An Investigation from the Perspective of Modernity in 19th-Century French Painting
Text / Liu Ziqi, Zhuge Yi
The 19th century was a transitional period for European art to transition from classical to modern, and French Impressionist painting was regarded as a visual representative of the discourse of aesthetic modernity, and its visual language surpassed the Western classical tradition to achieve breakthroughs in multiple dimensions of aesthetic modernity, value and significance. The 19th-century German painter Wilhelm Leibull took the theme of rural life as the core of his work. He attaches more importance to the inheritance and development of the "northern tradition" represented by the Renaissance realistic painting master Holbein. Li Xiaoyu's article examines the understanding of Holbein in the context of 19th-century art criticism and the influence of popular ideas on Leibul's creation, deepening readers' understanding of the poetic realist art style pioneered by Leibull. The female nude paintings of Frederick Leiden, an active neoclassical artist in the late 19th century, reflect the gradual decline of classical ideas and their corresponding academic art traditions after the European Enlightenment. (Wang Hongyuan)
Abstract: The French poet Stephan Mallarmé first proposed the term "subtle modern fluidity" to describe musical poetic phrases and their artistic characteristics. Since then, the characteristic of "fluidity" has begun to enter the field of study of artworks, especially in the 19th-century French "Impressionist" paintings. The term "fluidity" began to become a conceptual category that defined the technique and style of a certain painting, and while it was summarized as a formal feature of graphic art, it also approached an aesthetic characteristic that could anchor the "Impressionist" style. The investigation of "fluidity" as an aesthetic feature is not only helpful to the supplementary understanding of the discourse composition system of aesthetic modernity, but also can clarify the irrational aesthetic turn contained in "fluidity" from the perspective of modernity, and at the same time provide the modernity significance of aesthetic concept change for the context of modernization.
Keywords: fluidity, aesthetic characteristics, modernity, impressionism
In the face of globalization and the oscillation of the development of modernity, its constant change has gradually become the main feature of the entire social relations and spiritual concepts, and this characteristic is the core argument for discussing modernity, among which the theory of "fluid modernity" proposed by the British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman is the most prominent. Similarly, the interpretation of the category of "mobility" in "fluid modernity" has also spread from time and space to a broader field of research such as social relations and spiritual life. In the process of this rapidly changing modernity, art forms and their characteristics are also changing simultaneously in the development of society, and are in a state of constant shaping. Due to the great uncertainty of aesthetic expression, infinite improvement and constant change are the characteristics, which not only reflect the changing veins of the five major painting schools of French neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, impressionism and modernism in the 19th century, but also paint the background color of the times on its social concepts and aesthetic interests full of modernity. The concept of "fluidity" is similar to but not identical to the concepts of "continuity", "dynamics" and "transition", and the use of the concept of "fluidity" is still in a relatively weak and neglected position compared to these common terms that have become commonplace in the context of mechanics, physics, geography, fine arts, and even traditional philosophy, especially in terms of aesthetics as an aesthetic feature. The reason for this, with the help of Bauman's explanation, can be understood that because "fluidity" itself has the instability of the fluid, it is not easy to control its shape, compared with its opposite, "fixed", the "fluid" fluid has the characteristic of "neither fixed spatial shape nor temporal persistence" [1], which makes it difficult to accurately describe the concept of "fluidity" in both art history and aesthetics. However, on the contrary, the "fluidity" characteristics of fluids have incomparable advantages over the "fixity" of solids. In his book Fluid Modernity, Bauman argues that "for a fluid, it is its temporal flow (i.e., the temporal dimension) that is more important than the space it occupies (i.e., the spatial dimension): to occupy a certain space is, after all, only 'ephemeral'." In a sense, solids have no meaning of time; [2] This kind of transcendent significance given to the concept of time by "mobility" injects a revolutionary force to "disintegrate tradition", that is, to destroy and transform anything that is not affected by the passage of time, and to break the traditional characteristics of rigidity and stagnation in solid objects, which makes "mobility" a very important symbol of social progress and the establishment of a modern order. For example, Zimmer regards the dual characteristics of "fashion", namely "fleetingness" and "the identity of development and disappearance", as the survival characteristics of modernity, and believes that the aesthetic pursuit of "fashionable" things will inevitably lead to the acceleration of the rhythm of the individual's spiritual life, so that the whole social relationship will continue to advance and change, which is the situation in which art follows the life of human society; In the discussion of aesthetic modernity in the Frankfurt School, it proposed that artistic creation gradually deviates from human social life, that is, art reflects the negation or confrontation of social life, and this "fluidity" that deviates from daily life leads to the generation of a new mode and relationship between artworks and social life, that is, the awakening of consciousness from rationalism to irrationalism. Whether it is the flow from "collective organization to individual freedom" or the transfer from "instrumental rationality to aesthetic expression" [4], it reflects the generation and change of the basic conflict between modern Western society and aesthetic concepts under the nurture of modernity, which makes the theoretical value of "mobility" as an aesthetic feature more prominent.
The question of why "fluidity" became an aesthetic feature is inseparable from the influence of multiple determinants, and in 19th-century France, the process of modernity was accompanied by the fission of aesthetic categories. Therefore, from the generative perspective of modernity, there are common laws to follow to explore the reasons why "fluidity" has become an aesthetic characteristic. Therefore, driven by historical and social processes, as well as the artist's personal and technological development, "fluidity" has a common essence in different types of fluid forms, although it has different manifestation processes. It is precisely because European painting in the 19th century completed the transformation from traditional form to modern form, through the investigation of the aesthetic characteristics of this period, especially impressionist painting, it is not only helpful to understand the conceptual system of aesthetic modernity discourse, but also to clarify the irrational aesthetic turn contained in "fluidity" from the perspective of modernity, and at the same time provide aesthetic modernity meaning for the context of modernization.
Beginnings: The Emergence of "Fluidity" in the Nineteenth-Century European Art Landscape
Influenced by both the scientific wave and the Industrial Revolution, 19th-century European artists and intellectuals wanted to capture real-life situations and characters through painting, literature, music, film, and architecture. However, the principles of modernity do not appear at all levels of culture at the same time, but the exploration and examination of its "fluid" characteristics have never stopped: Walter Benjamin's definition of "commodity aesthetics" means that there is a kind of visibility and circulation in commercial space, which is widely perceived and concretized in the process of urbanization; The dynamic form, the dominant design concept at the time, which was to replace straight lines with curves, and at the same time, to establish a strong relationship between the structure and decoration of the building, so as to extend the gaze from the support of the building or the base of the wall to the decoration of the vault, this new paradigm with the dynamic character of "fluidity" began to be applied to the exploration of the spatial nature of architecture;[5] In terms of film, as the wartime "French School" According to Deleuze, the French philosopher who enjoys an important position in the field of film aesthetics and theory, Jean Epstein, Marcel L'Herbier, Jean Grémillon or Jean Renoir, the "taste" in the film is not limited to the storm, the canal, the rain, The manifestation of these fluidic liquids, such as fog, also stems from a deeper and more essential perception based on the formal and structural model of "fluidity". Thus the French cinema of the twenties of the twentieth century was largely constructed according to this fluid system of images.[6] In music, the French composer Tristan Murail, one of the founders of the French musique spectrale, wrote in his work Treize couleurs du soleil couchant (The Thirteen Colors of the Sunset, 1978), the composer was asked to imagine himself as an "impressionist" to contrast his imagery with Monet's painting Sunrise Impression, the founding work of the Impressionist movement, thus evoking "the continuity of sound flowing through time" in music a priori. These "fluid" characteristics embodied in the development of architecture, cinema and music are a good testimony to the universality of their existence, but if we want to investigate the necessity of their aesthetic characteristics, it is worth focusing on the prominence of painting.
"Fluidity" derives from the word "flow, flow, fluide" (fluide), which is given the "...... by the ending of "ité" state". The word was already mentioned in the 17th century in the Dictionnaire des termes, written by the French art chronicler André Félibien, dedicated to art: "Flou": "It may come from 'Fluidus', or from 'Floüet', which means gentle, soft or delicate." [8] The French philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot also explains it as a special term in the Encyclopédie: "'Flou' :(painting) is an ancient word, probably from the Latin word 'fluidus', which refers to a style of softness, fluidity, and tenderness that a mature and dexterous painter puts into his work...... [9] "Fluidity" has long since become a characteristic of describing a certain style of painting. The work of the American painter James Whistler, whose work is characterized by subtle refinement, has been praised as "a reborn, delicate, and fully personal painting outside of contemporary art, and it is precisely 'la peinture des fluides' that the dreamer seeks to depict" [10]. The pioneering British painter Joseph Turner is known for his imaginative landscapes and often violent and turbulent paintings of the sea, whose style is considered "the sublimation and deconstruction of the natural world by a great poetic artist, creating a feast that makes the sky and the river flow" [11]. In the texts of 19th-century art criticism, the word "fluidity" began to be repeated to summarize the pictorial characteristics of Impressionism, a particular school, especially for the paintings of Monet, the representative of Impressionism. [12] Gustave Geffroy, one of the first art historians to study the Impressionist art movement, argued that "through fluidity, immeasurable material can be exchanged"[13], while the French art historian Louis Gillet argued that in Impressionist painting, "this fluidity unfolds like liquid-like air, which miraculously flows in a reverie zone full of floating" [14]. The French statesman Antonin Proust, a close friend of Manet's and who referred to Monet as the "Raphael of water",[15] believed that there was a "wonderful fluidity" in Monet's paintings, which would persist into his Water Lilies series, and that the French art historian and critic Ernest Chesneau was interested in Monet's Avenue Capusin, which was exhibited at the First Impressionist Exhibition (Boulevard des Capucines, 1873, fig. 1) commented: "No one has ever been able to capture and fix this elusive, fleeting, and ever-changing motion capture in its marvelous fluidity." [16] [17] It can be seen that "fluidity" can become a conceptual category that defines the technique and style of a certain painting, and while it is summarized as an aesthetic feature of discussing image art, it is also gradually approaching an aesthetic characteristic that can anchor the Impressionist style, and the highlight moment that really puts the concept of "fluidity" into the aesthetic system in detail for discussion is the in-depth discussion of the French poet Mallarmé, a keen advocate of the Impressionist movement.
Fig.1 [French] Monet, Capucine Avenue, Oil on canvas, 80.3×60.3 cm, 1873-1874, Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, USA
In a letter to the French poet Ernest Raynaud dated October 19, 1887, Mallarmé first proposed the term "subtile fluidité contemporaine" [18] to describe musical poetic phrases and their artistic characteristics, which made "fluidity" as a term really enter the field of study of works of art. Mallarmé argues that Impressionist paintings depict primarily these flowing outlines, changing air, and the changing atmosphere that surrounds things, rather than the things themselves, although their "impressive" continuity is subject to the law of "perfect vision in the simplest of ways". [19] At the same time, "Claude Monet was preferential to the subject of water, and it was his special talent to express the fluidity and transparency of water, whether it was the water of the sea or the river, which was gloomy and unchanging, or the color of the sky" [20]. Mallarmé emphasized this special talent and charm of Monet, who believed that the water depicted in Monet's works was scattered, light and flowing, and that Monet represented it through a variety of wide, taut or small, tight brushstrokes. While emphasizing the waves, they also occupy the entire canvas space through reflection. This real transformation, seen from nature, was Monet's source of inspiration, in which he saw intangible and ephemeral moments. Perhaps it is precisely because the essence of painting is ephemeral and does not exist in the painting itself that painting is only a form of expression of culture and perception. It is precisely through this form that ephemeral and dynamic momentary impressions emerge as a "fluid" characteristic, appearing in multiple dimensions, especially in the changing atmosphere and space. Therefore, Mallarmé does a good job of focusing on the sensory properties of things, and the "subtle fluidity" not only makes the viewer's visual impression of the painting constantly change, and constantly detached from the stable and inherent meaning of the thing, thus promoting the diversified development and extension of the meaning of the subject, but also more conducive to the painter's attempt to explain how they create new ways of painting and thinking about the imagery of the painted objects in a peculiar way.
Table 1 Three types of fluids
The most direct manifestation of the "fluidity" characteristic in the artistic process is the depiction of natural fluids, but there is much more to it than that. Each work of art is essentially a formal relationship created by the artist's skills and imagery, so as not to confuse the concept of "fluidity" by being too generalized. According to different formal relationships, the category of fluids in which the concept of "fluidity" is located can be distinguished at different levels (Table 1): First, natural fluids. Water, air, and light were the most popular subjects of the Impressionists, and these substances could only be represented in the form of vibrations and reflections. Therefore, the Impressionists sought to elevate "the fluidity of light and the instability of the sense of light" [21] to the level of theoretical research. The German art critic Carl Einstein believed that the "fluidity" characteristic of painting is hidden in the depiction of light, that is, "the separated subject is endowed with a new unity, a unit that governs the flow of the canvas: light". He believes that it is this fluid, undulating interpretation of Impressionism that has made it the norm in art history. [22] Known as the "painter of light," Turner was adept at expressing weather themes such as wind, rain, and moving air through the use of light and shade in color and the different directions of brushstrokes, while at the same time translating the depiction of fluids in natural landscapes into a kind of bodily perception, and Leonardo da Vinci was also interested in natural fluids, known for his interest in water, storms, and other floods. As a result, natural fluids such as water, air, steam, clouds, and light itself were becoming increasingly important objects of expression for painters in the 19th century. [23] The second is biofluids, that is, fluids in the body. The related discourse also undergoes a linear process: the concept of "fluidity" in classical painting is first and foremost linked to the "fluid matter" and the "humor theory" of the organism before it is linked to the landscape or the way of modern life. In the 17th century, Descartes wrote of organic matter as follows: "There is no difference between those substances called fluids, such as blood, bodily fluids, and alcohol, and those called solids, such as bones, flesh, nerves, and skin; [24] Biological fluids are those that are withdrawn from the body: such as blood, milk, semen, sweat, and other bodily fluids or excrements. Thus, fluid with fluidity is not only present inside the body and matter in the form of bodily fluids, semen, milk, excrement, or moving "spirits", but can also occasionally diffuse to the outside and thus make itself more or less visible. [25] In the 18th century, the German art historian Johann Winckelmann attempted to evoke an exploration of the nature of aesthetic relations and aesthetic feelings through a mystical metaphor of "fluidity": "The true feeling of beauty is akin to a liquid plaster cast on Apollo's head, touching all its parts and wrapping them together. [26] This "'wrapping' and 'touching' also shows a sensibility beyond the eye, formality (just as the flow of gypsum slurry is actually beyond what the eye sees)" [27]. The viewer's perfect but imaginary tactile attachment to the object was the origin of what came to be known in the 19th century as "Einfühlung" and "l'empathie". In it, there is a mutual projection and mutual flow between the contemplative object and the subject. And "the purpose of art, together with its material means, is to extract the perceptual objects from the various perceptions of the object and the various states of the subject, and from the emotions that are the transition from this state to the other." to extract the mass of a feeling, the pure living thing of a feeling" [28]. This process of detachment creates an emotional transition and presents the artist's imagery and metaphor contained in the artwork. Until the 60s of the 20th century, the "movement of fluidity" [29] pushed intuition to the extreme, far beyond the simple representation of fluids, and thus placed more emphasis on the treatment of body art. Based on the above division of the three types of fluids, we can have a more intuitive understanding and grasp of the different connotations and characteristics of the concept of "fluidity" in various eras.
Refutation: The opposition, integration and convergence of "mobility".
Early metaphysical questions, i.e., how to construct and understand forms and spaces in the natural world, essentially gave way to aesthetic questions, that is, how to appreciate and actually utilize pure form and pure space in painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, regardless of the type of fluid, became the focus of attention. In the French context, "fluidity" does not at first glance evoke the same strong consciousness or image as English or German. Part of this comes from the dichotomy between space and place that exists in English, where space is thought to be open and intangible, the source and support point of movement, and place is what is fixed in movement, "met en place", as a place to be seen, recognized, and identified. This dichotomy is similar to the relationship between "fluidity" and "fixity", and the effect of pure opposition is far weaker than that of mixture. Therefore, this split dichotomy does not fully demonstrate the dynamic role of "fluidity" between liquids and solids. Perhaps, it is possible to maximize its effectiveness by exploring the characteristics of "fluidity" while considering its opposites, integrating them into a complete perceptual system, and applying them to the paintings between the two different forces of space and place.
The meaning of the concept of "mobility" needs to be revealed through its opposite, "fixité". In short, "fluidity" refers to the ephemeral, abstract, and more of a feeling, while "fixity" refers to materiality and concreteness. So is "fluidity" and its opposite, "fixity", really a state of separation and opposition to each other? Take, for example, two paintings by Monet that depict the same theme, and Régates à Argenteuil (1874). First, two paintings with the same theme: La Rue Montorgueil (1878) and La Rue (Avenue Saint-Denis). Saint-Denis, 1878), both depict the first official national celebration after the defeat of Napoleon III in 1870, as well as the closing of the Universal Exhibition of 1878, considered a symbol of France's recovery after the collapse of 1870. In these two paintings, there is a certain relationship between "fluidity" and "fixity", is this relationship of contrast or fusion? Putting this question aside, let's first analyze the form of the picture: both paintings are viewed from the high angle of the balcony, and Monet skillfully captures the movement of the joyful crowd and the state of the flag fluttering in the wind. In the former, Monet uses bright colors to present a dynamic sense of a large number of French flags fluttering in the wind on both sides of the street, which strongly sets off the festive atmosphere of the day. The latter also depicts the pomp and circumstance of the day, but in a more somber color. Monet's rendering with rapid brushstrokes shows the fluidity of the crowd, the flashes of light, the fluttering curtains, and the fluttering flags, but this dynamic is placed on a fixed canvas and made of solid pigments. This contrast seems to describe the contrasting relationship between "fluidity" and "fixity", but in fact it highlights the mixed relationship between "fluidity" and its opposite, "fixity". The question of suspension is answered: it is a seemingly opposing but in fact transcending the effect of opposites, which stems from the energy that Monet gave to his brushstrokes with lightness and firmness, and the ability of oil painting to maintain this dynamic between the channels produced by its own liquid and solid, which not only encloses fluidity, but also keeps the energy of fluidity in its fixed form. In The Regatta of Argenteuil (fig. 2), Monet's ability to transform oppositions into mixed effects is also presented. Through his horizontal and stacked brushstrokes, he connects the intensity of light with subtle changes in color, vividly expressing the fluidity of air and water, whose appearance changes with the light, resulting in the effect of movement and mixing between solids and liquids, an effect that Impressionists like Monet wanted to capture. In what André Masson calls the "negation of the silhouette", there is also a fluidity, not directly through the expressive power of the brushstrokes (direction, dynamics, momentum), but through the accumulation of matter to create a channel through which the air carrying colored light flattens the outline. [30] Thus, everything that presents itself in stability is only an appearance, not the support of a singular characteristic, but the result of the dynamic interaction and continuous flow of mobility and fixity. The internal existence of perceptions, feelings, emotions and thoughts also has the character of "flow", and this "flow" has the characteristics of transience and fluidity, and partially overlaps and coincides with the fluidity of matter—like a "flow placed in flow" [31], which is not some concept imposed on the fluidity of reality by thought and language: such as "local solidification" or "surface freezing", arbitrary cutting of (substantial) existence, "form" and solidity, etc. [32] Wolflin concludes that this is a shift from the "tactile principle" to the "visual principle."
Fig.2 Monet, The regatta of Argenteuil, Oil on canvas, 60.5×105 cm, 1874, Collection of the Musée d'Orsay, France
"Fluidity" creates a problem of convergence in painting. That is, does "fluidity" itself need to be completely synchronized or consistent with the space in which it is located or with the form, subject, emotion, and inherent fluidity of the material material? In the natural fluid, what the painter depicts is not just a "perceptual object" or a subject in the scene, but a real "perceptual system", whether it is water, fog, or air, it can be used as a theoretical model to reflect on the entire painting system, and its "fluid" characteristics can be used as a support point for form generation and subject anchoring. What the French school finds in water is a promise or sign of another state of perception: a perception that transcends the human, a perception that is no longer based on the solid, that no longer takes the solid as its object, condition, medium. [33] Even Deleuze argues that images are liquid in their original sense, and that "flowing perception" sometimes becomes a real "fluid substance"[34]. Here, the "fluidity" feature is consistent with the space or form in which it is located, the subject, and the inherent fluidity of the material material. This consistency can be demonstrated by the examination of the materiality of Monet's paintings, which leads to the possibility of the generation of "fluidity" in the process of transforming pigments from plastic, liquid, viscous or pasty colored materials to solid, smooth or raised materials. It belongs both to the essence of the original state of oil paint, and to what Monet liked to represent, the moving, fluttering and transitive water, air or light. "Flowability" allows these material properties to be linked to the effects they produce. The fluidity of Monet's painting is evident in his first paintings, with the undulating lines, the brushstrokes with this fluidity in form and momentum, Monet painted with great skill what moves, the wind in the flag, the crashing waves, the walking crowd, the smoke of the train, the water of the river, he does not return to these things, he wants to maintain the effect of these things, through his pictorial gestures to shape this feeling. [35] "The scenery looms in the clouds, and the obscuration of the clouds is precisely part of the appearance. Space here is not a static location or container of an object, but dynamic, spreading, floating, flowing, and diffusing to the surrounding and distant places. [36] There are also examples of other painters aligning the concept of "fluidity" with the inherent properties of the subject matter or material form: for example, in some of Titian's late works, and later in the works of painters such as Tintoretto, Rubens, and the French Jacques Blanchard, they linked the inherent fluidity of fluids, such as paint, to the inherent characteristics of "fluidity". There is an interest in the fusion of the process of painting that represents natural fluids or fluids on the body and evokes the free, fast, moving, diluted application of pigments whose application, flow and mixed appearance also evokes a trace of fluidity. Thus, fluidity can reproduce a form of "décomposition", "extension" or "dilatation" of the painting itself, whose internal expression questions the autonomous status of the self-enclosed object and restores it to a "thing" by breaking through the constraints of the frame (e.g., in monumental painting) In its original state, the object is now free from all limitations, such as a frame, and becomes an object of infinite expression, and becomes a "theater of uninterrupted passages for the flow of energy and matter". 〔37〕
It is quite clear to analyze the inherent "fluidity" characteristics from natural fluids, so does it have to be in sync with the emotion or subject matter of the artwork to depict the fluidity in natural fluids? The same is true for other fluids such as biological fluids? The answer is no. Taking Monet as an example, Monet expresses a kind of "discontinuous continuity" in his paintings, such as in "Impression Sunrise", which is "keen to convey and transcribe the visual reality that touches the retina of the animator in a discontinuous short time",[38] and the occurrence of this fluidity excludes temporal control, and even visual continuity, which refers to the continuous flow of impressions, that is, it is a matter of "representing" (rendre), not making it fixed. This temporal "discontinuity" can achieve spatial "continuity". It is a refutation of the false moments of the spatialized construction of time, and it is also the reason why St. Augustine transforms the so-called "point of time" into a "perceptual span in which memory and expectation are preserved", and argues that painting, sculpture, like music and poetry according to Lessing, have continuity because their successive impressions are continuous. [39] Discontinuity may bring about the fragmentation and tearing of the image integrity of the picture, but it does not mean that "fluidity" will come to an abrupt end with this characteristic, "Benjamin's concept of 'dwelling' makes people more understand the development process of modern art to break the integrity of the image or pursue incompleteness, whether it is the Impressionists' insistence on the blurring of contours and visual discontinuity, or the interlaced and disordered ink spots and traces on the picture of Pollock's splashed paintings, all of which bring greater space for symbolism and interpretation because of the fragmentation of the image" [40]. This continuity of impressions and visual discontinuity creates a synergistic flow between the subject and the object, which not only has a perceptual span, but also has a certain degree of autonomy and antagonism. Therefore, the motion of the fluid is not always accompanied by exactly the same features in form. In other words, the moments in the picture that express the "fluidity" of the fluid are not always exactly the same as the theme or the direction of the emotion, and sometimes even the opposite. Take, for example, Philippe de Champaigne, a painter of the French Baroque era and a leading advocate of the French School, in Le Christ mort couché sur son linceul (1654), in which Christ has a visible wound on the upper half of his body, and blood continues to flow outward. The flow of blood is evident to the viewer, but the subject of the whole picture is death, with Christ lying coldly still on a large rock. This figurative expression through the flow of blood reaffirms the materiality of painting itself on the one hand, and the plasticity and arbitrariness of form or subject matter on the other, but this way of expressing "static" through "dynamic" confirms well the saying that the appearance of fluids is not necessarily accompanied by the same characteristics in form. The inconsistency here precisely indicates the difference between the liquid and the solid, and Leonardo da Vinci's entire work can be understood as a search for and visual expression of this contrasting relationship, and he connects the two "visible objects" of the fluid and the solid, which are obviously the most heterogeneous things. 〔41〕
Reflection: The "Fluidity" feature in the modernization generation path
Obviously, the concept of "mobility" is not unrelated to the development of mobility in space. However, the concept of "fluidity" should not be reduced to a question of formal change, but should also consider its aesthetic attributes and its modernity characteristics. The pictorial tendencies pioneered by the Impressionists are no different from the modern path of perceptual development, which is to capture ephemeral phantoms and fix them on the canvas, "the visual embodiment of modernity that sprouted in Impressionist painting is precisely the beginning of this turn, although it still promotes the prescribed subject, but it is no longer precedented, but instantaneous, no longer from intellectual and perceptual activity, but from purely perceptual activity" [42]. The purpose of the "flow" created by this purely sensual activity is not to perpetuate it and invite the viewer to deepen its contemplation, but to "express the character of modernity in terms of an awareness of the discontinuity of time – a rupture with tradition, a feeling for the new and a dazzle for the lost" [43]. The concept of "fluidity" provides this way of thinking well, providing a different aesthetic approach to the context of modernization. The work of the Impressionists is actually a work that skillfully combines various schemes. Therefore, taking Impressionism as the starting point of modern art as the main object of discussion and exploring the modern characteristics of "fluidity" in it can lead to a broader research path.
Fig.3 Changes in the continuous rotation of ceramic cups under "topology" and Monet's "Water Lilies and Ponds"
The first path can be used to analyze Monet's "Water Lilies" series with the help of the concept of "topology" in mathematics (Fig. 3), and perhaps find the optimal position and spatial structure of "fluidity" through a continuous approximation. Topology is the study of the properties of geometric figures or spaces that remain unchanged after a continuous change of shape. It only considers the positional relationship between objects, not their shape and size. To put it another way, it is to look for common geometric qualities in some kind of set, such as boundary, distance, continuity, and other properties. [44] Among them, "topological space" is the most general type of mathematical space that allows the definition of constraints, continuity, and connectivity[45], and a classic case of topology is that a coffee cup can be turned into a doughnut through continuous transformation. [46] A corresponding technique can be found in Monet's impressionist style: Monet's paintings are considered "changeable and free". "The individual elements do not accumulate over each other, but through the adaptation, contrast and balance of irregular patches of color, and through the large-scale segmentation and affiliation of the brightness and dullness, intensity and saturation of the tones that are loosely distributed throughout the picture. [47] Monet's series The Water-Lily Pond (1917-1919) is a good example of the "modification of form" that originally belonged to topology, and began to be replaced by the "transformation of color" in painting. In this logic, each color can effectively be countered by the other, and the different colors are constantly covered, appropriated, and moved, producing a "flow" of position that does not produce any referential meaning other than that which can be seen on the canvas. [48] The French literary critic Jean-Pierre Richard wrote: "Fluidity is here the primary attribute of color. [49] Thus, it is through this purely pictorial topology, that is, focusing only on color, that Impressionist painting can give the effect of movement. The color of one point of the picture will become real in an instant, and the color of another point may be completely different. So an object never has only one color, or rather, it is an infinite number of colors, which contain the law of change into another color. In topology, the "topological likeness, that is, the elastic deformation of the image" [50] can provide a way to generate the law of color change in painting, and the nature of painting does not change in this process of fluidity. This topological method of "reading pictures" can be understood in combination with the "reading paintings" proposed by the famous French philosopher and art theorist Louis Marin. Ma Lan believes that reading painting is not a complete application of linguistic patterns to paintings, because painting does not present a linear linguistic chain, but a continuous, fully painted surface of painting. Reading a painting means constantly articulating/stating this surface[51], and reading a painting means observing a set of motivated symbols, i.e., the laws of perception that enable us to directly recognize images of a person, a tree, a stone, etc. At the same time, reading also implies a semantic interpretation and meaning topology of this complex, so as to achieve a "fluid" image contemplation. 〔52〕
Another path that can explore the connotations of modernity in "fluidity" has to do with the fluidity and volatility of objects that do not belong to nature, but to the "modern life" as portrayed by Monet and his contemporaries, with great ties to Baudelaire. Baudelaire famously defined modernity: "Modernity is transitional, ephemeral, accidental, half of art, the other half eternal and unchanging." Baudelaire's conception of modernity became the basis for a large number of later definitions of modernity. [53] In his view, "modernity implies a certain transience and fluidity, but in this instantaneity and fluidity there is eternity and immutability" [54]. In the themes of 19th-century French painting, in addition to the rich and colorful landscapes, there are also depictions of the flow of people and traffic, the smooth movements of dancers, the movement of horses in war scenes, and the tension between the expansion and stretching of various objects: for example, in Pierre Renoir's "The Ball at the Moulin of Pancakes", the scene of the working class in Paris dressed up and gathering to drink and dance; Edgar Degas's "Ballerina" captures the real sense of movement in the momentary impression, etc. In Henri Matisse's Harmony in Red (1908, fig. 4), the most prominent feature is the infinite magnification and extension of the patterns, which can make people feel a vigorous vitality in an instant, while presenting the fluidity and fluidity of the object, but also reflecting the French art critic Yve Alain Bois's three aspects of Matisse's system: circulation, tension, and respiratory, are characterized "by arabesque rhythms and intermittent beats...... The swelling effect relies on the pulsation of the strobe observation, rather than the continuity of the rest" [55]. This statement allows the cycle of the picture to be continuous, the tension to be infinitely extended, the continuity to become a kind of dynamic presentation, and the fluidity of the picture can be highlighted, and behind this fluidity, there is always a theme or eternal relationship that corresponds to an immutable theme. The interpretation of the aesthetic characteristics of "fluidity" does not stop there, but as a form of analysis, it is used to present and describe works of art, and to obtain pleasure and satisfaction in an aesthetic sense, which is a kind of inner vitality and formal freshness that all artistic goals want to pursue.
Fig.4 [French] Henri Matisse, Red Harmony, Oil on canvas, 180×220 cm, 1908, Collection of the Hermitage Museum, Russia
In general, the five schools of classicism, romanticism, impressionism, realism and modernism painted the picture of the main schools of painting in France in the 19th century, in which the characteristics of "fluidity" constantly flowed and sometimes flashed, making it difficult to ignore their existence and aesthetic value. Fluidity emerges as a term related to a particular subject and can be used to define the technical, stylistic, and aesthetic categories of a certain way of painting, which can be extended to symbolize Impressionism. At the same time, 19th-century European painting completed the metamorphosis from traditional to modern forms, and more broadly, "fluidity" even became a deeply distinctive feature of modernity in the second half of the 19th century, including poetry, music, and film, a symbol that can help us better understand a major shift in modernity. The characteristic of "fluidity" makes modern art begin to ripple in circles in the boundless pond, and continue to advance and spread deeper into aesthetics. At the same time, "topology" and "variability" are the two ways to understand the entry of fluidity into the aesthetic discourse of modernity, and the process of exploring the path has actually presupposed, and the "fluidity" as an aesthetic feature is not only a sign of entry, but also contains the process of reaching this scale. However, this does not prevent the study of "mobility" from gradually becoming a new interdisciplinary field of multiple disciplines, and there is still a lot of room for interpretation on the extent to which it can break through the boundaries of painting and even artistic modernity. However, it is worth affirming that "fluidity" has become a central object of thinking in the conceptual system of aesthetic modernity discourse, and has gradually become a non-negligible and deeply clear aesthetic feature of modern art and aesthetics. (This paper is the phased achievement of the "Louis Malan Reproduction Theory Research" project of Shanghai Normal University, project number: 209-AC9103-23-368072025)
Exegesis:
[1] Zygmunt Bauman, translated by Ouyang Jinggen, Fluid Modernity, Shanghai Joint Publishing Co., Ltd., 2002, p. 2.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Regarding the relationship between aesthetics and modernity generated by art in the process of following social life, see Yang Xiangrong and Lei Yunqian, "The Charm of Modernity in Reincarnation: The Construction of Fashion Discourse from Zimmer to the Frankfurt School", Marxist Aesthetics Research, No. 1, 2018.
[4] Zhou Xian, "Aesthetic Modernity and Criticism of Daily Life", Philosophical Studies, No. 11, 2000.
〔5〕Baridon, Laurent, Architectural and Urban Fluidity: A Search for New Paradigms in the Nineteenth Century, quoted in Impressionism, the Arts, Fluidity, Castanet, Pierre-Albert, Frédéric Cousinié, and Philippe Fontaine (eds.), Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013, pp. 193-194.
〔6〕Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1. L'image-mouvement, Paris, Minuit, Critique, 1983, p. 116.
〔7〕Tristan Murail, notice du CD Tristan Murail, Accord-Una Corda, 1994, p. 7.
〔8〕André Félibien. Of the principles of architecture, sculpture, painting, and the other arts that depend on them. With a dictionary of terms proper to each of these Arts, Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, (2nd ed.), 1676, pp. 608-609.
〔9〕Denis Diderot. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Paris: Pergamon Press, Vol.6, 1776, pp. 880b-881a.
〔10〕Joris-Karl Huysmans, Écrits sur l'art, J. Picon (ed.), Paris: Flammarion, GF, à propos de Whistler, 2008, p. 285.
〔11〕Ibid, p. 367.
〔12〕Castanet, Pierre-Albert, Frédéric Cousinié, and Philippe Fontaine, Impressionism, the Arts, Fluidity. Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013.
〔13〕Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet, sa vie, son oeuvre, Vol.1, Les éditions G. Crès et cie, Paris: Macula, 1924, p. 408.
〔14〕Louis Gillet, Three Variations on Claude Monet, Paris: Librairie Plon Les Petits-Fils de Plon et Nourrit, 1927.
[15] There are two versions of Monet being called the "Raphael of Water" here. In the known texts, one of the people who gave Monet this title was Édouard Manet, and the other was Antoine Proust, a friend of Manet.
〔16〕Ernest Chesneau, Next to the Salon, Le Plein Air. Exposition du Boulevard des Capucines, Paris-Journal, 7 May 1874, p. 2, quoted in Les écrivains devant l'impressionnisme: A. Silvestre, P. Burty, J. - A. Castagnary... Denys Riout (ed.), Paris: Macula, 1989, p. 64.
〔17〕Cousinié, Frédéric. Fluid Aesthetics: An Introduction. quoted in L'Impressionnisme, les arts, la fluidité, Castanet, Pierre-Albert, Frédéric Cousinié, et Philippe Fontaine (eds.), Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013, pp. 9-22.
〔18〕A letter from Mallarmé to Ernest Raynaud, October 19, 1887, Corres-pondance, cited edition, vol. III, 1969, p. 141.
〔19〕Stéphane Mallarmé, Œuvres, Bertrand Marchal (ed.), Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2003, pp. 151, 467-468, 451, 469-470.
〔20〕Stéphane Mallarmé, The Impressionists and Édouard Manet, The Art Monthy Rewiew, September 30, 1876; translated by Philippe Verdier in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, November 1975.
〔21〕Raynald Valois, In Search of a Lost Art: Essay on the Language of Symbolic Painting, Presses Université Laval, 1999, p. 63.
〔22〕Carl Einstein, The Art of the Twentieth Century, L. Meffre and M. Satiben (trans.), Arles, J. Chambon, 2011, p. 23.
〔23〕Frédéric Cousinié, Aesthetics of Fluids: An Introduction. quoted in L'Impressionnisme, les arts, la fluidité, Castanet, Pierre-Albert, Frédéric Cousinié, et Philippe Fontaine (eds.), Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013, pp. 10-11.
〔24〕René Descartes, The Description of the Human Body. De la formation de l'animal [1648], dansuvres philosophiques, Paris, Garnier, Classiques, 1989, p. 247.
〔25〕Frédéric Cousinié, Aesthetics of Fluids: An Introduction. quoted in L'Impressionnisme, les arts, la fluidité, Castanet, Pierre-Albert, Frédéric Cousinié, et Philippe Fontaine (eds.), Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013, pp. 10-11.
〔26〕Johann Joachim. Winckelmann, "Abhändlung von der Fachtkeit der Empfindung des Schönes" in der Kunst und dem Unterrichte in der Kunst, Kleine Schriften und Briefe. ed. SENFF W, Weimar, Hermann Böhlau's successor, 1960, p. 157.
[27] Gao Yanping, "Winckelmann on Sensory Ability: "Gypsum Slurry", "Heat" and Embodiment", Journal of Aesthetic Education, No. 2, 2022.
[28] [French] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Gatali, translated by Zhang Zujian, What is Philosophy?, Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House, 2007, pp. 439-440.
〔29〕立陶宛裔美国人艺术家乔治·马修纳斯（George Maciunas），他还开始与达达运动的创始成员拉乌尔·豪斯曼（Raoul Hausmann）通信，后者建议他不要再使用“neo-Dada”这个词，而是把注意力集中在描述这个新兴运动的“流动”上。 参见George Maciunas, Letter from Raoul Hausmann, 1962 quoted in Mr. Fluxus, p. 40.
〔30〕André Masson, Monet the Founder, in Homage to Claude Monet, op. cit. cit., pp. 26-27.
〔31〕H. Bergson, Mélanges, E. Robinet (ed.), Paris, PUF, 1972, p. 824.
〔32〕Frédéric Cousinié, Aesthetics of Fluids: An Introduction. quoted in L'Impressionnisme, les arts, la fluidité, Castanet, Pierre-Albert, Frédéric Cousinié, et Philippe Fontaine (eds.), Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013, pp. 14-15.
〔33〕Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 1, Op. cit., pp. 115-116.
〔34〕Ibid.
〔35〕Trémolières, Bénédicte. Some observations on fluidity in Claude Monet's painting, quoted in L'Impressionnisme, les arts, la fluidité, Castanet, Pierre-Albert, Frédéric Cousinié, and Philippe Fontaine (eds.), Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013, pp. 37-44.
[36] Hermann Schmitz, translated by Pang Xuequan et al., Infinite Objects: The Basic Characteristics of Philosophy, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2020, p. 278.
〔37〕Georg Simmel, The Framework and Other Essays, Paris, Gallimard, Le Promeneur, 2003, p. 30.
[38] [A] Richard Breiter, translated by Zhuge Yi, Modern Art: 1851-1929, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2012, p. 22.
[39] Mu Chun, "Deconstructing Images, Reflecting on the Assumption of the "Point of Time": Gombrich's Discourse on Re-examining the Boundaries of Lessing's Poetry and Painting", Journal of Central South University (Social Science Edition), No. 5, 2021.
[40] Zhuge Yi, "Benjamin's Essentials of Modern Art Thought", Humanities Magazine, No. 8, 2022.
〔41〕Leonardo da Vinci, Les Carnets, E. Maccurdy (ed.), L. Servicien (trans.), Paris: Gallimard, t. II, 1942, p. 363.
[42] Wang Caiyong, "Introduction to Visual Modernity", Fudan University Press, 2018, p. 34.
[43] [French] Foucault, "What is Enlightenment", in Du Xiaozhen, ed., Foucault Collection, Shanghai Far East Publishing House, 1998, p. 534.
[44] Zhao Yiheng, "The Topological Likeness of Art", Literature and Art Research, No. 2, 2021.
〔45〕Sutherland, W. A. Introduction to metric and topological spaces. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
〔46〕Hubbard, John H., & West, Beverly H. Differential Equations: A Dynamical Systems Approach. Part II: Higher-Dimensional Systems. Texts in Applied Mathematics, Vol.18, Springer, 1995, p. 204.
[47] Meyer Shapiro, translated by Shen Yubing, "Impressionist Style" and European Art in the 17th and 18th Centuries, World Art, No. 1, 2022.
〔48〕Clero, Jean-Pierre. Fluidity in Impressionism, quoted in L'Impressionnisme, les arts, la fluidité, Castanet, Pierre-Albert, Frédéric Cousinié, and Philippe Fontaine (eds.), Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2013, pp. 189-190.
〔49〕Jean-Pierre Richard, L'Univers imaginaire de Mallarmé, Paris, Seuil, 1962, p. 481.
[50] Zhao Yiheng, "The Topological Likeness of Art", Literature and Art Research, No. 2, 2021.
[51] The word "articuler" can mean both the connection, assembly, or association of things with each other, and the connection of elements and wholes in a harmonious or logical way, clearly expressing or stating the main idea.
〔52〕Louis Marin, Lire un tableau en 1639 d'après une lettre de Poussin, in Pratiques de lectures, s. dir. Roger Chartier, Msrseille, Rivages, 1983, p. 115.
[53] Baudelaire, translated by Guo Hongan, Selected Essays on Baudelaire's Aesthetics, People's Literature Publishing House, 1987, p. 485.
[54] Shen Yubing, "Manet and Time in Impressionist Painting", Art History and Philosophy of Art (1st Edition), The Commercial Press, 2020, p. 65.
[55] Zhuge Yi, "Matisse's System: A Form-Structure Analysis Report", Art History and Philosophy of Art (Third Edition), The Commercial Press, 2022, p. 236.
Liu Ziqi is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy, Shanghai Normal University
Zhuge Yi is a professor at the Institute of Art Education, Hangzhou Normal University
(This article was originally published in Art Observation, Issue 3, 2024)