Impressionism took hold at a time when painting was re-emerging from its cave. Their paintings tell the painter’s stories. Uniquely, the Impressionists are also autobiographical. At the same time, Impressionism appeals to the high class taste for leisure, as well as the low class desire for representation, to be seen and heard, with portrayals of peasants, immigrants, and working people. The story of Impressionism is the story of rebellion against conventional more, and in that way it is appealing to modern sensibilities -David will always be preferred to Goliath. Many of the works of Impressionism were accused of being unfinished, incomplete fragments, and as a result the movement garnered a reputation as a kind of iconoclastic movement. Some have even gone as far as to suggest that Impressionism is a kind of Hegelian reaction against emerging technologies, like photography, as well as the prevailing artistic establishment, like so-called “realism.” Perhaps to reduce Impressionists to mere reactionary impulses does a disservice to the movement. ![]() ![]() The Impressionists give us only a glimpse of something, a passing blurred picture of motion like a fading sunset over the ocean, people gathering in the park from a distance, couples sitting in a Parisian care, and so on. In contrast to the bold, triumphant, and defined political works of earlier European painters, like Eugene Delacroix for example, the Impressionists were a more muted, subtle group of less defined painters, at least conventional wisdom instructs us so.
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