19th Century

The 19th Century is the historical threshold in Jubal Harshaw’s explanation of modern art: Rodin’s late-century achievement, in his account, united formal mastery with stories that exposed the human heart, just before the world’s upheaval reshaped art and severed that connection.## Historical PositionJubal places Rodin’s major work in the tail end of the 19th Century and notes that Hans Christian Andersen was born only a few years before him. Rodin’s death came early in the 20th Century, around the time Jubal says the world began to lose its balance and art changed with it. The century boundary therefore functions as more than a date: it marks the break between an art grounded in human narrative and a modern movement increasingly committed to design and abstraction.## Rodin and the Turn to AbstractionJubal argues that Rodin’s successors understood and copied his handling of light, shadow, mass, and composition, then extended those techniques. What they failed to carry forward, in Jubal’s view, was the narrative purpose of the master’s major works: each told a story and laid bare the human heart. Instead, later artists elevated design, dismissed storytelling as literary, and turned toward abstraction that no longer resembled the human world.## Jubal’s Historical JudgmentFor Jubal, the cultural shift associated with the turn of the century helps explain why contemporary art has become difficult for ordinary viewers to encounter and respond to. He insists that art’s power lies in evoking pity and terror—human emotions rather than abstract arrangements—and contrasts that emotional exchange with work he regards as detached and self-regarding. His account makes the 19th Century a point of contrast and loss: formal invention survives into its aftermath, but, as he sees it, the reciprocal bond between artwork and audience does not.