Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

Equally influential was the English naturalist
Charles Darwin (1809–1882), whose theory of nat-
ural selection did much to increase interest in sci-
ence. Darwin and his compatriot Alfred Russel
Wallace (1823–1913), working independently, pro-
posed a model for the process of evolution based
on mechanistic laws, rather than attributing evolu-
tion to random chance or God’s plan. They postu-
lated a competitive system in which only the fittest
survived. Darwin’s controversial ideas, as presented
in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Se-
lection (1859), sharply contrasted with the biblical
narrative of creation. By challenging traditional
Christian beliefs, Darwinism contributed to a grow-
ing secular attitude.
Other theorists and social thinkers, most notably
British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903),
applied Darwin’s principles to the rapidly changing
socioeconomic realm. As in the biological world,
they asserted, industrialization’s intense competi-
tion led to the survival of the most economically fit
companies, enterprises, and countries. The social
Darwinists provided Western leaders with justifica-
tion for the colonization of peoples and cultures
that they deemed less advanced. By 1900 the major
economic and political powers had divided up
much of the world. The French had colonized most
of North Africa and Indochina, while the British
occupied India, Australia, and large areas of Africa,
including Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan, Rhodesia, and the
Union of South Africa. The Dutch were a major
presence in the Pacific, and the Germans, Portu-
guese, Spanish, and Italians all established them-
selves in various areas of Africa.

MODERNISMThe combination of extensive technological changes
and increased exposure to other cultures, coupled with the rapidity
of these changes, led to an acute sense in Western cultures of the
world’s impermanence. Darwin’s ideas of evolution and Marx’s em-
phasis on a continuing sequence of economic conflicts reinforced
this awareness of a constantly shifting reality. These societal changes
in turn fostered a new and multifaceted artistic approach that histo-
rians call modernism. Modernist artists seek to capture the images
and sensibilities of their age, but modernism transcends the simple
present to involve the artist’s critical examination of or reflection on
the premises of art itself. Modernism thus implies certain concerns
about art and aesthetics that are internal to art production, regard-
less of whether the artist is producing scenes from contemporary so-
cial life. Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), an influential American
art critic, explained:

The essence of Modernism lies... in the use of the characteristic

methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself—not in

order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of com-

petence....Realistic, illusionist art had dissembled the medium,

using art to conceal art. Modernism used art to call attention to art.

The limitations that constitute the medium of painting—the flat

surface, the shape of the support, the properties of pigment—were

treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowl-

edged only implicitly or indirectly. Modernist painting has come

to regard these same limitations as positive factors that are to be

acknowledged openly.^1

The work of Gustave Courbet and the Realists (see Chapter 30) al-

ready expressed this modernist viewpoint, but modernism emerged

even more forcefully in the late-19th-century movements that art

historians call Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Symbolism.

Impressionism

Impressionism,both in content and in style, was an art of industrial-

ized, urbanized Paris, a reaction to the sometimes brutal and chaotic

transformation of French life that occurred during the latter half of

the 19th century. The rapidity of these changes made the world seem

unstable and insubstantial. As the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire

(1821–1867) observed in 1860 in his essay “The Painter of Modern

Life”: “[M]odernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent.”^2

Accordingly, Impressionist works represent an attempt to capture

a fleeting moment—not in the absolutely fixed, precise sense of a

Realist painting but by conveying the elusiveness and impermanence

of images and conditions.

CLAUDE MONETA hostile critic applied the term “Impres-

sionism” in response to the painting Impression: Sunrise (FIG. 31-2)

that Claude Monet(1840–1926) exhibited in the first Impression-

ist show in 1874 (see “Academic Salons and Independent Art Exhi-

bitions,” page 823). Although the critic intended the label to be

derogatory, by the third Impressionist show in 1878 the artists had

embraced it and were calling themselves Impressionists. Artists and

822 Chapter 31 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1870 TO 1900

MAP31-1France around 1870.

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BELGIUM

LUXEMBOURG

NETHERLANDS

FRANCE

ITALY

SWITZERLAND

SPAIN

ENGLAND

GERMANY

CAT

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BRIT

TAN

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Brussels

Paris

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Les BarraquesCalais

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London

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Barcelona

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