The Judgment Of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave The World Impressionism (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
Ross King, author of the pop-histories "Brunelleschi's Dome" and "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling," writes another great story that combines artistic and political intrigue. This is a tale of the 1860s in France, when Edouard Manet and the not-yet-named Impressionists challenged the artistic establishment while Napolean III's "Second Empire" teetered on the brink of disaster. Most interesting is King's ability to tease out the relations between the political and artistic world, which were admittedly closer in Second Empire France than in just about any period in history. A section of Napoleon's Ministry of State known as the Ministry of the Imperial House and Fine Arts, based at the Louvre, controlled artistic exhibitions in Paris, most importantly the annual Salon, where artists displayed and sold their work. In the 1860s the arch-conservative Minister of Fine Arts, Comte de Nieuwerkerke, set the annual regulations which determined who was elected to the Salon's jury, and therefore what type of paintings were exhibited (and where they got exhibited: Manet's revolutionary Olympia was moved from eye-level to high above visitors heads at the 1865 Salon. One critic said "you scarcely knew whether you were looking at a parcel of nude flesh or a bundle of laundry."). The Comte's strict, conservative regulations for the 1863 Salon led to such an outcry that Napoleon, in order to gain artistic support, sponsored a "Salon de Refuses" where the rejects could be judged by the people as a whole. The 1866 Salon was known for its "Jury of Assassins," after one artist committed suicide when his art was refused entry. In order to gain more liberal support along with his liberalization of the censorship laws, Napolean in 1868 opened the "Salon of Newcomers," where previously rejected artists like Pisarro, Renoir, and Degas exhibited. King shows that art functioned as an important art of the state in this period.King also shows that this political concern about art was not idle or elitist. The Salon attracted as many as a million visitors in some years, sometimes up to 50,000 a day when it was free on Sundays, and they were truly visitors of all classes (he compares this to the most popular exhibition of 2003, Leonardo: Master Draftsman, at the Met, which drew 400,000 attendees, or around 6,800 visitors a day, not even a fraction of the attendance at the old Paris Salons). Painting and sculpture were real popular and political entertainments.He also relates some great anecdotes, such as the confusion among Manet's friends when Monet began to exhibit at the Salon (they complimented the angry Manet on his new landscapes: generations of art students, you have company). He also shows that it was the Americans who first showed the full appreciation for the Impressionists (Louisine Havemeyer, wife of the sugar-magnate, spent more than anyone else buying up Monet, Pissarro, and Cezanne works in the 1890s).Of course there are a few problems. King spends too much time comparing Manet and the now forgotten painter Meissonier, who was called the greatest artist of his age but who today is so ignored that he even had his statute removed from the Louvre by a recent French Minister of Culture. Although it is interesting to know about this oft-ignored representative of the "conservative" establishment, it's hard to get excited about the details of his family life. Also, the endless annual salons tend to blur into one another at some points in the story, a little more discretion here would have been nice. But overall this book gave me a real appreciation for the world that birthed modern art, and its importance in its time.
The Paris Salon was the ultimate tribunal where French Art was judged during the 1800's. Thousands of artists submitted paintings, sculptures and other forms of art every year in hopes of being accepted.Being chosen or not could break or make an artists' career quite literally. Over the decades, the tribunal that selected the works had become a self-perpetuating institution with sclerotized ideas of what constituted Art- both in regards to content ( mostly mythological, classical or historical grand scenes with some sort of moral) and style (no trace of brush strokes and soft chiaroscuro transitions). In 1863, driven by the outrage that resulted from the rules imposed by the Count of Nieuekerke and which resulted in controversial refusals, Napoleon III ordered the opening of the Salon des Refuses: an exhibition that was to display many of the works refused by the official Salon. Napoleon III knew how to distract the population from his dictatorial government after all. This book follows the fortunes of two painters that were deeply involved in the Salon controversy: Meissionier, a very succesful painter of excruciating detail and accuracy; and Manet, a representative of a more direct and modern style. In a very accessible style that flows quite well, the book delves into the state of French Art of the nineteenth century. The panorama that emerges is a lot more nuanced than what we normally understand by the rivalry between impressionism and classicism, the mere confrontation between the "new" and the "old" which ends in 1874 with the Impressionists Exhibition. The author reveals that Manet, for example, used very classical models (Titian, Tintoretto) for his first paintings. Also, Manet valued the Salon and kept presenting his paintings to be juried year after year, even after becoming the hero of many an impressionist. Meissioner on the other hand struggled to create a modern vision as well despite the fact that his enormous success stemmed from his anachronistic and greatly detailed canvases of a somewhat dutch inspiration. The cast of characters that surrounds these two masters is the subject of much literature: Courbet, Baudelaire, Whistler, Monet, Zola, Fantin-laTour, Ingres, Degas, Bougereau and the "pompier" painters, an endless row of royals, politcians, gallerists and collectors. "The Judgment of Paris" does a phenomenal job of integrating all these pieces in a coherent narrative. I particularly enjoyed the glimpses into the lives of the painters, how young some of them were when they created some of their work, how poor or rich or inbetween some were, how they debated with their own place in time and art, how some died young and how some fought, escaped or resisted the Franco_Prussian war, the siege of Paris and The Commune. I thought it was fascinating and far form the "finished" product and narrow portrait of self-determination most biographers produce. For anybody interested in art and history, the book is well documented and seamless. Not just a collection of facts in search of a story but a good narration.If you are a painter, this is a must read and the only thing you will regret is the time you won't be painting waiting to put it down.
What do You think about The Judgment Of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave The World Impressionism (2006)?
I liked this quite a bit. And the nice pun on the painting "The Judgment of Paris [that guy who started the Trojan War]" with the judgment of Paris about impressionism over the course of the 1860s was pretty good. The urban milieu comes through clearly: the journalists, the politicians (including Nap. III trying to prop up his reign and the whole mess of crap with the Franco-Prussian war and the commune and all of that), the regular people, the artists--they're all interacting at these artistic salon shows, judging the new styles, and laughing and carrying on and having a good ol' judgy time. I don't know Messioner's work, or Manet's, really, but now I will go find out about that. I thought it was interesting to point out not the absolute difference between the two, (old vs. new, good vs. evil, success vs. failure) but the fact that Messioner was concerned with his legacy and posterity and all that, and he embraced some of the new but ultimately has gotten the worse deal out of the two of them, in terms of later critical appraisal. Messioner was doing the best he could with his work, his tiny paintings and his lack of skill on big canvases, and he had shortcomings. Manet also had shortcomings, and even if he was trying to give an "impression" with his work rather than faithfully reproduce "reality," he still didn't always succeed in expressing himself as he hoped. And he wanted conventional success, and probably would have settled for that, rather than fame after his death. And Baudelaire was a cranky old misanthrope, and I must now go read everything he wrote.
—Miriam
King's exploration of the birth of Impressionism, which he considers the greatest revolution in art since the Italian Renaissance, interweaves the stories of two French artists: Ernest Meissanier, the most famous artist of his time who is now derided, dismissed, and virtually forgotten by art historians, and Edouard Manet, considered the father of Impressionism and one of the most influential artists in history who was scorned and insulted for most of his professional career. This dichotomy represents the central conceit of the book. History will tell the tale, King implies, the fickle tasts of a generation have no bearing on what will ultimately prove to be immortal. Posterity chooses its heroes, the Academies do not get to perscribe them. That's fine. For me, however, there is just one glaring problem: when considered alongside one another there is not a question in my mind about who is the superior artist: Meissonier. I believe King's premise ought also to be attached to our current tastes in art. Posterity, in the truest sense, has not yet had its full say. What the twentieth century deamed to be great art (Manet) will most likely be rebelled against in the 21st century, and Meissonier may, in the end, have the final say. One art historian quoted by King said something to the effect that he is disgusted by the thought that Meissonier, a pompous self-indulgeant technician supposedly without a true artistic notion, who made a career and a lot of money by creating empty decorations for the homes of rich bourgoisie's, while obviously supperior artists, such as Manet, toiled in absolute obscurity, barely able to scratch together enough francs to buy paints and brushes. This is the prevailing sentiment among art historians, and one would imagine, among contemporary artists. These idiots don't seem to understand that Manet's work today decorates the homes of the rich bourgoisie, that ultimately political sentiment has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with art, and that, yes, history will tell the tale. When viewed next to Meissonier's paintings, Manet's best work seems cartoonish, immature, untalented, and entirely forgettable, with the only exceptions being Le dejaneur sur l'herbe and The Assassination of Maximillian. By contrast, Meissonier's best work is breathtaking, even in reproductions, and his less great paintings are at least interesting.But back to the book. Ross King is a great writer, a compelling storyteller, and, for the most part, a fair historian. The only exception to this is his never clearly justified loathing for Victor Hugo. The Judgment of Paris is a very good read and likely to spark many interesting conversations about the nature of art, artistic immortality, taste, transformation, revolution, and evolution.
—Adrian Stumpp
I am a huge Ross King fan and absolutely devoured his previous nonfiction books, Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling. Ross King has a way of making history come alive because he does not just isolate his subject matter but rather analyzes it in terms of the social and political climate of the times, with just a smattering of historical gossip here and there to add a little spice. His latest book, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressi
—Shannon
