Week 1:

Georges Seurat, "Circus Side Show" 1887

I am very much looking forward to meeting you all today and beginning our adventure into the rich world of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

Teaching at OLLI will be a new experience for me. I am excited about working with all of you to create a mutually rewarding and enriching atmosphere where we can learn from one another.

Although we'll have no official textbook I want to share a few recommendations for texts that I've used to prepare my lectures and that I think you'll find helpful. All of them are quite inexpensive and can be easily purchased either used or new on Amazon.com

1.) Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society by Robert L. Herbert

2.) Impressionism edited by Ingo F. Walther (this can be bought in two volumes or in one small
volume- be aware the print is small in the one volume set- although its compactness makes it fairly easy to carry around.)

3.) The Impressionists at First Hand edited by Bernard Denvir

I am also very big on using new media resources and will certainly be sending you links and websites that I find helpful as we go along.

Please be aware of the Kahn Academy's Smart History Videos. These are mini-lectures on artworks from across history- with short articles to flesh out basic ideas or give helpful overviews of particular movements.

Smarthistory Impressionism page

Here are two articles that will (I hope) illuminate today's lecture and also help us think about the important concept of modernity as we go through the class. One is from Baudelaire's essays on modern art the other is a short essay on the history of the terms "Intransigents" and "Impressionists"- two terms used to describe the artists we now call Impressionist. The author shows us how both of these words were entangled with ideas concerning "Revolution" which was certainly much on the mind of Parisians in the 19th century.

1.) Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life

2.) Intransigents -- article on the origin of the word "Impressionism"

3.) Click here to find an article discussing the Baudelaire essay in detail

For those of you eager to dig more deeply into the topic check out this rather exhaustive website for a course on Impressionism at Michigan State University.

Not all of the links work- but there are many that do and you can easily download PDFs of articles that you find interesting or of help regarding this rather inexhaustible subject.