Posts Tagged ‘Salon’

Jul
09
2010

Salon Realism in France

Salon Realism of the 1850s

Realism had many faces.  As an international impulse seen in European and American art, Realism was not so much a style or a look as a new approach to art, overtaking the old ideas of exhausted Romanticism. By the 1840s, due to the impact of science and technology, a more materialistic and positivist approach to philosophy emerged.  Idealist philosophy, based upon abstract principles and models gave way to empiricism and pragmatism. Social change accelerated and demanded serious attention from progressive thinkers. In an age of growing discontent over the failures of the Revolutions in France, there was a growing interest in the arts with the problems of contemporary life there was an increasing interest in the arts with the problems of contemporary life.

Universal enfranchisement to all citizens was still a dream. The failure to alleviate the economic imbalance between the classes and to grant political power and rights to the lower classes meant that both France and England were faced with the choice between reform or repression.  England would grant reforms to the lower classes by carefully calibrated degrees, staving off serious unrest and outright rebellion.  The French, ever wary of the dangerous classes, suffered yet another Revolution in 1848 and went through another political upheaval.  This Revolution was eventually brutally suppressed and all hopes of reform were snuffed out when Louis Napoléon, nephew of the Emperor, returned to France and seized power in 1850.

When the Nephew crowned himself Emperor Napoléon III,  any traces of Romanticism evaporated.  In addition to philosophical and social forces that ended Romanticism, the rise of Realism was very much linked to the rise of the Middle Class as a major force in society.  By mid-century the bourgeoisie has become the dominant cultural force.  Unlike the traditional upper classes, the status of the middle class was based upon wealth and a distinct value system which was based upon social mobility.  It was the middle class that divided the genders and subjugated women to the rule of men.  For the newly wealthy males, it was important that their wives were shown to be at leisure, like an aristocratic woman.  Each man wanted his home to be his castle, and it was important to him to have power over his own family.

This new class was not widely read or particularly well-educated, nor was its taste particularly refined, but the bourgeoisie were eager to make its influence felt in the realm of culture.  Because it was easy to understand and accessible, the middle class art public preferred the kind of art that was legible or realistic.  For the bourgeoisie the mark of artistic talent was not creativity but the ability to copy nature.  Artistic experimentation and innovation was not appreciated, and the public shied away from extreme Romanticism and Realism, seeking an art that was more “middle of the road” or juste milieu.

As the result of the insistence on technical skills in painting demonstrated in “academic art,” the mid-century art public was trained to appreciate approved Salon art and looked for  precise delineation and  entertaining stories. But, like any dominant class, the bourgeoisie wanted to see themselves reflected in art.  Greek and Roman scenes might be exciting and full of beguiling female nudes, but the audience could not recognize itself in the history paintings.  As an artist knows, it is important for the audience to imaginatively and emotionally invest in the art.  The viewer must identify with the painting or the sculpture for the work to be successful.   Being remote in time, the art dictated by the Academy was not in tune with the modern age and was ultimately unresponsive to middle class needs.  The preferred art of the Academy referred back to the classical past of Greece and Rome and only a well-read person could grasp all the classical illusions.

The audience gravitated to realism on two levels.  First, people liked to see genre scenes of ordinary everyday life, preferably with an interesting narrative.  Second, the average spectator preferred realism over expressionism in terms of how the artist should render the subject.  Another important factor in the rise of Realism was the invention of photography in 1839.  Photography was a hugely popular art form and the public avidly flocked to photographic studios to have themselves immortalized.  Photography was, of course, an accurate mirror of nature, an exact copy.  The public liked the precision of the daguerreotype better than the fuzzy surface of paper photography and began to expect the artist to live up the process of Dauguerre.  Artists were at the mercy of this new public and had the choice to comply with its demands or to drift into the avant-garde where another type of Realism was being developed.

The artists who wanted to succeed steered a middle course between Romanticism and Realism and between academic art and photography.  The result was a form of art, called juste milieu, that was both popular and official. Early on, juste milieu art, fulfilled the need of the growing middle class audience for a popular art and for subject matter that was about them and their lives and that was easy to understand.  This art was “easy,” rather like today’s television: realistic and entertaining and enjoyable, giving the audience what philosopher, Roland Barthes called “the effect of the real.”

The juste milieu artists were successful and rich and respected and were often the implacable foes of the avant-garde.  They found the right formula to please audiences.  The subject matter really wasn’t “modern” or about the current age.  Indeed, given the current political climate in France, the juste milieu artists tended towards the historical escapism of Jean-Léon Gérome or idealized depictions of the countryside and its inhabitants from Jules Breton.   The middle class favored landscape painting, once considered a “low” genre of art.  In an age of social turmoil a scene of unscathed countryside or untouched forests were soothing and non-political.  And landscape painting was well suited to middle class needs for interior decoration: it was pretty to look at and avoided any unsuitable or controversial content.

The size of painting began to change.  The successful artist was well advised to divide his or her time between the large paintings, destined for the Salon, and smaller works, designed for the bourgeois home.  Sculpture suffered during the waning of classicism and academic art.  Like history painting, classical sculpture was not well-suited to the modern era and sculptors struggled to translate contemporary life into bronze and marble.  Like the painters, the sculptors had to divide their endeavors between large-scale public commissions and small scale works, destined for the private market.

It is important to understand how the juste milieu artists approached their subject matter. Paul Delaroche, Jean-Léon Gérome and Ernst Meissonier were all respected and wealthy painters by the 1860s and they rejected the tradition of academic history painting.  However, these artists were painters of history, but for many of them their content was contemporary or the near and national past. Gérome was particularly successful with a new art form: the historical genre painting or scenes of everyday life from distant and exotic lands, especially the Near East.  The art public enjoyed Gérome’s depictions of ancient Romans living in a way that seemed to resemble their own lives.  But Gérome also gave the audience thrilling scenes from the past, such as the assassination of Julius Caesar and gladiatorial contests in the Colosseum.  To today’s viewer, Gérome’s paintings are eerily like a Hollywood production, and, indeed, Gérome was typical of his time in his rigorous attention to historical detail and accuracy.

Paul Delaroche is famous in the history of photography because he greeted the invention of photography with the cry, “From today, painting is dead!” Delaroche actually mentored many painters who became photographers and his work, like that of Gérome had that intense realism that resembles the high gloss of a movie. Delaroche is best known for his dramatic scene of the beheading of Lady Jane Grey in 1833.  As might be expected, beheading was a sensitive topic in France, and many art historians have suggested that Delaroche’s painting allowed the public to consider the execution of a ruler from a distance of time.  The painting is well-executed (no pun intended), as are all the works of the juste milieu artists, and dramatically effecting in the heart rending depiction of the last moments of the Nine Day Queen.

Ernst Meissonier was also a history painter, but his works were about French history and small in size.  His popular specialty was scenes of the first Emperor, Napoléon, around whom a cult of nostalgia had formed.  A contemporary of the Realist painter of peasants, the unpopular, Jean-François Millet, Meissonier was one of the most successful and respected history painters of his time.  Renowned for adherence to accuracy—he even owned one of the Emperor’s saddles—-won him the adulation of the art public and the scorn or the avant-garde critics.

By the end of the Nineteenth Century, the art world had split into opposing segments, the conservative, the juste milieu, and the avant-garde—all of which had a stake in Realism.  Avant-garde Realism, which is covered in another chapter, did not use a realistic style to make history look “real,” instead the Realism of Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet was contemporary, of its own time, and provocative.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.

info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Jan
15
2010

French Romanticism and the Avant-Garde

French Romanticism and the Avant-Garde

The term “avant-garde” is a military one, borrowed from the French phrase, denoting the advance body of the army.  This small group of soldiers goes out in advance of the main group to scout the territory beyond with the aim of reporting back as to the conditions awaiting the other soldiers.  In American parlance, these soldiers are called “F.O’s” or forward observers, and they account for the highest casualty rate, for they are always on the line and out in front. The artists that are historically considered the avant-garde were also “out in front of” the main body of more conservative artists and the recalcitrant public, putting their careers and their lives on the line in order to find new ways of making art.  As Renato Poggioli in The Theory of the Avant-Garde put it,

“…the avant-garde…functions as an independent and isolated military unit, completely and sharply detached from the public, quick to act, not only to explore but also to battle, conquer, and adventure on its own…”

The avant-garde as a conscious and deliberate artistic activity is mainly a mid to late Nineteenth Century phenomenon, probably pioneered by the Impressionists who intentionally refused to placate public taste and who deliberately exhibited work outside of the expected channels of the large and popular public Salon exhibitions.  According to Pierre Bourdieu in The Rules of Art, the avant-garde was a sociological affair, born of rising middle class aspirations and the inability of the culture to satisfy talented people.  The Academy controlled entrée to school art school training and had the power to grant access to the Salon.  Although the intention of the academically minded juries may have been to maintain the high level of quality in art, the effect was to restrict economic opportunity, forcing artists outside of the system.  As Bourdieu said,

“…bohemia…grows numerically and as its prestige (or mirages) attracts destitute young people, often of provincial and working-class origin, who around 1848 dominate the ‘second bohemia.’  In contrast to the romantic dandy of the ‘golden bohemia’ of the rue de Doyené, the bohemia of Murger, Chapmpfleury or Duranty constitutes a veritable intellectual reserve army, directly subject to the laws of the market and often obliged to live off a second skill…in order to live an art that cannot make a living.”

The avant-garde grew out of a group of creative people who gravitated to Paris and lived in low-income quarters, suffering from neglect and poverty.  Outside the mainstream and lacking the outlets that would have perhaps earned them a living, these artists and writers could only gather together and form an ideology of failure.  They had failed, they consoled themselves, because they were so “advanced” that the unenlightened public misunderstood them.   Simply put, their art was too good, too “avant.” Success was inverted in to an indictment of failure and failure was transformed into a badge of honor.   It is doubtful that these defiant members of the avant-garde were particularly talented or gifted, for there were member of La Boheme who were quite successful, such as George Sand and Eugène Delacroix. But the formula was high-minded and allowed those who never made a breakthrough an honorable cover for their failure.  The avant-garde artist, then, was a mythic creature who was not appreciated or understood by the masses, one who chose to live and work in obscurity and poverty, believing that one day his/her art would be recognized by an educated art audience either in the near present or in some unforeseeable future.  Savvy and strategic Bohemian artists fueled the myth of the avant-garde by shocking the a public that was very easy to shock.  The rallying cry of the avant-garde was, “Épater le bourgeoisie!” but the idea was to gain attention, not to repel collectors.  Avant-garde artists needed to make a living and used the unexpected as  a strategy to shock and awe the crowd.

Without the church and state and their once limitless funds, without the taste and sophistication of the aristocrats, the artists were faced with the middle class as their main audience. This was an audience that wanted to be entertained and were treated by the artists to large paintings that were precursors to modern day movies—-the grand machines or huge paintings that enthralled them with exciting stories. The new audience was composed of the masses, high and low, average people, undereducated, unsophisticated, but not uninterested in art.  The kind of art they wanted was that which was easily accessible, easy to understand, entertaining and attractive to look at; something like today’s television programs, that reflected themselves and their interests.  For many artists, this new middle class audience was no problem. For other artists, the bourgeoisie was an opportunity.   Although the art viewers were trained to admire the large history paintings, the serious minded displays of ancient virtues and obscure myths were not necessarily what the public actually wanted to see.

Academic art was based upon time honored Greek and Roman art which glorified the human being, divinely beautiful preferably nude, engaged in noble deeds.  Members of the Academy acted as jurors to the annual (or biannual) salons, restricting style and subject matter to that which reflected their teachings and the official preferences of the State. Preferred subject matter favored history and myth with an eye to teaching the unruly public morality, through the lessons of the past. While such allegorical approaches had been very effective in the early years of Neoclassicism, the moral and political fervor had quickened succumbed to the status-quo demands of the State, which wanted to entertain the public and distract it from the problems of the present. Until the end of the Second Empire, artists found success only by positioning themselves within the establishment, if only to fight against it, like Irgres and Delacroix. But as the century progressed, social and political issues became increasingly pressing, forcing the artistic gaze away from the present and towards eroticism and exoticism and the problems of contemporary times. For the avant-garde artist, the historical past was past.  “Il faut être de son temps,” (“It is necessary of be of one’s time.”) the artist Honoré Daumier exclaimed.  A growing number of artists sought new ways to make art, which would reflect the new modern way of life.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Jan
08
2010

French Romanticism: Subject Matter and the Artist

French Romanticism:  Subject Matter and the Artist

The Romantic was Janus-faced, facing the present and commenting upon it while turning away for current events in order to yield to the lure of fantasy, legend, myth, and exoticism.  On one hand, Jean-Antoine Gros called attention to the human costs of Napoléon’s brutal wars in Napléon at Eylau in 1818, and, on the other hand, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres retreated into Nordic myth in his Dream of Ossian of 1813 and his charming paintings of troubadour legends.  On one hand, Girodet produced a reverie of eroticism with his Sleep of Endymion in 1791 as the opening volley of Romanticism and Géricault explored the limits of Romanticism with his portraits of insane people and his renditions of severed limbs. One did not have to be an avant-garde artist to be “Romantic,” for the avant-garde was just beginning to form.  One did not have to challenge Academic standards to be Romantic, for the Academy could very well accommodate exciting contemporary narratives, as long as they were correctly painted or sculpted.  Although associated with bold color and visible brushstrokes, Romanticism is not a style, nor is it a particular content, nor is it a rebellion against authority.  The successful and celebrated Romantic artists wanted to be accepted by the academic powers and vied for position and honors within the Salons.  For many of these artists, their reputation as “romantic rebels” rests upon a few works of art.   Most of the Romantic artists were part of the establishment and did not live the life of an outside artist, unappreciated and scorned by the forces of the status quo.  The myth of the Romantic artist has been entangled anachronistically with that of the avant-garde, and the full-blown outsider movements of Realism and Impressionism were decades away.

The so-called rebelliousness of the Romantic artists is less political than entrepreneurial, linked more directly to the loss of traditional patrons: church, state, and aristocrats.  The Romantic artist acted as an opportunist or a performance artist who sought to both slide past the conservative jury of the Salon and also to shock the spectators with spectacular and entertaining art. The art audience had become more and more middle class, which attended the Salons in large numbers.  The bourgeoisie, the crowd, the mob must be addressed in some fashion.  Fueled by fashions, literature and restless aggressive politics, the public developed a taste for scenes of sex and violence unsanctioned by the Academy and swooned over the newly discovered beauties of Nature.  The public had little interest in erudite academic subject matter and gravitated towards the familiar and the market for genre painting and landscape painting began to develop, inspiring artists to concentrate their efforts in these areas that were not supported by the academic hierarchy and hence were open professional territories for ambitious artists.

Landscape painting began to free itself from its traditional role as a backdrop for a narrative in the foreground, and “pure” landscape, painted for pure pleasure and free of moralizing became more and more popular.  Like still lives, landscapes could fit into any home and was acceptable to any taste, and did not offend any political opinions.  The so-called lower genres were directed not so much towards the academy but to a public that was inclined to buy decorative art. The most important group of landscape painters was the Barbizon School, located in the village of Barbizon in the Forest of Fountainebleau.  Artists such as Theodore Rousseau and Narcisse Diaz sketched in situ but finished the paintings in their studios.  They shared, along with many Romantic painters, a new concern for direct observation of Nature at its most natural and most accurate.  The Barbizon artists followed the Claudian precepts of the beautiful but they were distinctly modern in their refusal to include narrative in the painting.  These artists, such as Constantin Troyon, produced “pure landscapes.”  At the other end of the spectrum from marketable landscapes, the public taste for the strange and the exotic was also linked to economics.  The “Orient”, the “East” became open territory to be subdued and conquered by the Western Europeans who were beginning another phase of unchecked imperialism.  The delight in the themes of sex and violence, imagined by the European to be part and parcel of the Middle East, was fueled as much by sexual desires as by imperial pride.  A large number of artists, called “Orientalists” imagined the mysterious East as a place of harems and beheadings, inhabited by an alien and violent people who could only benefit from benevolent French rule.

Although the aristocrats, old and new, were restored to power during Napoléon’s rule and after the Restoration of Louis XVIII, the new audience for art was largely middle class.  The Romantic artist was sundered from traditional conservative artistic styles, separated from traditional patronage, and stripped of the historical social role as servant to higher powers. From the fall of Napoléon on, the artist was forced to re-invent him/herself as a social being and was forced to re-create a new cultural place and new purpose for unsanctioned art.  The imported German idea of “art-for-art’s-sake” fulfilled multiple purposes, providing art and the artist with a new and exalted role in society.  The artist had to be a free and independent creator who was an innovator and pushed art to change.  As the new aesthetic theories gained a following, the art world began to splint between the avant-garde who rebelled and displeased the public and the academics who conformed and pleased the audience.  By 1835, the writer and art critic, Théophile Gautier attacked conventional critics for their adherence to ideas of decorum and good taste.  In the preface to Madamoiselle de Maupin, Gautier advocated for beauty and art for their own sakes.  For the artist to be free to express original and personal feelings, art should have no useful purpose. Although these ideas give new impetus to art and a new place in society to the artist, they also begin the separation between the artist and the public that will be accelerated by the Revolution of 1848 in France.

Seen in the literary and the visual arts, Romanticism was an international movement and a cultural rejection of the Enlightenment and its stress on objective reason and rational thinking.   Romanticism was subjective and the ultimate truth was individual emotions, feelings, and expression. This shift from the objective to the subjective, from object to subject, or the individual, as the source of truth was a radical transformation in Western thought, perhaps the logical consequence of Protestant emphasis on individuality and European hopes for a political democracy.  The artist became important to society in a new way: not as an explicator of moral ideals, but as a “genius,” a seer who brought, through art, new insights into life.  Although a new critical vocabulary was created as aesthetics moved to the center as artistic concern, the Romantic artists offered no coherent programme nor did they have a common goal.  Wrapped up in their sense of individuality, artists produced works of art that proclaimed individual personalities and the originality that was the prerogative of the genius. Romanticism, as a challenge to academicism, was associated with forces of disorder and anarchy and revolution.  As an extension, drawing and low key color, disciplined stylistics, and a smooth “licked” surface in painting and sculpture, characteristic of Neoclassicism, became politically tied to the state.  Color, rough painting or impastoed facture became politically tied to the emotions that might lead to unrestrained social behavior.  Politics aside, most so-called Romantic artists, such as Delacroix, were actually politically quiet conservative, as are most artists because social and political stability are necessary for art making to be possible.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Dec
11
2009

The Artistic Revolution in France

The Artistic Revolution in France

Two social events would impact artists and art, especially in France.  The first event was the French Revolution, which forced artists to choose between King and Country and eliminated the traditional patrons, the Church and the aristocrats.  The second event was a long, ongoing process: the rise of the middle class as a group that would dominate economically and politically and thus constitute a new buying public for art.  In the decades before the French Revolution, the middle class had made itself known to the artists.  Although impressed by history painting, this class was interested in domestic themed art for middle class interiors.  In addition to being pushed by new collector demands, the artist was increasingly beholden to the opinions of art critics.  Any artist who wished to succeed in the Salon had to go through a set of educational and professional motions, including the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Prix de Rome and recognition in the Salon by the established powers—-the State, the Church, and the wealthy patrons.  The French Revolution upended the state-based system of educating and rewarding artists, but only for a time.  During the Revolution, artists either participated in propagandizing the aims and ideals of the cause or risked being denounced and imprisoned.  One of the most important painters for the French Royal family,  Jacques-Louis David,  proved to be an agile and adroit political opportunist and quickly turned his coat and put himself in the service of the Revolution.  He even went to far as to sign warrants which led to the imprisonment of his colleagues while he designed and built huge works of public art, rather like the Rose Bowl floats of today, that advertized the Revolution and awed the spectators.  At the end of the worst part of the Terror, David joined his imprisoned colleagues in the Luxembourg Palace.  He was lucky not to have been beheaded as were his sponsors.  David’s pupils, Jean-Antoine Gros and Anne-Louis Girodet Roussey de Trison, were able to ride out the Revolution in Italy, safely away from the changing fortunes of artists unwise enough to play politics.

David emerged from prison somewhat chastened but quickly attached himself to the next rising star, Napoleón Bonaparte, already a patron to Gros.  The end of the Eighteenth Century was an age of hero worship and Napoleón rewarded those who worshiped him.  Once sanity returned and stability replaced civil war and chaos, the new régime, the Directory quickly restored the system of art education, complete with the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Rome Prize, and all of the academic rules and regulations that, if followed, would lead to Salon success.  But the demands upon the artist had changed.  The old patrons were gone and new powers awaited the artists.  The state under Napoleón embarked upon nearly two decades of propagandistic art, celebrating the new Emperor and his court. Neoclassicism, already an important style before 1789, had been employed as the style of the Revolution by David, who was now the most important artist of the Empire.  Responding to the needs of the new heroes, Neoclassicism retained its carefully classical style—-clear outlines and cool colors and balanced composition—-but was dramatized by exciting narratives suitable to an age of glory and conquest.

It is here, in these military narratives, that the germs of Romanticism can be discerned.  Early Neoclassicism did not favor diagonals and action and motion, but under the Emperor, excitement and drama ruled.  That said, the official style of the Empire was given over to the same traditional role as had always been expected of artists—–supporting the established powers.  Although during these Napoleónic years, ideas of Romantic aesthetics from Germany were imported to France, art-for-art’s-sake and artistic freedom were still in the future.  The artists had to please new masters, the Emperor, the Salon jury, and the bourgeoisie.  Most of all the artist had to conform to the Salon system itself, now refined and more important than ever.  By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, a new power, the middle class, the bourgeoisie, was firmly in social, economic, and political power, despite the comings and goings of various emperors and kings.  This middle class was an art-loving class.  They knew little about art but knew that they like to be entertained.  Thousands came to art exhibitions called Salons that were state-run and state-supported advertisements for academically trained artists.  The Salon was the only avenue of economic opportunity for the French artist who needed to make a living.  Scheduled for every year or every other year, depending on which régime was in power, the Salons were huge exhibitions drawing from artists around the world.  The French public crowded in by the thousands, expecting to be delighted and amused, rather like we are pleased (or not) by contemporary film.

For the French artist, the annual Salon was the one chance to show and to become known.  To be refused—rejected from the Salon—was to be a failure, a refusée, until the following year.  Merely being accepted was not a guarantee of success.  Paintings were hung floor to ceiling and, of course, each painter wanted his/her work to be hung at eye level and not “skied,” that is, hung high, or hung low.  Prominent artists could demand that their works be hung where the public could see them easily.  The most successful painters were those who pleased both the public and the Academy juries.  Sculpture in the Salons adhered to the Neoclassical style but what the audience saw were small-scale works or casts or maquettes for future public projects.  Often the smaller works would be placed upon a crowded table and the sculptors suffered from the same kind of limitations to ideal viewing as the painters.  The Salon was a room of hierarchies that went beyond what the jury liked or not.  History painting reigned supreme, prized because the difficult and didactic compositions, crowded with ancient notables, mostly partially nude, displayed the artist’s erudition and education.  Only an artist educated in the Ecole would be capable of drawing and composing a group of figures.  Only an artist educated in the Ecole would be educated enough to understand the minutia of ancient history.  Other artists, especially women, would be confined, due to lack of education to lower ranking genres, such as genre scenes and portraiture and still lives.  In these years before modern art galleries and collecting, the Salon was the only game in town and artists had little choice but to accept the rigorous rule of a conservative elite, disinclined to be open-minded to new artistic ideas.

But new ideas were already present to those who were alert to such things.  The clash of realism and romanticism was present in the propaganda art of Gros, the blatant eroticism of Girodet, and the offbeat choice of content by Théodore Géricault.  The French Revolution may have ended in yet another oppressive regime under a new Emperor but it had introduced the idea of individual rights and freedom.  Neoclassicism essentially ended with the reign of Napoleón, and an artistic revolution began to emerge.  Denied political rights and freedom, artists began to resist the demands for the status quo from the Salon juries and took a more independent path.  Born of political disillusionment, a new attitude began to take shape.  The artist demanded the right to freedom of expression as an art maker, which, in these early years of Romanticism, played itself out mostly along the lines of style and the way in which materials were handled. Both inside and outside the Academy there was the pressing and urgent quarrel between the Poussinistes (the proponents of line in art and discipline in society) and the Rubenistes (the proponents of color in art and individual freedom in society).

This quarrel was a challenge to the dominance of Neoclassicism and the Salon system, which controlled artists.  But the quarrel was more than stylistic; it was political.  The dominant art form was connected to the dominant social system. These conflicts, no matter how they are labeled, seem to break down into philosophical positions, which seem to extend far beyond any disagreements as to style or subject matter.  Neoclassicism vs. Romanticism is really a conflict about emotion vs. reason, which is really a conflict about which should be supreme in art, color (emotion) or line (reason)?  The question of line versus color is really a political conflict about who should rule, the people  (feelings) or the state (order) were social conflicts concerning democracy vs. the ruling caste. The conflict over individual freedom opposed to the state’s traditional control over the art makers is really a conflict between the lone, romantic genius artist inventing new forms as opposed to the powers of the Academy.  During this era, the beaux-arts had a far more important and prominent place in society than today; and the State government of France kept careful control over artistic production, understanding all too well that an artist could speak directly to the people.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
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Dec
04
2009

The French Academy

The French Academy

The French Academy was established in 1648 for the purpose of controlling art in France and included a network of provincial schools in Rouen, Marseilles, Dijon, and Tours.  Art was intended to extend the nation’s prestige beyond politics and military glory and was intended to establish a hegemony in the arts and crafts. The French Revolution toppled this “Royal” Academy, replacing it in 1795 with the Institut, a representative body of intellectuals and artists who took over the instruction of artists in the School of Fine Arts in Paris and Rome.  They served in an administrative capacity that was honorary but powerful.  The Institut defined “art” and “artist” and established standards that should not be violated.  Meanwhile, other major cities followed the lead of the French. In London, the Royal Academy was established in 1768. By 1790, over one hundred academies of art or public schools of art were flourishing: Vienna (remodeled) 1770, Dresden 1762, Berlin 1786, Copenhagen 1754, Stockholm 1768, St. Petersburg 1757, Madrid 1752, Dusseldorf 1767, Frankfort 1779, Munich 1770, Genoa 1752, Naples 1756, Mexico 1785 and Philadelphia 1791/1805. The increased importance of academic training in the arts coincided with the development of the modern nation state, and the government’s growing awareness of the usefulness of art in an international contest for prestige.  By the end of the Eighteenth century, the Neoclassical style was the official style of “Academic art,” regardless of country.  This official style of the academy was based upon the foundations of classical art and art theory, as expressed by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works of Painting and Sculpture (1755).  According to Winckelmann, contemporary art should not copy Greek art but to should imitate the Greeks in their “noble grandeur and calm simplicity,” by attempting to think about art as they did.  This new frame of mind or mental state was hostile to that of the Rococo and put Antiquity forward as the only model to be followed.  “It is easier to discover the beauty of Greek statues than the beauty of nature,” Winckelmann stated, “imitating them will teach us how to become wise without loss of time.”

Winckelmann’s well-meaning volume of art history led to a formulaic copying by artists of classical models.  The academic learned response to the designated “ideal” beauty became a dictum to be followed.  Copying a pre-given object/objective led to the academic stress on drawing (disegno) because the pure outline was more faithful to the image.  Unlike fleeting, conditional and changeable color, drawing sought the essential and distilled the form into purity, a purity, which would have a moral character.  The moral character of art was definitively addressed by the German poet and philosopher, Friedrich Schiller, who stated that art, and only art, could lift the human being up from his/her natural state into a moral state.  Art alone produces harmony between our sensual instincts and formality and between life and order. Still, there were problems with teaching art, for speaking prophetically, Schiller asked in 1783,  “Do you expect enthusiasm where the spirit of the academies rule?”

Napoléon reorganized the Institut in 1803 and increased its membership.  The members were given exclusive rights and unprecedented power to admit and honor works shown in the Salons. Napoléon’s gift of control to a handful of individuals was part of his plan to ensure total control of art now yoked to his propaganda machine. The Salon, in its modern form, now showed the works of all artists, deemed worth of admission, not just the members of the Academy.  The Institut also awarded the Grand Prix de Rome to Beaux-Arts students (males only).  When Napoléon fell from power in 1814, the Restoration government sought to reestablish the historical link between the old Royal Academy and the Institut, which also managed to control the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, even though the two bodies were theoretically separate.  The connections between the Academy, the Ecole, and the government varied with the ruler in power who could intervene or not in the affairs of the art world. Nevertheless, the Academy exercised a great deal of power over the world of French art, and by extension, over all other serious art worlds, for French art had established an hegemony in Europe.  The forty members of the Academy held fourteen chairs in painting, eight in sculpture and in architecture, four in engraving and six in music and controlled the Beaux-Arts curriculum and the contents of the annual Salon exhibitions.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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Oct
02
2009

The Enlightenment and the Art Public

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.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to
Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.  Thank you.
info@arthistoryunstuffed.com

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