Luminism

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Luminism (also American luminism ) is an art-historical term that describes a trend in North American landscape painting of the 19th century. Its main period is between 1850 and 1875.

term

The term American Luminism or American Luminism was first used in 1954 by the American art historian and museum director John IH Baur (1909-1987) to characterize landscape painting in the late phase of the Hudson River School . He thus linked to the term luminism , which on the one hand denotes an artistic preference for clear lighting effects in general and on the other hand a movement of post-impressionism in particular (after lumen , Latin term for light ). The art historian Barbara Novak developed the underlying concept of the term Luminism in her American Painting in the Nineteenth Century (1969). When the art historian John Wilmerding first introduced the book American Light: The Luminist Movement 1850–1875 (1980), Luminism was already an established term in art history. The technical term and the emphasis it was intended to emphasize was problematized by the art historian J. Gray Sweeney in the writing Inventing Luminism , in which he attributed the invention and the spread of the term to the interests of collectors, dealers, curators and art historians as well as the desire in the phase of the Cold War to construct a national identity .

Origins and characteristics

In its prime time (1850–1875), Luminism was shaped by a change of perspective towards a realistic and documentary approach to painting and the engagement of painters from the Hudson River School with the emerging photography . Nonetheless, it was rooted in the traditions of romantic and heroic depictions of nature in European landscape painting (e.g. by Claude Lorrain , Jacob Isaacksz. Van Ruisdael , Caspar David Friedrich , Carl Gustav Carus , Johan Christian Clausen Dahl , William Turner and older landscape painters from the Düsseldorf School ). The luminism features highlighted in literature remain fuzzy. The literature characterizes him by the preference for strong, often indirect effects of the moon or sunlight, which connects this trend with impressionism , the staging of panoramic landscapes with a rather quiet, poetic atmosphere , a mostly calm composition with no or only sparse Staffage and the avoidance of visible brushstrokes, which sometimes gives the paintings an almost photorealistic appearance. Views of the sea, rivers, lakes and mountains are often shown in clear or slightly hazy weather, in which the light of the rising or setting sun creates numerous reflections and shadow effects on the water, rocks and vegetation.

Representative (selection)

gallery

See also

  • Luminism , post-impressionist movement in Europe, around 1900

Web links

Commons : Luminism (American art style)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • John IH Baur: American Luminism . In: Perspective USA. , No. 9, 1954, pp. 90-98
  • Edgar Preston Richardson: Painting in America: The Story of 450 Years . Constable, London 1956, p. 221
  • Barbara Novak: American Painting in the Nineteenth Century . First edition 1969, third edition: Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-530949-2 ( online )
  • John Wilmerding: American Light: The Luminist Movement 1850-1875 . First edition 1980 (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), reprint 1989, ISBN 978-0-691-00280-4
  • J. Gray Sweeney: Inventing Luminism: 'Labels are the Dickens' . Oxford Art Journal 26, issue 2/2003, p. 93

Individual evidence

  1. See biography Baur, John I (reland) H (owe), “Jack” in the dictionaryofarthistorians.org portal
  2. On the relationship between the term Luminism and the use of the word luminous (German: Leuchtend, phosphoreszierend ) in James Fenimore Cooper's novel Der Wildtöter, see: Allan M. Axelrad: From Mountain Gothic to Forest Gothic and Luminism: Changing Representations of Landscape in the Leatherstocking Tales and in American Painting . Published in: Hugh C. MacDougall, Steven Harthorn (Eds.): James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art . Papers from the 2005 Cooper Seminar (No. 15), The State University of New York College at Oneonta. Oneonta, New York 2005, pp. 7–20 ( online (October 2007) )
  3. Cf. for example Hans Sedlmayr : The light in its artistic manifestations . Mäander Kunstverlag, 1979, pp. 22, 24, 33
  4. See article John Wilmerding in the English language Wikipedia
  5. ^ J. Gray Sweeney, p. 93
  6. ^ Anne Hollander: Moving Pictures . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1989, ISBN 0-394-57400-1 , p. 357
  7. ^ Bettina Friedl: American painting between 1670 and 1980 . In: Christof Decker (Ed.): Visual Cultures of the USA. On the history of painting, photography, film, television and new media in America . transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 978-3-8376-1043-7 , p. 35 ( online )
  8. The characteristics assigned to luminism vary in literature. - See, for example, the hallmarks of Luminism in: Herbert R. Hartel Jr .: Luminism, Transcendentalism, and Abstraction in the Landscape Paintings of John F. Kensett . In: Notes in the History of Arts, Vol. 21, No. 4, summer 2002 ( digitized version )