Art_Last_Impression

Art Last Impression Gender and Genre in Impressionist Portraiture In the nineteenth century, the portrait form explored and celebrated the individual as a unique and dynamic identity. By isolating a person on the canvas, the artist recognized him as a subject with a character and will of his own. Genre, on the other hand, was the painting of social scene, a sketch of the modern metropolis, where characters represent static social 'types', rather than unique personalities. Tamar Garr's lecture gave a fascinating account of how the Impressionist artists used portraiture and genre to construct and comment on the process of constructing individual identity in relation to social expectations. In the nineteenth century, it was widely held amongst the artistic community, that only certain individuals could be painted in portrait - namely, bourgeois, artistic or aristocratic men - as only they could be understood as dynamic 'subjects' with a sense of their own unique identity. Consider Pissaro's portrait of Cezanne, a rustic character built up through minor detail (the fragment of a radical newspaper in the background, the torn peasant clothes, the size of Cezanne's body overpowering the canvas). Or portraits of bourgeois factory owners, dressed in expensive suits and assertively facing the viewer head on. art, social, women, painting, men, portrait, nineteenth, identity, century, canvas, artist, own, gender, whilst, unique, portraiture, painted, individuals, individual, impressionist, genre, garr, dressed, character, being, behind, art, within, understood, types, time, suggests, subjectivity, space, representation, rather, paintings, net, manet's, manet, impressionists, gonzales, explored, dynamic, diminutive, curtains, characters, bourgeois, between, background, artistic