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It sees reflected light and paints its effects at it strikes our eye.
For instance, do we see water as an entire entity? No, we do not.
We see merely the surface of water, of an ocean, glimmering and shimmering as it sparkles in the morning sun.
As the day moves into noontime, we see less white sparkles and more solid hues of blue because the sun is directly overhead.
Then at evening, we see the sparkles' return as the day wanes into the fleeing of the sun, glancing its beams to create a sparkling coat in the reverse direction of the morning.
When the moon arises, that is another kind of light, softer, more of a glow.
An impressionist seeks to portray the reflection of light, almost at a remove from his or her subject, yet the basic impressionism gets through to the viewer via the impressionist techniques of visible brush strokes, ordinary subject matter and unusual visual angles.
Add to this list the desertion of the traditional artist's studio for the benefits of working outdoors in natural light, and you shall see that impressionism does indeed deserve to be called "The New Painting.
" Impressionism seeks to portray the movement that is in our lives, and it did this very well prior to the graphic modern day methods of using a camera or computer technique to blur the image.
In its use of small dabs of color, movement can absolutely leap out to the viewer, proving that impressionism portrays movement better than the "Old Painting" with its emphasis on line and the recreation of the subject.
Impressionism seeks to show the passage of time, as well, and how could the "Old Painting" accomplish that, short of painting a collage or a multi-framed piece of art? With impressionistic techniques, such as showing a lively scene of a dance party, with revelers arriving, waiting in line to gain the dance floor, and then spinning off in a whirl of movement, the illusion of the passage of time makes its way through to the painter.
Granted, impressionism painting is typically opaque and lacks the glazing technique that was so painstakingly mastered by the "Old Painting" proponents, but the advent of photography with its snapshot ability certainly influenced impressionism's speed in producing a finished product.
Working in the plain air predictably added to the urgency of completing a painting, for who could know when a sudden downpour of rain would dampen one's canvas and ruin one's carefully executed work for the day? The "Old Painting" which utilized studios did not have this problem, and there is much to be said for that, but impressionism's gains in the immediacy of artistic effects were the richer for their techniques of painting out of doors and using the daubs of paint to enable the viewer to process the visual elements of the painting, allowing his brain to put together the blobs of paints into a cohesive, meaningful whole.
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