Artistic and literary movements Notes

How Did Movements Reflect Changing Times?

1. Artistic and literary movements are like snapshots of the feelings, fears, and hopes of their time.
2. Whenever societies experience rapid change: industrialisation, revolutions, scientific breakthroughs, or wars; artists and writers react.
3. Their work becomes a commentary on how people understood their world.

What Are Artistic and Literary Movements?

1. Groups of artists or writers sharing similar ideas, styles, or reactions to events.
2. Often emerge as a response against the previous movement.
3. Reflect major social, political, economic, or technological changes.
4. Help historians understand the emotional climate of an era.

Romanticism (late 1700s–mid 1800s): Emotion in an Age of Machines

1. Emerged as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s rational focus and the Industrial Revolution’s grime and noise.
2. Celebrated nature, imagination, individual emotion, and the sublime.
3. Showed anxiety about pollution, factory life, and the loss of rural landscapes.
4. Writers like Wordsworth and Byron sought beauty and freedom.
5. Painters used dramatic landscapes and storm scenes to emphasise emotion.

Realism (mid 1800s): Looking at Life Honestly

1. Developed as a response to Romanticism’s idealism.
2. Focused on everyday life: workers, poverty, cities, and social injustice.
3. Reflected industrial working conditions and the struggles of the lower classes.
4. Writers like Charles Dickens highlighted child labour, slums, and corruption.
5. Artists like Courbet painted labourers with unfiltered honesty.

Photography: A New Art Born From Industrial Change

1. Technological developments during the Industrial Revolution didn’t just change factories: they reshaped art.
   1. Cameras and chemical processes allowed images to be captured quickly and accurately.
   2. Photography supported Realism: life could now be recorded exactly as it appeared.
   3. The new middle class wanted affordable portraits, pushing photography’s popularity.
   4. Portrait studios flourished because photos were cheaper than paintings.
   5. Photography exposed social realities with unprecedented detail.
   6. American photographer Lewis Hine documented child labour, influencing reforms.

Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Art

1. Living and working conditions changed dramatically, inspiring Realism’s focus on factories and urban life.
2. The new middle class wanted art to decorate homes and represent status, boosting demand for portraits and Impressionist leisure scenes.
3. Technological innovations (new paint colours, portable paint tubes, photography) changed how and where artists worked.
4. Some artists embraced modernity; others wanted to return to craftsmanship or emotional expression.
5. Movements often formed around whether artists accepted or rejected industrial change.

Impressionism (late 1800s): Capturing a Moment

1. Artists focused on light, colour, and fleeting impressions.
2. Painted outdoors because industrial pigments became portable.
3. Reflected modern life: trains, cafés, parks, city leisure.
4. Used quick, visible brushstrokes to show movement and atmosphere.

Modernism (late 1800s–mid 1900s): Breaking the Old World

1. Inspired by world wars, scientific shifts, psychology, and collapsing empires.
2. Rejected traditional perspective and narrative.
3. Writers like Virginia Woolf used stream-of-consciousness to explore inner lives.
4. Artists like Picasso fragmented forms (Cubism).
5. Reflected uncertainty, trauma, and a search for meaning.

Postmodernism (mid 1900s–present): Questioning Everything

1. Skeptical of “big truths” and fixed meanings.
2. Blends high and low culture, irony, parody, remixing.
3. Reflects globalisation, digital culture, and identity fluidity.
4. Art becomes self-aware and playful.

Case Studies

Case study

Photography and Social Reform (Lewis Hine)

• Documented child labour in mines and factories.
• Photos stirred public emotion and influenced U.S. labour laws.
• Shows how technology empowered activism.

Case study

Dickens and Industrial Britain

• Realist novelist exposing poverty and inequality.
• Writings helped shape debates on reform.
• Demonstrates literature as a tool for social critique.

Case study

Monet and Modern Urban Life

• Painted train stations, bridges, and gardens in changing light.
• Captured the pace and mood of industrialising cities.

Case study

Picasso’s “Guernica” and War Trauma

• Response to the bombing of civilians in 1937.
• Fragmented style reflects a shattered world.