The Aesthetics of « Appearance » and the Emergence of Impressionism

The distinction between « appearance » and « reality » goes back to the origins of western philosophy. The Greek philosophers almost have considered the appearance as a distortion of the true essence of things and, as such, have strived to establish the reality behind the elusive and ephemeral appearances. The visual arts were condemned by this devaluation of appearances principally in Plato’s philosophy. For Plato, visual arts were essentially mimetic and not only were devoid of cognitive and epistemological values, but also were intrinsically deceiving. This philosophical condemnation of mimetic and representational arts prevailed all western art and culture until the early eighteenth century, when the study of appearance was gradually reevaluated and the role played by it in the visual art was also reconsidered. The first part of this article focuses on the developments of the concept of appearance in the 18th century’s philosophical reflections and its pivotal role in Kant, Schiller and Hegel’s aesthetics. The second part is devoted to the outgrowth of Impressionism based on these theoretical developments. According to the hypothesis adopted by this study, the Impressionist movement was rooted in these overvaluation of appearance in the philosophical debates of the late eighteen and early nineteenth century. The deep observation of the ever changing natural appearances, the scrutiny of colour hues and light shades and shadows, and the visual reductionism were at the service of the appearance representation. One of the discoveries of Impressionism was the flatness of canvas surface. We will show that great achievement of Edouard Manet (1832-1883), i.e breaking away from quattrocento traditions of representation the visual depth on the flat canvas, was undoubtedly the result of the reconsideration of the appearance and its far reaching importance in the reorganisation of the painting’s visual composition. One of the influential contribution to this appearance reconsideration was due to Konrad Fiedler’s (1841-1895) theories of « pur visibility ». He argued that visual arts are the arts of pure visibility (reine Sichtbarkeit), that is the representation of appearances detached from their material solidity. He concluded that artistic creation is the creation of appearances. Although the impressionist painters were not aware of his theories, it is clear that the transition from essence to appearance was « in the air » in that period of western cultural history. We see at the same time the emergence of a new philosophical school, i.e. the phenomenology, which choses as its slogan « return to the things themselves ». It was a complicated philosophical study of the appearances to achieve a true and genuine understanding of th world’s phenomena. Finally, we will see that the notion of appearance has always been at the heart of western art negatively or positively. In other words, the development of western painting can be traced in parallel with the developments of the appearance’s notion. There is a clear overlapping between modern art and the reeavalution of the appearance.
Keywords : Appearance, Painting, Impressionism, Visibility