Page 44 - Wax Fusion Spring 2022 Issue 6 WIP v19

Round-fleshed naturalism and realistic spatial perspective,

developed by Renaissance artists after a millennium of mostly
medieval flatness, was the only option. The most ambitious

academic paintings were massive in scale, with piles of figures
in grand historical scenes designed to win the artists medals,

fame, and lucrative commissions from the Salon exhibitions.

After a few hundred years like this, there were rebels. In 1863,
the Salon des Refusés took place in Paris, an exhibition of works

that the of cial Salon jurors had rejected. Visitors went and
laughed at paintings that now hang in major museums, such as

Édouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass. Some artists were not
satisfied with the same old artistic formulas, and if their new

work was rejected by the of cial Salon as sloppy, as happened
with the burgeoning Impressionists in the 1870s, they held

their own alternative exhibitions and created a new art
movement. These experimental artists considered the Academy

stifling to their imaginations and unyielding in its ability to
recognize the worth of what was admittedly radical about their

art.

Around the turn of the century, artists were concerned with
dif erent things—rather than Greek myths and Biblical stories—

many were interested in emerging socialism and the lives of
the poor; formal experiments that defied realism; and the

realm of the spirit and mysticism. They looked to forms of
global art, first with Japanese woodcuts, and later with African,
Iberian, and Pacific Islander sculpture, along with other pre-

Classical or indigenous arts that were more abstracted, often

made for ritual, and a far cry from than the Academies’ familiar
tropes.

Several of these artists struggled for recognition in their own
time, even from other artists.

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