Question 1
Bastien’s Haymaking is representative of the peasant community in the rural France that practised agriculture and did all the casual jobs in the farms. The painting has a woman who is seated on the ground at an edge of the field, possibly the one they had been working on. Beside her is a man lying on the ground still in his coat and hat covering the face. His arms are close to the chest and his legs are spread at some degree. He depicts total exhaustion. The field where the hay is spread occupies most of the background as the horizon is a little distant from the two characters. The sky is clear characteristic of the hot weather that the peasants have to work under during the day. The painting is characteristic of modern art due to the accelerated perspective, figures being in close framing, and the use of the light palette ( Boston, 2006) . It is this modernity and the clarity in the work that led to its admission to the Salon.
Pissarro, like Bastien was also inspired by the French peasant workers in the rural regions. In his work, “ Peasant’s Resting”, he presents two women seated on each sides of a thin roadside. At a corner of the road, there is a figure of a person walking away from where the two women are. There is also a child sitting near a tree behind one of the women. The road seems to be bushy with trees that are providing a shade above these characters that tamper with the clarity of the work. The lack of clarity could be the reason it was not admitted to the Salon ( Lloyd, 2003) . The work was more of an impression, which the Salon dismissed and instead opted for works that depicted some reality and not imaginations.
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The Salon was an exhibition and sales gallery where able persons in France that were interested in art works for their leisure would go to buy these works. Before 1877, potential buyers at the Salon were keen with the clarity in all the paintings. They were for the modern artistry features and any work that lacked such was due for denial at the site. Peasants Resting had been done using the ancient conventions of art that had blurry figures and followed the conventions of lines and curves. The Lighting property was an important feature for every painting and a dull one like the Peasants Resting was inappropriate.
Question 2
Cézanne’ is significantly known for his revolutionary call against impressionism in art. He criticized other artists for overly using impressionism in their works, making their works boring and predictable. He further criticized the virtual reality that had been hidden from the artistry works scenes and instead replaced with a lot of imaginations and fantasies. Cézanne’ did not only criticize them by words and writings but went ahead to prepare works that showed how art should be naturalistic in content, and how an impressionistic approach to art was wrong. He emphasized on the artists’ use of reason in their works. For this reason, his works did not follow the common trend of paintings that had been set by previous artists where there seemed to be a prescribed format and rule of drawing and making art works.
People that knew him like Merleau-Ponty described him as a temperamental person who in his old age was once supported and became outrageous to the point that he dismissed everyone around his life including ladies that would be his models, forcing him to draw a portrait on his wife in Madame Cézanne , 1888-90 ( Monnier, 2003).
After denouncing the conventional theories, he attempted painting from nature and presenting it as it is, without any modifications. His life experiences barely influenced his works ( Monnier, 2003) . In his revolutionary artistry, he brought out the idea of art being a mirror of things and objects as they appear or as they are perceived at first, without any fixed contours, being bound by light and air only. This can be witnessed in the portrait of his wife who he presented to be sitting on a chair in a background that seemed like their house. There seems to be a hanging curtain above her head and the posture does not show any special posing as resented by other artists.
Moreover, He has a unique idea of color usage in art where he suggested the use of the seven colors of the spectrum ( Fisher 1969, 357) . He believed in the idea of colors complementing one another to produce a desired impact in a painting. Instead of mixing colors to produce one color, he suggested that artists should instead juxtapose these colors to produce a better effect compared to the mixing. He however cautions about using all these colors then submerging the central object of a painting. He employs the technique of using the colors of the spectrum to represent the object individually and make it outstanding among the other elements by modulating all the colors so that the object maintains its form relevant to the light in the work by making the warm colors vibrate. He denounced elements like contours, outlines that enclose the color, and pictorial arrangement, sometimes going against the law of perspective. All these inspired his portrait of his wife where he uses a mixture of colors on her outfit by drawing different shades on it to isolate it from the background. Each element is also given a combination of colors, making the whole art lively and colorful.
Question 3
Mass culture is a cultural behavior that a society learns from mass exposure especially through the various influential media and mass communication including art and music. Art, as a mirror of the society and its culture, is an important element in exposing the various mass cultures in different societal settings. Seurat, in his work Chahut, is a perfect example of an instance where art works have been used to highlight the various mass cultures in the society. The mass cultures in question in this work are prostitution, music and entertainment and the cultural issue of femininity and masculinity ( "Seurat and the avant-garde.”1998) .
In the painting, there are a number of women in a que, all dressed in skirts and having one of their legs raised to the air. They are all occupying a stage that is on a higher ground but the audience is on a lower level ground. This audience is mainly composed of men in suits, symbolic of their social class. They all have their heads looking to the direction of the women. They are all wearing smiles and even raising their hands to show the thrill they are getting from watching the ladies’ underwear and nude thighs. The ladies dancing on stage also seem to be enjoying as they raise their heads in ecstasy ( "Seurat and the avant-garde.” 1998) . There is however on man seemingly overdressed and in a cowboy hat that is on the other side of the stage and does not have a clear view of the ladies as they raise their legs. This action shows the sexual behavior in the community under question where women willingly expose their privates to a crowd of men as they enjoy the view, for exchange of money.
The music culture has also been brought out in the art work through the man in the black blazer holding an instrument and part of it is seen to be protruding above his shoulders ( Smith, 2003) . Next to him, there are some hands that seem to be holding and playing an instrument using both hands. The women on the stage, being on the same pause must be dancing to the sound of these instruments.
The community in question also has a set of beliefs that vary from gender issues to religious issues. Women are depicted to be objects of sexual satisfaction for men. These men satisfy their sexual zeal by watching these women almost stripping. There is however a man immediately after the first lady who portends to be doing what the women are doing. He is representative of a weak man that does not belong to the same caliber as the rest ( Smith, 2003) . The women wearing the hats is symbolic of the halos placed above the heads of spiritual figures in drawings and arts. This is suggestive of the spiritual backgrounds of the society as persons that have a religion, and could be confused to be dancing to some religious music, but have been carried away by sexual immorality and secularization.
Bibliography
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