The Origins of Art Criticism
The Salon established the art exhibition as an independent entity, and, even though the exhibition was sponsored by the crown and was intended to show off the talents of France, any political or nationalistic goals were soon overshadowed by the presence of “art”, existing in its own right, to be looked at. The role of art began to shift. The new “art public” and its spokesmen, the art critics, began to redefine the social task of art. Art should have a moral effect but what lesson should be taught? Denis Diderot, who is considered the first important art writer, had a royal audience, but preached Enlightenment ideals. Although Diderot learned about art through studio visits with the artists, his audience, European despots who sported the sobriquet “enlightened” were informed of French art through an internationally distributed newsletter, edited by Friedrich-Melchior Grimm and not subject to French censorship. The irony of Diderot extolling middle class virtues to the lusty Czarina of Russia, Catherine, is intriguing and one can only wonder what the great queen thought when she read in his review of the Salon of 1763, “First, I like genre–it is moral painting”. Unlike 20th century art writers, Diderot did not believe in art-for-art’s-sake: times were too perilous. His art writing was engaged and political, a model for Marxist writers two hundred years later. Like many French thinkers, Diderot was indebted to English writers, especially the philosopher John Locke and the novelist Samuel Richardson, author of Pamela. He joined his fellow intellectuals in creating a new kind of literature and sought a new art form for the new class that would define this class through Enlightenment ideas of reason and order.
When viewing the works of François Boucher, Diderot wrote in 1765, “Depravity of morals has been closely followed by the debasement of taste, color, composition,” and suggested a year later that an appropriate alternative to aristocratic frivolity would be antiquity: “It seemed to me that we should study the antique in order to learn to see Nature”. But Diderot demanded more than mere stylistic servitude, “First of all, move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder, outrage me, delight my eyes, afterwards, if you can.” “Whatever the art form, it is better to be extravagant than cold”. Although Diderot did not live long enough to witness either Neoclassicism or Romanticism, both of which are anticipated in his writings, he articulated many important concepts in his art writing with his emphasis on naïveté, which led to primitivism (simplicity and clarity) and the grand ideal of Poussin: “Paint as though in Sparta.” Diderot believed that art should teach moral development but at the same time believed in the idea of genius. Although the moral sentiments of the works by Greuze were admirable, Diderot lamented that he was “no longer able to like Greuze” and preferred Chardin who was not only morally sound but also the superior artist.
The early to mid-Eighteenth Century period is one of transition, for intellectuals found it hard to either predict the future or to foresee the logical consequences of the newly forming ideals of “reason,” “democracy,” and “equality.” Diderot’s public counterpart, the art writer, La Font de Saint-Yenne, also took a middle path and equated the aristocrats with the ancients. The aristocrats, in turn, took the prudent course of denouncing decadence and corruption and joined in the vogue for the natural by praising simplicity and order. Threatened by the wayward behavior of their hapless monarchs, the French nobles attacked royal despotism of King Louis XVI and his Austrian-born Queen, Marie Antoinette, in defense of their own privileges and positions. The new French government reached back into the ancient past to justify and legitimate the new ideas of “liberty.” Old ideas of Roman virtue and Greek democracy were revived to promote and explain the radical changes. Previous artistic styles, Baroque and Rococo, were jettisoned because of their unseemly connection to aristocracy and vice. Artists turned to ancient art, fortuitously available due to the recent discovery of ancient Roman cities, Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 in the 1740s.
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Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed. Thank you.
