A (Very) Brief Introduction to Post-Impressionism
- Mary Hazel
- May 13, 2020
- 3 min read
The transitional departure from reality and do we really have a definition?
Music: “Phase 2” by Xylo-Ziko licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. I do not own the rights to this song and have used it for educational, non-commercial purposes.
So figuratively, Post-Impressionism (late 1880s – early 1900s) is the child of the Impressionist movement. The term was synthesized in 1910 by Roger Fry, an English artist and art critic, when he was organizing the exhibition, “Manet and the Post-Impressionists,” at London’s Grafton Galleries. Though, even he agreed that there was such a radical disparity in ideas and styles among the artists, “Post-Impressionist” is simply a blanket term and just used to illustrate the departure from true Impressionism.
So how did the exhibition go? Well, Fry had been a longtime admirer of art in France and was genuinely enthralled with the experimentalism these modern artists exhibited. The show was intended as a debut and introduction of radical artists like Cézanne, Seurat, Van Gogh, and Gauguin to the English public. He fully believed that this exhibition would allow English art and culture to progress in a similar way to the French, sprouting new modes of thought and creative direction. Sadly, as the cycle goes, it was met with public outcry and humiliation.
Departing from my formal history talk, I seriously feel bad for this guy. Can you imagine how happy he must have been up until that horrendous moment? I mean, some people even remarked that "he must be going mad" which was horrendously insensitive considering his wife suffered from mental illnesses and was in an asylum. This exhibition destroyed Fry's career but it also reserved his spot in history. Without him, who knows how our current art would look now. (Let's all take a moment to acknowledge Mr. Fry for his work and say a quick thank you!)
Back to our program - so, why did people react so violently to Post-Impressionism when normal Impressionism was a concept and was pretty acceptable at this point? Though Post-Impressionism still retains the same loose qualities of Impressionism, everything else is a separation from the former movement. There is no longer a concern with accurately representing natural light and colors, instead, erring on the side of abstraction and symbolism. No longer did these artists want to stick to depicting reality before their eyes but to showcase the reality in their minds. They wanted expression! They wanted vibrancy! They wanted art for art's sake!
Though there are many artists considered to be "Post-Impressionist," the four previously mentioned, as part of the 1910 exhibition, spearheaded this movement: Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. These men mostly began with impressionism and then greatly diverted into their own styles like pointillism, neo-impressionism, Japonisme, synthetism, primitivism, les nabis, or an emphasis on natural geometric forms. Due to the outrage against the London exhibition, these artists were rejected by their own national academies but we owe them for their genius, providing the world a final push into modern art.
And that’s art.
A Sidenote
I wouldn't be a good teacher if I failed to mention that the term, "Post Impressionism," is still up to debate. John Rewald, a 20th-century art historian and author, would use Post-Impressionism to include artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, les Fauves, and Henri Rousseau (Le Douanier). However, defining “Post-Impressionism” is not an easy task. It is difficult to set boundaries when terms like “Modernism” and “Symbolism” are thrown into the mix. Another Art Historian, Alan Bowness, expanded the movement even further to encompass the early art of World War I. Despite all the debate, at least it seems that everyone agreed that “Cubism” is a different entity of its own and the start of a new movement.
I, for one, simply identify Post-Impressionism as artwork adhering to the impressionist model of “capturing a quick glance of a scene” but using their artistic freedom in terms of forms, color, lighting, etc. As long as an artist upholds that basic concept, I refer to it as Post-Impressionism.
Sources
“Art Term: Post-Impressionism.” Tate. Accessed May 13, 2020. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/post-impressionism.
Bowness, Alan. Post-Impressionism. Cross-Currents in European Painting. London: Royal Academy of Arts & Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979.
Hodgkinson, Will. “Culture Quake: the Post Impressionist Exhibition, 1910.”British Library. May 25, 2016. https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/culture-quake-the-post-impressionist-exhibition-1910.
“Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.” Oxford Art Online. Accessed May 13, 2020. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/page/impressionism-and-post-impressionism/impressionism-and-postimpressionism.
Rewald, John:Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin, Revised Edition: Secker & Warburg, London, 1978.
The Art Story Contributors. “Post-Impressionism Movement Overview and Analysis.” TheArtStory.org. July 1, 2013. https://www.theartstory.org/movement/post-impressionism/history-and-concepts/#.
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