In the mid-19th century artistic society observed the formation of a new wave of French artists who believed that the role of the artist was to express the individual and expose the social and political problems that plagued modern society.  Realism as an art form was developed by this ìavant-gardeî intelligentsia of artists to counteract the past centuryís ornate romanticism in painting.  A new  awareness of the power of the individual in a democratic society and technology  in an urban environment was necessary for the new art movement to thrive.   The Realist painters and their successors the Impressionists thrived on their exclusion from the establishment.   Prevailing arbiters of taste decreed that the works of many now renowned painters such as Courbet, Manet,  Seurat, and Monet were not suitable for public expositions in museums and private galleries.  The act of rejection from the Ecole de Beaux Arts fueled the passion and determination of the artistic cohort who saw themselves as vanguards.   The artists held their own exhibits of recent work in their studios or in fellow artistsí and contributed to the "Salon des Refuses," determined to cement the bonds of an alternate art world.  The avant-garde in art was born out of this division of the modern and relevant from the imperial tastes of the past.  The revolutionary style and subject matter of Courbet paved the way for Manetís deeply physiological and intimate painting.
    In the later half of the 19th century new technology changed the relationship of the avant-garde to bourgeois society and the art world.  Through photography and the production made possible by the printing press, the art of Nadar and Toulouse-Lautrec reached the masses.  In the 1870ís  Nadar helped to solidify the avant-garde scene with his ground-breaking photographic portraits of his artistic contemporaries.  Twenty decades later, the poster artist Toulouse-Lautrec came to embody the bohemian aesthetic that was never fully realized by his predecessors.
 
 
 
 
 

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