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| Gustave Courbet |
Yesterday afternoon while
roaming through the crowded galleries of the New York Metropolitan Museum of
Art, I came across a painting in the 19th century European paintings and sculptures
section that seemed coarse yet real. It depicted a woman in nude standing beside
a waterfall, and instead of the usual frontal nudes, this one depicted the
woman’s behind.
Titled ‘The Source’, the
painting was by a French artist Gustave Courbet. I hadn’t heard of the artist before. The
painting and the artist were in a section that housed some of the best known
works and artists of the 19th century. And so while it was impossible to find
space to view Claude Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’, or Edgar Degas’s ‘Little Dancer’, nobody
seemed interested in ‘The Source’.
The museum’s introduction to
the painting explained, “This nude is painted in an unflinching natural style
and is devoid of the trappings of academic allegory to which the painting’s
tile alludes. Courbet is thought to have intended it as a response to (JeanAuguste Dominique) Ingres’s own La Source
(1856, Musee d’Orsay, Paris), which was exhibited at the Galerie Martinet,
Paris in 1861. The picture by Ingres depicts an idealized nude holding a jar
from which water pours, as allusion to a spring or river source, and
symbolizing poetic inspiration.”
Later in the evening, I browsed
the internet to know more about Courbet, and discovered an artist who did
everything that an artist should do – challenge preconceived notions of what
should or shouldn’t constitute art. Courbet (1819-1877) created Realism in the
mid-nineteenth century, and influenced early modernists such as Edouard Manet
and Claude Monet. He rejected the then prevalent classical and theatrical style
by focusing on the physical reality of the objects with all its imperfections.
He introduced egalitarianism by making commoners his models, and painting their
lives on a scale that had previously been reserved for either royalty or
religion.
According to a website (www.gustavecourbet.org) dedicated to
his work, “For Courbet Realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form,
but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct
observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He
depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing, challenged contemporary
academic ideas of art, which brought the criticism that he deliberately adopted
a cult of ugliness.”
Courbet shook the French art establishment
until then dominated by classicism that had been central to art since
Renaissance. He forced the art community to consider an alternative vision that
took cognisance of the prevailing sociopolitical and religious trends. He also declined
the Legion of Honour that the despotic Napoleon III wanted to bestow upon him.
Active in the radicalization of
the working class in France, he abandoned art briefly to serve the government
during the Paris Commune of 1871. Courbet was put in charge of all museums and
entrusted with the task of saving art from the rampaging mob that had taken
over Paris. Subsequently, he was held responsible for carrying out the Commune’s
decree of dismantling the Vendome Column erected by Napoleon I, and had to flee
to Switzerland after he was ordered to pay for its reconstruction.
Courbet was opposed to the
dominance of the state-sponsored art patronage and worked hard to establish a
direct market for his work. He understood that an artist’s responsibility was
not just to create art, but also sell it. He created new ways to create
awareness about his art and himself, becoming one of the first artists to
utilize the newly-available mass media of newspapers to create a wider audience
for his work. Courbet’s efforts succeeded in getting women of Paris interested
in art. (The Most Arrogant Man in France:Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture).
In a review of an exhibition of
his works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008, The New York Times’s Roberta Smith wrote, “Courbet virtually wrote
the definition of the modern artist as a bohemian, narcissistic loner and
political radical who shunned the academy, tutoring himself at the Louvre and
living by the phrase “épater le bourgeois,”
or “shock the bourgeoisie.” He emerged in Paris in the 1840s, when court
patronage was long gone, but the modern art market was still in formation. He
was quick to grasp the usefulness of three related, also nascent phenomena:
newspapers, popular illustration and especially photography, with its new
realism.” (Seductive Rebel Who Kept ItReal).
Forever a rebel, he called
himself ‘The most arrogant man in France’; and continued to provoke the art
establishment and the society with his paintings. In the late 1860s, he began
to focus on eroticism depicting female genitalia and featuring two women in
bed. Naturally, these works were banned. In fact, when his works were exhibited
in New York, the John Golding in his New
York Review of Books observed that the layout of the display was such that it
allowed the guards to deny access to parties of schoolchildren.
Just a year before his death,
he formed the Federation of Artists (Federation des artistes) for the free and
uncensored expansion of art. The group’s members included artists such as Andre
Gill, Honore Daumier, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Eugene Pottier, Jules Dalou,
and Edouard Manet.
Courbet’s ‘The Source’ is an
antithesis of Ingres’s original. Ingres was a preeminent artist in France in
mid-nineteenth century. His painting defined him. Kenneth Clark, one of the best
art historians of the last century, described Ingres’s 'The Source' as the most
beautiful figure in French painting. Courbet’s ‘The Source’ eschews
romanticism, and realistically depicts a woman’s anatomy in a manner that was
considered rude, vulgar and unnecessarily provocative in the mid-nineteenth
century.
Images:
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/436022?=&imgno=0&tabname=object-information
