Realism

The second half of the 19th century has been called the positivist age. It was an age of faith in all knowledge which would derive from science and scientific objective methods which could solve all human problems.
In the visual arts this spirit is most obvious in the widespread rejection of Romantic subjectivism and imagination in favor of Realism - the accurate and apparently objective description of the ordinary, observable world, a change especially evident in painting. Positivist thinking is evident in the full range of artistic developments after 1850- from the introduction of realistic elements into academic art, from the emphasis on the phenomenon of light, to the development of photography and the application of new technologies in architecture and constructions.
Realism sets as a goal not imitating past artistic achievements but the truthful and accurate depiction of the models that nature and contemporary life offer to the artist. The artificiality of both the Classicism and Romanticism in the academic art was unanimously rejected, and necessity to introduce contemporary to art found strong support. New idea was that ordinary people and everyday activities are worthy subjects for art. Artists - Realists attempted to portray the lives, appearances, problems, customs, and mores of the middle and lower classes, of the unexceptional, the ordinary, the humble, and the unadorned. They set themselves conscientiously to reproduce all to that point ignored aspects of contemporary life and society - its mental attitudes, physical settings, and material conditions.
Realism in France appears after the 1848 Revolution. In France it expresses a taste for democracy. At the same time in England artists - Realists came before the public with the reaction against the Victorian materialism and the conventions of the Royal Academy in London.
In spite of its social inclinations Realism produces no new style in architecture and few valuable sculptures.It was the time of introduction of new technologies in constructions. The revolutionary modular construction and largest spans in structural skeleton that could then be mass-produced - used on exhibition halls, railway stations; the use of cast iron as building material and invention of twisted-wire cable that extended main spans of bridges in Europe and United States. Less positive attitude toward technological progress can be seen in the first attempts to incorporate structural iron into architecture proper.

We recognize a few Realism schools of painting:

The Realists (1800 - 1899)
This is a group of international artists in Paris which begin to devise new methods of pictorial representation. They are focused on scientific concepts of vision and the study of optical effects of light. The Realists express both a taste for democracy and rejection of the inherent old artistic tradition. The Realists felt that painters should work from the life round them. Indisputable honest, the Realists desecrated rules of artistic propriety with their new realistic portrayals of modern life. Artists: Marie Rosalie Bonheur, John Singleton Copley, Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, Thomas Eakins, Ignace Henri Theodore Fantin-Latour, Wilhelm Leibl, Edouard Manet.

Barbizon School (1840s - 1850s)
Barbizon School was a group of French landscape artists one of first formed outside the Academy. They were named after the Forest of Fonteblau near the village of Barbizon where they got away from the revolutionary Paris to produce their art. They attempted to paint nature directly; Constable who pioneered in making landscape painting a faithful depiction of nature was their model.
The Barbizon painters helped establish landscape and motif of country life as vital subjects for French artists. They also cherished an interest in visible reality, which became increasingly important to the later artistic styles. Artists in the group: Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Jean-François Millet, Pierre-Etienne-Théodore Rousseau.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848 - late 19th Century)
In 1848 a group of English painters, poets and critics formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to reform art by rejecting practices of contemporary academic British Art. They have been considered the first avant-garde movement in art. They accepted the doctrine of imitation of nature, as central purpose of art. Instead of the Raphaelesque conventions taught at the Royal Academy, their central doctrine was that artists should seek to represent the natural world. They believed that the only great art was before high renaissance, before Raphael. He was representative of the time when painters would scarify the reality of the subject to their own ideals of beauty and morality. The Pre-Raphaelite Brothers condemned this art of idealization, and promoted works based on real landscapes and models, and paid intense attention to accuracy of detail and color. They advocated as well a moral approach to art, in keeping with a long British tradition established by Hogarth. The combination of didacticism and realism characterized the first phase of the movement. The landscape compositions were painted outdoors, what was an innovative approach at the time.
The interest in the Middle Ages inaugurated the second, unofficial phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. Their subject matters were from medieval tales, bible stories, classical mythology, and nature. With technique of bright colors on a white background, they achieved great depth and brilliance. However, we can see now the curve from their immature rebelliousness, through the realistic painting of detail without idealization, to works of art that are finally more surreal than real. Their work cannot be realistic with the mythological matter and medieval tales that they chose - they can only be envisioned in the mind and do not exist outside of there. So they ended up closer to some other art rebellions - -Symbolists.

Victorian Art

The second half of the 19th century has been called the positivist age and one of the most fascinating periods in our history. It has been an age of faith in the positive consequences of what can be achieved through the close observation of the natural and human realms.
The spirit of 19th century England could be personified through Queen Victoria and it's known as the Victorian era. It is covering the eclectic period of 64-year reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. British Empire became the most powerful, and England the most modern, and wealthy country in the World.
The faith that science and its objective methods could solve all human problems was not novel. The idea of human progress had been gradually maturing. The world was truly progressing at break-neck speed, with new inventions, ideas, and advancements - scientific, literary, and social - developing. The middle class became self-made men and women who reaped of profits. Prosperity brought a large number of art consumers, with money to spend on art.
When most people think of the Victorian era, high fashion, gilded age, rich with elegance, splendor, and romance, strict etiquette, and plush or eclectic decorating styles come to mind - but it was so much more than that. Victorian era covers Classicism, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism. Classicism, with the accurate and apparently objective description of the ordinary, observable world, was specially viewed as the opposite of Romanticism. Paintings of the Romantic school were focused on spontaneous expression of emotion over reason and often depicted dramatic events in brilliant color. Impressionism, a school of painting that developed in the late 19th century, was characterized by transitory visual expressions that focused on the changing effects of light and color. Post-Impressionism was developed as a reaction to the limitations of Impressionism. Victorian art was shown in the full range of artistic developments, from the development of photography to the application of new technologies in architecture.
In the midst of these artistic movements, painters Dante Rossetti and William Holman Hunt formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The avant-garde artists banded together with the common vision of recapturing the style of painting that preceded Raphael, famed artist of the Italian Renaissance. The brotherhood rejected the conventions of industrialized England, especially the creative principles of art instruction at the Royal Academy. Rather, the artists focused on painting directly from nature, thereby producing colorful, detailed, and almost photographic representations. The painters sought to transform Realism with typological symbolism, by drawing on the poetry and literature of William Shakespeare and their own contemporaries.

Modernism

The term Modernism applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the arts that emerged from the middle of the 19th century, as artists rebelled against traditional Historicism, and later through 20th century as the necessity of an individual rejecting previous tradition, and by creating individual, original techniques.
Rather than a lockstep organization, it is better to see Modernism as taking a series of responses to the situation, and the attempt to wrestle universal principles from the collision between the two. The Modernism was not merely defined by its avant garde but also by a reforming trend within previous artistic norms.
The second half of the 19th century has been called the Positivist age. In the visual arts this modernistic or positivistic spirit is most obvious in the widespread rejection of Romantic subjectivism and imagination in favor of the faith in the positive consequences of the close observation and the accurate and apparently objective description of the ordinary, observable world. The term Realism was the label used around 1850 by the artists and critics who pioneered the development.
In the modern opposition to this current historicism were a series of ideas, among which some were even direct extensions of the Romanticism itself- the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood for example. But Impressionism- painting school originating in France, had particular impact on Modernism. It was initially focused on work done, not in studios, but in the "plain air". They argued that human beings do not see objects, but instead, they saw light itself. The school became increasingly influential and the work of Eduard Manet attracted tremendous attention.
In the turn of century crucial ideas were: the importance of the machine as being part of beauty, the importance of subjective experience, the necessity for system to replace the concept of "objective reality". These concepts were often in competition with each other, and were subject of direct conflict.
In the first 15 years of the 20th century, the landmarks of Modernism include artists such as Gustav Klimt, Matisse, Mondrian, the abstract paintings of Wassily Kandinsky, culminating with the founding of the Blue Rider group in Munich, the Surrealism, the rise of Cubism with the work of Picasso and Georges Braque. Modernism's cutting edges, to this point had been the exploration of subjective experience and the clarification and simplification of structure.
The rise of cinema and "moving pictures" in the first decade of the 20th century gave the modern movement an artform which was uniquely its own. The use of photography, which had rendered much of the representational function of visual art obsolete, also strongly affected Modernism.
In period 1910-1930's there were two trends of Modernism, to some extent, at cross purposes - Subjectivity and Criticism. Many early modernists were seeking increasing sophistication, and hence for greater difficulty in understanding a work, and others a greater transparency, and hence easier understanding.
On the eve of World War I the break out of the Russian Revolution introduced the increasing number of works which either radically simplified or rejected previous practice. Underlying strand of that thinking can be called the shift from idealistic to critical. This tendency mirrors that art is to communicate clearly.
Subjectivity, on the other hand, led to an increasing exploration of primitivism, with Paul Gauguin's paintings. Arts from Africa became increasingly prominent in the public consciousness, because of their geometrical nature, their perceived reaching for original or basic drives, and their phantasmagoric quality, such as is seen by ceremonial masks.
Thus in the immediate post-war years, the tendency to form "movements" and develop systems became increasingly entrenched in the modern movement. Examples include Dadaism, the "International style" of Bauhaus and Socialist Realism. By 1930, Modernism had entered popular culture with "The Jazz Age" and the increasing urbanization of populations. Such ideas rapidly became labeled "modern" or "hyper-modern.
The pressures of communication, transportation and more rapid scientific development began placing a premium on search for simplification of diction in the work of various art forms. One example was the movement towards clarity, and the embracing of new technology, found in Futurism.
After World War II, Modernism began to merge with consumer culture, especially during the 1960s. In Britain, a youth sub-culture even called itself "modernists". Modernist design also began to enter the mainstream of popular culture. The merging of consumer and modernist culture led to a radical transformation of the meaning of "modernism" itself. Firstly, it implied that a movement based on the rejection of tradition had become a tradition of its own. Secondly, it demonstrated that the distinction between elite modernist and mass consumerist culture had lost its precision. Many have interpreted this transformation as the beginning of the phase that became known as Postmodernism.

Impressionism

Impressionism is a movement in French painting, sometimes called optical realism because of its almost scientific interest in the actual visual experience and effect of light and movement on appearance of objects.
Impressionist motto - human eye is a marvelous instrument. Impact worldwide was lasting and huge. The name 'Impressionists' came as artists embraced the nickname a conservative critic used to ridicule the whole movement. Painting 'Impression: Sunrise' by Claude Monet fathered derogatory referral. Impressionist fascination with light and movement was at the core of their art. Exposure to light and/or movement was enough to create a justifiable and fit artistic subject out of literally anything. Impressionists learned how to transcribe directly their visual sensations of nature, unconcerned with the actual depiction of physical objects in front of them. Two ideas of Impressionists are expressed here. One is that a quickly painted oil sketch most accurately records a landscape's general appearance. The second idea that art benefits from a naïve vision untainted by intellectual preconceptions was a part of both the naturalist and the realist traditions, from which their work evolved.

Neo-Impressionism (after 1880)
Neo-Impressionism outgrew the Impressionism. Many Impressionists in the years after 1880 began to reconsider their earlier approaches or make important adjustments to them. What many of them found objectionable in their earlier art was not its truth value but its lack of permanence. Despite the fundamental similarity of conception, later works differ from earlier works in two fundamental respects. The elements, especially the figures, are more solidly and conventionally defined, and composition is more conservative. They moved far from her early commitment to depicting only contemporary moments. This pattern of rejection and reform was originated by Georges-Pierre Seurat, who made use of a technique called pointillism (known as confettiism). This new technique is based on the skillful putting side by side touches of pure color. The brain then blends the colors automatically in the involuntary process of optical mixing. Other neo-impressionists include Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac, Theodoor van Rysselberghe, and Henry Edmond Cross.

Post Impressionism

The years between 1880 and the outbreak of WW II testified to a fruitfulness of different styles and artistic movements in Western Europe.These various tendencies, often consciously at odds with one another, are traditionally grouped under a common label, modernism.
Post-Impressionism is a French art movement in early Modernism, also known as Synthetism. It is almost absurd to call it Post-Impressionism for two reasons: because it diverged so strongly away from its predecessors - Impressionists, with all the admiration and due respect paid, and because "Post-Impressionism" started in early '80s while impressionism was still gaining speed. One could argue it hardly is a movement, keeping in one's mind all the diversity and brightness of artistic individuality it embraced. Struggle to regain solidity of color and form unites it more than anything, that's where the Synthetism as a name comes in. These artists showed a greater concern for expression, structure and form than did the Impressionist artists.
Timeline is roughly end of 19th century. It introduced components that would have significant and lasting impact on modern art overall - primitivism and folklore notes with elements of mysticism. Light is as strong and as present as impressionist, but focused, not dispersed or broken into base colors. Palette of colors is purified and intensified.

Les Nabis (1891-1899)

Group of Parisian Post-Impressionists and illustrators. They became forceful in the graphic art. Their special attention on design made them the counterpart of Art Nouveau. Both groups also were strongly influenced by the Symbolists.

Symbolism

Symbolism originated in France, and was part of a 19th-century movement in which art became infused with mysticism. French Symbolism was both a continuation of the Romantic tradition and a reaction to the realistic approach of impressionism. It served as a catalyst in the outgrowth of the darker sides of Romanticism and toward abstraction.
The term Symbolism means the systematic use of symbols or pictorial conventions to express an allegorical meaning. Symbolism is an important element of most religious arts and reading symbols plays a main role in psychoanalysis. Thus, the Symbolist painters used these symbols from mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul.
Not so much a style of art, Symbolism was more an international ideological trend. Symbolists believed that art should apprehend more absolute truths which could only be accessed indirectly. Thus, they painted scenes from nature, human activities, and all other real world phenomena in a highly metaphorical and suggestive manner. They provided particular images or objects with esoteric attractions.
There were several, rather dissimilar, groups of Symbolist painters and visual artists. Symbolism in painting had a large geographical reach, reaching several Russian artists, as well as American. The closest to Symbolism was Aestheticism. The Pre-Raphaelites, also, were contemporaries of the earlier Symbolists, and have much in common with them. Symbolism had a significant influence on Expressionism and Surrealism, two movements which descend directly from Symbolism proper. The work of some Symbolist visual artists directly impacted the curvilinear forms of the contemporary Art Nouveau movements in Europe and Les Nabis.

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau has made itself know and present from 1880s to 1910s. This movement walked under the flag of an art that would break all connections to classical times, and bring down the barriers between the fine arts and applied arts. Art Nouveau was more than a mere style. It was a way of thinking about modern society and new production methods. It was an attempt to redefine the meaning and nature of the work of art. From that time on, it was the duty of art not to overlook any everyday object, no matter how utilitarian it might be. This approach was considered completely new and revolutionary, thus the New Art - Art Nouveau name.
An artist should work on everything from architecture to furniture design so that art would become a part of everyday life. By making beauty and harmony a part of everyday life, artists make people's lives better. This approach has been represented in painting, architecture, furniture, glassware, graphic design, jewelry, pottery, metalwork, and textiles and sculpture. Advertising posters were welcomed into art, and fence has been proclaimed a suitable exhibition place for this new art. This was a sharp contrast to the traditional separation of art into the distinct categories of fine art (painting and sculpture) and applied arts (ceramics, furniture, and other practical objects).
Because of typical flat, decorative patterns used in all art forms, Art Nouveau obtained a nickname 'the noodle style' in French, 'Le style nouilles'. Visual standards of the Art Nouveau style are flat, decorative patterns, intertwined organic forms of stems or flowers. Art Nouveau emphasized handcrafting as opposed to machine manufacturing, the use of new materials. Although curving lines characterize Art Nouveau, right-angled forms are also typical, especially as the style was practiced in Scotland and in Austria. Typical for this style was artistic application of modern industrial techniques and modern materials (unmasked iron in architecture for example). Principal subjects are lavish birds and flowers, insects and polyformic femme fatale. Abstract lines and shapes are used widely as a filling for recognizable subject matter. Purposeful elimination of three-dimensions is often applied through reduced shading. Art Nouveau artifacts are beautiful objects of art, but not necessarily very functional.
Art Nouveau flourished in a number of European countries, many of which developed their own names for the style. Art Nouveau was known in France as style Guimard, after French designer Hector Guimard; in Italy as the stile Floreale (floral style); stile Liberty, after British Art Nouveau designer Arthur Lasenby Liberty; in Spain as Modernisme; in Austria as Sezessionstil (Vienna Secession); and in Germany as Jugendstil.
Art Nouveau had its deepest influence on a variety of art and design movements that continued to explore integrated design, including De Stijl, a Dutch design movement in the 1920s, and the German Bauhaus School in the 1920s and 1930s.