Humanities in Dialogue Series Explores Social Change Through Art in Professor Young's Recent Book
The latest installment of the Humanities in Dialogue series鈥攄iscussions between faculty members with different areas of expertise, presented by the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at 鈥攐ffered a lively interview of Dr. Marnin Young about his recent book, Realism in the Age of Impressionism: Painting and the Politics of Time. The interview was conducted by Dr. Rachel Mesch. Young is an associate professor of art history at , and Mesch is an associate professor of French and English and chair of the department of foreign languages and cultures at Yeshiva College.
In his book, Young explores how the economic and social changes cascading through French society of the late 1870s and early 1880s affected the shift from mid-19th century realistic painting, with its focus on order and 鈥渟low time,鈥 to the 鈥渋nstantaneity鈥 of impressionism, with its quick brush strokes and lighter touch. Impressionism was trying to capture the same one-tenth of a second that the newly invented technology of instantaneous photography was also trying to capture.
He focuses in detail on how Realist painting tried to hold on as a legitimate mode of expression as contemporary society became more attuned to clocks and moved away from the circadian rhythms and social quiescence of an earlier time.
Under Mesch鈥檚 questioning, Young explained how and why he structured his book around five emblematic realistic paintings: Haymaking (Jules Bastien-Lapage), Decorative Triptych (Gustave Caillebotte), The Strike of the Miners (Alfred-Philippe Roll), The Absinthe Drinkers (Jean-Fran莽ois Raffa毛lli) and Russian Music (James Ensor.)
Dr. Marnin Young
Each of these painters, infused by the values of their society, tried to 鈥済rapple with the puzzling and often frightening acceleration of the advanced urban life they called their own.鈥 For example, in each of his selected pictures, while the people may appear to be inactive鈥攁 rural worker gazes off into the middle distance in Haymaking, or two hobos just pass aimless time in The Absinthe Drinkers鈥擸oung argues that they are in fact resisting the pull of the clock and the train schedule and the industrial system.
Dr. Rachel Mesch
This tension mirrors many of the discussions within French society about that society鈥檚 future. A city population still only a generation or two away from being peasants on the land contended with new velocities of change that threatened to do away with rural life and the nostalgia for it, what Young called 鈥渢he ideology of the countryside.鈥
Many other topics were covered in both the interview between Young and Mesch and in the Q&A afterwards, ranging over photographic technologies, Emile Zola versus Victor Hugo (with Balzac and Flaubert thrown in), the 鈥渋deology of romance鈥 that enthralls Emma Bovary and the coming of Karl Marx鈥檚 work to France in the late 19th century.
Young鈥檚 next project is, appropriately enough, focusing on post-Impressionism along with a history of changes in exhibition strategies as galleries and museums moved away from crowding artworks together to the more modern practice of single pictures hung on a wall and spaced apart from each other.
ores how the economic and social changes cascading through French society of the late 1870s and early 1880s affected the shift from mid-19th century realistic painting, with its focus on order and 鈥渟low time,鈥 to the 鈥渋nstantaneity鈥 of impressionism, with its quick brush strokes and lighter touch. Impressionism was trying to capture the same one-tenth of a second that the newly invented technology of instantaneous photography was also trying to capture.
He focuses in detail on how Realist painting tried to hold on as a legitimate mode of expression as contemporary society became more attuned to clocks and moved away from the circadian rhythms and social quiescence of an earlier time.
Under Mesch鈥檚 questioning, Young explained how and why he structured his book around five emblematic realistic paintings: Haymaking (Jules Bastien-Lapage), Decorative Triptych (Gustave Caillebotte), The Strike of the Miners (Alfred-Philippe Roll), The Absinthe Drinkers (Jean-Fran莽ois Raffa毛lli) and Russian Music (James Ensor.)
Dr. Marnin Young
Dr. Rachel Mesch
