Judith Flanders

INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA

Judith Flanders
The Ashcan Painters -
Masters of American Reality

Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

An insulting term to dismiss a new type of art, a term that, in turn, becomes the positive identifier of that group, is by now a cliché. In 1874 a journalist in “Le Charivari” newspaper in Paris mocked a young artist named Claude Monet, who was exhibiting a painting called “Impression, Sunrise”: “Impression,” wrote the critic, “I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” Likewise, when a Donatello sculpture was placed in the same room as some contemporary painters at the 1905 Salon dÕAutomne, a critic mourned, “Donatello au milieu des fauves” – “Donatello surrounded by wild beasts” – and the term “Fauves” stuck.

INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA

Judith Flanders
The Ashcan Painters –
Masters of American Reality

№2 2011 (31)

An insulting term to dismiss a new type of art, a term that, in turn, becomes the positive identifier of that group, is by now a cliché. In 1874 a journalist in “Le Charivari” newspaper in Paris mocked a young artist named Claude Monet, who was exhibiting a painting called “Impression, Sunrise”: “Impression,” wrote the critic, “I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it ... and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.” Likewise, when a Donatello sculpture was placed in the same room as some contemporary painters at the 1905 Salon dʼAutomne, a critic mourned, “Donatello au milieu des fauves” – “Donatello surrounded by wild beasts” – and the term “Fauves” stuck.