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Working Class In Modern Art Essay

Submitted By
Words 1619
Pages 7
Yimeng Sun
Professor Bryson
VIS 22 Final Paper
March 16, 2016
The Shift in Representation of Working Class in Modern Art
As the development of modern art era, the representation of working class in modern art works had experienced a process from scratch to flourish. Since Jean-Batiste Simeon Chardin began to paint his still life paintings and introduce the art to the public, more and more artists have begun to shift their focus from the luxury and ideal life of aristocracy to the rough life of the working class. Among all the artists that were discussed in the lecture of modern art history, Jean-Batiste Simeon Chardin, Jean-François Millet, Gustave Millet, and Vincent van Gogh are the artists that contributed the most to the shift in representation …show more content…
Chardin was one of the first artists who aimed not to show the ideal life of aristocracy, but to focus on appealing ordinary life to aristocracy, and at the same time, introduced art to the public. Millet painted the lowest class of the society and created a sense of collective harmony to show his sympathy towards working class. Courbet painted about the extremely insufferable working environment of labors in order to shock the Bourgeois viewers. Vincent van Gogh showed the working class subjects in his painting to attach himself with the suffering of working class and also showed his sympathy. Although they were all painting about the life of working class, but they could show different approaches by using various techniques. Those representations of working class in their art works were the products of both the cultural background and their personal pursuits. As the the art get more and more popularized and acceptable by more and more public audience, there would be more artists showing more working class subjects in their art works with their formal approaches. Therefore, the representation of working class in modern art was more and more generalized and varied as the cultural background and the range of audience developed during that era.

Bibliography
Bryson, Norman. The History of Modern Art. Lecture, University of California, San Diego,
La Jolla, 2012
Clark, T.J.. The Absolute Bourgeois. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1999
Cohen, Sarah. Chardin’s Fur:Printing, Materialism, and the Question of Animal Soul.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004
Schama, Simon. Power of Art, Van Gogh: Painting from Inside the Head, Burbank: BBC
Books,

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