hello everyone and welcome back to art history shorts so for the next few videos i had the intention of talking about impressionism and the artists that worked within that style but i realized that when talking about art movements it can be kind of difficult to get an idea of how they started without first talking about the ones that came previous to it because often these art movements they um they evolve as a reaction to the one that was before it uh so in the roots of impressionism they are tied to the period of realism and to the invention of photography so i wanted to take some time to talk about those two things before we tackled impressionism so realism in terms of art was about the unembellished depiction of nature and contemporary life the artists who followed it rejected the idealized imagination they didn't depict their subjects with idealized beauty as more perfect than what was found in reality so they replaced these idealized subjects and forms with everyday people doing everyday things instead of depicting the grandest moments in history they wanted to show what life was like for the majority of people and not just the wealthy few this was revolutionary for the time and redefined the art world it placed all people on equal footing at the time of realism the highest form of art in france for nearly two centuries was history painting these were large-scale depictions of a narrative drawn from classical mythology or from the bible or literature or from a historical event of human achievement history paintings uh they harmonize perfectly with the neoclassicism style the oath of haredi seen here by david it's a paragon of the style the message of country over family honor and virtue it's a depiction of a roman narrative the figures are all idealized and done in classic roman style their forms are contrived to better tell the narrative you can see like no one would really stand like that or so stiffly the romanticism movement developed from this wanting to inject more emotion and movement into the scenes but they were still clinging to these same kinds of story lines as an example we can see here delacrosse liberty leading the people it's a contemporary narrative that depicts an emotionally charged scene but is still depicting a grand and idealized subject so it's not until realism that artists start depicting everyday life and people on the same scale as the aristocracy so with the beautiful and the grand so in depicting these new subjects in the same style of neoclassism and romanticism the artist following this trend of depicting what was real uh what was real felt all were worthy of lasting a lifetime on canvas so in contrast to the oath of heredity and liberty leading the people we see the stone breakers or the gleaners images of laborers and the poor along with these scenes of working class life we see scenes from a product of industrialization life in the city on the streets and in the cafes and popular entertainments artists started depicting the nude figure in a more open and frank way this was all about painting from direct observation in the modern world these artists were essentially asking what constitutes art a question that i think artists are still asking today artists of course have taken the the approach of depicting art in a realistic way before the mid-1800s but in mid-19th century france it became a conscious movement a reaction to their time during this time we see the invention of photography and the rise of journalism both are act accurately depicting the world they were influenced by scientific discovery the age of enlightenment industrialization and shifting governments philosophy and literature written at this time also influenced them with the reception that the artwork received created by these artists was not exactly a welcoming one they were criticized in some cases they were rejected from the government exhibition and salons they were creating art that many people especially the people who would go see these exhibitions did not want to see facts of life that they didn't feel comfortable being confronted with so in my next few videos coming up i want to go into a bit more detail about how the artwork was received and by talking about a few of the artists and their work from this movement so until next time everyone thank you for watching