從印象主義到立體主義

19 世紀末，一群被稱為「印象派」的法國畫家——其名稱源自克勞德・莫內於 1872 年創作的畫作《印象・日出》（如圖所示）——開啟了一連串現代藝術運動的序幕，這些運動徹底改變了藝術的風格與觀念。印象派畫家不再追求寫實地描繪事物，而是致力於傳達自然界的氛圍與感官印象，採取一種抽離的觀察立場，而非直接的情感投入。他們的理念是捕捉某個瞬間，如同人在尚未經由理性分析前，第一眼感知到的景象。

在莫內的畫作中，物體與人物常以幾筆筆觸略作暗示，且筆觸之間常以強烈對比的色彩呈現，讓觀者的眼睛與大腦自行混合色彩並補足缺漏的細節。光影對物體的影響，往往與物體本身一樣，成為畫作的主題，如莫內畫作中多次描繪的乾草堆系列（1890–91 年）與盧昂大教堂系列（1892–93 年），皆是在不同時間點下捕捉光影變化的結果。

前景與背景的區分被刻意模糊，使畫面的透視變得扁平，進而讓觀者聚焦於整體的視覺印象。雖然印象派畫作在今日極受歡迎，但在當時卻一度不被看好，被批評為缺乏藝術技巧，違背傳統美學。這類反應後來也同樣出現在其他現代風格的繪畫與音樂作品中。

From impressionism to cubism

In the late nineteenth century, French painters known as impressionists—named after Claude Monet's painting Impression: Sunrise (1872), shown in Picture—inaugurated the first in a series of modern artistic movements that utterly changed styles and attitudes toward art. Rather than depicting things realistically, the impressionists sought to convey atmosphere and sensuous impressions from nature, adopting a stance of detached observation rather than direct emotional engagement. The idea was to capture an instant in time, as one apprehends a scene, before reason can process it. In Monet's paintings, objects and people are suggested by a few brush strokes, often of starkly contrasting colors, leaving it to the viewer's eyes and mind to blend the colors and fill in the missing details. The effect of light on an object is often as much the subject of a painting as is the object itself, as in Monet’s series of paintings of haystacks (1890–91) and of the Rouen Cathedral (1892–93) captured at different times of day. The distinction between foreground and background is blurred, flattening the perspective and focusing our attention on the overall impression. Although impressionist paintings are widely popular today, they were at first poorly received, derided as lacking in artistic skill and opposed to traditional aesthetics. Such reactions would also greet other modern styles of painting and music.

引用文獻

英文書籍

J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca (2019). A History of Western Music (10th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.

J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca (2014). A History of Western Music (9th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.