Impressionists Influence on Digital Art
In mid-19th century Europe, the art world was starting to experience massive changes. The advent of photography in 1837, was a catalyst that pushed painters to seek alternative ways of expressing themselves. This led to a greater emphasis on the subjective versus the objective. Much like how digital art has experienced the catalyst of AI-derived art pushing new boundaries in contemporary digital art.
Enter the Impressionists! These painters were drawn to photography’s ability to capture a moment in time, just as they sought to depict the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. This desire to capture the immediacy of a moment led to a looser, more spontaneous style of painting, which mirrored the candid quality of photographs. Many of them preferred to paint in plein air (meaning open air, to create outside the confines of a studio). Which allowed them to capture the fleeting impressions of light.
They abandoned the strict rules of academic-style painting and sought independence from the Académie des Beaux-Arts and its annual Salon. While there was no universal Impressionist style, the artists associated with the movement, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro, shared similar approaches to painting. Instead of focusing on fine details, Impressionists used short, visible strokes of paint to capture the overall impression of their subject. They used complementary colors to depict shadows rather than black or gray, and they often applied new layers of paint over layers that were still wet, which softened the forms and created a unique intermingling of colors.
We can see the direct influence the Impressionists have on digital art today. While some artists are embracing the old school styles like the Renaissance, there are others who are fully embracing generative and AI-derived art, and are pushing the boundaries to create something that is entirely new and unlike art we have seen expressed before.
While Impressionists focused on capturing the fleeting effects of light and color in their paintings, Post-Impressionists sought to bring more structure, order, and symbolic significance to their work. They kept the Impressionist interest in capturing the changing qualities of light, but sought to infuse more emotional, symbolic, and personal meaning into their art. They experimented with color, form, and line in more exaggerated and expressive ways.
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Georges Seurat were notable Post-Impressionists who expanded upon Impressionism while rejecting its constraints. They brought a greater sense of order and structure to the spontaneous methodology of Impressionism.
Van Gogh’s intense brushwork and vivid colors, Cézanne’s exploration of geometric forms, Toulouse-Lautrec’s bold and graphic style, and Seurat’s pointillism technique all signified a shift towards more abstract and symbolic content. These developments laid the groundwork for the various modern art movements of the 20th century.
The Impressionism/Post-Impressionism period is mirrored in the evolution of Digital Art, particularly in the Web3/NFT ecosystem. Just as Post-Impressionists built on the foundations laid by the Impressionists, today’s digital artists are building on previous technological advancements to create new and innovative forms of expression. This transition demonstrates a broader evolution in the art world, which we see today in the digital and NFT art spaces.
Art is an ever-changing entity, unconstrained by mediums or traditional norms. The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists challenged the status quo, much like today’s digital artists who embrace blockchain technology and NFTs.
Some examples of this include generative art and AI-derived art. These new forms of expression are made possible by the latest technological advancements, and they are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the art world.
The Web3 community is at the forefront of this evolution, and it is exciting to see what new and innovative forms of art will be created in the months and years to come. As we continue to explore and expand the boundaries of digital art, let’s be inspired by the artistic pioneers who dared to envision and create a new reality, profoundly shaping the future of art.
The dynamic fusion of the past and the present is where my love lies. I will continue this journey through art history and how it relates to NFTs.
Please join me for the next installment, where I will delve into Expressionism and Abstract-Expressionism.
