19th Century Art Movements

 Concentration on the Ordinary:

Literature became more focused on the individual, basically the ordinary individual’s experience of ordinary life. Some realist writers like Flaubert paid excruciating attention to details and others like Kafka and Baudelaire worked with symbols. Impressionism seemed to pay less attention to lines and details and allowed colors and brushstrokes to take charge and let the viewer’s eye assemble and interpret the painting. It also depicted ordinary life events.  Perhaps industrialization, scientific discoveries and progress had shifted the focus of the arts onto the rising middle class. Materialism and social re-structuring possibly caused a sense of alienation and uncertainty which inspired artists to explore their rapidly changing environment through their work and depictions of how ordinary people navigated life.