The nineteenth century was a pivotal point
in European history. The continent
revolted against the last vestiges of Christendom. This political revolution began in 1789 and
ended with the conclusion of World War I in 1917. Between these two dates, new thoughts and
principles were violently enforced on the body politic of Europe. Monarchs were overthrown; bloody riots
occurred in all of the major European cities; modern philosophy overthrew man’s
connection to reality; Liberalism and Modernism infected the Church.
The philosophical underpinnings of this
revolution was a distorted concept of liberty.
The philosophes of the French Revolution proposed that liberty meant a
complete freedom of choice and of conscience, that the governing body had to
respect the will of the people, and that the governing body had no power to
determine moral absolutes other than what was pragmatic for keeping the
peace. Thus, these philosophers
concluded, the government cannot infringe on the will of the people even if
what the people want is considered immoral.
The people determine morality and truth.
This shift in philosophical perspective,
which began with Descartes, was a denial of the nature of reality. Descartes claimed that the senses could not
be trusted, and as the senses are how we know the world around us, this brought
about doubt in the nature of truth. This
doubt began to be explored by other philosophers, such as Kant and Husserl.
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| Impressions: Sunrise by Claude Monet |
The philosophical and political
revolutions in the nineteenth century were visually recorded, not just by their
effects on subsequent events in the twentieth century in the world and the
Church, but also in the changing nature of art.
Art in the Middle Ages tended to be
theocentric. Most of the art contained
religious themes, even the art that was not used for religious purposes. In the Renaissance, the perfection of the
human form was stressed as a result in a shift in societal perspective. Man and his perfection, while still connected
to religion, became the center of attention.
In the mid nineteenth century, artistic styles changed suddenly. No longer were figures and shapes clearly delineated,
but the colors blurred together, giving an impression of the subject. Maria Teresa Benedetti in her contribution in
The History of Art titled,
“Impressionism,” says that this style was a representation of an experience of
the senses.[1] The focus was on what the eye perceived, and
not on the nature of the subject. This
focus on perception or impression had its source in the political and
philosophical upheavals of the 1800’s.
Bruce Cole and Adelheid Gealt in Art of the Western World explain this
upheaval:
In 1848, the year
in which Marx and Engals published the Communist
Manifesto, revolutions broke out in Paris , Vienna , Berlin , Venice , Milan , Parma , and Rome . Though inspired by different circumstances,
these revolts shared a common ideology centered on a growing belief in
democracy, a sense of individual freedom, and an emerging social awareness.[2]
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Beach Scene: Guernsey
by Pierre Auguste Renoir
|
Cole
and Gealt claim that this political revolution was also shared by artists who
“…challenged the philosophy and the aesthetic principles of the academies”.[3] Kenneth Clark in his study, Civilisation, makes a similar
observation about two of the first French Impressionists, Gustave Courbet and
Jean Francois Millet: “They were both revolutionaries; in 1848 Millet was
probably a communist, although when his work became fashionable the evidence
for this was hushed up; Courbet remained a rebel and was put in prison for his
part in the Commune – very nearly executed”.[4] As the political revolutionaries challenged
the conventions of the old political order, so the artists seemed to challenge
the traditional conventions of art. Art
no longer attempted to faithfully reproduce reality. Instead artists presented their perception of
the world. For this reason, clear
delineation was no longer used – after all, how can we be sure enough of
reality to reproduce it? Impressionism
reflected the destruction of a social order that had been founded on ten fixed
rules – the Ten Commandments. As morality had become something which the people determine and was no longer
something to which the people had to follow, so the very rules of painting had become arbitrary.
An understanding of what happened to
secular society and the world of art in the nineteenth century can help to
clarify the sources of Modernism in the Church.
As truth and liberty became subjective, so religion became subjective as
well. According to Pope Pius X in his
condemnation of Modernism in Pascendi
Dominici Gregis, Modernism claims that religion has it source in a personal
religious experience, a vital immanence welling from the subconscious and
revealing the divinity. For the
Modernist, God was no longer someone outside who reveals His reality to all
mankind, rather He is within, revealing Himself to us individually through
experience and in different ways to different people.[5] The same philosophical thought that led
artists to present impressions instead of reality, also caused theologians to
speak of personal religious experience instead of the truth of the Divine
nature.
Art and religion and philosophy are
intimately connected. While philosophy
has often been called the handmaid of theology, art is the reflection of
both. Claude Monet and Pierre Renoir
reflect the denial of objective reality of transcendental truths. Impressionism visually shows us what was
happening in Europe and the Church.
[1] Maria
Teresa Benedetti. “Impressionism.” The
History of Art. (W. H. Smith, New York. 1989) 319
[2] Bruce
Cole and Adelheid Gealt. Art of the
Western World. (Simon & Schuster, New York. 1989) 235
[3] Cole and
Gealt, Art of the Western World. 236
[4] Kenneth
Clark. Civilisation: A Personal View.
(BBC Books, 1969) 339
[5] St. Pius
X. On the Doctrines of the Modernists, Pascendi
Dominici Gregis. (8 September, 1907) §7
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Sources:
Benedetti, Maria Teresa. “Impressionism.” The History of Art. (W. H. Smith, New York, 1989)
Clark, Kenneth. Civilisation: A Personal View. (BBC Books. 1969)
Cole, Bruce and Adelheid Gealt. Art of the Western World. (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1989)
Monet, Claude. Impressions: Sunrise
Pope Pius X. On the Doctrines of the Modernists, Pascendi Dominici Gregis. (8 September, 1907)
Renoir, Pierre Auguste. Beach Scene: Guernsey. 1881. (renoirgallery.com. 2015)
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