Unesco travelling print exhibition: From impressionism till today

I N T R O D U C I 1 0 N Western a r t seems from t he very start to have appointed itself one essential task, t h a t of reflecting nature in all its aspects. A t t he very most, i t ma y have allowed itself, during t he classical periods, t o improve on nature, and make i t conform t o an intellectual ideal. Throughout t h e centuries, however, the conquest of reality remained its prime goal. I n this, Western a r t is faithful to t he spirit of Western civilization, urging us as i t does, i n t h e phrase of Des- cartes, 'to become the masters and possessors of Nature After the troubled years of t he early Middle Ages, when the barbarian inva- sion changed the course of its history, the Western world returned rapidly t o this tradition inherited from antiquity, and ever since, from t h e early Primitive school a t t he dawn of the Renaissance, European painting has aimed above all a t being t he true or the flattering mirror of living creatures and inanimate objects. The primitive artist applied himself resolutely t o the task; the classic liked t o be master of his subject, adapting i t t o his own standards, those of beauty, and choosing i t according t o t he laws of good taste, b u t he never set aside reality. The eighteenth a nd nineteenth centuries paid increasing attention t o technique, beginning indeed t o accord i t a n inde- pendent value, and hinting a t t h e possibility of pictorial interpretation. But though a certain audacity, certain sharp differences of opinion and even her- esies crept in, the cult of reality was never really abandoned, nor was the principle of its observance. This century-old tradition was scarcely shaken b y t h e nineteenth century, b u t t he twentieth century p u t a n end t o i t in a few years. I t is because o f this daring and astonishing revolution t h a t modern a r t sometimes surprises and shocks those who come in contact with it. Modern a r t is more easily understood when followed through its various stages. The Romantics, led b y Delacroix, h a d already sought t o make use of nature merely t o express and give emphasis t o their own feelings and personal genius. This shocked t h e middle-class public, educated as i t was in the prin- ciples of realism. The extreme tension thus created between artists and the public reached its peak with Impressionism, introduced b y Manet. Manet himself, however, neither was, nor desired t o he, anything b u t a realist in his art: he followed on from Courbet, t h a t other great realist reviled b y the public. Wh a t was either of t h em doing, after all, b u t reviving t h e tradition of the powerful Naturalists o f t h e past, t h e Italian disciples of Caravaggio and the seventeenth -century Spanish school? Bu t so ma n y conventions h a d been accepted a nd accumulated t h a t t h e public no longer recognized t he simple truth. The recent invention of photography h a d strengthened its taste for