Art Gallery

History

The Corporations

Until the middle of 17th century, in France, the painters, just as of other trades, were organized in Corporation. Thus with Paris, since 1391, they belonged to the corporation of the “Painters and tailors of images”.

One also distinguished, at that time, the “Mechanical arts” of the “Liberal arts”.

The “liberal arts”, according to a classification going back to the 5th century, were subdivided in two categories: the arts person “Trivium” (gathering grammar, rhetoric and the dialectical one) and the scientist “Quadrivium” (with the Arithmetic , the Geometry, the Music and the Astronomy). The representatives of the “Liberal arts”, characterized by their “knowledge”, profited from a privileged social status.

The members of the corporations, old professional organizations coming from the the Middle Ages, were arranged under the name of the “Mechanical arts”. They were holders, them, of a “know-how”. The manual and commercial connotation (they “held shop”) of these trades placed them at less low social status. They are craftsmen.

Name “painters” of the corporation of the Painters and tailors of images, as well recovered the “painters of figures” as the “house painters”, the first being directed towards the artistic practice than the seconds.

However, at the 17th century, the concept of “art”, well-known in the Antiquity, but having, with time, lost its contents of “creation of work of art” to the profit of that of skill technical, includes its direction gradually first.

The painters of “figures” are sensitive to this semantic evolution. They do not accept any more their statute of craftsman, with his weak social valorization and want to raise their trade on the level them Liberal arts in order to escape the payments thus from the corporation which they considered constraining for their creativity. While being extracted from this structure, the painters of figure wanted to promote their activity by stressing the exercise of Article They also wished, to guarantee the artistic aspect of their profession, to set up a new pedagogy of training of the young artists to at that time replace the too artisanal die practiced in the corporation, also called Maîtrise.

The role of the Academy

The painters and sculptors of the king, with at their head Charles Le Brun, will undertake a long work of Lobbying (if the term did not exist at the time, the method was already present) near Mazarin and of the queen (the king Louis XIV was hardly 10 years old) to set up a new institution answering these claims. They could quote besides in example the precedents of Florence and Rome, where the Princes with the capacity had supported the creation of Art school, one century earlier already.

They obtain win and in 1648, the creation of the royal Académie of painting and sculpture is approved.

Thus in 1648, the royal Academy of painting and sculpture is created in Paris. It obtains a structure, personnel and of doctrines.

The doctrines are based on the hierarchy of the Kinds, inherited Antiquity. By decreasing order of prestige, this hierarchy at the head places the painting of history (layman, nun or allegorical), then the painting of kinds (put in scenes of human beings considered in their daily existence), the portrait, the landscape and the Still life . One passes in fact of what requires the most imagination and from creativity, for which one needs more talent, with what is regarded as pure copy of reality.

This hierarchy is found in the personnel nominations of the Academy which, let us recall it, has an important function of teaching. Only the painters of history have access to the functions of “officers”: professors, associated with professor in particular.

To be received with the Academy, the candidate was initially to subject for approval one or more as a basis works being used for the choice of the imposed subject, in the kind chosen by him. Then, it carried out the project into final and presented it for reception. Work was called then the “piece of reception” which became property of the Academy.

These works were shown with the public during exposures whose regularity was not principal quality at the 17th century. However of 1663, amended in 1668, envisaged a biennial presentation. It was necessary indeed, to find a means of compensating for the absence of “shops”, places of presentations of works which the Academicians and Officers had given up, within the framework of their new statute.

In 1692, the Academy settles with the Louvre where the exposures of 1699,1704 and 1706 will be held (two first in the Large Gallery of Louvre). 1725 should be waited until to see the process starting again. But this time, it is the square Living room of the Louvre which offers its surfaces to the placement of works. It will be used regularly as place of exposure as from 1737.

It is as of this moment that the practice is spread to use the name of the place to qualify the event and speaking about the official Living room as being the place where the Academicians present their works to the public.

After the French revolution, the Living room is opened with all the alive artists: it is the beginning of a new reign of official art, very traditional, with imposed topics of the stories Greek and Roman, in particular at the time of the rise in cabin of the candidates to the Prix of Rome.

It is the Romantisme, with in particular Eugene Delacroix, related with the representative most influential of various monarchies which follow one another the capacity, which allows the true diversification of the schools of painting, leading to the creation of living rooms independent of the political power after the Second Empire.

The apogee of the Living rooms of visual art (fine of XIXe and XXe century)

The third and the Fourth republic constituted the only true periods of total artistic freedom in France since, contrary to the preceding modes, they did not impose official art. This total freedom to create could open out, mainly also thanks to the will of some politicians, often freemasons, who refused very forced in art as out of religious matter and who compromised themselves with personal capacity to support the creation of Living rooms out of the governmental seizure.

Living rooms created under the Third Republic

The old living room of the Academy becomes the Salon of the French Artists and although created at the end of the Second Empire, it is under the République that the National company of the Art schools * will develop. One thus sees constituting before the First World War of other companies of self-management artists, painters, sculptors, engravers, who expose each year to the Large palace: the Living room of Independent the, the Living room of autumn *.

The new departure of the Post-war period

Just after the Second world war still create for themselves Living rooms self-managed by the artists: the Living room of May, the Living room of New Realities, the Living room of the young Painting, the Living room of the Drawing and Painting to Water, the Living room " Comparaisons" * both created in 1954, the Living room of the Pilot Painters of their Time, the Living room " Ground latine" and others. The exposures then take place mainly with the museum of Modern art of the Ville of Paris or with the Galliera museum close to the Trocadéro.

The Malraux era

Starting from the re-establishment of an official art very framed with the come to power at the end of 1958 of the General de Gaulle and her Minister for the Culture Andre Malraux which removes the Prix of Rome decreed by the Institute of France, the Living rooms become principal artistic space of freedom de facto, therefore of dispute of the official art regent by the proper nephew of the general.

The various governments of the Fifth Republic thus will endeavor - with mollesse it is true, since Art is not their priority - to make so that the Living rooms self-managed by the painters lose will have them gradually international. He multiply the " Salons" artistic whose exhibitors are appointed by the administration, increasingly important in addition, since between 1958 and the presidency of François Mitterrand, the Ministère of the Culture passes from three thousand to thirty thousand civils servant.

The concept even of Living room, as a place of presentation of works of painting and sculpture, loses its artistic direction gradually to be supplanted by a more commercial direction. Thus the Salons Domestic Arts, Aeronautics, Car, Agriculture etc appear

But more none of these events is held in the square Living room of the Louvre, which gave them its name. The “mechanical arts” all the more took again the top that in 1993, the Large palace is closed for work and that the Living rooms independent of Visual art must be spaces of very expensive exposure to the four corners of Paris and in province.

to see English articles, not yet translated into French.

Parisian Living rooms at the beginning of XXIe century

Since the end of the year 1990, senior officials reprocesses some are made indicate as presidents of the Art galleries, sculpture, Parisian drawing and engraving, completely self-managed by artists professional plastics technicians during the XXe century. The regulation envisages remainder which a civil servant who chairs a recognized association of public utility - it is the case of the majority of the Living rooms - continues to profit, if it makes the request of it, from the treatment which it perceived when it was in activity.

The ministry for the culture, whose Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres then Mrs. Christine Albanel were titular, is from now on charged to manage the Large palace of Paris whose restoration was completed in 2006. Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres decided that all the companies of painting, drawing and sculpture eager to hold their living room with the Large palace will have from now on to devote a great part of the surface which will be rented to them with the exposure of works of painters officially appointed by the administration, even dead, like Andy Warhol. Moreover, these companies will have to organize their exposure all unit for the same period of the year. The Living rooms which will refuse all these directives, or will find a space of exposure out of the Large palace, will be exposed to retaliatory measures of which the refusal to grant the least subsidy to them.

Already, for 2006, at least a Living room, one of oldest and most prestigious, chaired by a painter, in the past general officer, decided to refuse the governmental directives, to organize its exposure elsewhere, in buildings as central as those of the Large palace.

It is in fact the public and the art lovers, which continue to flow in mass in the Living rooms and finance them by the tickets of entry and the purchases of works, which constitute the best parking of their perenniality. One can add that the voted law when Laurent Fabius was Minister for the Budget, and who exonerated the works of art of the wealth tax, took part in its manner to save the freedom of art in France and the Living rooms independent of the supervision of the State.

External bonds

Chronic artistic
Living room of Independent the
Living room of the French Artists
Historical of the Living rooms
List of the Living rooms in France

Internal bonds

Critic art
Living room of Independent the
National company of the Art schools
Living room of May
Living room of New Realities
Price Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

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