Original subtitles

The second half of the 19th century saw the camera become a part of the everyday world

that could capture people, places, and events with stunning realism for the first time in

history.

A huge paradigm shift in the world of art.

No longer would the artist's primary vocation be the creation of realistic depictions and

portraiture.

Instead, the camera liberated a generation of artists to explore and depict the world

in new and exciting ways that went beyond observable reality.

And yet, at the same time, it became an incredibly useful tool to help them understand and refine

their own paintings.

But this revolution was a long time coming.

And although it's tempting to think that artists of the 19th century would have been

Luddites smashing the cameras that might threaten to destroy their livelihoods, in fact, artists

are often the biggest fans of devices that can help them explore the possibilities of

light and vision.

The Post-Impressionists were one of the first generations to really embrace the camera and

incorporate it into their work.

It was also the era we see photography becoming art in its own right.

Because of its importance, in this lecture I want to look more broadly at how the camera

has long influenced art, and where we start to see modern photography's hand in the work

of the Post-Impressionists.

The use of cameras by artists goes back many hundreds of years—yes, that's right, hundreds!—because

before modern photography began to appear in the mid-19th century, there was a simpler

device in use for centuries—the camera obscura.

You may have seen one of these, or perhaps even observed their effect in a darkened room.

Camera obscura is Latin for dark chamber, and if you've had a teeny little hole in a darkened

room or box that allows just enough light in, and you get the right distance away from the

opening or aperture, then the light will be concentrated in such a way as to show a real-time, moving

image on the opposite wall, albeit upside down.

It's quite an astonishing phenomenon if you've never seen it first-hand.

And you can find plenty of tutorials online on how to turn a box or even a room of your

home into a camera obscura if you want to see this magic for yourself.

Humans have known about this beautiful phenomenon for a long time.

The oldest known record was the Chinese philosopher Mozi, who was talking about it clear back

in the 5th century BCE.

As technology progressed, the use of a glass lens over the opening allowed artists to use

a wider aperture, take in more light, and to focus the image.

And while there are many art historians who are loath to mention this, it's pretty likely

that the megastars like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Eyck, and Caravaggio all used a camera obscura,

or similar optical devices.

The artist David Hockney has done some fascinating research on the subject and made a documentary

about it that I highly recommend.

Now, a camera obscura is obviously not a camera in the sense we think of today.

It's more like a projector.

Their subject would be projected through the aperture onto a surface like canvas or paper,

so they could trace its outlines.

What upsets the traditionalists about this rediscovery is that it takes some of the magic

away from the brilliance of the artist.

We want to believe that the old masters were prophets channeling pure inspiration without

the need of technology or mediation.

The idea that they started the process by tracing a projection for some maybe feels like cheating.

But I don't think the use of technology makes these artists any less talented or brilliant.

They already knew how to paint and draw and create believable proportions.

Most often times the camera obscura is just a time-saving device.

It takes work and planning to map out a composition and to get all your proportions just right.

But, with a projection, you can speed that up and then use that time to concentrate on the finer details that can make a master's reputation.

If you look at some Vermeer paintings long enough, you'll start to realize the light and forms are slightly out of focus, yet accurate in terms of photographic quality.

This style was not just an accident. Vermeer was actually painting some of the distortions the lens and the camera were creating along the way.

Various other devices have followed over the years as aids to artists in composing their paintings, like the camera lucida, which uses mirrors to show an artist what's in front of him while he looks down at his drawing surface, and the pantograph, a mechanical arm that can copy your movements.

As a painter myself, and a teacher of painters, I have absolutely no problem with this.

I do think it's important to learn the fundamentals of how to construct a composition, but after that, I think it's great when an artist finds shortcuts in their production methods in ways that help them create better art.

So, technological art tools were nothing new in the 19th century, but camera obscuras and these other devices are only aids in the creation of art.

They can't create permanent images by themselves.

All of that changed in Paris in the 1820s, though, with the inventor Joseph Nizephor Niepce.

Niepce has become obsessed with figuring out how you could save the image coming from a camera obscura without having to draw or paint it.

He began experimenting with light-sensitive materials that would react to the image being created.

He began with silver chloride, smearing it on pieces of paper or bleached white leather, and then exposing them to light.

The problem was that an image would form, but it would be dark where it should be light, and vice versa.

In other words, it was the negative he was creating.

And the moment he removed the plate from the camera obscura and into the light, the entire image would just darken over and be ruined.

But Niepce knows he's on the verge of something big, so he looks around for other materials that might do the job better.

Asphalt, or more specifically, bitumen of Judea, is what next grabs his attention, because it hardens when it was exposed to sunlight.

After years of experimenting, he finds that thinning the bitumen and mixing it with lavender oil and then smearing it onto pewter plates will, when exposed to a camera obscura image, burn the image into the plate permanently.

It won't vanish when brought out into the light.

But the process is long. Researchers have reconstructed it and found you need at least eight hours, if not several days, to get sufficient light exposure to make a clear image.

But Niepce did it, and in the process created the very first photographs.

However, Niepce is getting on in years, and he doesn't have the time or the energy left to really pursue and refine this invention.

But he knows it's huge, and he needs to find somebody he can trust.

So he ends up finding an artist, a well-known panorama painter named Louis Daguerre, to carry on his work.

Daguerre experiments further with light-sensitive materials and finds that using a copper plate with a silver coating exposed to iodine fumes will be light-sensitive like the asphalt pewter plates, but will develop the image faster.

Depending on the amount of light, it will now take hours rather than days to capture an image on the plate.

That's still way too long to be very practical, though, and if the subject is moving in any way, it's going to be very blurry.

But then Daguerre discovers that even after short exposures, just seconds to minutes, an image was forming on the plate, but just incredibly faintly, almost invisibly.

You can imagine the amount of trial and error discovering this took.

So now, he looks to see if some other chemical combination will help develop that faint image.

Eventually, he discovers that if you burn mercury and let the plate breathe in the fumes for a few minutes, boom, the image will start to appear like magic.

Dangerous, but effective.

Then you have to wash off the unexposed silver because you just want to keep the parts the light has touched and burned onto the surface of the plate.

So he develops a hot salt solution and washes off the unexposed parts.

Finally, you now see a moment of real life, captured like never seen before, beautiful and clear, with details so lifelike, it blew people's minds.

If you can think about what it could possibly have felt like to see the first ever photograph in your life.

We aren't quite done yet because this finely coated plate is still incredibly fragile,

and even the air can mess up the surface.

So he makes a little sealed glass case to protect it from the elements.

And that's a daguerreotype.

It's a laborious process to make them, but it works beautifully and properly sealed daguerreotypes are still in perfect condition today.

As one can expect, this invention becomes huge, as massive as you can get when it comes to new gadgets, bigger than the iPhone.

In a surprisingly cool move, the French government buys the rights to this process and gives it away as a cultural good to any country who wanted to make daguerreotypes.

Well, they gave it to everybody except the British, of course. They had to pay.

Daguerre also works out a deal so that he and Niepce's family get a pension for the rest of their lives. I like that.

It was 1839 when this deal was arranged, the first year, too, that the first selfie was taken by the American photographer Robert Cornelius running in front of his camera after setting it up.

And by the 1840s, we began to see widespread use of photography. Daguerreotypes take the planet by storm.

It's hard today to grasp just how revolutionary the photograph was, because up until this point in history, the only way to record something visually was to paint or draw it.

And what that meant was that for the longest time, artists were employed not just to create grand masterpieces on the ceilings of churches, they were also doing the more everyday work of painting individual and family portraits, houses, businesses, pets, anything that we would think about hiring a photographer for today.

You would have had to hire a painter for before the camera. Many artists cut their teeth fulfilling these practical needs, like painting signs or furniture, before exploring more complex subjects.

As a result, most artists were treated more like craftsmen, hired to do a specific job to the customer's specifications. Painting portraits or decorating churches was the most common, so they didn't have much freedom when it came to their subject matter.

Most of their ideas, concepts, and theories were only able to be expressed covertly, or as subtext, behind the subjects they were explicitly hired to paint.

Today, we seek the most creative artists out when we peruse history, and we praise them for their ingenuity.

But this is not the kind of thing that a wealthy merchant or an archbishop in the 16th century wanted.

In their world, creativity was more often a liability than an asset.

The patron would generally prefer the artist's hand to be invisible.

Some of the most famous and influential artists we know throughout art history were often criticized or censured for breaking the boundaries.

If something looked too new, it would be rejected.

But now, as daguerreotypes spread, the traditional work-a-day portrait and scene painters who had once been necessary to capture the likenesses of people and places became redundant.

By the 1850s, mobile photo studios were popping up all over Europe.

Photographers started showing up at these traveling fairs and even setting up their own studios in town.

Now, portraits can be taken accurately, cheaply, and quickly, and even the middle class can afford them.

Though wealthy and powerful folks were obviously quick to get their portraits photographed,

soon they started to realize how cheaply photographs could be made and copied,

and they began to have a new appreciation for painting as an even more rare and valuable form of portraiture.

Those portrait artists that remain in business are now being prized not for their ability to capture real life, which a photograph can do flawlessly,

but increasingly for their creativity and their ability to do something different from an ordinary photograph.

This is where we start to see the photographs' effect on the psyche of artists.

For centuries, they had toiled away, trying to make things look as realistic as possible.

Slowly, but surely, it began to dawn on them.

Why should I even bother if all I am is a camera, a copier?

With photography, there was no longer a need for an artist to record reality.

From here on, we gradually start to see artists shedding the burden of capturing observable reality

and focusing instead on their own self-expression.

How an artist felt, rather than simply what they saw, was being acknowledged in the creative process.

It's the impressionists, the ones who grew up with photography, who were able to seize upon new, avant-garde painting techniques,

bolstered by the knowledge that the landscape or church they were painting could be remembered in a photograph,

and they were under no obligation to record it for posterity.

Instead, they would focus on depicting reality in all the ways the camera couldn't.

They made their art what photography wasn't.

Way lighter, way more color, way more saturated, more brush strokes, more energy, more motion.

Their paintings were alive and humming with movement.

They took small flashes of light, fleeting moments in time, and turned them up to eleven.

As one might imagine for the traditionalists, those casual viewers who proclaim,

I like stuff that looks like stuff.

This nearly psychedelic, oversaturated, amped-up impressionist world was too much, too vulgar.

And that's pretty normal.

People aren't usually super receptive right off the bat to new things that challenge everything they know about the visual world.

To be confronted by a distorted version of reality can make you feel uncomfortable or even stupid.

And people often conceal their discomfort or lack of understanding by critiquing the new on academic or traditional grounds.

But the Impressionists were proving that the artists hadn't been made redundant by photography.

On the contrary, they were showing just how spectacular and beautiful the artist's perspective could truly be.

And not only were artists freed by photography, but they were also inspired by it as well, particularly when it came to composition.

Today, we take photographic compositions for granted.

We see potentially hundreds of images a day that have been composed and cropped in interesting ways.

But this was all new in the 19th century.

Let's take a step back.

When we look around us, there's no frame to our reality.

There are no edges, no defined points of view.

Everything is all around us everywhere.

But if we want to capture a part of that reality, we must deliberately limit our frame of view to compose it.

Think about the cliché of the director walking around with his thumbs and fingers in a rectangle, trying to find the shot.

That's composition.

Now, traditionally, painters thought about composition and perspective in a very standard way.

If you wanted to paint a fancy building, you would have it centered and facing you squarely.

That was the best way to capture all of its details.

Think of your house or the White House or any famous building.

The image you have in your mind of it is probably from the front and looking straight towards it.

When you ask children or new art students to draw something, they will usually do the same sort of composing, front-facing with the subject right in the middle.

Our brains aren't trained to think of more interesting angles and points of view.

They are wired to present things to us in the most straightforward way possible with the subject directly in the middle of our vision.

This makes total sense in a world in which we want the clearest information possible, to accurately assess what lies before us.

But nailing down a perspective and a vantage point that is engaging, creative, and dynamic is a bit different.

The camera simplifies this task for us because it takes a slice of the world from any angle you like,

and then it flattens and compresses the world, providing everything from that vantage point into one handy perspective.

People started setting up cameras inside buildings, around corners, pointing up, pointing down, even from the air.

People were putting cameras where you would never set up an easel, capturing perspectives that once were only momentarily glimpsed.

Photographs began to teach us more about composition, about angles, and about space that isn't didactic so much as it is felt.

Composing things by experience and emotion, rather than a factual analysis.

And historically, the more ubiquitous photography becomes, we start to see fewer stale and boring compositions,

and more variety in how artists capture a scene.

We are brought inside, and spaces become more intimate, or from more engaging angles that draw us in or out of a space.

The edges of the canvas are no longer an arbitrary stopping point,

but become an active edge that artists are utilizing as a tool to organize space in more interesting ways.

As a result, photography becomes an artistic tool.

And by the time of the post-impressionists, artists have not only been liberated from the tyranny of realism,

but they are also increasingly embracing photographs as a means of doing their work.

Like the camera Obscura had for centuries, allowed artists to make basic traces of their compositions and subjects as a starting point.

Now photography could take that interesting composition or subject, freeze it at a moment in time, and allow the artist to explore it.

Let's take a specific example.

We talked a little previously about Edouard Vouillard, a member of the Les Nabis group.

He was an enthusiastic photographer.

Starting with the trusty Kodak camera in 1895, he made several thousand photos as studies for his paintings.

So his work provides some excellent examples of how photography influences the post-impressionist style.

Working from photographs can help create accuracy in form and shadow that doesn't come naturally when working from life.

It's difficult to put your finger on, but there is something that just feels photographic about Vouillard's paintings.

The camera has its own logic of space.

It's a bit flatter and more focused and frozen than we perceive with our own eyes.

By using the photo to map out the correct proportions and perspectives,

Vouillard had the chance to cut loose within those parameters.

Here his brush is loose and his mark is expressive.

Just look at that wallpaper that dominates this painting.

It's sloppy and crooked, yet the piano is in perfect perspective with the perfect color reflecting on the top.

Have a look at this pair of paintings Vouillard did of his living room.

You can almost feel instinctively that these are the types of compositions only a snapshot would create.

First off, the composition is built around the fireplace, so much so that we see his mother is cropped off the back.

She's sort of blurry, too, because the focus is on the mantle and the objects behind her, not on the foreground.

This would be total blasphemy for academic painters.

It breaks just about every rule of traditional painting to have a human as anything but the main focal point of your composition.

This second painting is the same living room, just taken from a different angle and perspective.

Now the cropping is even more severe, the focus on the little vase, and the fireplace is barely visible.

And poor mom is gone completely, even though she might have still been sitting in the room when the photo study for this painting was taken.

Another thing photographs do is freeze light. How is that helpful?

Well, if you were sitting in this room painting this scene, the light and the shadows would be entirely different by the time you got just one of the chairs painted in.

You could try to come back at the exact same time each day to recreate the same light, but what if it's cloudy the next day, or smoky outside?

The light is still going to look a lot different day to day, and even more so as weeks and months lead into different seasons.

The only way you could get a consistent light source across the working time of your painting was to shut out any and all sunlight and use lamps or electric lights.

But what if you wanted to paint that beautiful sunlight in the room?

The only way you can record it all at once, in an instant, is with a photograph.

So not only is Vuillard exploiting the proportional accuracies of the photograph, but he's also using that frozen and consistent light.

So despite the very loose and fuzzy brush marks, he's paying very close attention to the values and colors that create convincing lights and shadows.

And like the other artists of Les Nabi, he can also use photography to help him capture charming, intimate scenes of everyday human life, exactly frozen in time.

Like in this painting, which we can instantly connect with emotionally, through the simple gesture between the woman and the baby, that look between the two, that moment with an outstretched hand, it would have all been gone in a second, far too fast for a painter to capture a painting from life, and hard to exactly recreate from memory.

But a camera probably captured this moment for eternity, and with the warmth and expressiveness of Vuillard's palette and brushstroke, that moment from a photograph becomes an intimate painting we instantly connect with.

Many post-impressionists like Maurice Denis and Pierre Bonnard were also prolific photographers, and many scholars have found clear parallels between their experiments in the medium and their artistic works.

Felix Vallotton, too, used photographs as studies as a basis for some of his paintings, many of which present scenes from unusual viewpoints and vantage points.

We can just imagine these fleeting glimpses of scenes and people as something only a photograph could capture in the spur of the moment.

At the same time, we also see the rise of photography as a potential art form unto itself.

This, too, is controversial, while impressionists and their successors are doing what they can to distinguish themselves from the photography craze, creating a sort of line between the practical work of the photography and the creative work of the artist.

There are some virtual amateurs who are crossing the boundary and declared the photograph an artwork on its own.

Henry Peach Robinson, for example, was an early English photographer who pioneered new techniques to create photo montages,

creating elaborately staged scenes that told stories and expressed feelings and emotions.

The camera was more democratic.

It did not require years of training and technique to use, so now even amateurs could create highly aesthetic works.

Julia Margaret Cameron only began experimenting with a camera at 48, but had an extraordinary late career pioneering photography as an art form.

Cameron's portraits revealed that photography was hardly confined to the world of realism.

She experimented with soft focus and close-ups, as well as unusual angles and creative compositions, and showed the world how creative portrait photography could be.

The influx of amateur photographers into the fine art world sparked a furious debate over whether photographers could be considered artists that in some ways still lingers.

But regardless, the camera spawned a number of artistic revolutions.

Rapid advancements in camera technology continued.

From the 1870s to the 1910s, cameras went from being rare luxury items to part of everyday life.

And the technology just got better and better.

Soon, motion photography and multiple exposures are even allowing movement and multiple points in time to be captured in a single image,

giving photographers more control over time in a way that painters always had.

Pretty incredible.

All of this serves as critical backdrop to understanding the Post-Impressionists.

They had come into the world inheriting the freedom from copying nature created by the camera and pioneered by the Impressionists.

And yet, at the same time, were being profoundly influenced by the ways in which a camera could capture the world.

Indeed, they were using them as tools to create their art, and sometimes even art itself.

With camera in hand, and newfound knowledge of the way people and the natural world function, painting was inevitably going to get very, very weird.

We can't find it completely weird.

No problem.