Assignment 1 Fall 09-10 Courbet: modern or avant-garde?

200700454 4th year Architecture

For some theorists, modern art is art that responded to modern conditions, thus viewed as the natural artistic manifestation of modern society which implies that it was a passive mirror of society. But art can be related to modernity in more than one way (Blake, Frascina. Art as a social practice.) Modern aspects are relative in that they incorporate an innovation, be it technical, formal or aesthetic (which is argued as leading to a pure modern art or art for arts sake). Avant-garde artists had a social and political commitment, and attempted to engage in strategies and forms of representation that were perceived as critiques of existing conventions and the power structures which underpinned them (art as a social practice) Thus, the one entails individuality while the other community and while one is not engaged, the other is. Both employ the same formal strategies but have a different intention (self-regard vs. interventionism). In my opinion, Courbet was an avant-garde artist and a modern artist as well. He knew that both marched in lockstep after 1852. He had an avant-gardist goal, which was to intervene in the domain of real life by changing the language of art, so as to turn passive spectators into active interlocutors, but when the dominant culture won out and the oppositional public was lost, the interventionist aim faded before the ultimate aim of modernism, that of the achievement of artistic autonomy (Courbets trilogy) We can say that Courbet employed innovative ideas in the physicality of his paintings (size and medium) as well as in the way the subjects are treated. His paintings were all considered too large for their genre: After Dinner at Ornans, a genre painting, the Stonebreakers, Burial at Ornans took the size of a History painting, while depicting the burial of a Nobody, a common bourgeois. The anonymity of these figures is emphasized by their faces which are turning away from the spectator (in After Dinner at Ornan, the central figure itself is turning away, thus denying the viewer any emotional connection to the painting, and providing an unexpected odd effect, in the Stonebreakers, not seeing the faces puts emphasis on the activity their doing, a modern one, tat of paving roads, and on the entire working class). Courbet sees himself as an objective observer of society, depicting reality as it is, thus shocking conservatives. What was unaccepted at the time was giving these anonymous working class characters a life size. Also, not respecting the genres size and language were seen as a threat: Burial at Ornan is a painting of religion but not religious, it has the elements but not the vocabulary, it is satirical. It is not the subject matter in itself that is vague or ambiguous, rather its the way that it is depicted. He also admits to using intellect as a weapon to achieve equality. In Burial at Ornans, he employs lack of depth, shadowlessness, stark color contrasts, superimposition of figures and emotional neutrality that recall the style and aspect of popular art: by embracing popular art and culture (its audience, subjects, and ingeneous and anonymous style) he was rejecting the hierarchism and personality cult of the official regime. He doesnt use conventional codes that help understand the painting so art could be understood by the masses not just by the educated bourgeois, Courbet seemed to be turning art into popular imagery Courbet had bent the conventions of the genre in which he was working and this had altered the status of what was depicted (Art as a social practice)

Courbets work, by calling on its viewers knowledge of the everyday world more than their knowledge of art, regained a political potency, an ability to provoke and enlighten an active oppositionality. Burial at Ornans questioned the status of art within the society in which it was produced and within the modern order of things, which is a defining characteristic of the avant-garde tradition. His works were constantly rejected by the Salon for they were received with fear and hostility and seen as a threat, an engine of revolution. The scandal aroused by his art is due in part to its powerful individualism(Chamfleury), this sentence links Courbets avant-gardist objective to his modernism. References Blake, Nigel and Frascina, Francis. Modern Practices of Art and Modernity, Ch.1 in Modernity and Modernism, pp51-80 Eisenman, Stephan.The Rhetoric of Realism and the Origin of the Avant-Garde, in 19th Century Art, pp207-212 Eisenman, Stephan. Courbet Trilogy of 1949 in 19th Century Art, pp212-223 Chamfleury, Jules Fleury-Husson. Burial at Ornans in Art in Theory, pp366-370