From Realism to Modernism

Subject  > Art Essays  > Works of Art

From Realism to Modernism Le déjeuner sur l'herbe Edouard Manet, 1863.         Le déjeuner sur l'herbe ("The Luncheon on the Grass"), originally titled Le Bain ("The Bath"), is an oil on canvas painting by Edouard Manet. It was painted between the years 1862 and 1863 and measures 208 by 264.5 cm. The juxtaposition of a female nude with fully dressed men sparked controversy when the work was first exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863. The work is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.         In the foreground, three characters are seated on the grass: a naked woman and two men dressed like dandies. The woman, whose body is starkly lit, looks frankly in ...

... of proportion and location. This is just one of many similar paintings of his. Mondrian was in search of transcendent experience and pure harmony or equilibrium, and he saw his paintings as a model of a harmonious world. How this work of art fits into the time period.         Mondrian's piece is the epitome of modernism; a "tradition of the new" (Sporre, 536). It is not coherent. Rather, it is an approach to creation that broke old rules to express new thoughts and certain assumptions, often pessimistic, about the state of the world. In a world filled with tension and uncertainty, (two world wars in his lifetime) he wanted to maximize the feelings that

essay continues for another 100 words