impressionism

nationality

French

occupation / innovator as

poet

Uruguayan

translator

cause of death

natural causes

is a primitive way of looking at the world. The impressionist artist is one who, forgetting the pictures amassed through centuries in museums, forgetting his optical art school training line, perspective, color by dint of living and seeing frankly and primitively, paints as simply as he sees.

Two early commentators,Jules Laforgue and W. S. Sichel, illustrate these divergent views. Laforgue represents the objective end of the spectrum and argues that impressionism is a 'primitive' way of looking at the world. He suggests that the impressionist artist 'is one who, forgetting the pictures amassed through centuries in museums, forgetting his optical art school training line, perspective, color by dint of living and seeing frankly and primitively . . . [paints] as simply as he sees.'

is a way of seeing reality with a primitive eye, of seeing reality in the living atmosphere of forms, decomposed, refracted, reflected by beings and things, in incessant variation.

Laforgue goes on to say that this 'primitive eye' reaches 'a point where it can see reality in the living atmosphere of forms, decomposed, refracted, reflected by beings and things, in incessant variation. '

is objective, merely painting what one sees divorced from personal experience and cultural conventions.

In other words, impressionist merely paint what they see divorced from personal experience and cultural conventions. On the other hand, W. S. Sichel suggests that the impressionist's 'medium is the feelings, his method a style of suggestion rather than of representation. '42 He also argues, ' In the personal and plaintive is to be found the method of what we style 'lmpressionism.''4:1

Jules LaforgueThinkers

Jules Laforgue