Objectives

This chapter concentrates on the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe and America. It examines the various manifestations of realism, rooted in the philosophical and social base of positivism. Our effort in this chapter will mostly be devoted to seeing what happens when people declare that the business of art is the depiction of the real world. Not surprisingly, the result is a wide-ranging declaration. Your main objective for this chapter is to see how a pristine daguerreotype and a "fuzzy" Monet painting are part and parcel of the same impulse.

Goals for this chapter include:

• Grasp the essential features of positivist thought.

• See how Europeans and Americans reacted to the belief in technological and scientific progress.

• Watch the invention of photography and the fact that photography did not replace painting and other traditional methods of making pictures.

• Witness the triumph and slow demise of the academic system.

• Observe the hostility exhibited towards those artists who began to assault academic taste in the third quarter of the century.

• Witness the birth of the modern notion of the artist as rebel.