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Bouguereau & theReal 19th Century |
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It was systematically suppressed by the 20th century art establishment. Before I saw Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyr I thought that the methods and techniques of the great old master's had somehow been lost. It never had occurred to me for two seconds, that people could actually have deliberately destroyed and eviscerated all of the institutions and methods by which the knowledge could be gained of how to create great works of art. This is one of mankind's greatest achievements ... one of the defining characteristics of advanced civilization ... that makes us so unique, so sophisticated and so special. We're talking about the great arts of drawing, painting and sculpture, through which it's possible to express our shared humanity, including all of the universal, profound, complex and subtle emotions of what it means to be human: our hopes and dreams, our fears and fantasies, our jealousy, and joys, our grief, loneliness, expectation, insecurity, intrigue, compassion, and betrayal. This is what art is for; whether in theatre, in music, in literature, in poetry, or in painting. And this is precisely what the idiotic theories of modernism decided were uncreative, confining, sentimental, obsession with technique, empty story telling, and worthless. In other words, modernism didn't attack academic art. It attacked art itself. All art was without value, because the essence of what art is, the communication of our common humanity, was banished from the entire field, from the art schools, and museums, and it was all supported by journalistic art criticism, which was also held hostage by the same insanity. And it was all paid for by a growing network of dealers who were making untold fortunes by hiring clever writers to justify their products that could be produced now in minutes and hours instead of weeks and months. And these works the public was told were not only as good as what had come before, but far better. Bouguereau was incredibly productive, painting an average of sixteen to eighteen paintings per year during his prime. But his dealer Goupil had a list a hundred deep, of wealthy collectors waiting for his work. Everything was sold long before it was finished. Dealers for these great academics sat biting their nails waiting helplessly for the products they needed to sell. Well, what kind of business is that? Any good business man knows that if you have ten of something and can sell two hundred, that you'd better get out there and find the other one hundred and ninety so that you can meet the demand and maximize your profits. But with the demand of the works by a specific artist, you can't go anywhere else except to that artist. What a great solution Modernism had for this problem. Dealers welcomed it with open arms, and as the Academy and Salon fell into disrepute, they were the ones who took over the direction of art, and their advertising dollars made sure that the press played ball. So they celebrated artists and art forms where supply could keep pace with the demand that they were creating. Bouguereau painted eight hundred and twenty-six paintings, and fully seventy-five percent of them are master works of the highest level and half of those are full blown masterpieces. But it was still only eight hundred and twenty-six paintings. Alma-Tadema only produce four hundred and thirty-five during his life. Do you know how many works were produced by Picasso? -- more than eighty thousand. Hell, for a while there during the 1960's and 70's, every self-respecting member of the upper class and even many in the upper middle class had their own Picasso that they could show off to their friends. Now let me systematically deal with the things that have been said about Bouguereau; the inaccuracies, the myths and the out and out lies that have been incorporated into the religious and fanatical canons and scriptures of modernism that have been passed off as scholarly and historical text books … but are really no more than large propaganda brochures. In Modernism's religious zeal, not only women are forced to hide behind a veil. All mankind along with our experiences, our feelings, and emotions, our dreams and passions are also forced to stay hidden. But, instead of a veil, we're all hidden behind a wall of splattered paint or twisted girders. By the 1940's, nearly all museums around the world had taken Bouguereau's paintings down, putting them in attics and store-rooms where they were uncared for and collected dust for the next sixty to seventy years. Or worse, they sold them off at bargain-basement prices as if nearly worthless. Now, in the twilight of the 20th century, and the start of the 21st, Bouguereau is once again attaining the respect he so richly deserves. A major retrospective of his work was organized by the Montreal Museum and traveled to Paris and Hartford in 1984. Scholars, curators and historians have been reevaluating his work, and though he is still held in contempt by modernists, a growing crescendo of supporters have welcomed his return. And since 1975 his prices have climbed steadily by over five thousand percent in twenty-five years, with major works of his selling for example $1,500,000 in 1998 for The Heart's Awakening, $2,600,000 in 1999 for Alma Parens and Charity sold at Christies in May of 2000 for $3,500,000. And now, over one hundred museums throughout the world have Bouguereau paintings on permanent exhibit. Bouguereau was not only loved by the general populace, he was adored and revered by other recognized giants of his own time, including men like Henry James, Charles Dickens, Edgar Degas and Frederic Chopin. Are we to believe that these recognized geniuses in their own fields had such bad taste and judgment? But just as Rembrandt was relegated to near oblivion for over one hundred years after his death, so too was this to be Bouguereau's fate. One of the most famous stories about Rembrandt concerns his painting Night Watch. No one wanted it. Finally, a gymnasium agreed to hang it on their back wall if the top foot of the painting would be cut off so it would fit. To this day, we know this masterpiece only in this mutilated form. Bouguereau, until the mid-1970s, was equally denigrated, and his return is being fought tooth and nail every inch of the way. Another major myth was the claim that Bouguereau and his colleagues were not relevant to their times; that they only copied the styles of earlier times. This argument is without a shred of truth. Bouguereau was born in 1825, shortly after the American and French Revolutions. These upheavals were the most tangible results of the new ideas generated by the Enlightenment. Whereas earlier centuries were controlled by ideas of the primacy of religion and monarchs ruling by divine right, instead, in the 19th Century major philosophical and political writings held the day, like John Locke's The Rights of Man, Thomas Hobbes' The Leviathan and Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Instead of religious paintings, illustrations of historical events and portraits of the aristocracy and nobility that dominated the 15th, 16th and 17th and 18th century, with the new democratic philosophies, came the ascendance of interest and respect for all mankind. "Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité," cried the French; and the Americans, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These words perfectly sum up the new philosophical and sociological advances of Western civilization that occurred in the late 18th century and that were being popularized and codified in the 19th. Both America and France were at the cutting edge of the changing Western world. It is no coincidence that some of the greatest works of art of the 19th century came from these two societies. And with these changing ideas, art too changed, generating many new groups and styles. There were the naturalists like Jean Francois Millet, Jules Breton, Julien Dupré, and Leon L'hermitte, who showed the nobility of the common man straining under the yoke of a hard life. They tried to show rural life as it really was. There were also the Pre-Raphaelites exploring fantasy, myth and legend, the Social Realists exposing the plight of those trapped in poverty or oppressed by backward and dehumanizing social mores, as well as the English Aesthetic movement that explored beauty for it's own sake. There were the idealists and romantics, who celebrated all humanity in keeping with principles of democracy and human rights. Bouguereau's paintings successfully merge the best from many of these movements in his own unique and original style. In much of his work he uses peasants and gypsies for his subject matter. How fitting to choose society's lowest to exalt all mankind to the highest, for if we could appreciate the value of the peasants and gypsies, then certainly we all must be worth while. Bouguereau also celebrated humanity's culture and literature in his paintings as seen in his mythological scenes of nymphs, cupids, and angels, and his scenes from literature, legend and the Bible. These wholly original compositions are handled with an emotional force second to none. The Flagellation and First Mourning (Adam and Eve grieving the death of Abel) are all consummate masterpieces, with figures painted so lifelike that you feel like you're looking through a window at an event frozen in time. One can sense the blood rushing in their veins and the life in their eyes, accomplishments for which no words can do justice. It was the artist's goal to show humanity as beautifully real and ideal as possible, encouraging all to strive for such ideals. The message is: Mankind is good and life is good. Implicit is the moral imperative that all people are worthy of love and respect and it is society's duty as well at the duty of each individual to nurture our children and to care for the poor and down-trodden, asserting that each individual was unique and valuable. So not only was it untrue that Bouguereau was irrelevant, the exact opposite was the case. He and many of the other academic artists were at the cutting edge of the changes that were occurring in Western civilization. Only a society with these liberal values could generate people who would even be permitted to dribble paint on a canvas and call it a work of art. A hundred years earlier, somebody trying to do that would probably have been thrown into an institution or worse. We must realize that modern art could never have existed save on the back of the Humanist art and the freedom loving society that preceded it. One can't help but be struck by the irony that the chief benefactors of these liberated and "enlightened" artists are their chief detractors. The next myth perpetuated about Bouguereau by his critics was that he painted just for the bourgeois in order to get rich. Let's dispel that once and for all. He prided himself in never having to take commissions. He painted what he loved and believed in, often laboring sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, much like Michelangelo. His fame became so great that his dealer, Goupil, was able to charge $10,000 for a single canvas (equivalent to more than $300,000 today). The bourgeois couldn't possibly buy his paintings, but they were eagerly acquired by the wealthy: Mellons, Vanderbilts, Frick's Carnegies and Rockafellas. Let me ask, who has been buying Matisse, Picasso and Gauguin, or even de Kooning, Rothko and Jasper Johns? The Mellons, Vanderbilts, Rockafellas and Carnegies, or their contemporary equivalents. I don't hear the same critics claiming that these artists painted just for the bourgeois in order to get rich. Certainly Picasso was far wealthier when he died than Bouguereau at his death. Rubens, Gainsborough, Church, Boucher, de Kooning, Warhol, and Stella all made or are making substantial sums on their art. The fact is that most often, it is the wealthy who collect art. Rather than using this fact to condemn the artists, it should be the basis for praising those collectors who recognized and helped support greatness. What would the Renaissance have been without Lorenzo de Medici? Then again, we should ask what is wrong with being part of the bourgeois? The term has been so reviled and vilified, that artists and scholars run for the hills rather than be associated with the Bourgeoisie. But, it was their existence more than anything else that helped to create our culture as we know it. The bourgeois mostly came from poor roots, and through hard work and a frugal life style created a dominant and viable middle class upon which democracy and constitutional government depended for survival. And this middle class, the "bourgeoisie" rightly felt that they were as worthy of love and respect as the nobility that controlled government and society before them. |
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