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Courbet’s Materialism
Frédérique Desbuissons
Gustave Courbet radically challenged the ways in which art and literature
1. An earlier version of this article was were perceived as traditionally transcendent forms. Refusing to view
presented at the Premier Congrès international artistic creation as a form of production of something immaterial, he
de la Société des études romantiques et
dix-neuviémistes, held in Lyon from 14 to 16
considered painting from the perspective of its physical reality.1 His
May 2003. I would like to thank the organisers contemporaries fully understood this, coining the pun ‘le mate´rialisme de
of this conference, M.M. Jean-Yves Mollier, Courbet’ in the early 1850s. When applied to a painter in the
# The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. OXFORD ART JOURNAL 31.2 2008 251–260
doi:10.1093/oxartj/kcn011 Advance Access Publication 30 May 2008
Frédérique Desbuissons
its (ideal) re-creation. Thus, Leclerc, for example, opened his review of the
1850– 1851 Salon in La Re´publique, declaring that:
5. See A. Leclerc, ‘Salon de 1851–1852 [sic]’,
Painting is composed of two essentially inseparable practices: imitation and creation. With
La Re´publique, no. 87, 28 March 1851: ‘La
respect to the former, it succeeds in reproducing exactly – even slavishly – the outward
peinture se compose de deux opérations
appearance of objects, but this is merely an exhibition of more or less skilled craftsmanship,
essentielles et inséparables: l’imitation et la
for which the function of the camera obscura or daguerreotype would suffice. This body lacks création. Par l’imitation, elle arrive à
a soul – comprised of movement, inspiration, thought, animation, life – from which derives reproduire exactement et servilement les objets
the act of creation.5 extérieurs, mais ce n’est là qu’une œuvre plus
ou moins habile de métier et d’industrie, et à
This metaphysical philosophy of art became common ground for critics laquelle pourrait au besoin suffire la besogne de
la chambre obscure ou du daguerréotype. A ce
such as Louis Peisse, who considered Realism to be a ‘théorie corps il manque une âme, c’est-à-dire le
matérialiste’ where ‘art is merely the imitation of nature’,6 or Louis mouvement, l’inspiration, la pensée,
Enault, who in 1852 underscored the ‘matérialisme’ of the landscape l’animation, la vie: c’est là le fait de la création’.
painting Young Women from the Village, emphasising as much its ‘slavish’ 6. Louis Peisse, ‘Salon de 1850’, Le
therefore distinguish the real person from his persona, in other words from
his representation, in order to understand how the artist was able to craft
his image by playing with his appearance, attitudes and habits, as so many
temps qu’il n’en faut pour le dire. Nous, nous
significant features. Without this process corresponding to what Michel avons mené une action symbolique à visage
Foucault called the ‘techniques de soi’,20 he found himself actively aided découvert. On assume la totalité des actes que
by the press. It would be wrong to underestimate the spectacular nous avons commis: sans aucune violence,
personne n’était sur le chantier, nous l’avons
manifestations which constituted an essential part of Courbet’s career, fait à visage découvert, avec des outils comme ça
whose development was greatly affected by the public image of the a été démontré et de manière tout à fait calme et
artist. As a result of these dramatic displays, Courbet inhabited the Paris pacifique’.
art scene throughout twenty years, and not merely at the time of 18. According to Champfleury (‘Mouvement
exhibitions. His contemporaries often reproached his behaviour for being des arts’, L’Ordre, 21 September 1850), the
self-promoting – from his repetitive scandals, his regular recourse to expression appeared on the poster for the
sympathetic critics and caricaturists, to his outspoken public posture. exhibition of Burial at Ornans and The
Stonebreakers in Dijon in July 1850. The success
His manipulation of the signs of his identity did not deceive others of the name once again attests to Courbet’s skill
Fig. 1. Stock, Stock-Album no. 4, 1870 # Bibliothèque nationale de France (Photo: Bibliothèque
nationale de France.)
Yes, there she is, that fleshy, affluent middle-class woman, deformed by fat and luxury; her
flabby mass suppressing the ideal female form, destined to die from cowardice if not from fat
32. P.-J. Proudhon, Du principe de l’art et de sa
fondue; there she is, as her silliness, egotism and cuisine have made her. What ampleness! destination sociale (reprinted by Les Presses du
What opulence! One might say a heifer awaiting sacrifice. . .Does not this thick piece of fat, in Réel: Dijon, 2002), p. 135. We discover that
its flaccid materiality, seem to render the mind of the artist a thousand times better than the Proudhon always associates size with negative
most skilful allegory could do?32 female types: the bluestocking weighed down by
writing, the mother abbess, the all-consuming
Regarding Courbet, his very real size only obtained its metaphorical courtesan.
significance when associated with other traits peculiar to the painter 33. As several of my colleagues in literary
himself, first and foremost his richly textured painting technique. The studies have indicated, Courbet shares this
peculiarity with Balzac. It is found, for example,
coincidence of two lexical domains – one describing the forms of the in two caricatures by Gavarni, reproduced by
body ( fat and flesh) and one the craft practice it performs (applying the Jean A. Ducourneau, Album Balzac (Gallimard:
First it took off like a rocket. We heard a rustling joined by load bursts and we looked at
it to his own advantage, but to have inflected the very forms of his art in light
of it. According to Chu, who fashions a portait of the great man master of his
destiny, he did this heroically, from the centre of a circle of men of letters
together in the Statuts et règlements of 7 June
and celebrities, constructing a network of his complete work;39 this was even 1652: Ludovic Vitet, L’Acade´mie royale de
more compromising for T.J. Clark, who inclines to abandon the second part Peinture et de Sculpture, e´tude historique (Calmann
of the artist’s career to its mediatised fate.40 Lévy: Paris, 1880), p. 211.
It has been important to show that, in so far as we should speak of the 39. Petra ten-doesschate Chu, The Most Arrogant
‘figure’ of the artist, it is not only in terms of critical reception and Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the
textual and visual representations,41 but rather as a material reality whose Nineteenth-century Media Culture (Princeton
University Press: Princeton, NJ, 2007).
apprehension and understanding – Dewey’s notion of experience fits
perfectly here42 – constitute the very matter of human existence. Equally, 40. Timothy J. Clark, Image of the People:
Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (Thames
this Courbet, neither caricatural puppet nor deus ex-machina, is not a fixed, and Hudson: London, 1973).
closed object; his identity, open and subject to evolution, is the reactive,
unstable product of a dynamic process. It is because of this that I have 41. An approach used by Klaus Herding in his
study of caricatures of Courbet in his Courbet, to