Le Centenaire De L Independance

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Post-Impressionism Le centenaire de l'indépendance
Henri Rousseau (1892) Henri created “Le centenaire de l'indépendance “as a way to “commemorated the one-hundredth anniversary of the proclamation of the first French Republic in 1792”. The piece also shows peasants participating in farandole, a popular dance found in southern France. There are multiple symbolic structures found within the painting such as, “three liberty trees and two female figures representing the First and Third Republics”. Henri had copied the various dancers from an illustration he saw in a French magazine and chose to add “waving banners, the liberty poles, and the allegorical figures”. As the viewer can see; Henri had captures the movement of the dance in the center …show more content…

The reasoning behind the proper translated title and the paining itself was form through the various legends of knights and the trials and tribulations they had to face. In this piece was are greeted at the sight of Vityaz, a Slavic folk hero also known as Bogatyr, facing the daunting decision as to what path to take next. The stone in runic reads, “If you go to the right – you’ll lose your horse; if you go to the left – you’ll lose your life; if you go to forwards – you’ll lose both” Implying that the only safe path is to turn back. However, Vityaz cannot allow himself to turn back as his honor and pride deny it. This piece invokes the gloom and daunting feelings the surely the knight is feeling himself. Through the gritty art style and the proper shadow to convey the overall dark feeling this painting gives off. With both the skulls of a human and horse lying on the ground before Vityaz and the stone, this implies that Vityaz will choose one of the three paths that the stone provides, leaving behind the dread and correlating the feeling of hopelessness towards the choice Vityaz must make. As the crows futhur cement the idea that one or both Vityaz and his horse will die, as crows are renowned as signifiers of death to …show more content…

Hector’s design had hostoricly invoked the desire to “celebrate and promote this new infrastructure with a bold structure that would be clearly visible on the Paris streetscape”. The gate utilizes organic forms, typical of Nouveau style, while also making the piece appear as “a single component”. The piece actually hide his modernity within the soft forms of the gate, this strategy being symptomatic of “Art Nouveau's ambivalent attitude to the modern age”. Hector’s final design of the gates allowed for the popularizing of the Art Nouveau style, thus “making the style an important early stage in the evolution of modernist

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