iii. Make up sentences of your own with the given phrases.
iv. Arrange the following in the pairs of synonyms:
a) to surpass; perpetual; to provide; paradise; fundamental;
b) Eden; essential; to exceed; to furnish; continuous.
IV Here are names of the painters and the titles of their works. Match them up Describe these works of art.
1. Pissarro
2. Renoir
a. Les Grands Boulevards
b. Le Moulin de la Galette
c. Boulevard des Italien, Paris - Morning Sunlight
V. Translate the text into English.
В картине "Бульвар Монмартр в Париже" Камиль Писсарро запечатлел один из красивейших бульваров столицы Франции. Этот пейзаж написан художником из верхних окон отеля. Зритель видит длинную улицу в день ранней весны. Деревья еще без листьев, видимо, только что прошел дождь. Благодаря свободным и быстрым мазкам художнику удалось передать живое ощущение улицы, заполненной пешеходами и потоком катящихся экипажей.
Огюста Ренуара называли "певцом счастья". Его искусство радостно и лучезарно. Пейзажная живопись мало увлекала Ренуара, в центре внимания живописца был человек. Художник оставил много портретов, главным образом женских. В них нет психологических углублений. Высоким живописным мастерством также отмечены созданные Ренуаром жанровые сцены и натюрморт с цветами.
VI. Summarize the text.
VII. Topics for discussion.
1. The methods of painting of Pissarro and Renoir.
2. The artistic heritage of Pissarro and Renoir.
The leading painter of the late nineteenth century in France, one of the most powerful artists in the history of Western painting, was Paul Cezanne. Son of a prosperous banker in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provance, Cezanne never experienced financial difficulties. He received some artistic training in Aix. Cezanne arrived in Paris for the first time in 1861, but he never set up permanent residence there. At first Cezanne was interested m the official art of the Salons but soon achieved an understanding of Delacroix and Courbet, and before long of Manet as well, but his early works were Romantic. Only in the early 1870s Cezanne adopted the Impressionist palette, viewpoint, and subject matter under the tutelage of Pissarro. Cezanne exhibited his paintings with the Impressionists in 1874, 1877, 1882.
During most of his independent career Cezanne remained in Aix. His isolation from other artists helped him to concentrate on the formation of a new style of painting. Cezanne's mature style is often interpreted in the light of his celebrated sayings: "I want to do Poussin over again, from nature," "I wish to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums," and "Drawing and colour are not distinct... The secret of drawing and modelling lies in contrasts and relations of tones."
Among the subjects Cezanne repeatedly studied was Mont Sainte Victoire, the rocky mass that dominates the plain of Aix. His Mont Sainte-Victoire was painted about 1885-1887. Nothing indicates the time of the day or even the season. It neither rains nor snows in this landscape. Time is defeated by permanence. In this picture it is not clear where Cezanne places the observer. It is not certain where the tree is rooted. Some objects are identifiable as houses, trees, fields, but Cezanne's visual threshold is high and below that level nothing is defined. The effect of durability and massiveness is produced by a new use of the Impressionist colour spots. The landscape becomes a colossal rock crystal of colour - a cubic cross section of the world. Its background and foreground planes are established by branches and by the mountain whose rhythms they echo. The constituent planes embrace a great variety of hues of blue, green, yellow, rose, and violet. The delicate differentiation between these hues produces the impression of three-dimensional form. To construct form Cezanne has used the very colour patch the Impressionists had used ten years before to dissolve it. He has achieved from nature a construction and intellectual organisation much like that Poussin had derived from the organisation of figures, and made of Impressionism something durable, reminding us of the airless backgrounds of Giotto. Cezanne created a world remote from human experience. The beauty of his colour constructions is abstract, and it is no wonder that many artists of the early twentieth century, especially the Cubists, claimed him as the father of modern art.
Still life was to Cezanne second only to landscape. His Still life with Apples and Oranges was painted between 1895 and 1900. The arrangements of fruits, bottles, plates and a rumpled cloth on a tabletop never suggest the consumption of food or drink; they are spheroid or cylindrical masses. The appearance of reality is neglected; the table has a tendency to disappear under the table-cloth at one level and emerge from it at another, and the two sides of a bottle can be sharply different. Whether Cezanne did not notice such discrepancies in his search for the right colour to make a form go round in depth, or whether he decided on deformations consciously, has never been convincingly determined. He cared for subjects as arrangements of form and colour, but they also possessed for him strong psychological significance.
For his rare figure pieces Cezanne chose subjects as quiet, impersonal, and remote as his still lifes. The Card Players, of about 1890-1892, shows three men, two of whom are clad in the blue smock of the farmer labourer, sitting around a table, while a fourth gazes downward, arms folded. The card game had been a favourite subject among the followers of Caravaggio. The quite figures contemplate the cards, themselves planes of colour on white surfaces. The Giotto-like folds of the smock of the man on the right echo in reverse those of the hanging curtain, locking foreground and background in a single construction. Yet the background wall fluctuates at an indeterminable distance like the sky in one of Cezanne's landscapes.
The full beauty of Cezanne's developed style is seen in his Woman with the Coffee-pot, of about 1895. Cezanne's planes of varying hues of blue and blue-violet have built majestic cylinders from the arms and a fluted column from the body. Stability is very important for Cezanne. Yet the door panels in the background tilt slightly to the left, compensating for the turn of the head toward the right, and the placing of the coffee-pot and cup. The adjustments are so exquisite that the removal of one element inflicts the whole picture a fatal blow. Cezanne's search for the exact plane of colour to fit into his structure was so demanding that at times the plane eluded him. Surprising elements are the mysteriously vertical spoon, and the cylinders of cup and pot, definitely out of drawing.
By the end of his life Cezanne's development toward abstraction became more evident. The large Bathers, of 1898-1905, is the culmination of his series of nude compositions. The figures were neither painted from life, nor in the open air (women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not bathe naked in streams and sun themselves on the banks). The fantasy gave Cezanne the materials with which to build a grand imaginary architecture, composed of strikingly simplified figures, overarching tree trunks, blue sky and white clouds - a modern cathedral of light and colour. The figures and heads remained schematic, features are suppressed and mouths are omitted entirely. The end result is a simplification of the human figure that had not been seen since the Middle Ages.
Make sure you know how to pronounce the following words:
Cezanne [seiPzÓn]; Provance [proPvÓns]; Aix [Peiks]; fatal [feitl]; threshold [PTreSh@uld]; majestic [m@PdÆestik]; imaginary [imPdÆin@ri]; indeterminable [indiPtýmin@bl]; Victoire [vikPtwÓ]
NOTES
Mont Sainte-Victoire - "Гора Сент-Виктуар"
Card Players - "Игроки в карты"
Still life with Apples and Oranges - "Натюрморт с корзиной фруктов"
Woman with the Coffee-pot - "Женщина с кофейником"
Bathers - "Купальщицы"
TASKS
I. Read the text. Make sure you understand it. Mark the following statements true or false.
1. Cezanne was born in Normandy.
2. Cezanne's early works were Neo-classic.
3. Cezanne exhibited his paintings at the Salon in 1877.
4. Portraiture to Cezanne was second only to still life.
5. Cezanne developed abstractionism.
6. The figures in the Bathers were painted from life.
II. How well have you read? Can you answer the following questions?
1. What interested Cezanne at the beginning of his career? What sayings illustrate Cezanne's mature style?
2. What subject did Cezanne repeatedly study? What is depicted in the Mont Sainte-Victoire^. How did Cezanne produce the effect of durability and massiveness? What did Cezanne achieve from nature?
3. What is shown in the Still life with Apples and Oranges? What discrepancies are seen in this work of art?
4. What subject did Cezanne choose for his figure pieces? What is depicted in the CardPlayers? How did Cezanne arrange the figures?
5. Where is the full beauty of Cezanne's developed style seen? What dominates in this painting?
6. What makes the Bathers a masterpiece? Why is Cezanne claimed to be the father of modern art?
III. i. Give Russian equivalents of the following phrases:
to adopt the Impressionist palette; objects are identifiable; a colossal rock crystal of colour; colour construction; spheroid or cylindrical masses; psychological significance; to inflict a fatal blow; search for the exact plane of colour; a developed style; a visual threshold; a fluted column; indispensable elements; the formation of a new style; simplified figures.
ii. Give English equivalents of the following phrases:
неотъемлемый элемент; упрощенные фигуры; зрительный порог; зрелый стиль; формирование нового стиля; постоянно изучать; сферические и цилиндрические фигуры; излюбленная тема; цветовые формы; не поддающиеся определению предметы; овладеть палитрой импрессионистов.
iii. Make up sentences of your own with the given phrases.
iv. Arrange the following in the pairs of synonyms:
a) to inflict; fatal; indispensable; imaginary; to develop;
b) unreal; essential; to impose; to improve; doomed.
IV. Here are descriptions of some of Cezanne's works of art. Match them up to the titles given below.
1. Cezanne's planes have built majestic cylinders from the arms and a fluted column from the body.
2. The painting shows three men sitting around a table, while a fourth gazes downward, arms folded.
3. The fantasy gave Cezanne the materials with which to build a grand imaginary architecture, composed of simplified figures.
4. The table disappears under the tablecloth at one level.
5. Nothing indicates the time of the day or even the season.
a. Still life with Apples and Oranges
b. Bathers
c. Woman with the Coffee-pot
d. Mont Sainte-Victoire
e. Card Players
V. Translate the text into English.
До конца жизни Поль Сезанн подписывал свои произведения "ученик Писсарро", таким образом подчеркивая свою связь с импрессионистами. Сам Сезанн не принадлежал к этому направлению. У Сезанна нет картин сложного содержания. Наиболее сильная сторона таланта Сезанна - колорит. В передаче цветом реальности выявляются геометрические фигуры природных форм. "Все в природе лепится в форме шара, конуса, цилиндра; надо научится писать на этих простых фигурах, и, если вы научитесь владеть этими формами, вы сделаете все, что захотите". Взамен кажущейся случайности импрессионистов Сезанн принес чувство массы, выразительность образов.
Элементы абстрагирования, заложенные в искусстве Сезанна, позволили его последователям считать его основоположником абстракционизма.
VI. Summarize the text.
VI. Topics for discussion.
1. Cezanne's artistic concepts.
2. Cezanne and Cubists.
3. Cezanne's as the forerunner of Abstract painting.
UNIT XIV TOULOUSE-LAUTREC (1864-1901)
Henry Toulouse-Lautrec, born to one of the oldest noble families in France, broke both his legs in early adolescence, and they never developed properly. For the rest of his brief existence he remained a dwarf, alienated from his family's fashionable life. He learned to paint, and took refuge in the night life of Paris, which he depicted with consummate skill - scenes of cafes, theatres, and cabarets. All of his portrayals are prompted by the same uncritical acceptance of the facts of Parisian night life that he wished for his own deformity and found only in this shadowy world. At the Moulin Rouge, of 1892, was influenced by Degas, whom he deeply admired. Toulouse-Lautrec's line was sure, almost as much as that of his idol, but his tolerant humanity was entirely his own. The little artist can be made out toward the top of the picture in profile, just to the left of centre alongside his towering cousin and constant companion. It is significant that, to reinforce the psychological impact of the picture, Toulouse-Lautrec extended it on all four sides, particularly at the bottom and at the right. The plunging perspective of a balustrade in the added section pushes the little group huddled about the table into the middle distance, while it forces toward us with startling intensity the face of a heavily powered entertainer, so lighted from below that the shadows are green. Toulouse-Lautrec's smart and vivid drawing style, his brilliant patterning, and surprising colour contrasts were the dominant influence in Paris when in 1900, eight years after the picture was painted, the young Pablo Picasso arrived from Spain.
Make sure you know how to pronounce the following words:
Toulouse-Lautrec [tuPlüz loPtrek]; Degas [d@PgÓ]; Picasso [pi'k{sou]; adolescence [,{d@uPlesns]; alienated [Peilj@neitid]; balustrade [,b{l@Pstreid]; cabaret[Pk{b@rei]; cafe [Pk{fei]; dwarf [dwþf]; profile [Ppr@ufail]; psychological [,saik@PlodÆikl]
NOTES
At the Moulin Rouge - "Мулен Руж"
TASKS
I. Read the text. Make sure you understand it. Mark the following statements true or false.
1. Toulouse-Lautrec's parents were French aristocrats.
2. Toulouse-Lautrec took refuge in the wilderness.
3. Toulouse-Lautrec depicted poplars and cathedrals.
4. At the Moulin Rouge was influenced by Renoir.
5. Degas admired Toulouse-Lautrec's works of art.
6. Toulouse-Lautrec's line resembled that of Cezanne's.
II. How well have you read? Can you answer the following questions?
1. Why was Toulouse-Lautrec alienated from his family's fashionable life?