The Industrial Revolution : Its effect on society and art

One of the most studied periods in history. It began in England during the 1800’s with the introduction of machines. The ability to duplicate exactly specific tools, books and other common day needs. Interchangeable parts were possible.

It led to the disappearance of guilds. Machines could create what took many people many hours to create.

A spinning machine does away with spinning wheels at home.

For example, fabrics no longer needed to be made by many people sitting for hours before looms. Instead, machines could do that.

Child labor was present and abusive.

They worked in mines where men could not fit.

The Middle Class Becomes Permanent With the advent of machinery a “middle” class became permanent in society.

Lords were still rich. The poor remained poor.

Factory workers, the poor. Factory owners became middle class

But a middle class grew because they would own machinery then hire people to operate the loom, farming tools freed up farmers to become merchants at markets. Products from farms were more easily acquired and bakers began to sell their baked goods. Cobblers learned that machines could make shoes as good as theirs faster.

ARTISTS: Impressionistic Artists Artists began to focus on life around them. No longer were they hired to paint family portraits as often. Many finer artists wished instead to paint images of peasants, peasant life, people at work, common every day happenings.

Impressionistic Artists viewed as “weird” and unwelcomed. Impressionistic artists were not immediately appreciated. Their focus was not longer on duplicating on canvas exactly what they saw as the Renaissance artists had. Instead, they “played” with color using thin, small brush strokes that for the time seemed chaotic.

Pollution With the industrial age came factories. With factories came pollution and the waste from producing products. Rivers became heavily polluted. The air grew thick. Life was changing.

Gray ashen plumes choked the skies.

Lighting Artists began to notice the light around them. The differences as the sun rose and set each day. They noted that the polluted air created different colors or effects upon the things surrounding them.

Additionally, as the sun scratched its way across the sky the light changed, shadows shifted. They were recognizing a new world of color around them.

The use of color by artists changed. They painted what they saw. The artist noted that water could look like dots of colors, separate colors not just blue or blue-green. Haystacks could even change from sunrise to sunset. Brush strokes became thin and small.

Notice how the brush strokes are thin, smaller and more abstract.

Haystacks: A series by Claude Monet

He painted them again

Monet painted the same scene. Note, the changes in the hues or colors he used as the day changed around him.

The focus: not to create a photographic duplicate.

Monet’s painting of a building in polluted air. Artists use these same colors today to paint skies that are polluted. with smoke.

In closing The Industrial Revolution helped in that it created time for further inventions to be created that could free up time from previous daily requirements. Also, it standardized production enabling quality and quantity to be increased.

Also, the Industrial Revolution caused an increase in child labor and its abuses. Read “Great Expectations” or “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens if you want to learn more about this time in history and what it did regarding child labor.

This time in history created a middle class. This class owned the machinery, the factories, the bakery, the mills. It was the poor and children who worked long days for very little money.

With the factories came pollution. Most factories were fueled by coal or peat. These forms of energy created massive amounts of smoke that began to fill the atmosphere. The waterways were filled with factory refuse.

Pollution changed the colors seen by the artists who in turn began to use different colors and techniques in their work.

Artists began to notice the world around them and began to record peasant life and to record what was happening around them during this time.

Artists began to abstract their work, use dots and slashes when using their brushes and the colors they used often expressed feelings rather than what was actually being viewed.