Museum of Industrialization and Poverty: Blandford Fletcher's "Evicted" (1887)

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Blandford Fletcher's "Evicted" (1887)

By the 19^th century, Europe’s new attitude towards art was reflected in dramatizing social issues instead of dull portraits. This painting, “Evicted”, represents the realist movement of art, which is characterized in the meticulous details of the people and buildings. This painting realizes a major repercussion of England’s Industrialization when pestilence and unemployment were rampant and multitudes of families were displaced from their homes (“Industrial Revolution”). Such movements inspired future expressionists like Pablo Picasso, who aimed to depict the plight of peasants in a more subjective and ambiguous manner (McCully).

In the late 19th century there was widespread poverty and famine amongst the lower-working classes from unemployment, which made tenants of homes unable to pay their rents to their landowners, and allowed landowners to evict farmers and render them homeless and jobless. In fact, a great number of people faced a similar situation to what is depicted in Evicted. By 1900, between 15%-20% of England’s population were displaced, and an additional 8%-10% of the population lived below subsistence level (“Industrial Revolution”). Realism addressed this issue by increasing public awareness of the sparse living conditions of the lower class.

Fletcher attempts to portray the truth as accurately as possible by presenting the figures as sharply as possible; the walls of the buildings, the people’s clothes, and the precision of their facial expressions attest to this. Next, he attempts harmonizing the painting by placing the villagers in groups, and fixates them to the lower left corner of the canvas. Fletcher clarifies his message by the central figure of the painting, which is a small girl, who is the central focus of the canvas, and sadly stares back at the viewer as she pathetically drags a small wooden horse behind her. By dramatizing the scene through realism, he projects the suffering of the poor by showing the demise of the lower-class family in England, and appealed to middle-class viewers and buyers ("Blandford Fletcher: Evicted”).

"Blandford Fletcher: Evicted (1887)." Queensland Art Gallery: Gallery of Modern Art. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.

"Industrial Revolution." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 26 Apr. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/287086/Industrial-Revolution>.

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Introduction to the Museum

Greetings, fellow bloggers. This museum showcases the themes of despair and destitution that manifested in post-romantic art during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. People during this time either encountered or experienced widespread poverty, which was a major repercussion from Europe’s rapid industrial advances. Most of these misfortunes were cast mainly upon lower-class society, where most modernist artists would emerge. These new artists would adopt new and unique styles of art to communicate and chronicle their own toils and financial issues. This allowed the cultivation of different societal values people held, which greatly influenced modern art. Finally, I will discuss the cause and significance of the transition in styles of meticulously detailed works by Gustave Courbet and Blandford Fletcher to modernistic and abstract ones by Pablo Picasso and Brian Tolle. I hope you will enjoy my museum!

Other Related Exhibitions

"Technology: A Perpetrator of War"

by Marcos Lopez

http://technologyandwar.blogspot.com/

This extensively researched blog by Mr. Lopez contains an amalgam of pre-Industrial and modernist works of art, ranging from paintings of scenes from the American Revolution to modern weaponry, which rapidly evolved during and after the Industrial Revolution. This exhibition presents technology as something that "ravaged the earth with advancements in weaponry, time and time again making wars bloodier and more destructive". Indeed, the rapid transition, from the use of the first rifles as depicted in John Trumbull's "The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill (1786)" to the fortuitous destructive power of atomic bombs represented in Seb Janiak's "Downtown L.A. Atomic (2005)", is ever more present in this meticulously researched blog. The severe psychological trauma experienced during World War I is lengthily explained in Otto Dix's "Wounded Soldier (1924)", and tells viewers gruesome tales of how the discovery of new technology also entailed the development of fearsome and terrible weapons that have the power to annihilate hundreds of thousands of humans. By elaborately explaining the terrifying efficiency of weapons both in the past and the present, Mr. Lopez suggests an esoteric alternative to war: "...with these weapons will come the power to destroy mankind as we know. We must stop this vicious cycle...whatever the cost may be".

"The Effects of Industrialization"

by James Hoffstetter

http://hoffinator9.blogspot.com/

The Industrial Revolution permanently altered the development of weapons, and the workforce. This blog, by James Hoffstetter, contains analyses of various paintings made during the Industrial Era that depicted the widespread epidemic of poverty within Europe. By choosing three distinguishable paintings of the Industrial Revolution's various repercussions, the viewer can gain valuable insight on the tough conditions people faced during that time. By analyzing Gustave Courbet's "The Stonebreakers", the viewer gains a perspective of peasant life during the mid-19th century, and learns of the abuse of children and elderly workers. Also, by using Otto Dix's "Wounded Soldier (1924)", the viewer learns the aftereffects of the rapid evolution of weaponry, and its dangerous implementations on the battlefield. James delves into the significance in the shifts in styles of art between the 19th and 20th centuries: "...to reveal the hardships of the normal life in the country and to open the eyes of the public".