Can Impressionism be called another renaissance?

Answer 1

Hardly!!! It's more of a Morte d' Arte...to paraphrase Sir Thomas Mallory's book title. It is a crude and immature style based upon loony ideas. Impressionists wanted to make a quick impression of something. Light changes rapidly, so they worked quickly. Such a technique cannot accomplish much worthwhile. They didn't even wish to take time to blend colors, so they put them side by side in blobs to blend in the eye. That doesn't work. Georges Seurat used dots of color, and that works better than large blobs, but his paintings still look quite amateurish. Impressionists observed that pigments blend in a subtractive manner, i.e toward black, while light blends additively toward white. Blending pigments "muddies" colors and doesn't recapture the bright colors in nature... or so they said. They have a point to an extent, but there are better ways to avoid muddying than to do childish paintings. The Renaissance painters knew how, and Salvador Dali did too. I know how from studying them. We refute the Impressionist philosophy and reveal it to be immature. After Greece fell to Rome,and Rome fell to barbarians, there was a long Dark Ages. For 1850 years, no one could match the skill of the greatest ancient Greek painters, e.g. Zeuxis and Appeles. About 1400, Italian artists aspired to equal the Greeks. Thus, the Renaissance began as a Rebirth of the skills of a flowering civilization. Raphael Urbino, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarotti were the only ones who succeeded in equalling the Greeks. In the Baroque period, Jan Vermeer van Delft exceeded the Greeks and was the best painter who ever lived. Diego Velasquez was second to Vermeer. Sadly, painting deteriorated after the Baroque. Honestly, can you compare Impressionists' crude daubings to Vermeer or Raphael? A true Renaissance will come only when artists can once again equal the Renaissance and Baroque masters. As Dali says, now, mere eccentricity is wrongly believed to be originality, and obscurantism is mistaken for profundity. Impressionism is a Morte d'Arte=Death of Art.

Answer 2

Not really... Renaissance was a "rebirth" of the Classical art styles, and Impressionism, at the time that it came out, was a very modern and rather unexplored art style. Renaissance was all about control and realism, etc, and Impressionism was about trying to depict a moment in time, rather than making something as realistic as possible.

Answer 3

I would say that impressionism is more of an art movement than a renaissance.
Given that the renaissance was the rebirth of many different things, including art, science and philosophy, it seems appropriate that it would be a "rebirth" on a smaller scale.

Answer 4

As Renaissance means rebirth and referred to the rebirth of classical art architecture and values etc, exactly what would Impressionism be a rebirth of? Yes Impressionism was associated with technical innovations such as paint in tubes and photography but I fail to see it as a Renaissance rather it was a a creation of its own era.

Answer 5

I wouldn't think so since if you think about the word 'renaissance' meaning 'rebirth'... what was being reborn in the period of the renaissance was an assertion of a return to classical ideals and thus a return of an era of ground breaking thought: in the fine arts a display of human achievement; physical and intellectual statements which aspired to show God's image continued in mankind... i.e. pride rather than denial of the human form as seen previously in the ancient Greeks and Romans but in a Christian context. When you come to the Impressionists they were something completely new, a way of looking at the world through painting which reflected the age of industrialism and verified the worth of painting in a time of change in art when photography took over the role of realistic image making. Hmmmm... that help?!

Answer 6

The renaissance was the result of a secular bourgeoisie
in societal conflict with an omnipotent political/spiritual
Monolith (Roman Catholic Church) to satisfy human intellectual, sensual and spiritual curiosities.
Impressionism was a aesthetic/scientific effort in capturing and depicting light.
(i.e.How many fingers can you identify in any "impressionist work?)
Freud and Carl Yung, have made more contributions to human and asthetic growth than any painter who couldn't pass muster for any Paris Salon Exhibition.
Great Marketing/Poor Products

Answer 7

Yes, renaissance means rebirth. It is fair to say that the Impressionist movement in art was a rebirth and new way of approaching painting, more by light and shadow than by shape. It is difficult to make the connections, but it can be argued that the change in art also had influence on literature, poetry and politics. It is an interesting concept, worthy of more thought.

Answer 8

EVERY NEW MOVEMENT CAN BE CALLED A RENAISSANCE!