Impressionism vs Expressionism. Impressionism and Expressionism stand as two pivotal modern art movements emerging in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that shifted painting’s priorities from realism towards capturing light, color and inner sensation. While the styles share some key similarities in their rebellion against academic tradition, Impressionism and Expressionism diverge greatly regarding influences, techniques and overall objectives.
Introduction
Impressionism arose in late 19th century France as young artists rebelled against state-sponsored academic painting standards from the Neoclassical period which prized ultra-realistic historical tableaus and mythological allegories championing moral narratives.
In contrast, Impressionists like Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Mary Cassatt dedicated themselves to portraying the contemporary world around them as objectively as possible. Their avant-garde works emphasizing modern subjects like cityscapes, middle-class leisure, and landscapes painted directly en plein air radically pushed painting toward a scientific study of how changing light altered visible reality.
Just a few decades later entering the 20th century, Expressionism emerged principally in Northern Europe led by trailblazing figures like Edvard Munch and Wassily Kandinsky. However unlike Impressionism’s devotion towards transcribing fleeting light effects, Expressionist works focused wholly on using exaggerated colors, spatial distortions and empathetic brushwork to intensely convey inner psychological states, emotions and the modern human condition beyond superficial appearances.
What is the Difference Between Impressionism and Expressionism?
At its core, Impressionism concentrated on utilizing newly advanced pigments and quick brushwork to capture the fleeting effects of natural light on modern landscapes and scenes with remarkable sensorial precision. The optical sensations and color revelations took precedence over concepts.
Whereas Expressionism intentionally distorted perspective, form and garish symbolic color to externalize inner psychological intensity onto the canvas. Conveying the artists’ empathetic anxiety, discontent and provocative visions outweighed optical accuracy.
Contrasted Objectives:
- Impressionism -> Transcribe Nature
- Expressionism -> Project Psychology
Divergent Methods to Achieve:
- Impressionism -> Optical analysis, color theory
- Expressionism -> Emotional resonance, symbolism
So while sharing rebellious spirits against tradition, Impressionism and Expressionism diverged radically on influences, subjects and overall aims driving stylistic innovations.
How Will You Recognize Impressionist and Expressionist Artworks?
Identifying Traits of Impressionism
- Loose, small dotted brushstrokes
- Outdoor modern landscapes/scenes
- Bright, unblended saturated colors
- Focus on capturing light effects
- Spontaneous perspective angles
Identifying Traits of Expressionism
- Jagged lines and distorted figures
- Unnaturally vivid or muted colors
- Subjective perspective extremes
- Symbolic, emotional atmosphere
- Exaggerated forms and proportions
In essence, Impressionism valued preserving the optical vibrance of external realities while Expressionism sought inner revelations by reinterpreting exteriors subjectively.
What Came First, Impressionism or Expressionism?
Impressionism arose out of 19th century Paris when young radicals like Monet and Renoir rebelled against Salon standards by directly painting everyday modern subjects en plein air with experimental color theories and loose texture.
In contrast, Expressionism developed in early 1900s Northern Europe (especially Germany and Austria) partly in response to Impressionism’s superficial fixations. Pioneers like Munch, Kirchner and Kandinsky focused wholly on harnessing distortion and dissonant colors to convey intense inner psychological states rather than pure optical analysis.
So Impressionism paved initial inroads away from realism that Expressionism built upon, evolving painting concerns toward more conceptual interpretations beyond appearances.
Is Van Gogh’s Starry Night Expressionism or Impressionism?
While Van Gogh did adopt vivid colors and thick paint textures affiliated with later Expressionists, Starry Night (1889) still predated Expressionism’s crystallization by over a decade.
But its exaggerated swirling composition, celestial phenomenon and incorporated imagination definitely forecasted Kandinsky and others prioritizing symbolic resonance over naturalism soon after.
So Starry Night’s visionary abstraction aligns it more with future Expressionist ambitions than Impressionist preoccupations confined to optical transcription. Its striking style predicted profound modernist directions before categories concretized.
Impressionism
Impressionism crystallized into an avant-garde movement in France during the 1860s-70s as young artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley rebelled against the prominent Académie des Beaux-Arts which taught severe Neoclassical principles and technically precise historical painting.
Defining Traits of Impressionist Art:
- Candid Modern Subjects – Rather than lofty historical, literary or allegorical themes, Impressionists painted the contemporaneous world around them – lively city parks, middle-class leisure outings, summer landscapes.
- Vibrant Colors – Harnessing new chemical pigments, Impressionists employed bright, unmixed colors directly from the tube arranged in lively complementary contrasts inspired by discoveries in optical color theory.
- Luminous Effects – Artists focused intently on capturing the atmosphere and ephemeral effects of natural light flooding landscapes and dancing across water, shadows, and structures at distinct times of day.
- Loose Brushwork – They exchanged meticulous Neoclassical precision for experimental, visible thick brushstrokes and texture conveying a creative sensation of immediacy and modern aliveness.
- En Plein Air Painting – Impressionists immersed themselves directly in nature asmotivated scientific investigators, formulating analytic color notes while rapidly trying to transcribe changing light qualities and the movement of the human eye scanning vistas.
As covered in more depth in Art Movements and Their Key Characteristics, Impressionism crystallized a radical avant-garde shift emphasizing everyday modern subjects captured through optical color analysis and scientifically-informed study of light’s fluctuations and the mechanics of human sight itself.
Their rebellion against classical conventions helped pave the way for even bolder stylistic innovations soon after.
Expressionism
Expressionism dominated avant-garde visual arts chiefly in Northern Europe during the early 20th century pioneered by figures like Edvard Munch, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc and Egon Schiele.
Defining Qualities of Expressionist Art:
- Conveying Emotion – Rather than impartial observations, Expressionists sought to project intense inner psychological reality onto the canvas – angst, discontent, spiritual yearning and visions were rendered with empathetic brushwork and colors.
- Distortion and Exaggeration – Forms, figures, objects and environments were radically altered and reinterpreted to heighten emotional sympathetic resonance rather than capture optical accuracy.
- Non-Naturalistic Use of Color – Vibrant, jarring, unexpected hues often with symbolic meaning took precedence over natural color for amplifying psychic states dwelling beyond exterior appearances.
- Conceptual Focus – Their works burrowed towards deeper existential meaning and revelation; execution aimed to materialize personal symbolic visions over tangible sight reality.
- Varied Stylizations – Expressionism nurtured diverse individualized painterly styles from Munch’s ominous anxiety to Kandinsky’s biomorphic improvisations to Schiele’s jagged figurative intensity reflecting innermost consciousness.
Expressionism’s liberation to project inner turmoil outward built directly from the impressions legacy of celebrating subjective vision over supposed higher truth. Yet they took liberties distorting form and color to psychological extremes outlined above.For more on the chain of influences between pioneering modern art movements, see Art Movements and Their Key Characteristics.
Impressionism vs Expressionism: A Deep Dive Into Their Distinctive Styles
Parallels and Divergences
Shared Rebellious Spirit
Both Impressionism and Expressionism emerged from young avant-garde artists rebelling against mainstream academic art institutions. They jointly rejected Realism and emotionally detached rendering. This defiance of tradition fueled radical stylistic innovations in composition, color and brushwork that provoked shock and outrage from establishment tastemakers, yet provided revolutionary creative breakthroughs.
Celebrating the Subjective
Far from impartial observational transcription, Impressionists and Expressionists alike championed individual inner sensation and vision as the wellspring for artistic meaning and integrity. Though diverging on methods, they jointly shifted art’s purpose toward capturing modern life beyond surface appearances.
Differing Influences and Intents
However, Impressionism traced its influences more from burgeoning color science revelations and optical natural light studies hewing closely to almost scientific investigation of shifting conditions accurately. They prized discerning and replicating fleeting effects as perceived through momentary sensation clinically.
Whereas Expressionism derived its explosive hue choices and jagged stylistic distortions from dense symbolist philosophy and an empathetic need to manifest deeper screaming psychic reality that sincere visionaries uniquely could reveal. Raw emotion resonated over clinical catalogs of color notes or timed light captures.
Accuracy vs Distortion
Likewise while Impressionism sought to transcribe the shimmer and flicker of light dancing across forms with remarkable precision using loose dashes of unblended complementary pigments, Expressionism willfully sacrificed accuracy for symbolic psychic resonance via garish non-natural color blending and contorted spatial relationships expressing the artists’ turbulent interior reality over exteriors.
Conclusion
In closing, while Impressionism and Expressionism arose from related rebellions against conservative Academic painting standards, their paths markedly diverged regarding influences, objectives and long-term impacts on artistic evolution.
Impressionism’s obsession analyzing optical color/light interplay did help scientifically validate perceptual sensation over classically idealized reality. Their landscapes capture ephemeral moments with remarkable accuracy decades before photography’s spread.
Conversely, Expressionism’s psychological intensity and symbolic form distortions essentially founded 20th century abstraction and surrealism by conquering inner worlds closed to Impressionism’s fleeting. Munch’s The Scream remains modern art’s most iconic encapsulation of anxiety and alienation.
Yet provocatively, Kandinsky himself credited Impressionist pioneer Monet’s monumental Water Lilies as inspiration entering purely abstract directions seeking spiritual resonance through color and form alone by 1911, coming full circle via both styles’ championing of inner perception beyond slavish external replication. In dynamic interplay, Impressionism and Expressionism formulated the building blocks underpinning much of modern art still today.
Thus across a generational bridge, the two movements managed to jointly pull art from hidebound conventions into bracing modern domains still rippling over a century later. Though differing substantially in specifics, their loose collective faith in transposing both rich optical reality and uncharted psychic terrain indelibly expanded painting’s purpose and creative frontiers at large.
