“I paint what I see and not what others like to see” Édouard MANET
It was a time when artists were at the service of some king or queen and when just the idea of selling their works to the public was an unachievable dream. Two centuries after the medieval era, the oppression of art still existed and it was not only around the middle of the Nineteenth Century when artists finally became emancipated. The Impressionism movement was the leader in liberating artistic expression.
The Nineteenth Century were times of economic and social changes where artists had started to search to break apart from the oppressive rules of art schools called, the Academies. In 1863, the Art Salons, in Paris, rejected 4000 works and Napoleon III, to distract the negative attention from the media created the Salon de Refuses (the Salon of Rejected Artists).
Therefore, on one side we had the Academies with their Salons d’Art, limiting the artist’s inspiration by restricting the use of color, light and movement. On the other side, we had the Salon des Refuses, where artworks were not turned down by the government, but where they became depreciated by public opinion. Finally, we had the Impressionists creating the Society of Independent Artists (La Societe des Artists Independents) founded by George Seurat, Paul Signac, Odilon Redon, Henry-Edmond Cross, Armand Guillaumin, Albert Dubois Pillet and others.
Thanks to the Impressionists and to Post-Impressionists such as: Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Henry Rousseau, Paul Gaughin, and Henry de Toulouse Lautrec artists can now be free to paint what they want and wherever they want. They can paint on the streets and they can even create their own associations.
Remembering Our Revolutionary Artists
In the mid-1880s Toulouse-Lautrec began his lifelong association with the bohemian life of Montmartre. The cafés, cabarets, entertainers, and artists of this area of Paris fascinated him and led to his first taste of public recognition. He focused his attention on depicting popular entertainers, nocturne life and the famous Moulin Rouge with its Can Can dancers.
