Abstract
This article explores transmedia principles in impressionism spanning painting, music and literature. The introduction focuses on concepts with the suffix-ism in scholarly communication (especially in literary theory and the general theory of art). Applying the concept of intermediality, it is possible to explore the intersection of all three above-listed arts and to identify, name and systematize stable principles which universally characterize impressionism. Theoreticians of intermediality (I. Rajewsky, W. Wolf) characterize these principles as non-media-specific and migrating, indicating that a particular aesthetic may be applied in different arts. The principles identified in this paper (hic et nunc, transposition, three-dimensionality and imagination, the two-stage reception of impressionist works, equivalent principles in techniques for expressing colour and light, similar genres and themes, and a shared goal–the optical integrity of the world) indicate that impressionism takes a unified noetic approach to reality, and thus these principles can be characterized as transmedia principles. Paradoxically, thanks to these principles, we are aware of the specificity of each of the arts as a distinctive system of signs. Parallel or equivalent structures can thus occur in different arts, accentuating either the visual aspect (painting), the auditive aspect (music), or a combination of both aspects (literature).
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Notes
According to Jiráček, the suffix -ism (in Czech -ismus) originated in the Greek suffix -ismós, which in the Greek language was used to denote actions by derivation from verbal forms ending in -izein. A related suffix was -isma, which denoted completed actions. In some cases, the suffix has survived as the modern form -ism. Nouns ending in -ismós denoted “acting in the manner of (something),” “appurtenance to (something),” “expressing oneself in the manner of (something)”–e.g. christianizein–acting according to Christian principles–became christianismus in Late Latin. The suffix -ismus became a common derivational morpheme in medieval Latin; it was used to denote scholarly disciplines, schools of thought, or linguistic characteristics. It then came into widespread use mainly in Church Latin (1995, p. 44).
For the purposes of this article, I will not address how scholarly terms with the suffix -ism have penetrated into everyday, non-expert communication; see Rusínová (2014).
E.g. Bek (1964) characterizes impressionism in music as the transformation and re-coding of all the fundamental techniques used by preceding movements, as a struggle against conventions.
E.g. Jarociński described impressionism as “an unconscious anticipation of a new vision of the world and an example of a new method of perceiving it, specifically viewing the world as an arrangement of forces and their mutual dependencies, when a person is at the same time an observer and one of the acting forces” (1989, p. 17).
“Impressionism can no longer be considered a purely aesthetic phenomenon, but rather a product of the entire palette of social, economic and even political pressures which led to its emergence and which are reflected in this movement.” (Denvir 1999, p. 9).
An example is the relationship between the French painters Eugène Boudin and Gustave Courbet and the French poet Charles Baudelaire, or between Émile Zola and Claude Monet.
It would thus be misleading and a distortion of reality to claim e.g. that the paintings of Gustave Courbet, who was frequently influenced by seascapes–e.g. in the paintings The Calm Sea (1869) or Wave (1870)–were “described” in music by Debussy.
La Mer is divided into three parts, each of which uses different musical resources as means of expression. The first part (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea) features brass instruments and extreme shifts of rhythm and dynamics. The second part (Play of the Waves) features harps and flutes, and is dominated by trills. The third part (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea) incorporates a long melodic line supported by violoncellos and double basses (see e.g. Walsh 2018).
An analysis of the relationship between impressionism and nature from a new perspective is presented e.g. by the art historian S. F. Eisenman (2011), who claims that the impressionists recorded the impact of modernity on the French landscape, but also accepted a new holistic way of seeing which revealed the dynamics and state of the social and natural systems. Eisenman’s work traces the development of depictions of nature in the oeuvre of 19th-century French painters.
E.g. Monet uses the colours of the solar spectrum, whose intensity is heightened by their juxtaposition with complementary colours (Krsek 1982, p. 42). A commonly used technique is the optical blending of colours; two pure colours are placed next to each other, and it is only the viewer’s eye that combines them to create the resulting colour. Thus red and blue spots next to each other create the impression of purple (Serullaz 1978, p. 10). Serullaz cites the French poet Jules Laforgue, who wrote of the impressionists’ approach to colour as a polyphony of colours, noting that the impressionists saw and depicted nature in vibrating colours (ibid., p. 12).
Painters use broad, straight and rapid brushstrokes to achieve a greater sensory effect (undulation, noise, vibration, atmosphere, coruscation); they do not mix colours on the palette, but instead apply them directly to the canvas in separate patches, which then merge to create the resulting shapes and tones (Krsek 1982, pp. 42–44).
Musical impressionism suppresses all traditional elements. Modifications of timbre are achieved by means of instructions to performers (e.g. sordemente–muted), and piano chords are blended by pedalling. Differentiation of colours is achieved by rhythm, dynamics and agogics. The principle of tonality is undermined, as is the relation between consonance and dissonance, major and minor (Sychra 1992, p. 37).
The accentuation of the sensory aspects of a human being leads to a weakening of that person’s social aspects. Impressionism is therefore sometimes described as socially indifferent.
Having reached the conclusion that the application of a transmedia approach necessarily implies a degree of schematicity and model-creation, which thus brings the risk of over-simplification, the question remains to what extent this simplification is necessary when attempting to model a problem, and to what extent it deforms our vision of the issue.
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Novák, R. Transmedia principles in impressionism spanning painting, music and literature. Neohelicon 48, 299–312 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-020-00558-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-020-00558-7