Esthetic combat

esthetic Combats is the title under which were collected, in 1993, in two large volumes, article devoteds to by the writer Octave Mirbeau with painting and the sculpture during its long career of journalist influential, able to ruin the reputations best established and to devote unknown artists who throw on the things a new glance. Almost official cantor of Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin, to which it devotes very many chronicles and which it contributes more than very other to make pass, in twenty years, of a modest notoriety to glory and the dedication, it proclaims the genius of Vincent Van Gogh, of Paul Cézanne and of Camille Claudel, it sings Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir, it pays homage to Whistler, Eugene Carrière and Jean-François Raffaëlli, it promotes Maxime Maufra, Constantin Meunier and Aristide Maillol.

On the other hand, the author of the Abbot Jules turns into ridiculous, on a side, the Symbolists, préraphaélites, larvists and others kabbalists , of which it exècre inspiration turning the back on nature; and, other, academists, firemen, manufacturers of painted fabrics and industrialists of the statuary, covers of price and charms and decorated like cows with the agricultural shows: its Turk heads are Alexandre Cabanel, William Bouguereau, Edouard Detaille, Carolus-Duran, Benjamin-Constant, Denys Puech…

Hostile with the system of the Living rooms, these Bazaars of the mediocrities with thirteen pennies , and with the intervention of the levelling State in the field of the fine arts, Mirbeau is recipient of the merchant-critical system which is set up in second half of the nineteenth century and which makes it possible to the impressionist painters to remain in spite of the ostracism of the official Living rooms. But it is not made any illusion on the merchants and galerists, and the mercenary attitude in art seems eminently dangerous to him, since it tends, in its turn, to choke the true talents and the original voices, if they are considered to be nonprofitable.

Its duty of criticism is not to analyze and interpret works, exercise which seems to him vain and arbitrary (it compares the appointed critics with pick-ups of horse droppings of wood ), but simply to try to make share with its readers its very favorites and its exécrations, in the hope to make it possible some innovative artists to make known itself and to recognize and of living of their Article It is before a whole speaking pipe, which makes esthetic emotion, very subjective, the criterion of its judgments as regards art. But, without illusions on the men and the education system, it knows pertinently that a new snobbery is likely to be set up, without the general public never managing to test true esthetic emotions.

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