Preface to the 1986 Edition

Boime, Albert

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Preface to the 1986 Edition

Albert Boime

The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century

~The writing and publication of The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century coincided with and made a substantial contribution to a worldwide shift in cultural taste. This shift has profoundly affected art education, museums, art historical scholarship and art production during the past two decades. The founding in 1980 of the New York...

Author

Albert Boime

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00116.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-16899

Preface to the 1986 Edition

The writing and publication of The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century coincided with and made a substantial contribution to a worldwide shift in cultural taste. This shift has profoundly affected art education, museums, art historical scholarship and art production during the past two decades. The founding in 1980 of the New York Academy of Art, whose purpose was to revive the curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; the numerous monographs and exhibitions devoted to Salon and other academic masters; the opening in December 1986 of the new Musée d’Orsay in Paris, which features classical realists alongside avant-garde painters; and the revival of figurative and narrative painting—all testify to the dramatic change in taste which has occurred since the book first appeared in 1971.

Prior to the book’s appearance contemporary culture was dominated by the doctrinal and programmatic exclusiveness of modernism. Like other belief systems, modernism generated its own dogma and creation myth. According to its cosmogony, the nineteenth century witnessed a showdown between Good and Evil, incarnated by the mighty divinities Avant-Garde and Academy, who contested for aesthetic kingship. The noisy, active Avant-Garde, accompanied by the lesser deities Spontaneity and Originality, finally wrested the Crown of Fine Arts from the passive, unchangeable Academy and its still sharp-toothed demons Gloss and Perfection. The victorious deity went on to beget a sequence of disorderly progeny, who managed to stave off the growling remnant of the defeated gods. Each new generation of the victors sprang fully grown with paintbrush in hand and surpassed its elders in novelty, strength and personality. They completed the work of their ancestors by dismembering the ex-divinity Academy and its demons to prevent them from returning to life. Periodically, however, the upstarts had to rise μρ and vanquish anew the dread fourfold specter of Academicism, Classical Realism, Narrative Painting and Illustration. Such was the myth that explained the origin of modernism until it ran out of steam at the end of the 1960s.

During the 1950s and 1960s, culture was subjected to the hegemony and authoritarian imposition of the absolute value of the abstract avant-garde. Its defenders posited an abrupt transition of almost catastrophic change between the old and the new, between tradition and innovation. Their attempt to expunge from the historical record the contributions of the Academic masters succeeded to such an extent that few art historical accounts of the period—whether of the broad survey type or more specialized studies—gave more than passing mention to the unfortunate ‘nonpersons’. My own undergraduate and graduate education suffered because of this historical omission: the only time I ever saw a slide of a Gérôme or a Bouguereau was when the instructor needed some comic relief from the stodgy parade of examples of Courbet and Cézanne, codified in a limited formalistic discussion. The boring litany of avant-garde attributes often sounded like the empty jargon of the contemporary art journals, and I recall longing for more information about Couture’s Romans of the Decadence. Indeed, the whole period was steeped in the dogma of the inevitable triumph of the avant-garde that justified the current dynamics of the art market and the domination of the New York School—the latest offspring of Paris and the Double Helix that culminated as The Big Apple of Discord.

My book struck at the ideological roots of the myth and revealed the logical progression between the Academic tradition and the facts of modernity. It pointed out the profound ties between Academicians and their independent disciples and demonstrated a natural connection between the informal preparatory art of the masters and the formal finished art of their modernist pupils. It disclosed that the downgrading of the Academy and its teachers was an ideological stance taken by apologists for the avant-garde. By exposing the wellsprings of the myth, it restored to art scholarship the missing chapter that had been rudely excised from its history.

The world of creativity (whatever its ultimate aims and sources) knows no concrete boundaries between high and low—boundaries heretofore determined by modernist critics not in terms of intrinsic quality but in terms of style and/or content. Nevertheless, the effort to eradicate the Academicians has resulted in the staining of their entire edifice with the tarred brush of ‘badness’. By definition, Academic work came to mean ‘bad art’ and avant-garde work ‘good art’. There is no need to introduce specific examples of the two schools into the present discourse, but the evident absurdity of this general proposition would be cause for endless laughter were it not for the fact that it is a notion still taken seriously by eminent critics and art historians. In the 1950s and 1960s style and gesture were cherished as the be-all and end-all of art production, indeed, as the justification for all cultural practice from prehistorical times to the present. It was a patently ahistorical attitude that also bestowed upon the moderns a history-exempt status: through the categories of formalism their work could be viewed as ‘timeless’, like old master productions. Only now the artists sprang fully equipped not from the head of the deity Originality but from the deity known as The Unconscious—a Freudian surrogate for the old divinity.

But artists do not work in a vacuum, and there is an inevitable link between the most original efforts and the historical context. So much downgrading of the Academy aroused my suspicion; and like others of my generation spurred by the social and political protests of the late 1960s, I questioned the common assumptions about Academic art, just as they challenged the existing policies of the government and the university. In this sense, my interest in the Academic tradition signified as much a questioning of the falsified view of history promulgated in the classroom and survey texts as it did a manifestation of a changing taste. My allegiance shifted from the modernists to the ‘underdog’ Academicians who were the target of so much irreverent abuse. As my research disclosed the continuity between the generations, between the Academic tradition and avant-garde modernism, a missionary zeal overtook me in my desire to point out the historical links that had been relegated to oblivion by an ahistorical mindset. The sheer illogicality of the modernist position justified my project and fired me on.

The book amplified the historical perspective of the nineteenth century to again account for some of its most illustrious practitioners. It heightened scholarly awareness of the degree to which the early modernists were influenced by their masters. Few contemporary monographic studies of the avant-garde skip this relationship, as was the case two decades ago. Today art historians automatically incorporate into their texts the progressive exchange that took place between Academician and independent disciple. The modernists did not simply reject what went before but borrowed freely from tradition those components that best answered to their aesthetic and ideological needs. The book showed that they were not only part of the same process but that they also applied the Academic techniques to their most advanced experiments. In addition, my study contributed a historical dimension to the early works and school examples of the independents that had either been forgotten or deliberately ignored. In this way, the book established the intimate connection between modernist experimentation and Academic ideals.

At first I was a lone voice in the wilderness of avant-garde neglect. The deep-seated art historical bias against ‘mediocrity’ consigned my research to the niche of ‘bad’ art, but recognizing that I was touching at the roots of an entrenched belief system I probed deeper. This took me into a full-scale investigation of the institutional base of Academic art, its official sponsorship, private patronage, curricula, and political and aesthetic interaction as exemplified by the relationship of the juste milieu policies of Louis-Philippe and contemporary art production. The fruitful results encouraged others to do more research in French official archives, to examine the institution of the Salon and the records of state commissions. The book thus made a significant contribution to the methodology of social art history that is now dominant among the younger generation of art historians. I know in my own case that the book provided the foundation for my continuing work in this direction.

While the scholarly community’s acceptance of the book happened gradually, enthusiastic response to it came immediately from two other sectors of the art network. The first, and the most gratifying to me, came from young contemporary painters groping hesitatingly in realist forms and from an older generation of figurative artists seeking historical justification for their contribution. Both groups expressed gratitude for the reconstruction of the training of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and especially for the scholarly perspective, which they saw as legitimizing their own efforts. It was as if the book had articulated the frustrations of a large segment of the art community and liberated them from the hegemonic embrace of the Museum of Modern Art. In addition, it gave a legitimate voice to the aspirations of those wanting to make meaningful statements about the burning issues of social inequities then at the forefront of national debate. Graphic designers and poster painters, feminist and black artists were then turning to representative and narrative modes in order to address contemporary political and social problems. The book clearly contributed to a sorely needed figurative revival that reached an audience impervious to the elitist jargon and escapist visual forms of modernism that were completely out of touch with the pressing political concerns of that period.

The other response, more predictable but still unanticipated, came from the various sectors of the art market. I received requests to write scholarly prefaces and introductions for shows of academic masters, and also letters from collectors and dealers asking me to authenticate or identify works attributed to Academicians and their acolytes. I complied with most of these requests, mainly to repay the generosity of those who had permitted me access to otherwise obscure or hidden examples of academic works. I soon realized, however, that I had flushed out an entirely new area of art historical merchandise for a market in which the avant-garde had attained price levels well beyond the ken of even the prosperous middle classes. A new territory needed to be mined for the affluent of the 1960s and 1970s, and here again my work provided scholarly legitimation for the new direction. I watched with fascination as the auction prices of ‘bad’ art shot through the roof.

At the same time, it was clear to me that the very success of the Academicians in the art market (attesting to the shift in taste) helped the book to gain recognition among the scholarly community. The mellowing critics and younger generation of art historians were pulled along by the market forces. As a result of the reciprocal exchange between scholarly and market dynamics, the former ignominy associated with the Academicians has all but evaporated. Now it is voguish not only to study and collect works by the Academicians and their faithful followers, but to rejoice with the discovery of every new one that had somehow slipped through the art historical net. Thus some sixteen years after publication of the book, the locus of the art market has shifted from the avant-garde to ‘the other nineteenth century’ or ‘a new nineteenth century’ that is now a legitimate field of inquiry. The voracious demand of the market has certainly helped the Academicians achieve their recent respectability and make the book the ‘bible’ of the new movement.

The persuasive nature of the book has also forced critics of the avant-garde to deal with and allow for the impact of Academic art in the style of their heroes. While at first viewing it as a kind of lese majesty, these formerly hostile critics have had to make their peace with the Academy. Nevertheless, they—together with some conservative art historians whose dread of mediocre art makes them odd bedfellows—still hold sway over the instruments of communication. There are still major battles to be fought in order that Academicians may not be indiscriminately lumped in the category of ‘bad’ art. The lingering diehards of the avant-garde are even now regrouping for an all-out attack on ‘the new nineteenth-century painting’. Only further intensive historical investigation of the Academic masters and a richer array of their works can help still the debate over their presumed badness. As of now the social historian of art and the informed apologist of the avant-garde can at least agree on the historical importance of the Academicians, but the latter still wishes to insist on the superior quality of the modernists. In point of fact, I am certain that the greater degree of inclusivity will at last reveal that current standards of quality are part of the socialization process under our advanced industrial society. It is possible that by 2001 the avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s will be considered bad art, while Bouguereau, Gérôme and Couture will be more fortunate.

I am proud to have played a role in this changing perception. I am grateful that the book has been of use to both artists and scholars in their search for a historical dimension that had been all but erased from the collective art historical consciousness. Above all, the unfolding of the book and its public reception have clarified for me the role of historical research in its relationship to the sociology of culture. This has been both an enriching and a sobering experience.

April 1986
A. B.

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