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| Velázquez or Bouguereau? Who's was the more 'honest' art?, by Juan Martinez |
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I personally found it nearly inescapable to like and appreciate 19th century academic art once I started examining it closely. Mercifully, prior to my first encounters with it in my mid-thirties, I had never read an art history book or formally studied art so I didn’t have any preconceptions about 19th century academicians at all -- I just never heard of them, period. In fact, the first time I saw a Bouguereau painting in person I thought it was the best-painted thing I had ever seen in my life, but it wasn’t until some 5 years later that I was made aware of who had painted it. Anyway, I’m not going to bother with the myriad reasons why he and the academicians have been given such short shrift today. I will say, however, that it is simply incorrect to “dismiss” the academicians -- which is apparently what present-day mainstream artworld aesthetes do -- or to claim Bouguereau was just a “minor” figure if one wishes to be knowledgeable about art history. If your only aim is to connect the dots that lead to Modernism, then sure, dismiss the academicians, but otherwise it is a rewriting of history. To belabour the point; to “dismiss” Bouguereau as a “minor” player in 19th century art (I have often seen both of these words used in the above-mentioned contexts) is identical to dismissing Picasso as a minor influence in 20th century art. Would the latter not be a misleadingly erroneous view? Maybe you don’t like Picasso, but you can’t, and shouldn’t, ignore him if you want to speak knowledgeably about 20th century art and aesthetics. Same goes for WB. Here are a few common rallying cries of the too-numerous-to-mention contradictions found in 20th century Modernist notions about art: Velazquez: good, honest. Sargent: pretty good, maybe not so honest though (pandering just a little too much to the Bourgeoisie). Bouguereau: bad, very bad. Dishonest. False. What are the contradictions found here? Well, let me use Velazquez as an exemplar (I love most of Velazquez's work by the way). His art is supposed to be honest, right? Yet, he was born into a family of the lower nobility and spent most of his life as a courtier of kings. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just that it is hardly the kind of background that would make him the most suitable person to paint gypsies, vagabonds, or peasants. If he were working today he’d probably be accused of some sort of cultural appropriation; like a middle class white kid from Switzerland trying to be a gangsta-rapper or something. It just wouldn’t ring true would it? Yet today the “honesty” in Velazquez’s work is something he is so known for. But how was it possible for him to have been so honest about a world he knew virtually nothing about? Instead, could he have been subtly mocking? Was he a cultural anthropologist before there was such a thing? Does any of this even matter? Or, was he just so good at artifice -- the painter’s stock-in-trade -- that he has fooled us all? It is ironic that we today consider his portrayals of the lower classes -- of whom he almost certainly knew very little -- as being so honest and sincere, whereas Bouguereau’s depictions are false even though he was far more familiar with and closer to the poor and downtrodden than was Velazquez. WB was born into a low- to mid- middle class family, attended one of the most democratic institutions ever devised, the French Academy (among many other positive things about it, there was no tuition at the Academy) lived through and bore a great deal of tragedy and, fought in two wars. How much of that sort of “real world” living did Velazquez do while being catered to at the king’s court? But again, none of this has any particular bearing on whether someone’s art is “honest”. For heaven’s sake, it’s honest if the artist loves to do it and is able to achieve his/her vision. As Miles pointed out, Bouguereau painted beautiful things beautifully. For this he is some sort of false prophet? Was it not Renoir who said of Bouguereau that he is the first artist in history who was able to perfectly depict what was in his mind’s eye? To me, that’s honesty if nothing else. Of course, much of today’s antipathy toward Bouguereau boils down to the fact that so many of his most reproduced pictures, and certainly the ones that are used to illustrate his “bourgeois pandering to the American robber-barons’ soft-porn tastes, etc.” are, indeed, his most saccharine pieces. Well, excu-u-u-u-se me! He painted over 800 pictures and for sure, some were of similar themes. After all, he was a pro and he knew his market. Up until recent times, that was a laudable and necessary element of being an artist. Yet, most assuredly, not all of his works were the same. It’s amazing how often it is today that just because someone chooses to paint something other than grim “reality” he/she is dismissed as being “minor”. Do we dismiss Michelangelo, da Vinci, or Rubens? Not usually I dare say. But why not? They almost never painted anything that was even remotely like the real world, and (horrors) they painted for money and only for money. Accepting these great artists, but rejecting more recent ones for doing the same thing is a Modernist contradiction that has also, unfortunately, been taken up even by some present-day representational artists and aficionados. The result is that any artist from, say, the 19th century onward who paints anything but reality is “dismissed” one way or another. In a roundabout way this has to do with photography, but that is for another essay. FWIW. I know that usually any essay defending WB has the same impact on the Bouguereau-haters as would a shouting contest at a deaf school. But, we persevere ... All the best to everyone. Good bunch of posts lately. -- Juan
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