Academic painting

On the initiative of Louis XIV, on February 1st, 1648, was created the royal academies of paintings and sculptures. The painter Charles Le Brun takes the direction of it. The Academies then preach a radically new method of teaching of the Art schools. This one sets up works of antiquity gréco-Roman for model and rests primarily on a concept whose keywords are simplicity, size, harmony and purity.

The Academy is composed then of two sections: the Academy of painting and sculpture, and the Academy of architecture. The anatomy, the geometry, the prospect and the study according to the alive model, constituted the bases of preparatory teaching to painting and the sculpture.

The teaching of the academy rests on certain principle founders:

  • To affirm the primacy of the drawing on the color
  • To look further into the study of naked, of the anatomy
  • To in the open air privilege work in workshop compared to work, on the reason
  • To carry out works " achevées"
  • To imitate the old ones, to imitate nature

These principles gradually solidified with time and ended up constituting a yoke with the eyes of certain artists and critics of the end of the 19th century against which they rose little by little.

The academism was the current one dominating of painting under the Second empire, characterized by a very strong taste for the historical topics and the taste for the Orientalisme. Academic painting borrows from the Néoclassicisme David or of Ingres on the plan set of themes, stylistics as much as technique (Glacis). This art is in addition loan of the middle-class moralism of its time and of a somewhat hypocritical direction of the erotism .

The name “fireman” (1888 according to the Robert) is undoubtedly an allusion to the brilliant helmets of certain characters of the great compositions of the time, which pointed out those of the firemen. Certain sources propose the assumption of a derision of the word “Pompéin” (of Pompéi). Lastly, this word evokes the pump , the pompeux .

Academic painting is often opposed to the realistic painting of Courbet then to the art of the impressionist although it should not be forgotten that at the time the borders were less clear: Auguste Toulmouche was the guard of Claude Monet, Jean-Leon Gérôme helped Edouard Manet at his beginnings, etc

History of the Academy

The creation of the academies

The Royal Academies of painting and sculpture were created in 1648, by Louis XIV with an aim of guaranteeing to the painters and to sculptors the statute of artist who theirs was then disputed. The academy thus provided for the technical training (training of the drawing, the anatomy, the color…) and cultural (familiarisation with the subjects of antiquity, the great authors…) young artists. The candidates at the entry at the school of the Art schools (the women are allowed there only in 1897) must pass a contest of admission consisting of the execution of a naked figure drawn according to the alive model.

The control of the Academy

In second half of the 19th century, an opposition crystallizes which deeply will mark all the history of the art of the 20th century: that of the academism and the " Modernity " , term launched by Baudelaire. The avant-garde S could not be essential, very slowly , that by hustling the Official art. The academic painters resisted to them of all their forces . They had the means of them, because they reigned on the Académie of the Art schools, with the Institut, the Salon, a long time place of required passage to expose, make known themselves and obtain government orders. “The instruction, you Control will control the style”, said the academic painter Gérôme . The Second Empire assimilated initially the naturalism of Millet (honoured however with a medal to the Living room of 1864) or, more still, of Billhook to socialism: Billhook passed in their eyes for the painter of ugly, or nothing, because its works seemed deprived of significance.

Far from the Living room

The innovators had to expose and make known themselves apart from the institutions, of the rewards and the official orders . It was not by choice, but by obligation. It is with the Living room, where artists, society men and critics pressed themselves, which they would have liked to triumph. Only the jury of the Living room was named by the Academy of the Art schools, before seeing itself partly co-opted by the artists received themselves with the Living room. In 1855, Gustave Courbet made set up the " House of Réalisme" opposite the World Fair where some of its fabrics had not been accepted. In 1863, as well of fabrics were refused with the Living room as, to ensure , appeasing Napoleon III authorized the opening of a parallel living room. The Living room of refused had been born. The Déjeuner on the grass thus made it possible Manet to be made known by a success very scandal. Criticisms were shocked and irritated as well by the bottom as by the form. Manet did not put the nudity of the flesh at the service of any mythological convention; it granted to the play shade and light infinitely more importance than with the drawing. In 1874, some artists, whose Monet, Renoir, Camille Pissaro, Alfred Sisley, organized an exposure in the workshop of the photographer Nadar. Criticisms and public transfer in their fabrics only works the insane ones and of daltoniens. The newspapers multiplied the caricatures and the mocking remarks. In the Hullabaloo, Louis Leroy made fun in these terms of the fabric of Monet Impression, rising sun , representing the port of the Havre: “Impression, I was sure. I also said myself, since I am impressed, it must there have impression in it. ” To tell the truth, Pascale Bertrand, the word " recalls; impression" was already since about fifteen years in the center of all the conversations, in the workshops or the coffees. As of the beginning of the Years 1880, each impressionist preferred to explore his own way. It is, estimates Marina Ferretti-Bocquillon, whom they were welded by the ambition “to invent an objective expression of the modern life”, and whom the battle was already gained. Cézanne, in particular, preferred since its beginnings permanence with the fluidity of the impressionist universe (“I wanted to make Impressionism something of solid and of durable like the art of the museums”, he will say). To the eighth and last impressionist exposure, in 1886, it did not expose, not more than Monet, Renoir, and Sisley. Seurat and Paul Signac was there, on the other hand. The history of the post-impressionism started, concludes Ferretti-Bocquillon.

Defeat and evolution of the academism

The year 1897 ratified the defeat of the Academism. Manet, Degas, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Cézanne indeed made their entry in an official institution, the museum of Luxembourg, reserved for the government orders. The legacy Caillebotte, patron of the impressionists, collector and painter himself, was finally accepted, after three years of fierce combats (only the tables of Degas had initially been allowed). It is the Council of State which had sliced, asserting that these works made in fact part of the history of French painting. Actually, pear in two had been divided: on 67 fabrics, 29 were rejected. Gérôme had however threatened to resign of its pulpit of professor of the Art schools, qualifying these fabrics of " ordures" , and seeing in their entry in Luxembourg the sign of “the end of the nation”. It is that a new public had been formed, avid formal innovations rather than of confirmation of the established codes. The currents avant-gardists multiplied. The Academy and the School of the fine arts themselves became more eclectic, note Claire Barbillon. After rejectbeing rejected under the second Empire, except in certain edulcorated forms, “the naturalism was adopted by the most official painters of the third Republic”, writes it. As for symbolism, it brings together “artists formally rather traditional”, like Gustave Moreau, and of the radically innovative painters like Gauguin or Odilon Redon. The Living room of Independent the (1884), then the Living room of Fall (1903), hustled the monopoly of the official Living room. The appearance of a true market of art and galleries, often directed by amateurs of the new currents, made it possible to the artists to sell their works without passing under the forks caudines of the Living room and the official orders. In 1899, the tables of Cézanne meet finally success, at the time of a sale to the gallery Georges Petit. In 1900, impressionism triumphs with the centennial exposure over French Art. The Van Gogh retrospective organized in 1901 by the gallery Bernheim-Young person strongly marks Maurice Vlaminck, which exclaims that he loves Van Gogh better that his father! The same year, Picasso exposes at Ambroise Vollard. In 1905, Marquet, Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck expose together to the Living room of Fall. The history bégaie: the name of " fauves" who is then given to them originates in the railleuse exclamation of a critic.

The opening of the Musée of Orsay in 1986 will be the polemical sharp occasion. Much will see a rehabilitation of the " there; pompiers" , even of the " révisionnisme". André Chastel considered however as of 1973 qu ' it had “only advantages there to substitute for a total judgment of reprobation, heritage of the old battles, a quiet and objective curiosity. ”

Painters academists

Paintings

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