Francoise Bardon

Historian of the modern art, Francoise Bardon (1925-2005), is one of the major figures of the Histoire of art criticizes. Former student of the School of Louvre and laid off in traditional letters, graduate of the Practical School of the High Studies, Francoise Bardon supports in 1973 a doctorate in Histoire of art under the direction of Jacques Thuillier. During the Sixties, it directs the section documentation of the photographic library of the National museums, then becomes engineer of research to CNRS before joining the Université of Poitiers.

Mythological portrait and Caravage

The first work of Francoise Bardon is devoted to the representation of the royal person. Its mythological Portrait at the court of France (1975) had still today the appearance of a reference.

During the Seventies, it turns to the Italian field. It is also at this period which it exceeded the set of themes that it had hitherto privileged. With Caravage (1978), it is opposed to a certain type of monograph which reduces the painter to his life and its work and weaves a limpid network of sources and influences. Its research concentrates then on the concept of difference and establishes the nature of the reports/ratios that Caravage maintains with the painting its time and that which precedes it, with the company to which it belongs. This “differential definition”, concept largely influenced by Althusser, falls under a new manner of writing the history of the art which substitutes the reading for the comment and valid by the analysis the concepts allowing the apprehension of painting. This work, badly diffused, did not receive in France the place which it deserved, whereas it was extremely well accommodated in Italy, causing eulogistic reports including under the feather of Prof, academician of the Lincei, in the columns of the conservative daily .

Carpaccio

The recognition by the Italian intellectuals is confirmed and developed during the publication of the Carpaccio (1985). The speaks in praise of a “attractive book which holds account in harmony and in-depth of all the modern thought, of the rigorous criticism of formal esthetics to the most recent research on the history, literary criticism, the social studies”. , which a monograph had devoted to Carpaccio a few years, written before in the : “new interpretation Francoise Bardon does not explore only the space and perspective conquests or the complexes cultural fabrics, but also the relations between the places of the account and the specific reality of the social structure and the formed urbis of Venice”.

The group PALPATES

This work is partly related to the activities of François Bardon within the group PALPUS (Practical artistic, literary and esthetic phenomena), attached to the Research institute Marxists of Paris. Few documents testify directly to this collective intellectual adventure, except for the articles published in the review Esthétique books published in the mobility of the group of painters DDP (Derivery, Dupre, Perrot), whose André Fougeron wrote: “they do not separate the theoretical reflection from the act to paint”. In her interest for the “artistic practice”, Francoise Bardon does not conceive her work of historian of art like an accumulation of information dissociating the methods of the practices, including those of the alive artists.

The pastoral Concert and picturology

The ideas that it advances, the matter which it brings are carefully judged with the chopper of the Dialectique. The development of its thought carries with it the conditions of its criticism; for this reason she is opposed to “the Interprétation which is the attribution of a direction to a painting, as the Identification is the attribution of a name to a work, with the same margin of uncertainty, the same party taken idealistic” (1986). Its reflection on the discipline “history of art” finds its achievement in a case study the pastoral Concert (1996) supplemented then by the Petit treaty of picturology (2000). It there déconstruit modes of historiographic stratification and watch ideological bases of the discipline. Proposing in the second time to center itself on the table so that the direction emerges from work rather than it does not converge there, it establishes the principles of a new approach which it calls the picturology.

Principal publications

“Queens with the Cross”, Re-examined XVIIe Century , 36-37, 1957, pp. 414-419.
“an Engraving of Antoine Jacquard, 1622”, Re-examined Archaeological , 2,1962, pp. 25-48.
“On a portrait of François Ier”, the Information of History of art , 1,1963, pp. 1-8.
Diane of Poitiers and the myth of Diane , Paris, PUF, 1963.
“the Topic of the penitent Madeleine in France at the XVIIe Century”, Newspaper off the Warburg Institute , 31,1968,274-306.
“Médée renovating Eson. Proposals and prospects” (with H. Bardon), Homages to Marcel Fox , Brussels, vol. I, 1969, pp. 83-94.
the mythological portrait at the court of France under Henri IV and Louis XIII: mythology and political , Paris, Picardy, 1975.
“Operation of a mythological portrait: The large Miss in Minerve by Burgundian Pierre”, Coloquio Artes , 26,1976, pp. 5-17.
“metamorphoses of Ovide and the emblematic expression”, Latomus , 35,1976, pp. 71-90.
Caravage or the experiment of the matter , Paris, PUF, 1978.
“Of Passio to Painting: analyzes historical verbal account of the legend of Ursule”, Belgian Revue of history of art and archeology , 52,1983, pp. 43-80.
the narrative painting of Carpaccio in the cycle of holy Ursule , Venice, Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ED Arti, 1985.
“History of art: handling or analyzes concrete works”, Manifeste , 8,1986, pp. 2-4.
“Art, reality and knowledge at Virgile and/or Hermann Broch” (with H. Bardon), Latomus , 46,1987, pp. 369-431.
“concept of realism at Bertolt Brecht”, Esthetic books , 13,1990, p. 5-21.
“Of the idealism in painting and history of Article In connection with a work of Vermeer of Delft”, Esthetic books , 19,1992, pp. 61-68.
“paintings of metamorphoses in Venice at the beginning of XVIe century”, Die Rezeption DER “Metamorphosen” of Ovid in der Neuzeit , Hermann Walter (ED.), Berlin, Mann, 1994, pp. 98-114.
the pastoral , Paris, Esthetic concert books editions, 2 vol., 1995-1996 and.
Small treaty of picturology , Paris, Esthetic books editions, 2000.
“In connection with Caravage: impulses, figurae, picturality”, the Review of art , 140,2003, pp. 72-75.

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