Realism/Impressionism/Symbolism

This Friday in lab we talked about making connections for the Realism/Impressionism/Symbolist period. This period was in the 19 century. For the focus question I would probably choose what representation is even though we talked about it in class, it seems like the best question for this period. During this time of industrialization there was a movement reform because of the unbalance of wealth made it so that the living conditions of the poor were terrible. This led for a want of social reform and some sought to depict the conditions using journalism and photography. For the symbolist part it would be poetry from Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, in which he uses words different from the way they would normally be used to represent a new idea. The poems are somewhat disturbing and have some sense of romanticism in them. One of the key period concepts is ephemerality, because things were changing due to the industrialization people began to value the transience of things. Some of the poems of Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil talk about the decaying of a lover, which in some since represents the ephemerality of life. The music during this time was called Impressionism, and bridged the gap with the 20th century. Impressionism basically means the external perception. The piece of music we talked about in music was Claude Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of a Fawn; it’s based on a pastoral poem by Mallarme about a fawn who can’t remember if he slept with some nymphs. The use of solo instruments was used to represent different things happening during the poem. The art was also known as Impressionism, and the piece of art was Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet. This painting used broad paint strokes which ending up representing the sunrise on what looks like a water village. While far away you can make this out close up its hard to distinguish what you’re looking at.
321 words.