Notes on the Boucher Exhibitions Marking the Tercentenary of the Artist's Birth (original) (raw)
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Sculpture have a serial rather than narrative relationship to each other. Like the arabesque architectural details, they can also be increased or reduced in number depending on the amount of space to be filled. Moreover, their staccato rhythm acts singularly in visual terms and is perfectly suited to the decorative demands to which they respond. In this case, the loosely thematic Arts and Sciences mirror the publishing endeavour with which Pompadour was eager to associate herself: the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751-1772). In this work, readers can flip from one entry to another (for example, from "Architecture" to "Tragedy"), and even between volumes, without expecting any causal link but deriving knowledge or pleasure from individual entries. This formal structure also worked effectively in the print market, where a given motif could be extracted and freely circulated, unencumbered by compositional or narrative demands. Claude Duflos's prints advertised in the Mercure de France in 1753, for example, extracted two of the vignettes that appear in the Frick's Boucher Room in precisely this way and included them in an arbitrarily grouped series of four prints modelled after enfants de Boucher, each of which was given a moralising verse. 3 Likewise, it is possible for just one or two motifs-rather than all four-to turn up in wildly different spatial and material contexts, including Gobelin tapestries, Sèvres
The Artist as Collector: François Boucher (1703–1770)
The name François Boucher is synonymous with the visual and material culture of luxury in mid eighteenth-century France. His paintings are filled with desirable objects that informed the tastes of collectors. What is less known is that Boucher was a prolific collector of art and nature, with more than 13,000 different objects in his collection at the time of his death in 1770. Despite this, a formal study of his collection is almost entirely absent from the existing field of historical scholarship. This article brings to light Boucher’s activities as a collector, in particular his interest in natural objects for which he was especially well known. It also considers the extent to which Boucher’s passion for collectable objects had an impact on his practice as an artist.
Bourdieu and the art historians
The Sociological Review, 2001
I have never had much taste for 'grand theory', and when I read works which might enter into that category, I cannot stop myself from feeling a certain irritation before a typically scholastic combination of false audacity and true carefulness. Bourdieu, 1996: 177.
Bourdieu and Art/ Painting - De-authorising Narratives?: The Case of Ithell Colquhoun: Part I
It seems there was comparatively little discussion of the work of the British surrealist painter Ithell Colquhoun during her lifetime, or in the immediate decades following her death in 1988 (although see Ades, 1980). More recently, however, her work has been subject to comprehensive cataloguing (Shillitoe, 2009) and has attracted considerable attention from both feminist scholars (Ferentinou, 2011, Stevens, 2016) and those involved in esoteric studies similar to her own (Ratcliffe, 2007, Nichols, 2007). Such interest has led to a small but deeper understanding of her work, its significance and place within the national and international Surrealist movements, and the ideas and experiences, which gave rise to it. This paper, rather than focus on feminist critiques and esoteric appraisals of Colquhoun, bases itself on the socio-cultural aspects of her life and works. It builds on other studies, which have employed the methodology developed by the French socio-cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu to the art field (Grenfell and Hardy, 2006, 2007, 2010). Issues of research object construction and reflexivity are therefore to the fore, together with field analyses, which scope both Colquhoun’s empirical biography (habitus) and the networks she formed (field), together with their relationship to the dominant field of cultural reproduction (Grenfell, 2012, 2014). I shall offer network analysis of her field of activities, both within artistic and esoteric communities. The paper presents synchronic accounts of Colquhoun at ‘critical moments’ within her life trajectories, detailing the breadth and focus of her influence with respect to the capitals – social, cultural and economic – these levels of activities involved. Such analyses are set against exemplars from her painting as a way to compare the development of an esoteric aesthetic with her biographical experience. In particular, I am interested in the provenance and destiny of avant-gardes, especially those apparently at their margins. The account challenges conventional narratives of her work but does not oppose them. Rather it seeks to demonstrate the relationship between personal creative aesthetics and the social conditions of their production in order to target a reflexive understanding of the expressive impulse as it is manifested in trans-historic fields and the necessity of human creativity immanent within them. Refs Ades, D (1980) ‘Notes on two Surrealist Painters: Eileen Agar and Ithell Colquhoun’, Oxford Art Journal, 3, 1, 36-42. Ferentinou, V (2011) ‘Ithell Colquhoun, Surrealism and the Occult’, Papers of Surrealism, Issue 9, London: University of Essex. Grenfell, M (2012) - Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts (2nd Edition). Stockfield: Acumen, 248 pp. - (2014) - Bourdieu and Data Analysis: Methodological Principles and Practice. Bern: Lang, 333pp. Grenfell, M and Hardy, C (2006) ‘When Two Fields Collide: St Ives and the Making of an Artistic Avant-garde’, The International Journal of the Arts in Society, 1, 2, pp. 77-85. - (2010) ‘Snaps! Bourdieu and the Field of Photographic Art’, International Journal of Arts in Society, 5, 1, pp. 49-62. - (2013) 'Field Manoeuvres: Bourdieu and the Young British Artists', Space and Culture, pp. 19- 34. - (2007) Art Rules: Bourdieu and the Visual Arts. London: Berg Publications, 212 pp. Nichols, S (2007) The Magical Writings of Ithell Colquhoun. Lulu Entreprises. Ratcliffe, E (2007) Ithell Colquhoun: Pioneer, Surrealist Artist, Occultist, Writer and Poet. Oxford: Mandrake. Stevens, A (2016) ‘How and in what ways did the work of female artists significantly subvert the Surrealist male discourse during the period 1935-45: with primary reference to the work of Ithell Colquhoun and Leonora Carrington’, Thesis awarded for the degree of MA in Art History, University of Falmouth. Shillitoe, R (2009) Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born in Nature. Lulu Enterprises. .................................................................. Professor Michael Grenfell The Southampton Education School Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences University of Southampton Highfield Southampton SO171BJ E-mail: grenfell@soton.ac.uk https://soton.academia.edu/michaelgrenfell
Keri Yousif: Balzac, Grandville and the Rise of Book Illustration
Publishing Research Quarterly, 2014
Keri Yousif's study of Balzac and Grandville is a welcome and significant contribution to the field of textual and visual studies, and indeed to the general domain of French nineteenth century research. While the growing body of criticism on the text-image problematic reflects an increasingly interdisciplinary approach, Yousif has rightly identified the lack of convergence between comparative studies of visual culture and descriptive narratives of the technical, social and aesthetic changes that led to the popularization of book illustration. It is this lacuna that the author aims to fill. To this end, her book's theoretical recourse to Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture is one which is, throughout the course of the work, applied to the richly charted and diverse realms of artistic biography, historical bibliography, art history and indeed extensive close text analysis. The introduction to this work raises the curtain on the cultural and industrial context of the July Monarchy. Yousif outlines key developments such as the re-emergence of the French satirical press (La Silhouette, La Caricature Morale, Politique et Littéraire, Le Charivari) and rise of the 'feuilleton', the reforms in censorship and education and the modernization of printing. Having clearly unveiled the growing domain of illustration, the author devotes chapter one to the early yet seminal works which grounded the artists' individual careers. Her analyses of Grandville's Les métamorphoses du jour (1829) and Balzac's Les scènes de la vie privée (1830) exemplify the sixth tenet of Bourdieu's ''theory of practice'', as offered by Yousif, namely the 'dialectic of distinction' in which artists must locate themselves in relation to the officially consecrated producers of the period. Balzac's breakaway from romanticism via a shifted focus on the collective (as evident in the network of social 'types' in Les dangers de l'inconduite/Gobseck) paves the way for the later 'physiognomies', textual and visual caricatures in which social observation,
190203 BOELE_A Broader View of Art.pdf
Treasury! Masterpieces from the Hermitage, 2019
On the occasion of the Anniversary exhibition 'Treasury!' I collected a few thoughts about art history in connection with my work of 18 years collaborating with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Working with its collections and its curators have broadened my view on the history of art. The design of the catalogue was done by www.gebr.silvestri.nl.
The Bouguereau of the Naturalists: Bastien Lepage and British Art
Art History, 1978
In 1887 Whistler and William Merritt Chase visited the International Exhibition in Antwerp together. From Pennell's account we learn that the older American was teasing the younger one. In the presence of Whistler, Chase was rather embarrassed by his own admiration for Bastien Lepage, of whose works there were several on show. With characteristic 'wickedness' Whistler seized upon the situation to declare: Til say one word, Chase. .. the one word-school.' 1 In this single utterance Whistler conveyed his reservations about the artist whose work, three years after his death, was regarded with such enthusiasm by the younger generation. Painters of Whistler's age drew their sustenance from an art with a longer pedigree and would consequently advise their followers not to be seduced. We find that Pissarro père, on more than one occasion, exhorted Pissarro fils to disown what he regarded as Bastien's souless skill, while in the accounts of painting in the '80s Degas' mocking title 'the Bouguereau of the Naturalists' is frequently quoted. 2 And yet we often forget that there were many artists and critics of the day, led perhaps by Zola, for whom Bastien's concentration on métier gave his work an edge over that of the group represented by Degas and Pissarro. Many would have agreed with Zola that, 'Sa supériorité sur les peintres impressionnistes se résume dans ceci, qu'il sait réaliser ses impressions.... Il a donc gardé leur souffle, leur méthode analy tique, mais il a porté son attention sur l'expression et la perfection du métier.' 3 Such divided opinions were even more marked in Britain where the dispute over Bastien's work still lingered in criticism at the end of the '90s. By 1910 many British painters, conscious of reputation, were more likely to admit to the influence of universally accepted masters. More recently, historians who have looked at those artists' work have found it more tantalizing to search for the traces of a very positive personality, like Monet, for instance, than to reveal the effects of someone who was himself carrying stylistic and iconographie ingredients from others. The questions raised by the work of many young artists of the 1880s have to do with the fact that the style of their chosen master was in a sense 'soluble'. What he conveyed was not totally of himself but depended to a varying degree on his reading of others as it were at a third remove. Similarly one has