Gustave Courbet, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet 1854. Works Essay

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Gustave Courbet, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet 1854.

Works of Art

The world of art includes a picture in a location, someplace in either fictional or real universe. It is usually a view framing a section of space, and occupies an elaborate ground. It forms a vicinity; a scene with entrance and exit. Pictures formed here tend to be a bit precise. The place of the picture is attached to a particular site within the world. Some fixed landmarks and scheduled stop in the art identifies the reasons as to why the picture settled at a given place of the surface earth.

Some other pictures pitch their tents at any place. They have no particular place; it is jut someplace where somebody is. For example, Gustave Courbet's The Meeting reveals three men on a country way doffing their hats. The artist himself is the man with staff and backpack, while the man who standing in front of him is his Montpllier patron with the name Alfred Bruyas, and he has raised his arm in a stiff greeting. Whoever is standing behind Bruyas is his servant Calas. The dog Breton belongs to Bruyas. The setting of the art is at a road outside Montpellier. From a distance, toward the right hand side shows the coach that probably dropped Courbet moving off.

Courbet's work is a great indication of artistic independence. The artist is seen as a free man who is pursuing his destiny on the open road. Carrying his own luggage, in shirtsleeves, with jutting beard, Courbet is standing proudly and grandly at the foreground, (Tom Lubbock, 2006). He forms the prime figure, and the patron is the one somehow paying court to him. Depending on the location or lack of location a picture may be boastful. One can be imagine trying to locate such place. No landmark in sight, middle of nowhere. The foreground has grass verge as well as a plateau of stony road. The background is occupied by fields, low hills as well as indistinct settlement. Almost a half of the picture is made up of open sky. Indeed, it is just a picture with people out and about in the world. The question is where in the world? It might be anywhere. The picture concentrates on the spot where the meeting between the three is.

Therefore, according to the picture, the figure themselves are the sufficient location. There is no need for a setting. They also need no support and backing of the world, including its fixes and fittings, established landmarks, as well as its orientation conventional points. Their importance and independent is seen by the fact that they can meet anywhere, and wherever they meet turns to be a scene. Portraying a meeting that takes place in the middle of nowhere show an event worth painting. Their place of meeting is a site worth seeing. They have established their own landmark and point of orientation. Courbet declares that this is where he is.

The artist who was having much influence in the nineteenth century French Realism forming the first figure to be identified as avant-garde is Gustave Courbet. The term was originally used by French military in referring to particular radical artists and thinkers. The meaning of "Avant" is advancing forward, while "garde" means solder or guard just like English. The phrase was by then referring to the vanguard or the troops that managed to push a head of the main battalions risking their lives. In the world of art, on the other hand, refers to artists who can risk their reputation while looking for a new way of visual expression that will be able to do away with old, ineffective art making approaches. Generally, avant-garde is always in front; however they have new ideas, in case of a success.

The trips that Courbet made to Belgium and Netherlands in 1846-1847 gave strength to his belief that painters are supposed to be portraying the life around them, just like other Dutch masters and Rembrandt had. By 1848, Courbet had already gained supporters from the younger critics, the realists and Neo-romantics, particularly Champfleury. Courbet managed to achieve bigger recognitions following the success of his painting "After Dinner at Ornans at the Salon of 1849. Courbet earned a gold medal from the work "Le Nain" and "Chardin" and the state purchased it. Fro the gold medal any of the Courbet work never needed any approval for exhibition at the Salon. He enjoyed this exemption until 1857 when there a change in the rules

The paintings of Courbet were of figurative compositions such as still-lifes, seascapes, and landscapes.

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His work was sometimes seen controversial because they addressed social issues, with subjects that were viewed to be vulgar, for example, working conditions of the poor, peasants, and rural bourgeoise. Courbet's work did not belong to either predominant Neoclassical, or Romantic schools. What Paris Salon considered to be of painter' highest calling, History Painting, were not of interest to Courbet, he even stated that, "the artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century." And believed that artists' own experience is the only possible source for a living art. Therefore, realism about his work was associated with perfection of line and form; however had spontaneous as well as rough handling of paint, signifying direct view by the artist while identifying irregularities in nature, (Clark, 1999).

Gustave Courbet, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet 1854, became commissioned by Alfred Bruyas who was a wealthy Monpellier collector and started purchasing works of Courbet in 1853. The exhibition took place at the 1855 Exposition Universelle. The kind of painting is linked to stay by Courbet at Monpellier, 1854 summer. To some extend the composition is concurrently symbolic and narrative. It gives strength the famous image that showed "the burghers of the town speaking to the wandering jew," as well as having ability to read as the meeting of money and genius. In particular the location has been identified as near the house of a friend on the borders of Montpellier; where Courbet arrives on foot, as a coach is seen leaving from the background, a free artist coming back from the sea and his painting gear on his back.

The painting of Courbet showed a great realism. The painting showed real life as if it were something epic or great. He could be described as a great egotist who went on to paint his own life in a similar way. His painting was precursor of the real life painting that managed to be of success during late 19th-century in France, (Courbet, Gustave, 1992). The artist was echoed as an independent freelance who attempted to break out of the salon system through financing his exhibition on its own though the number of people who bought the ticket was not enough. He was as well as a republican and socialist, Pierre Joseph's friend and a key figure within the 1871 Paris Commune, in the eve of blewing up the Napoleonic Vendome Column.

Gustave Courbet, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet 1854 is a painting that its meaning has been always debated in art history circles. After its commissioned by Alfred Bruyas, who is the center of the painting, in September 1996, Ting Chang writing in Burlington Magazine describe the this meeting of 1854 as broadly as well as justifiably an unequivocal statement on the position of the artist of ninetieth century in the society; when Courbet represented himself in the company of the art collector Afrred Bruyas of Montepellier and Bruyas's servant, he is looking independent, independent figure who is in full control of the relationship he has with his patron. His painting is among the first to transparently look at the question of the artist especially in regard to the artist's patron. A former art critic, Robert Hughes indicate in the Time Magazine that the painting was derived from a woodcut of two bourgeois meeting the Wandering Jew, however it could be carrying an esoteric reference to Masonry. Tom Lubbock of the Independent describes it that on it initial exhibition, according to them it was a boastful work or a blatant self-advertisement. On the subject that it was all about, is a painter of 35 years old exchanging greetings with a provincial art collector.

Nevertheless, its painting looked like some great scene from history, maybe sacred history. These three monumental figures which can be somehow observed from below had various interpretations. To some it could be Christ meeting the apostle on their way to Emmaus. Due to these disturbing thoughts, the painting was given a belittling nickname Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, and that was the same title that the painting adopted. In 2003- 2004 exhibition, the National Gallery of Australia's online catalogue based on the Musee Fabre collection described the painting to a greater extent the way the collectors' ambition of the collector, devoted to include his personal name, generosity and taste into the painting history. Actually Courbet was aware about this relationship. Consider how just Courbet….....

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