Naturalism (visual arts)

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The naturalism (also idealism) in art is a flow of about 1870 to 1890, but as an epoch, in the visual arts less sharp than in the literature. In addition to naturalism as an epoch term, as an equivalent to naturalism in literature , one speaks more generally of naturalism as a mode of representation that is independent of time and ideological background. Naturalism makes use of realism as a means; like this, it only depicts visible reality and dispenses with the representation of abstract ideas, but does not, like realism, strive to represent or construct an aesthetic totality e.g. B. by scarcity and reduction of forms. On the contrary, it opens up to the details and to new social and metropolitan issues.

Definitions

Naturalism as an Epoch

Jules Antoine Castagnary's manifesto La philosophie du salon de 1857 (1858) was the programmatic writing at the beginning of naturalism in France , which referred to painting, but also had a great influence on literature (especially on Émile Zola ). The aim of the naturalistic artist is to depict the objective world without leaving out the socially low, the simple life. However, external correctness does not guarantee internal truth. That is why the pictorial naturalism of the 19th century, like the literary one, is coupled with social engagement.

Heathland near Neu Zittau (near Berlin) by Eugen Bracht (1884)

The terms naturalism and realism cannot be precisely delimited from one another in this context. Realism can mean that the style of representation is even more romantic, despite its social commitment. Realism claims to penetrate beyond the external to the essential, to the inner truth. Naturalism can also mean, for example, that outdoor painting is given preference over studio painting . The French painter Gustave Courbet played the role of pioneer in this art-theoretical discussion since the middle of the 19th century.

The German representatives of naturalistic painting of the 1880s ( Hans Herrmann , Max Liebermann ) were already clearly leaning towards impressionistic luminarism (depiction of spots and bundles of light, stimulated by the identification of the electromagnetic wave character of light by James Clerk Maxwell in 1864, experimental measurements of the speed of light by Albert A. Michelson 1878) and the post-materialistic, anti-positivistic and sensualistic philosophy of Ernst Mach (1883: Mechanics in their development ).

Naturalism as a way of representation

In a figurative sense, in art history, regardless of an epoch, one speaks of a tendency towards naturalism or a naturalistic mode of representation when artists sometimes pursue naturalistic goals in their work , i.e. show a kind of positivistic , non-idealizing depiction in their works. Examples can be found in late medieval manuscripts and tapestries , in old Dutch painting , as well as in some painters of the 19th century who avoided it in this way - in contrast to realism - to take social positions with their art.

The bitter drink by Adriaen Brouwer (Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main)

Max Deri , on the other hand, rejects the assumption that naturalistic painting is a positivistic art form that only depicts “external nature”, that is, it does without psychology. Your best representatives like Rembrandt or Wilhelm Leibl have also succeeded in making “inner nature” visible.

The definition of Jost Hermand goes further, who understands every naturalism as a conscious reaction against a stagnating or formally frozen artistic development supported by a ruling class, which one tries to "counter the formlessness of the unlimited truth". Naturalism is directed against academic conventions, against classicism, mannerism , but also against artistic and social authorities as a whole. This critical, form-destroying impulse marked the naturalism of the 15th century, which turned with peasant severity against the late Gothic pompous style, as well as the critical turn of the naturalism of the 17th century (of the early Rembrandt or the "peasant painter" Adriaen Brouwer ) against Mannerism , the naturalistic opposition of the 18th century to the Rococo , which referred to Rousseau , or the naturalism of the 1880s, the front against the ostentatious need of the Wilhelminian era , against stage-like “Renaissanceism” and “Salonstaffage”. Naturalism is not really a style-building, but merely a critical, often aggressive, cynical or compassionate impulse that places the purely natural above all questions of aesthetic value. This often leads to caricature-like “grotesque distorted images of previous ideals”.

The Little Asleep Peddler by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1882)

From this, and from his often close connection to the milieu, the specific narrowness of naturalism results: his aggressive impulse exhausts itself after a few years and changes into an objectifying attitude in which things are only reflected, or he thinks back to the "forces of form." of tradition ”.

Definition according to Georg Schmidt

Means of representation

In a time of intrinsic interpretation after the Second World War, the art historian Georg Schmidt tried to detach visual naturalism from the social and ideological. This is how he came up with definitions that were relatively time-independent. Naturalism is not concerned with “truth” but with “correctness”. The following criteria are decisive for him:

Three illusions

  • Spatiality ( central , color , aerial perspective, drop shadow, etc.)
  • Physicality (linear perspective, shadow modeling)
  • Materiality (correct representation of the substance, material, etc., haptic surface quality through light reflection )

Three corrects

  • drawing accuracy (degree of sharpness of the eye)
  • anatomical correctness (individual and overall shape)
  • Color correctness (object / local color (with neutral light); appearance color )

Naturalism - Realism - Idealism

Schmidt also tried to differentiate the term naturalism from the terms realism and idealism . While naturalism strives for “external correctness”, that is, the perfect image, quasi value-free, realism is concerned with “inner truth”, that is, the essentials. Idealism is about "enhancing reality", for example the transfiguration of a mythological scene, while realism strives for "knowledge of reality" and its spiritual penetration.

  • Realistic naturalism: Greek classic, Italian art (14th / 15th century), German and Dutch art (15th century).
  • Realistic anti- naturalism : dismantling of the individual elements of naturalism (late work by Rembrandt van Rijn , Vincent van Gogh , Paul Klee , Pablo Picasso ).
  • Idealistic anti-naturalism: Maya , Inca , archaic / early Christian / Byzantine art (early high cultures).
  • Idealism: Effects and details are subordinate to the idealistic representation ( Johann Wilhelm Schirmer , August Weber )

Naturalism artists in the late 19th century / early 20th century

The list is arranged in chronological order according to the dates of birth of the artists.

literature

  • Georg Schmidt: Naturalism and Realism (1959) in: Ders., Dealing with art Selected writings 1940–1963. Association of Friends of the Art Museum, Basel 1976.
  • Gabriel P. Weisberg: Beyond Impressionism - the Naturalist Impulse in European Art 1860-1905. London 1992, ISBN 0500236437 .
  • Gabriel P. Weisberg: Illusions of reality - Naturalism 1875-1918. Exhibition catalog, Belser Verlag, ISBN 3763025774 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Naturalism  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Hamann , Richard Hamann : Impressionism. (= Epochs of German culture from 1870 to the present. Volume 3.) Munich, 2nd edition 1974, p. 70 ff.
  2. ↑ Max Deri: Painting in the XIX. Century. Berlin 1923. New edition: BoD - Books on Demand, 2013, p. 415.
  3. ↑ Jost Hermand: Preface, in: Richard Hamann , Jost Hermand: Naturalismus. Munich 1972, p. 7.
  4. ↑ Richard Hamann, Jost Hermand 1972, p. 9; see also p. 186 f.
  5. ↑ Richard Hamann, Jost Hermand 1972, p. 8.
  6. ↑ Richard Hamann, Jost Hermand 1972, p. 8.