The Enlightenment and the Art Public
Spanning the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, the Enlightenment produced greater philosophical thinking than it did fine arts. That said, the Enlightenment was crucial for a new way of thinking about art and art making. In the beginning, the production of visual art was under the protection and sponsorship of the State, since the establishment the Royal Academy in 1648. This Academy was a model followed by other major nations, which were aware of the need to monopolize the arts and to harness them to the needs of the government. Because the people of France paid for the education of artists, the French government, the major sponsor of art, held Salons, or public exhibitions of state-sponsored art, outside on the grounds of the Palais Royale the new home of the Duc d’Orleans, who had an appetite for beauty and pleasure. But after the first show in 1704, this site of balls and fêtes proved unsuitable for large exhibitions and the later salons were held at the palace of the Louvre. Here in the palace the works of art could be protected from the weather and displayed to their best advantage. The Salons were held after 1737 every year or every other year on August 25th in the Salon carré of the Louvre and ran ten days to four weeks, attracting the art public and the art critic, both new social entities.
The concept of a “public” for art was a new one as was the idea of publicaly exhibiting art, and inevitably, someone from the “public” would emerge with an opinion. This opinionated member of the public who dared to speak and write an to publish his views, much to the dismay of the artists, was the “art critic.” By exposing the artists to the public, these salons opened the artists to public scrutiny and public criticism and the new species, the art critic, demanded that the artist be accountable to the public. Artists, previously answerable only to elite groups of collectors and fellow artists, now needed public approval to succeed. The public, then as now, encompassed all levels of social and economic classes and all levels of education and constituted a community of interest, breaking social hierarchies down into the new notion of a “public,” explored in 1985 by Thomas Crow in Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth Century Paris. The creation and existence of this public brought with it new problems for the artist: what to represent in terms of subject matter; how to represent in terms of style; and who should be allowed to represent and who was allowed to speak to and for the public?
Also new were the private art collectors who became the chief patrons of modern artists. Patronage was split between the aristocrats such as Madame de Pompadour and the newly rich middle class who preferred genre painting, that is scenes of everyday life, over the more prestigious history painting, depicting noble heroes of the distant past. Art collecting became a sign of wealth and taste, and during this period, several important large collections came on the market, such as the works owned by Queen Christina of Sweden, acquired by the French banker and art connoisseur, Pierre Crozet. French artists were exposed to a historical spectrum of Western art and had a wide range of artistic possibilities to choose from. Despite the presence in France of the classical Baroque styles, the Baroque was systematically toned down in its dramas and was softened for the civilized and essentially domestic style of Rococo. Although much of Rococo art was produced for the aristocrats and rulers of Europe, the style was paradoxically involved with the concept of the “natural,” a reaction against the formality of society and its artificial and unnatural mores. The pastel colors and gentle brushwork of the Rococo artists and the romantic themes made the paintings ideal for the domestic interiors of those who could afford them. But during the same period, the public taste for middle class scenes made genre artists, such as Jean-Baptiste Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, famous for their depictions of everyday life.
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Tags: "natural", art public, genre paintings, Salon