Courbet
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Courbet Details
From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), an early master of Realism, is famous for his evocative portraits and landscapes, his profound understanding of shadow and light and his working-class sympathies, all well represented in this beautiful, comprehensive monograph. The text provided by Le Men, a specialist in 19th century French art, chronicles Courbet's life in detail, beginning with his childhood in the provincial Ornans, a setting that would be highly influential in both his art and politics. By the time Courbet made it to Paris in the 1840s, the chaotic artist-bohemian scene that greeted him was a radical, populist and uneasy departure from the Romantic model, a reflection of "the confusion and the difficulties of a social group becoming aware of itself," as well as the end of art patronage in a world where "money was still king." Looking into his social motives as well as his aesthetic values, intelligence, talent and ambition, Le Men charts the progress of the man, and the movement, as he becomes a vigilant witness for the lower classes and those in the Provinces. Visually, one could not hope for a more impressive, complete collection of the artist's work-beginning with his first painting, done at age ten. Le Men also offers a great deal of insight into Courbet's materials and artistic process, including elaboration on the artist's recurring metaphors. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more From Booklist The bigger and richer the reproductions the better when it comes to the paintings of Courbet, an artist of dramatic contrast and grand vitality, whether he is depicting water, sky, trees, or flesh. Art books don’t get more lavish and heart-revving than this. Oversize and lustrous, it is also fresh and inclusive in its comprehensive discussion of Courbet’s life, work, and society. An assured, even cocky, and commanding nineteenth-century French artist radical in his championing of realism and embrace of romanticism, Courbet reveled in earthiness, infused his work with his belief in the nobility of the common man, and captured a spectrum of moods in both his tender portraits and glorious landscapes. With each page in this magnificent book, Courbet’s wiliness and genius come into sharper focus. Self-mythologizing and inspired by Balzac, Hugo, and Baudelaire, Courbet lived large and unabashedly celebrated sensuality. Considered the first modern artist, he owed a great debt to Rembrandt and is equally bewitching in the profoundly moving masterpiece, A Burial at Ornans, and the infamously explicit The Origin of the World. --Donna Seaman Read more About the Author Segolene Le Men, a graduate of the Ecole Normale Superieure, has been director of literary studies at that institution, as well as a researcher at CNRS. Presently she is professor of art history at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, an instructor at the Ecole du Louvre, and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Professor Le Men is the author of numerous publications on nineteenth-century French art. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION The reputation of Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) as a great artist has rested mainly on his major manifesto paintings, his defense of Realism in the 1850s, and his contribution to the dismantling of the academic system of genres, an event that revolutionized Western art. His eventful life, his selfish and provocative nature, and the dramatic events of the final years of his career all played a part in the myth that sprang up around his life and art—a myth to which he himself contributed no small part. His career is generally considered to have followed a series of major stages, determined by the art institutions and market. First, there are his difficult early years in the 1840s, submitting portraits and self-portraits to the Salon; then a period of scandal and glory, marked by what Michael Fried referred to as his “breakthrough pictures” of the Second Republic, through to the solo exhibition of 1855 and its “Realist Manifesto”; followed by his later years as a master painter specializing in landscapes and portraits, working on commission, submitting numerous works to exhibitions and enjoying the fruits of success; and, finally, the end of his career, in exile, denied official recognition after the failure of the 1870 revolution. Nevertheless, most of the critical attention so far has been devoted to the great Realist masterpieces A Burial at Ornans (plate 108) and The Painter’s Studio (plate 149), to the point of blurring or distorting the reception of his overall oeuvre. In recent years, however, art historians have begun to reassess other aspects of his painting. The reception of Courbet in the postwar period began in 1948, the centenary of the 1848 revolution. This significant date led to a new political reading of the artist, presented in the exhibition La Revolution de 1848. An earlier reading that was also to prove influential was Meyer Schapiro’s article “Courbet and Popular Imagery” in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Insitutes (1940–41). Schapiro, a medievalist, discussed how the artist drew on popular imagery in his paintings and lithographic work. This approach inspired Linda Nochlin’s 1967 study on The Meeting (Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet) (plate 143), which identifies Courbet as the Wandering Jew, a popular subject who also represents a Romantic myth of the artist. The retrospective held at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1977–1978 renewed interest in the debate. An exhibition within the exhibition, presenting a study on The Painter’s Studio by Helene Toussaint, gave a Masonic reading of the manifesto painting as a collective portrait a clef. The catalogue was also the first to show caricatures next to Courbet’s paintings. Drawing on a review of the exhibition that criticized it for failing to place the artist in his historical context, Werner Hofmann, writing in Kunstchronik, developed a new line of research in historical contextualization. This led to the exhibition Courbet un Deutschland, presented in Hamburg and Frankfurt in 1978. The Besancon symposium “Les Realismes et l’histoire de l’art” explored forms of Realism from Courbet through Social Realism and Photorealism in American art, and sparked a debate on the Grand Palais exhibition, to which belongs Klaus Herding’s Realismus als Widerspruch (1978). In a period marked by the social discontent of 1968, and in a Western world divided by the Iron Curtain, this research into a nineteenth-century theme marked a turn toward an international reception of Courbet characterized by ideological schisms. In a way, the Chartres exhibition Les Realismes et l’histoire de l’art, which proved fundamental to the interpretation of Courbet’s art for the period 1840–55, can be seen as a continuation of the Besancon conference. T.J. Clark’s 1973 book Image of the People, which represents a major contribution to our understanding of Courbet, Realism, and the art of the Second Republic, was its key point of reference. It represented a new anthropological approach to the question of the mask worn by the artist, in the poses of his self-portraits and in his presentation of peasants at the Salon. Michael Fried’s analysis, published in 1973, is based on a phenomenological reading, inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, of a number of paintings considered to be milestones in a broader artistic journey. Fried begins with the notion of “absorption,” which leads him on to that of anthropomorphism, basing his argument on Clark’s theses at times and challenging them at others, especially in the sections dealing with A Burial at Ornans and The Painter’s Studio. Whether we read this plurality of interpretations in terms of dialectic or controversy, it is bound up with the dynamic of readings of art, however contradictory they might be. This range of interpretations has also been apparent in recent exhibitions at museums in Brooklyn and Lausanne—the latter shedding light on Courbet’s work after 1855—and France, with the Vagues exhibition in Le Havre, the various exhibitions held at the Musee Courbet in Ornans, and the two exhibitions at the Musee d’Orsay, including Courbet et la Commune. It has also inspired a number of doctoral dissertations, by scholars such as Ting Chang, Frederique Desbuissons, Michele Haddad, Fabrice Masanes, and Thomas Schlesser. A number of books have also been written on the subject, including feminist readings following the work of Linda Nochlin, Jean-Luc Mayaud’s and James Rubin’s historical and social interpretations, and Petra Chu’s work defining Courbet’s place in the media culture of his day. Robert Fernier’s catalogue raisonne was first published in 1977—78. In terms of recent art history research, then, Courbet’s oeuvre has given rise to a number of studies that are both fundamental and highly diverse. The work of no other painter has led to such a divergent range of interpretations inspired by current trends in art history. This is why, in France at least, the debate on “over-interpretation” has become polarized around the figure of Courbet, pitting curators against scholars, while deepening the divide between those art historians who focus on dating and attribution and those more interested in constructing a historical discourse. I will take this situation as my starting point to address the still-unanswered question as to why Courbet’s painting is so open to interpretation. In fact, I shall argue that Courbet himself planted the contradictory readings and fables in the structure of his works and in the way individual paintings relate to each other. This book aims to take into account the full diversity of Courbet’s art. I have chosen a multidisciplinary approach to look at the body of work in terms of the relationship between different modes of artistic expression—not only literature, history, and the social sciences, but even (through Berlioz) music and conducting. I discuss popular imagery and the culture of Romantic typologies. I have stressed the importance of Courbet’s home region of Franche-Comte in eastern France, both for his Naturalistic taste for landscapes and rocks with occasionally anthropomorphic motifs, and for the social context and the people he met there. I have developed a theory on pictorial genres and in particular the shift from paintings of people to forest landscapes and seascapes, taking into consideration issues of reception. I also suggest that the artist himself alluded to the game of interpretation in various ways in his works, as he implied for The Painter’s Studio (“guess as guess can”), leaving the spectator free to choose his own reading. This is particularly apparent in the various reactions to The Origin of the World over the years (plate 186). In a brief review of the 1991 edition of Clark’s book in the Gazette des beaux-arts, I suggested that it would doubtless be of interest to look to Maisieres. This I have now done. In this house near Ornans where Courbet worked for some time, he would have met people from very different background from the familiar image of the Franche-Comte peasant, which was in any case already undergoing change. The existence of such a mode of provincial sociability highlights the need for a re-evaluation of Courbet’s career, looking at the networks, social milieus, and geography of his travels, with his native region always acting as anchor. Among the paintings still in Maisieres was one on coarse-grained canvas that Courbet had left in a preparatory stages which I found particularly fascinating and whose importance is confirmed in the artist’s letters. Read more
Reviews
That the two largest and most comprehensive surveys of Courbet's oeuvre should have appeared virtually simultaneously--in 2007 in the original French versions and in 2008 in their English translations--is apparently only a coincidence, since neither 2007 nor 2008 is any kind of anniversary year for the painter (although he did die on the last day of 1877). But it is an appropriate coincidence, since every generation deserves its own major reconsideration of an artist as major as Courbet, and it had been 30 years since the last two great retrospectives, which were indeed intended as centennial commemorations: the more expansive "Gustave Courbet 1819-1877" at the Grand Palais in Paris and subsequently at the Royal Academy of Art in London, and the more focussed "Courbet und Deutschland" at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg and then the Staedtische Galerie in Frankfurt. And it is a fortuitous coincidence, also, for it affords us the opportunity to compare two quite different but equally important kinds of art books: the modern exhibition catalogue and the scholarly monograph devoted to a single artist.Although "Gustave Courbet," the Metropolitan Museum of Art's huge exhibition of 2008 took place under the supervision of its own curators, the accompanying catalogue reflects the show's French origins in that the great majority of the contributions, including all the introductory essays, were written by curators at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and the Musee Fabre in Montpellier. It is an excellent example of everything one would want in a companion volume to a great retrospective: comprehensive in scope and up to date in its information, it presents the works of the exhibition in (for the most part) large and excellent reproductions and adheres to the highest standards of professional scholarship. The six essays are all by recognized authorities in their fields and deal, over 70 pages, with Courbet's political positions; his relationship with Alfred Bruyas, his most important early patron; "realism and ambiguity" in the paintings; and references to Courbet in other paintings, mostly by Manet and Cezanne. There is an essay on the results of the X-radiography of more than fifty of Courbet's canvases, which reveals some of the often surprising changes he made while working on them, and, as an index of the painter's continuing influence in our own day, Dominique de Font-Reaulx presents a brief comparative consideration of the work of the contemporary Swiss photographer Balthasar Burkhard.The 340 pages of the catalogue itself range over the full scope of Courbet's oeuvre, with sections topically arranged: the landscapes, the nudes, the Commune-related paintings, etc. There are separate sections on the early self-portraits and the hunting scenes, two topics that are not often treated in the depth they deserve. The 219 excellent plates are identified not only by title, date of creation, medium, support, dimensions and location, but also by provenience, a list of previous exhibitions, and a specialized bibliography and are accompanied by annotated commentary by one of the curators and supported by hundreds of auxiliary illustrations. The volume concludes with a very detailed chronology of Courbet's life and works; a short "anthology" of relevant correspondence, reviews and documents; a comprehensive general bibliography and a detailed list of prior Courbet exhibitions. All of this apparatus is informed by the great deal of research and scholarship that had accumulated over the previous thirty years, chief among which are the publication of Courbet's letters, the greater accessibility of archival material, and the publication/exhibition of works new to the canon. Oddly, there is no index, either of names or of works, which makes for an annoying amount of page flipping to find a reference or a picture; but in all other respects this is a treasure trove of information that no serious student of Courbet can afford to be without, the very model of what a modern exhibition catalogue should be.Segolene Le Men's "Courbet" is equally exemplary of its particular genre of art book, the scholarly monograph written by one person and with one point of view. And since Le Men is a widely published and well respected expert on 19-century French painting and currently professor of art history at the University of Paris X-Nanterre and an instructor at the Ecole du Louvre, one is assured that her book is as authoritative as that of the curators of the exhibition reviewed above. As a monograph, this book is less restricted in the choice of works it wishes to discuss, since it does not have to address a select corpus of works that could be gathered at one specific time in one particular gallery. It does not have to be as oeuvre-oriented as an exhibition catalogue and has greater liberty to be sweeping and narrative and to consider matters that may be beyond the scope of specific work-analysis per se.Le Men's sections are arranged broadly biographically rather than topically, and the first two, "The Formative Years: Courbet the Romantic" and "A Bohemian in Paris," are particularly informative about the social context of those early years and the easy way the painter assimilated other modes of artistic production. (Example: the window-pane checked pants in the self-portraits and those of his friends Paul Ansout and Marc Trapadoux derive ultimately from descriptions of men's clothing in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's romantic novel "Paul et Virginie.") Le Men is more expansive than most writers on Courbet's interactions with others (friends, but also women, fellow painters, collectors and buyers on the market, etc.), and she publishes, for the first time, Courbet's portrait of Wilhelm Leibl, a Munich painter whom he met and whose artistic project and realist aspirations he felt to be similar to his own. The chapter "Art, Business, and Naturalism" traces Courbet's path during the 1860's, when, in response to increasing fame, the painter embarked on a course that led him, in the author's view, from realism to naturalism and at the same time became increasingly astute as a businessman intent on selling his product to consumers on the marketplace--and arranging his own exhibitions for that purpose. At that time he concentrated on landscape and portraiture, on the great hunting scenes and snowscapes that people wanted to buy, and on the great nudes from the woman in "The Artist's Studio" to "The Origin of the World." Here Le Men is especially good on Courbet's close attention to matters like the hanging of the canvases in the galleries and the arrangement of the works in series, etc.What makes this volume stand out among the many other Courbet books is the high standard of the production values that have been lavished on it. It is huge, sumptuous, excellently designed and printed, and the quality of the reproductions is outstanding. There are many full-page and even two-page illustrations (and these are very big pages), and many detailed blow-ups; even the dust jacket is the best reproduction of "The Artist's Studio" that I have ever seen (albeit cropped a bit at the right edge). But this is not only a magnificent coffee-table book; it is a serious contribution to the Courbet literature, backed by its author's extensive research and solid scholarship as authoritative as that of the curators of the Met's exhibition catalogue. The serious student of Courbet will want to own both these volumes, but for someone who wants just one excellent and comprehensive survey with superb reproductions of Courbet's works, this is the one to have.
