Sharjah: Aladdin Mahmoud
The genius of the great French artist Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), who is considered one of the pioneers of the realist school, is that he took the arts towards new directions closer to the conquests made by philosophers and thinkers. A great revolution in art, and although it belongs to realism and one of its most prominent poles, it was different, while the members of that school copied nature as they saw it, Courbet was mocking that act, and he said: “Only ugly is beautiful, and it is Only the Beloved.” So he chose to draw ordinary people in his paintings and then act in their forms, so that his work is not just copying, and many critics see that his works scream emotions that have not been depicted in artwork before.
Perhaps knowing the basic aspects of Courbet’s life, such as his style and way of thinking, is an important issue in interpreting his works, as he wanted art to express life, and monitor the reality of human beings without extremism in artistic work. He was content with discovering him, as he was a rebel even against the academy and its institutions, and he believed that they were identical with the conservative society, and he was the main supporter of realism, and he challenged the popular historical painting favored by the State-sponsored Academy of Arts, and perhaps these views were the product of the influence of many philosophical schools of thought of a color The left-wing, and Courbet’s views and ideas may have been decisively influenced by the French Revolution in 1848, and the artist had actively participated in the events of the “Paris Commune” in 1871, and the realism he adopted sparked controversy; Because it deliberately criticized social values and the upper classes, in addition to introducing new values that came with the Industrial Revolution, realism was widely considered the beginning of the modern art movement.
effect of realism
And the painting “The Stonebreakers”, which Courbet painted in 1849, is one of the works that embodies the values of the Realist school, the artistic movement that appeared in France in the 1940s, where the realists rejected Romanticism, which dominated literature and art since the early 19th century, Realism revolted against the colorful and emotionally exaggerated artistic themes of the Romantic movement. In contrast, it concerned itself with the real world rather than idealistic perceptions. It took on themes of everyday matter, portrayed all social classes in a similar fashion, and used paintings in dark, earthy colors to ignore This idealism that printed artwork, and this was evident in many of Courbet’s works, on top of which is the painting “The Stone Breakers”, in addition to another work called “Ornan’s Funeral”.
a description
“Stone Breakers” was shown for the first time at the Paris Salon in 1850. As a realistic work, it deals with a scene from daily life, “a young man and an old man breaking rocks.” This painting was intended to show the hard labors experienced by poor citizens, and the artist did not show faces The two characters in the painting, they represent as each working man sees, and the painting depicts two people belonging to the region to which the artist belongs, where the countryside, and doing hard work, but the artist avoided the rural tradition of representing humans in harmony with nature, and instead depicted two men side by side. Side by side on the sidelines of a rocky road that does not bring pleasure in the soul, and the concealment of their faces confirms the inhuman nature of their repetitive monotonous work, they are at the lowest levels of the social ladder, and the painting wanted by Courbet to enjoy good things, so he, through the painting, presented a picture of misery and poverty; Where Courbet had seen the sight of the two laborers breaking up rocks as he roamed the country, and he paused at that sight a great deal, and came to the conclusion that only adversity motivates them to do such hard work.
details
The painting features two stone-breakers, an old man in a wide-brimmed hat and a striped jacket, who is engaged in building a road that requires crushing large pebbles into small stones with his hammer. The color of the skin is dark, and the other person is a young man in shorts whose job is to help the old man and complete his work.
Protest
While Courbet believed, through painting, that art should show people and events in a certain time realistically and honestly, his painting faced great criticism in the way of processing and portraying rural societies, and showing them as being of the lower class, but in fact, Courbet wanted to express through the painting a new reality. The peasants had become an important and great political force, and the artist wanted to highlight them as representing a new reality and a different era, which angered conservative critics.
message
Courbet talked about his painting in a letter to a friend, dealing with the circumstances and circumstances that led him to paint it. To him, Courbet described the scene, saying, “There was an old man bent at work, his hammer raised, his head shaded by a straw hat, and duffel pants, and on the other side a young man with a dusty head and a dark face.” Courbet laments the sight of these two poor men, and says : « Alas! These are the people who start their lives that way and end it.” Many critics have described the work as distinguished and considered one of Courbet’s most important works. In fact, the French politician and philosopher Pierre Joseph Proudhon described Courbet as the first true social artist, and that “stone-breakers” are A real social portrait.
distortion
Unfortunately, the painting was destroyed during World War II, along with 154 others, when in February 1945 the Allied forces bombed a carriage transporting the paintings to Königstein Castle, near Dresden, the capital of the eastern German state of Saxony.