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For many critics Édouard Manet wrote of the nineteenth century and the modern period (much as Charles Baudelaire does in poetry). His rediscovery of Spanish painting from the golden age, his willingness to show the unpainted canvas, his exploration of the forthright nude, and his radical brush strokes are the first steps toward Impressionism. Impressionism would take the Barbizon school one step farther, rejecting once and for all a belabored style and the use of mixed colors and black, for fragile transitive effects of light as captured outdoors in changing light (partly inspired by the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and Eugène Boudin). It led to Claude Monet with his cathedrals and haystacks, Pierre-Auguste Renoir with both his early outdoor festivals and his later feathery style of ruddy nudes, and Edgar Degas with his dancers and bathers. Other important impressionists were Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Gustave Caillebotte. |
After that threshold was crossed, the next thirty years became a litany of amazing experiments. Vincent van Gogh, Dutch born, but living in France, opened the road to expressionism. Georges Seurat, influenced by color theory, devised a pointillist technique that governed the Impressionist experiment and was followed by Paul Signac. Paul Cézanne, a painter's painter, attempted a geometrical exploration of the world, that left many of his peers indifferent. Paul Gauguin, a banker, found symbolism in Brittany along with Émile Bernard, and then exoticism and primitivism in French Polynesia. These painters were referred to as Post-Impressionists. Les Nabis, a movement of the 1890s, including painters such as Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis, was influenced by Gauguin's example in Brittany: they explored a decorative art in flat plains with the graphic approach of a Japanese print. They preached that a work of art is the end product and the visual expression of an artist's synthesis of nature in personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols. |
Henri Rousseau, the self-taught dabbling postmaster, became the model for the naïve revolution. |
20th century |
The early years of the twentieth century were dominated by experiments in colour and content that Impressionism and Post-Impressionism had unleashed. The products of the far east also brought new influences. At roughly the same time, Les Fauves (Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Albert Marquet, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Charles Camoin, Henri Manguin) exploded into color, much like German Expressionism. |
The discovery of African tribal masks by Pablo Picasso, a Spaniard living in Paris, lead him to create his Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907. Working independently, Picasso and Georges Braque returned to and refined Cézanne's way of rationally comprehension of objects in a flat medium, their experiments in cubism also would lead them to integrate all aspects and objects of day-to-day life, collage of newspapers, musical instruments, cigarettes, wine, and other objects into their works. Cubism in all its phases would dominate paintings of Europe and America for the next ten years. (See the article on Cubism for a complete discussion.) |
World War I did not stop the dynamic creation of art in France. In 1916 a group of discontents met in a bar in Zurich, the Cabaret Voltaire, and created the most radical gesture possible, the anti-art of Dada. At the same time, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp were exploring similar notions. At a 1917 art show in New York, Duchamp presented a white porcelain urinal (Fountain) signed R. Mutt as work of art, becoming the father of the readymade. |
When Dada reached Paris, it was avidly embraced by a group of young artists and writers who were fascinated with the writings of Sigmund Freud, particularly by his notion of the unconscious mind. The provocative spirit of Dada became linked to the exploration of the unconscious mind through the use of automatic writing, chance operations, and, in some cases, altered states. The surrealists quickly turned to painting and sculpture. The shock of unexpected elements, the use of Frottage, collage, and decalcomania, the rendering of mysterious landscapes and dreamed images were to become the key techniques through the rest of the 1930s. |
Immediately after this war the French art scene diverged roughly in two directions. There were those who continued in the artistic experiments from before the war, especially surrealism, and others who adopted the new Abstract Expressionism and action painting from New York, executing them in a French manner using Tachism or L'art informel. Parallel to both of these tendencies, Jean Dubuffet dominated the early post-war years while exploring childlike drawings, graffiti, and cartoons in a variety of media. |
École de Paris |
Between the two world wars, an art movement known as the École de Paris (School Of Paris), flourished. Centered in Paris, the movement gave rise to a unique form of Expressionist Art. It included many foreign and French artists, many of whom were Jewish; these artists were primarily centered in Montparnasse. These Jewish artists played a significant role in the École de Paris, several had sought refuge in Paris from Eastern Europe escaping persecution and pogroms. Prominent figures such as Marc Chagall, Jules Pascin, Chaïm Soutine, Isaac Frenkel Frenel, Amedeo Modigliani, and Abraham Mintchine were among notable contributors to the movement in France and abroad. These artists often depicted Jewish themes in their work, imbuing it with intense emotional tones. |
The term "l’École de Paris," coined in 1925 to counter xenophobia, acknowledged the foreign, often Jewish, artists. However, the Nazi occupation led to the tragic loss of Jewish artists during the Holocaust, resulting in the decline of the School of Paris as some artists left or fled to Israel or the United States. |
Post War |
The late 1950s and early 1960s in France saw art forms that might be considered Pop Art. Yves Klein had attractive nude women roll around in blue paint and throw themselves at canvases. Victor Vasarely invented Op-Art by designing sophisticated optical patterns. Artists of the Fluxus movement such as Ben Vautier incorporated graffiti and found objects into their work. Niki de Saint Phalle created bloated and vibrant plastic figures. Arman gathered together found objects in boxed or resin-coated assemblages, and César Baldaccini produced a series of large compressed object-sculptures. César Baldaccini was a prominent French sculptor of the 1960s, who created large waste sculptures by compressing discarded materials, for instance, automobiles, metal, rubbish, and domestic objects. |
In May 1968, the radical youth movement, through their atelier populaire, produced a great deal of poster-art protesting the moribund policies of president Charles de Gaulle. |
Many contemporary artists continue to be haunted by the horrors of the Second World War and the specter of the Holocaust. Christian Boltanski's harrowing installations of the lost and the anonymous are particularly powerful. |
French and Western Art museums of France |
In Paris |
Musée du Louvre |
Musée d'Orsay |
Musée National d'Art Moderne |
Musée de Cluny |
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris |
Petit Palais |
Musée Picasso |
Musée Rodin |
Musée de l'Orangerie |
Musée Zadkine |
Musée Maillol |
Musée Bourdelle |
Musée Gustave Moreau |
Musée Jacquemart-André |
Musée national Eugène Delacroix |
Musée national Jean-Jacques Henner |
Musée Marmottan Monet |
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris |
Musée Nissim de Camondo |
Musée Cognacq-Jay |
Musée Carnavalet |
Near Paris |
Musée Condé in Chantilly |
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres in Chartres |
Musée de la Renaissance in Écouen |
Musée d'archéologie nationale in Saint-Germain-en-Laye |
Musée départemental Maurice Denis "The Priory" in Saint-Germain-en-Laye |
Musée d'art et d'archéologie de Senlis in Senlis |
Sèvres - Musée de la céramique in Sèvres |
Outside Paris |
Major museums |
(alphabetically by city) |
Musée Faure in Aix-les-Bains |
Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence |
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi |
Musée de Picardie in Amiens |
Musée de l'Arles et de la Provence antiques in Arles |
Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon |
Fondation Calvet in Avignon |
Musée Albert-André in Bagnols-sur-Cèze |
Musée Bonnat in Bayonne |
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie de Besançon in Besançon |
Musée Fernand Léger in Biot, Alpes-Maritimes |
Musée des beaux-arts de Bordeaux in Bordeaux |
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen in Caen |
Goya Museum in Castres |
Musée d'Art Moderne de Céret in Céret |
Musée d'art Roger-Quilliot in Clermont-Ferrand |
Unterlinden Museum in Colmar |
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon in Dijon |
Musée départemental d'Art ancien et contemporain in Épinal |
Jacquemart-André museum in Fontaine-Chaalis |
Musée de Grenoble in Grenoble |
Grenoble Archaeological Museum in Grenoble |
Musée Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis |
Musée des Beaux-Arts André-Malraux in Le Havre |
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille in Lille |
Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon in Lyon |
Musée gallo-romain in Lyon |
Musée des beaux-arts de Marseille in Marseille |
Musée Cantini in Marseille |
Museums of Metz in Metz |
Centre Pompidou-Metz in Metz |
Musée Ingres in Montauban |
Musée Fabre in Montpellier |
Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art in Montsoreau |
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy in Nancy |
Musée de l'École de Nancy in Nancy |
Musée Lorrain in Nancy |
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes in Nantes |
Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice |
Musée national Message Biblique Marc Chagall in Nice |
Musée archéologique de Nîmes in Nîmes |
Musée Camille Claudel in Nogent-sur-Seine |
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