Impressionism

Impressionism, aesthetic movement in which the artist attempts to present the impressions an object makes upon him, rather than a realistic version of the object itself. Impressionists are thus more concerned with moods or sensations than with the observation of details. The name derives from the French school of painting of the late 19th century, whose exponents included Degas, Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Pissarro, and which was brought to the U.S. by such painters as J.A. Weir, Maurice Prendergast, and Childe Hassam, who were similarly concerned with transitory effects of light and with capturing a momentary luminous atmosphere. Their theories were taken up by writers, especially Baudelaire and other followers of Poe, and Symbolists such as Mallarmé, who attempted to capture the fleeting impressions of a moment, or held that the personal attitudes and moods of an author were more important than any objective depiction of character, setting, and action. In music, the leading impressionist is Debussy, whose American followers include such composers as Griffes and Loeffler. Impressionistic art was most influential at the end of the 19th century and during the early decades of the 20th, when its leading proponents in American criticism included Huneker, Vance Thompson, and G.J. Nathan. In poetry the movement is exemplified in such authors as Pound, Sandburg, Amy Lowell, Conrad Aiken, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens, who were influenced by a mingling of trends, including Imagism. Impressionists in prose include such diverse writers as Van Vechten, Huneker, Gertrude Stein, E.E. Cummings, and Thomas Beer. Expressionism is both an extension and a negation of this point of view.