PAUL C�ZANNE: Landscape
(Verlag der Photograph.
Gesellschaft.
Berlm-Charlottenburg 9)middle-class art copied the art of the feudal classes (Classicism: lngres).
Only around 1830 did it attain a form of expression of its own (the
Romantics: Runge, C. D. Friedrich). But whereas until then the subject of
painting had been of purely ideological significance, now painting for its
own sake became important, and the subject lost more and more of its
importance.
The invention of photography in about 1830 had much to do with this
development. Its existence made possible the posing of a new problem.
Previously, two main factors had influenced painting: the purely painterly
one of arranging colours; and the subject, the motive, to which representa
tion was subsidiary. The representative, ideological, and narrative functions
of painting were in the 19 th century taken over by other areas of activity.
The path now to be taken by painting meant a gradual liberation from sub
ject, a progress towards the pure use of colour. This way lay clear after
photography had found the means to provide an exact mechanical repre
sentation of the material world. For the first time the purely painterly prob
lems could be recognized.
A comparison between a picture by Otto Philipp Runge and a daguerreo
type shows that photography could take over from the point which painting