COURBET' S EXHIBITIONISM

BY

PATRICIA MAINARDI

In a letter to his patron Bruyas, Courbet described

his vision of the show he planned to mount for the 1855

Universal Exposition: "From here I can already see an

enormous tent with a single column in the center; for

walls, scaffolding covered with canvas, all mounted on

a platform; then the employees, a man in a black suit

minding the office, opposite the canes and umbrellas,

then two or three ushers. This will really be enough to

make Paris dance on its head. It will be without question

the best comedy that's been played in our times; there

are some people who will get sick over it, that's for

sure"~. Across the letter he sketched a tent (fig. 1). In

reality, as a newly discovered photograph shows

(fig. 14), Courbet's pavilion was rectangular, not a tent

at all, and this drawing, appearing across an unpub-

lished letter, was a private fantasy rather than a public

fact. And yet the public did apprehend his gesture, even

without benefit of his drawing. On reading his letter

today we might well wonder: Who would laugh at this

comedy, and who would get sick over it ? What was

the nature of Courbet's exhibitionism" ? - a word en-

tirely relevant, as we shall see, to the contemporary dis-

course surrounding this artist. By placing in context the

various aspects of Courbet's endeavor as they appeared

to his contemporaries, we can gain a more profound

sense of the reasons for which he was both praised and

damned in his own time.

Although the negative criticism which first greeted

Courbet's work has been taken by modernists as a par-

adigmatic example of the persecution of the avant-garde

artist by an uncomprehending public, I have argued

elsewhere that Courbet in 1855 was actually supported

by the professional artists' periodicals 2 . La Revue uni-verselle des Arts, La Revue des Beaux-Arts, Journal desArts, L'Artiste, all either praised him or were sympa-

thetic to his plight. The most savage attacks in 1855

came from critics and caricaturists working for periodi-

cals of the conservative right, such as A.J. Du Pays and

e - 1Q4'

Q ulenbots in L'Olustration j . Nonetheless, as this nega-

tive criticism ha always taken center stage, it is im-

portant to explo e the nightmare vision that Courbet

political conservatives.presented to aest etic and

FIG. 1. - Gustave COURBET. Autograph letter with a sketch of

the 1855 Pavilion.

254

Today we focus on Courbet's gesture of mountinghis show and we see it as a gesture of defiance to thegovernment that had rejected both his Studio and hisBurial; indeed it was, as Champfleury wrote at the time,"an incredibly audacious act" 4 . Our focus on the gesturefits in well with modem political imperatives, the heroi-cization of the individual standing alone against an un-just state. The issues embodied in Courbet's gesture,Individualism, Self-confidence, Defiance, Genius, areall qualities which define the modern - usually male -hero. They are also, however, qualities which define theself-made man of early capitalism, the entrepreneur.

FIG. 2. - Title Page, Catalogue of Courbet's 1855 Exhibition.

GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARTS

This latterlreferent has been largely ignored by art his-torians, but both interpretations, defiant hero and entre-preneur, should be explored, for in the nineteenthcentury, they were by no means mutually exclusive.

To begin to see Courbet's exhibitionism as his con-temporarie''s would have seen it, we will have to under-stand firstl, the exhibition structure as they saw it,second, traditional exhibition sites as they understoodthem, and third, the decorum of exhibitions at that time,for Courbet's gesture could only assume meaningagainst the commonly accepted fabric of expectationsand procedures. In giving the broad outlines of theseissues, it trust be stressed that, although I am here fo-cusing on the negative, contemporary opinion heldvarious attitudes, both positive and negative, towardseach.

Throu0out most of the nineteenth century, the majorevent in I-Irench exhibition practice was the Salon, theannual, sometimes biennial, exhibition of contemporaryart. Until the 1789 Revolution, it had operated as a mo-nopoly, controlling French artistic life and careers. Onlymembers Of the Academy could participate and alterna-tive exhibitions were suppressed. The Academy hadbeen founded and was maintained as the Governmentagency in charge of aesthetics: its members receivedsalaries a~d studios, and State commissions were orig-inally reserved for them. Academicians had, however,elevated their status from that of artisans by rejectingall hints f commerce and so, in the Academic Salonof the An ien R6gime, artists did not exhibit works forsale but "consented to show to a limited public somepictures commissioned in advance for a specific desti-nation" 5 . !,, Although in reality many Academiciansworked inja variety of modes, this elite attitude towardsart production survived well into the nineteenth century,defining o~e pole of the spectrum of attitudes towardsexhibition I practice. That pole can be summed up in theword exposition; in both English and French it pre-served thelconnotation of a didactic, morally instructiveshow. The word exhibition, on the other hand, whilemeaning lin English simply a show, assumed innineteenth] century France a pejorative connotation ofostentation and immodesty. A commercial enterprise,

hop window display, would be an exhibition,rsonal behaviour we today would label ex-This negative attitude towards anything

such as aas wouldhibitionistcommercial derived from traditional aristocratic disdainfor corn*rce, which, in the nineteenth century, wasidentified ]with England, the leading commercial poweramong nations; hence the pejorative use of the Englishword exhibition 7. Needless to say, conservative critics

descrinot aiheadi(fig.a dish

Aimonoprincthe Ping t(and iworl,Courtroutled ipronof eSalo

ser\whiindipealabdenechassbayin()satha~wedoweth,

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described Courbet's 1855 show as an "exhibition" andnot an "exposition". Courbet himself provoked this byheading his own catalogue EXHIBITION ET VENTE(fig. 2) "Exhibition and Sale", a title more fitting fora display of furniture or rugs than of high art s .

After the 1789 Revolution, the Academy had lost itsmonopoly over the Salon, which was then opened, inprinciple at least, to independent artists. Nonetheless,the Academy continued to maintain that it was degrad-ing to make a direct appeal to the public to sell pictures,and that true artists did not produce easel paintings butworked on commission for Church and State. The youngCourbet made his entrance to the Salon during thetroubled years of the 1840s when the Academy control-led the Salon Jury, rejecting works by artists even asprominent as Delacroix. By the 1848 Revolution, outof eighteen paintings Courbet had submitted to theSalon, only two had been accepted.

The 1830s and 1840s were the years in which con-servatives began to criticize the Salon in languagewhich continued throughout the century as an infallibleindicator of conservative politica 9 . Ingres stated re-peatedly: "The Salon is no longer anything more thana bazaar, where mediocrity displays itself with impu-dence" i0. E.J. Delecluze, the leading conservative critic,echoed his sentiments: "The Salons in the Louvre haveassumed, more and more each year, the character of abazaar, where each merchant is obliged to present themost varied and bizarre objects in order to provoke andsatisfy the fantasies of his customers" Il . Art historianshave largely ignored the significance of these codewords: exhibition, market, picture shop, bazaar (exhibi-tion, marche, boutique de tableaux, bazar) pejorativewords never used by critics supportive of what we callthe avant-garde.

Conservatives believed that art was inherently aris-tocratic and elitist and that, under a democratic politicalregime, mediocrity would reign. Education, they in-sisted, was the only legitimate purpose for art, historypainting its only legitimate vehicle, and Academiciansits only legitimate practitioners; the habitus of such artwas the church, the public monument, the museum orthe aristocratic private gallery. The enemy for them wasthe bourgeois preference for art as decoration or as com-modity. Such art, they felt, was trivial and commercial,only fit to be sold at bazaars and market places. Theirlanguage was anachronistic, however, for, as capitalismleveloped, the site of art distribution became increas-ngly the commercial art gallery or the auction house.through this politico-aesthetic language, of bazaars and)icture shops, of mediocrity and aristocracy, a political

COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM 255

la do d. Yon E:poeiW~e anlyeraeile, Cooabet Re dtoeioe ! lal-mamaquolquaa rdeompewa Lle~ mfritfea, on prlsence rune multitude choi-de, compacts de M. Bra et ton ehiso.

-

FIG. 3. - BERTALL in the Journal pour tire, 12 January 1856.

system - democracyI -and an economic system - capi-talism - was being criticized: Courbet, through his 1855show, symbolized bh institutions.

It is clear that 11855 the two poles of the Salonwere, on the right, elevated, academic exhibition asclose as possible tot the ideals of history painting andthe Ancien Mgime.lOn the left there was the popularSalon, full of indep

,~ndept artists striving to appeal tothe public in order to sell their work. But if, in fact,the other pole fromIthe aristocratic closed pre-Revolu-tionary Salon was tolbe the open, somewhat democraticand independent Sal n, where does that place Courbet'spavilion ? When con ervatives referred to a bazaar, theywere both exaggera ing and speaking metaphorically;Courbet intentional,

produced the very image of theirnightmare, but not i the quaint, sentimentalizing im-agery of a bygone e och, of marche and bazar, but inthe contemporary wo Id of burgeoning mass culture andcommercialism - thel art exhibition as store.

25 6

To place Courbet's 1855 show, we must understandhow rare any individual shows were in France. The mostcommon examples of these events were the posthumousshows organized for recently deceased Academiciansand held in prestigious locations such as the Ecole it-self. Galleries at this time were still picture shops dis-playing and selling a variety of work by a variety ofartists. Artists occasionally held their own shows intheir studios, as David did in 1799 and Horace Vernetin 1822, but, by being held in their studios, these showspreserved the dignity of hiO art events, even when theywere intended as protest t . Courbet's 1855 show hasalways been identified with this tradition, a protestagainst the Exposition Jury's refusal of his two majorpictures, The Artist's Studio and A Burial at Ornans(figs. 12 and 13). And yet even before he submitted hispictures to the Jury' he had informed Nieuwerkerke, theIntendant des Beaux-Arts, that he was hoping to mounta private exhibition to compete with the Universal Ex-

GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARCS

position, land he had dropped several hints to his patronAlfred Blruyas that such a show (which he wantedBruyas to subsidize) was in the offing l 3. One couldargue that he anticipated that his pictures would be re-jected, but it must also be acknowledged that he verymuch wanted, from the beginning, to hold this showand to hold it on a site identified with the distributionof art and not its production, in other words, to hold itas a commercial enterprise. Indeed he had already madetwo previlous attempts in this direction in 1850, in Be-sanrgon and in Dijon, the first in a market hall, the sec-ond in mouse that also held a cafe. In both cases hehad plastered the town with posters advertising his showand had charged a fifty centime admission fee t4 . Riatquotes him as feeling that the peasantry of Omans hadthought he was an idiot because he had let them seehis works! for free, "which evidently proves it's silly tohave a kind heart, for it merely deprives one of fundswithout enriching others in spirit or purse. To be free,

"Lis 0Z gBAID®S4lltflI54.Tmm wjb~ W. lost I M-11

FIG. 4. - J. JOURDAN, Le Palais de l'Industrie, Tutgis Editeur, Paris, 1855.

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eople want to pay, so that their judgment won't beHayed by gratitude; they are right. I want to learn and

I'll be so ruthless that I'll give everyone the righttell me the most cruel truths" 15 .

This leads to my second point, the issue of a suitable)cation for art exhibitions. The annual Salon took placeI the Louvre until 1848 when, evicted from thetuseum, it began a nomadic existence l 6. Pressure hadegun to mount in the 1830s to evict it from the Louvre,Iostly coming from conservatives who felt that art,hich increasingly rejected tradition had no right to par-Ike of the elevated provenance associated with thattuseum. The Salons of 1849, 1850-51, 1852, were held1 the Tuileries and in the Palais-Royal; 1853 presentedrtists with the worst disappointment of all, for thatear's Salon was held in temporary buildings surround-

Ig the Imperial furniture warehouse at Menus-Plaisirsi northern Paris. During these years there was con-, nual talk of suppressing the Salon altogether; Ingresad actually recommended such a course when he:stified before the 1848 Commission permanente desieaux-Arts: "In order to remedy this overflow of me-

. iocrities, which has resulted in there no longer beingFrench School, this banality which is a public mis-

ortune, which afflicts taste, and which overwhelmshe administration whose resources it absorbs to novail, it would be necessary to give up expositions..." 17

tumors and uncertainty ran rife through the artists'ommunity. Would there continue to be a Salon ? If so,vhere would it be held ? The very future of contem->orary art seemed to be at stake during these years, so'.ourbet's carnival tent would not seem very funny tohose who feared that contemporary art might end upxactly there.

Art galleries as we know them were still in their in-ancy in the first half of the century. In 1843 the critic.outs Peisse wrote: "Outside the Louvre there wouldIo Ion Rer be a Salon, there would be only picture,hops" i8. Galleries were then indeed picture shops sel-ing, indiscriminately, art supplies, curios, and small>ictures from the lower categories of art - genre, land-:cape, still life l9 . The common conservative complainthat the Salon had become a bazaar or a picture shop,howed that, in fact, these institutions were seen as themly alternative to the museum. So the two poles onhe exhibition spectrum were the Louvre, for exposi-ions of educational, historical art, and the picture shop'or exhibitions of commercially viable, decorative art.knd yet art dealers at this time were not interested in)old entrepreneurial initiatives, such as the promotionInd marketing of a trademarked product, namely the

COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM 257

FIG. 5. - Auguste BELIN. "Sortie du Bat de 1' Opdra", Journalamu$ant, January 1859.

b¢uf 6wt la r~iarrac qiu est tratnh pat lea labor

FIG. 6. - Le Monde Renverse, Pellerin Imprimeur, Epinal, 1829.

258

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FIG. 7. - GAVARNI. "Le Debardeur mile et femelle..." fromLes Dibardeurs, No. 1, Aubert & Cie Imprimeur, Paris, 1840.

one-artist show. Courbet, then, with his one-artist show,was an innovator of marketing techniques for art in theearly capitalist period. In several letters to Bruyas,Courbet bragged about how profitable this show wouldbe: "I'll gain 100,000 francs in one shot", he wrote,and later "I'll be considered a monster but by all pre-dictions I'll make 100,000 francs" 20. He'll sell his liv-ret, he writes, he'll make money on checking canes andumbrellas, he's even having photographs of his paint-ings made so that he can sell those too2t . I think weshould listen to him, for only then can we see both whathe intended by his gesture, and what his conservativecontemporaries loathed about it: Courbet was the newself-made man. Nineteenth century France had manysuch: Benin, who founded Le Journal des debats,

GAZETTE DES BEAUX-OTS

Schneider who owned Le Creusot - and Courbet, theartist as' entrepreneur. No wonder, then, that the mostvicious attacks on Courbet came from the right, wherelegitimi~m and clericalism diametrically opposed them-selves to the new economic and social order.

The third context concerns the decorum of exhibi-tions. For French conservatives, the quarrel over thecommercialism of exhibitions included the question ofadmission fees. When David attempted to charge ad-mission to his 1799 show, he explained in his livretthat such a practice was justified to save artists from alife of poverty: "In our day, this custom is observed inEngland~ where it is called exhibition", he wrote 2. Aslate as 855, David's student and admirer E.J. De16-cluze, the most powerful conservative critic in France,wrote: ",The kind of exposition David held seemed aninnovation much more extraordinary than his idea ofpresenti g his figures nude. The artist, having heard ofexhibitions as practiced in England, where an entrancefee is demanded at the door, resolved to try this system

FIG. 8. - lionor6 DAUMIER. Le Gamin de Paris aux Tuileries,Aubert & Cie Imprimeur, Paris, 1848.

in France. It was only because of David's great cele-brity, and the extreme curiosity that his work aroused,that the public accepted a practice which is repugnantto all our French customs. Although this mode of ex-position succeeded in that David earned 20,000 francs,he was harshly criticized, and ever since no artist hasdared try it again"23 . In the heated polemics accompany-ing the introduction of admission fees at the 1855 Uni-versal Exposition, the standard objection was to stressthat, under the longstanding policy of noblesse oblige,a benevolent state owed to its citizens free access tothose institutions considered spiritually and morallyuplifting, such as churches, schools, libraries, publicmonuments, and expositions. Charging admission fees,it was feared, would lower art exhibitions to the levelof popular entertainment, like theatres 24. Courbet, how-ever, blatantly moved art into this sphere of commercialentertainment and self-promotion, with his pavilionadvertising his own name G. Courbet (visible in

COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM 259

FIG. 9. - Gustave COURBET. Les Demoiselles de Village, Salon of 1852. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Harry PayneBingham, 1940.

fig. 14), as prominently as did the bold red signatureson his paintings 25 . Charles Perrier, the critic for L'Ar-tiste, commented Iveryone has seen Monsieur Cour-bet's poster with it$ huge lettering plastered over thewalls of Paris, next o street performers and quack doc-tors, inviting the pu~lic to come and pay a franc to seehis exhibition of tlorty pictures of his own work26 .Bertall's cartoon (fig. 3) "At the end of the UniversalExposition, Courbet! awards himself some well-meritedhonors" criticizes the artist both for commercialism (thereceipt box is prominently displayed) and for immod-esty (he is awardingI himself a laurel wreath). The criticErnest Gebauer attacked Courbet in 1855 thus: "M.Courbet, not satisfied with having eleven pictures in theUniversal Expositio , indulged himself by setting up hisown special exhibition a few steps from Palais desBeaux-Arts" 27. In other words Courbet's show manifes-ted the requisite commercialism, ostentation, and im-modesty which defined it as an exhibition.

260

In addition to the commerce of the picture shop,Courbet's 1855 show also recalled the outdoor fairs, theimmediate predecessors of the resolutely non-commer-cial, dignified Salon exhibitions. These lowly antece-dents to the Salon continued to be an unwelcomememory of the past in the collective memory of Aca-demicians and conservatives in general; hence theircriticism of the Salon as a bazaar. Joined to this, how-ever, was an even more frightening spectre of the future:the commercialization and commodification of artwhich, they feared, would happen under capitalism. Inother words, to conservatives Courbet's show repre-sented the worst of both the old and the new systemsof art distribution. For us today it is less shocking andmore laudable to see Courbet raging against an unjustState than to see him making a crassly commercial ges-ture. But to nineteenth century conservatives, it was thedisturbing commercialism of his gesture rather than itspolitical content that was shocking. After all, in 1855the political opposition came from both left and right;with the repeated revolutions and counter-revolutionswhich had shaken France since 1789, almost everyonehad had a taste of being in the political opposition atsome time.

II. Courbet's Exhibitionism as Carnival

GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARTS

Although I have been reading Courbet's exhibition-ism as a function of capitalism and the new economicand social order, this should be underscored by a secondlevel of interpretation which compounds the first: Cour-bet's exhibitionism as carnival. If the Louvre, the Palace

FIG. 10. - Gustave COURBET. Le Retour de laConfirence, 1862. Destroyed.

of

ings, represented the aristocratic tradition, and thePalace of Industry (fig. 4) at the Universal Expositionrepresented the challenge launched by capitalism, thenCo rbet's pavilion can be seen as disruptive of bothorders. Carnival, of course, did exactly that. Carnival,thel period from Twelfth Night (6 January) to Ash Wed-ne0ay of each year, culminating in the revelry of MardiGras, celebrated the world-upside-down, the reversal ofthel normal order of events. It was filled with feastingand drunkenness, dancing and orgies, masquerades andstreet theatre. Inversion was its basic premise, satire andpa ody its means: the lowly were raised up and themi hty were abased; social, political, and moral ordercold be safely transgressed. Carnival during the 1830san~i 40s had become increasingly political; no one at

-century had forgotten that the February Revolutionof': 1848 had taken place during Carnival and that thetwo events had been intertwined in a grotesquely sur-realist spectacle: carnival processions turned into mob

2sri

NUatmosphere, must be seen as the very antithesis of that,rigidly controlled and organized. This fact is importantin',order to understand the contrast presented by Cour-bek's pavilion, at the very entrance to that Exposition;it I,fulfilled the carnivalesque function of deflating thepretentiousness of the mighty. And his gesture wasindeed understood: Le Figaro described Courbet's pavil-

ion, facing the Palais des Beaux-Arts of the UniversalExposition, as "Guignol's theatre next to La Scala ofM lan ..z9 , that is, the Punch and Judy show, a satiricaland subversive institution of popular culture, juxtaposedto! its antithesis, the high art opera house.

ts, carnival floats into insurrectionary wagonspoleon III had certainly not forgotten and his 1855iversal Exposition, far from having a carnivalesque

COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM

Ever since Meyer Shapiro's brilliant article of 1941"Courbet's Popular Imagery"30, we have been aware ofthe relationship between Courbet's art and popular im-ages. I would like to take that a step further and proposethat Courbet's interest was not just in a generalizedpopular culture of Epinal prints and the customs of therural bourgeoisie, but, with his instinct for the "mostcomplete expression of a real thing"31, Courbet focusedon the most subversive and threatening aspect of popu-l ar culture, the only one that had both political over-tones and a revolutionary history, namely carnival.

The political carnivalesque informs Courbet's 1855show. When Courbet wrote that his show "will reallybe enough to make Paris dance on its head", his state-ment conflated the two major features of carnival, rev-elry (fig. 5) with the image of the world-upside-down(fig. 6). The fear which Champfleury described as theconservative response to Courbet's show ("It's a scan-dal, it's anarchy, it's art dragged through the mud, it'sa fairground spectacle") 32 was identical to their fear ofcarnival when all social order was transgressed. TaxileDelord, in Le Charivari described Courbet as a carnivalbarker shouting to artists to follow his example andabandon official expositions; 33 Gavarni drew just suchan image of this popular carnival type as the intro-ductory plate of "Les Debardeurs" (fig. 7).

Daniel Stern (Marie d'Agoult) published an accountof the invasion of the Tuileries in February 1848 whichgives the flavor of Carnival/Revolution wheremasquerade and parody combine. Daumier's cartoon ofthe Paris gamin on the throne (fig. 8) is based on thisincident. She wrote: "The children dress themselves upin velvet robes, turn the golden drapery fringe into belts,and pieces of tapestry into phrygian caps. The womenpour over their hair the perfume that they find on theprincesses' tables. They rouge their cheeks, cover theirshoulders with lace and furs, decorate their heads withsprays of jewels and flowers; they deck themselves outwith a kind of burlesque taste parodying extravagantdress" 34 . Compare this to Courbet's Young Ladies of the

Village (fig. 9), criticized by Du Pays in L'/llustrationas "the most anti-picturesque, the most unpleasant thingin the world: the pretention to elegance flaunted by thecommon people"35 . Even in conservative critics'frequent attacks on Courbet as the "apostle of ugliness",one can read the world-upside-down, for ugliness wasthe reversal of beauty, which to conservatives was theproper sphere of art.

I am proposing that, if we look at Courbet in thelight of carnival, we can better understand the hysteriahis works provoked in conservative circles. Parody and

26 1

inversion assume a new and sinister dimension in theraucus Return from the Conference (fig. 10) featuringdrunken priests, or the oversized Beggar's Alms

(fig. 11) which the critic Chesneau claimed representedFrance 36 . Courbet constantly reversed the traditionalhierarchical relationship of pictorial category to size: inpaintings such as fhe Stonebreakers, The Grain Sifters,After Dinner at Ornans, ordinary people are elevatedto a size and status traditionally reserved for gods and

heroes. Parody nd inversion proved more subtle,though equally disturbing, in A Burial at Ornans(fig. 12), whose 'enter is the void of death, and whosered-nosed beadles seem to mock the solemnity of theevent. In the light of Klaus Herding's reading of The

Artist's Studio (fi 13) as an adhortatio ad principem,

the traditional exportation to the ruler, Linda Nochlin

has recently suggested that we might also read this asworld-upside-do n, with the "normal" order of theworld reversed: t~e monarch must now listen and learn,while the artist & ants the benefit of his example to theruler 37 .

FIG. 11. - Gusta~e COURBET. L'Aumone d'un mendiant dOrnans, 1868. Buprell Collection, Glasgow Museums and Art

Galleries.

262 GAZETTE DES BEAUX-A(ZTS

FIG. 12. - Gustave COURBET. Un Enterrement d Orn4ns, 1849. Paris, Music d'Orsay.

Carnival existed at mid-century as a constellation of

that carnival still contained. He created works which,attitudes and modes of behaviour; Courbet knew just

like time bombs, would explode in politically and aes-how to exploit, under the guise of humor, the threat

theticalllY conservative circles.

FIG. 13. - Gustave COURBET, L'Atelier du peintre, alligorie rielle diterm'linant une phase de sept annies de ma vie artistique,1855. Paris, Muscle d'O0say.

Frfry

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FIG. 1 4. - C. THURSTON THOMPSON. "Fireman's Station and Division Wall be ween the Picture Gallery and Sugar Refinery",from R.J. Bingham and C.T. Thompson, Paris Exhibition, 1855, Tome I, No. XXXVIII. By Courtesy of the Board of Trustees

of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

To his conservative audience, Courbet's 1855 showwas certainly an exhibition. He travestied every aspectof high art practice, ostentatiously and immodestly, anddid so with publicly avowed commercial intent. Hiscontemporaries saw Courbet the carnival barker presid-ing over a disturbing vision of the world-upside-down,parodying the high, the mighty and the respectable; atthe same time, they saw the spectre he presented of the

COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM

future of art'', in the capitalist commodity system. For totrue nineteenth century conservatives, the coming of thenew bourgeois economic and social order was theworld -ups id -down. What looks like a contradiction tous today was, in fact, a single nightmare vision in 1855,the defiant 11ero and the entrepreneur.

P.M.

264

This research was supported in part by a grant from T eCity University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Pr~gram. An earlier version was read at the Symposium "CourbetReconsidered", held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1988 in con-nection with the exhibition of the same title.

I would like to express my gratitude to the photographyhistorian Glenn Willumson who first discovered the photo-graph of Courbet's 1855 pavilion and made a copy print Ofit available to me, to the historian Ann Ilan-Alter who is culr-rently working on a study of carnival and without whosegenerosity I would not have been able to develop these i deaIIP~' ,and to Bernard Silve and Charles Daudon who helped withthe transcription of the contract for Courbet's pavilion.

1. Courbet to Alfred Bruyas, n.d., No. 10 in Courbet let-ters at the Biblioth6que nationale, Yb3 1739 (8), published n"Lettres inddites" L'Olivier, Revue de Nice, 8 (septembre-o -tobre 1913), 485-90. "Je vois ddjA d'ici tine tente 6norme av ctine settle colonne au milieu, pour murailles des charpent srecouvertes de toiles peintrs, le tout month stir tine estrad .Puis des municipaux de louage, tin homme en habit noir tena tle bureau, vis-'A-vis les Cannes et parapluies, puis deux ou tro sgargons de salle... 11 y a vraiment de quoi faire danser Par S

Stir la tete, ce sera sans contredit la plus forte com6die q~iaura de jouer de notre temps; it y a des gens qui en tombero6tmalades, c'est stir".

2. See Patricia MAINARDI, Art and Politics of the SecondEmpire. The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867, NewHaven/London, 1987, 92-94.

3. Augustin-Joseph Du PAYS, "Beaux-Arts. Expositi nUniverselle", L'Illustration, 28 juillet 1855; QUILLENBOIS, " aPeinture rdaliste de M. Courbet", L'Illustration, 21 juill t1855.

4. CHAMPFLEURY (Jules Husson), "Du R6alisme, Lettre iiMadame Sand", L'Artiste, 2 septembre 1855, 2-5 : "tine audaceincroyable".

5. This classic defense of the Salon of the Ancien R6gi

ewas formulated by L6on de LABORDE in his L'Application d sarts d l'industrie, Vol. 8 of the Commission frangaise stir I'i -dustrie des nations, Londres, 1851, Travaux de la Commissifrangaise stir I'industrie des nations, 8 vols., Paris, 1856,224-25.

6. See "Exhibition", and "Exposition", in Paul ROBERt,Dictionnaire alphabetique et analogique de la langue fran-gaise, Paris, 1955, s.v.; Centre National de la Recherche Scietifique, Tresor de la langue frangaise. Dictionnaire delangue du XIX ` et du XX ` siecle (1789-1960), Paris, 198s.v.; Ferdinand BRUNOT, Histoire de la langue frangaise, 193S.V.

7. See Koenraad A. SwART, The Sense of Decadence iNineteenth Century France, The Hague, 1964, 55-56.

8. Gustave COURBET, Exhibition et vente de 40 tablea xet 4 dessins de l'o'uvre de M. Gustave Courbet, avenue Mottaigne, 7, Champs-Elysdes, Paris, 1855.

GAZETTE OES BEAUX-ARTS

NOTES

9. L6on ROSENTHAL pointed this out in his Du Romantismeau realisme, Paris, 1987, 3f, 37ff, 60; published 1914. LaterAcademicians whose writing illustrates these attitudes includeCharles BEULt, "Du Principe des expositions", Causeries stirPart, Paris, 1867, and Georges LAFENESTRE, "Le Salon et sesvicissitudes", Revue des Deux Mondes 45 (1 mai 1881) : 104-35.

10. Jean-Louis FoUCHt, "L'Opinion d'Ingres stir le Salon",La Chronique des arts et de la curiosite, 1 4 mars 1908, 99."L'exposition nest plus qu'un bazar o6 la mddiocrit6 s'6taleavec impudence".

11. E.J. DELECLUZE, Louis David, son ecole et son temps,ed. Jean-Pierre Mouilleseaux, Paris, 1983, 325; published1855. "Les salons du Louvre ont pris d'annde en ann6e lecaractdre d'un bazar, oit chaque marchand s'efforce de pr6-senter les objets les plus vari6s et les plus bizarres, pour pro-voquer et satisfaire les fantaisies des chalands".

12. Jacques-Louis DAvID, Le tableau des Sabines, exposepubliquement au palais national des sciences et des arts, sallede la ci-devant academie d'architecture par le citoyen David,Paris, an VIII (1799), 2; Deloyne 591, Vol. XXI : 631-648.MM.JouY et JAY, Salon d'Horace Vernet. Analyse historiqueet pittoresque de quarante-cinq tableaux exposes chez lui en1822, Paris, 1822.

13. Several letters to Alfred Bruyas in 1854 and early 1855raise the question of a private exhibition; see COURBET,L'Olivier (cited n. 1).

14. Georges RIAT, Gustave Courbet, peintre, Paris, 1906,82. T.J. CLARK in his Image of the People. Gustave Courbetand the Second French Republic 1848-1851, Greenwich, CT,1 973, 85, states that Courbet held his Dijon exhibition in thecaf6 but cites no source.

15. RIAT, Ibid., 82. This seems to be a letter from Courbetto his friend Francis Wey, but Riat's text is unclear as towhether this was a written, spoken or fictionalized account."ce qui prouve 6videmment que le grand ceeur, c'est de laniaiserie, par le fait que vous vous privez de moyens d'actionsans enrichir les autres, ni par Fesprit, ni par la bourse. Afind'etre libre, I'homme veut payer, que son jugement ne soitpas influenc6 par Ia.reconnaissance; it a raison. J'ai envie dem'instruire, et pour cela, je serai si brutal que je donnerai 3chacun la force de me dire les vdritds les plus cruelles".

16. For a detailed discussion, see Patricia MAINARDI, "TheEviction of the Salon from the Louvre", Gazette des Beaux-Arts, juillet-ao0t 1988, 31-40.

17. Jean-Louis FoucHt, "L'Opinion d'Ingres stir le Salon.Proc6s-verbaux de la commission permanente des Beaux-Arts(1848-1849)", La Chronique des arts et de la curiosite, 14mars 1908, 98-99. "Pour rem6dier A ce d6bordement des m6-diocrit6s qui fait qu'il n'y a plus d'Ecole; 3 cette banalit6 quiest tin malheur public, qui afflige le gout, qui accable 1'ad-ministration dont elle absorbe les ressources sans rdsultat, itfaudrait renoncer aux expositions...".

18. Louis PEISSE, "Le Salon de 1843", Revue des Deux-Mondes, n.s. 2 (1843) : 104. "Hors du Louvre, il n'y auraitplus de salon; il n'y aurait que des boutiques de tableaux".

19. See Nicholas GREEN, "Circuits of production, Cir-cuits of Consumption: The Case of Mid-Nineteenth CenturyFrench Art Dealing", Art Journal, Spring 1989, 29-34, andLinda WHITELEY, "Art et commerce d'art en France avant1'epoque i mpressioniste", Romantisme 4, (1983): 65-75.

20. Courbet to Bruyas, letter No. 7, n.d., in the BN col-lection and L'Olivier (cited n. 1), 478-79; "Je grnene1 00 000 francs d'un seul coup". Courbet to Bruyas, n.d., inL'Olivier, 479-80; "Je vais passer pour un monstre mais jegagnerai 100 000 francs, d'apr6s toute prdvision". In an ear-lier letter to Bruyas, n.d., No. 10 in the BN collection, Cour-bet projects only 40,000 francs profit; see L'Olivier, 478-79.

21. Courbet to Bruyas, n.d., in L'Olivier (cited n. 1), 479-80.22. David (cited n. 12), 2. "De nos joues, cette pratique

est observde en Angleterre, oil elle est appelde exhibition".23. DELtCLUZE (cited n. 11), 212-213. "Le mode d'exposi-

tion adopte par David parut une innovation bien plus extraor-dinaire que l'idde de prdsenter ses personnages nus. L'artiste,a~-ant entendu parler des exhibitions telles qu'elles se pra-tiquent en Angleterre, c'est-3-dire en faisant payer un prixd'entrde a l a porte, rdsolut de faire 1'essai de cette mdthodeen France. Il ne fallut riens moins que la grande cdldbritd dontjouissait David et la curiositd extreme que faisait naitre sonouvrage, pour que I'on se conformat 3 un usage qui rdpugnea toutes les habitudes frangaises. Bien que I'on se soumit Acc mode d'exposition, puis qu'il rapporta vingt mille francs,on le blama gdndralement, et depuis, aucun artiste n'a osd yrecourir de nouveau ".

24. See MAINARDI, (cited n. 2), 44-46, 116.25. A.J. Du PAYS wrote that RtALISME, in large letters,

,A-as written across the doors, but it cannot be seen in the pho-tograph; see Du PAYS (cited n. 3), 72.

26. Charles PERRIER, "Du Rdalisme, Lettre a M. le Direc-teur de 1'Artiste", L'Artiste, 14 octobre 1855, 86. "Tous lemonde a vu, placardde aux murs de Paris en compagnie dessaltimbanques et de tous les marchands d'orvidtan et dcriteen caracteres gigantesques, l'affiche de M. Courbet, apotredu rdalisme, i nvitant le public a aller ddposer la somme deun franc A Pexhibition de quarante tableaux de son muvre".

27. Ernest GEBAOER, Les Beaux-Arts d 1'Exposition Uni-verselle de 1855, Paris, 1855, 133. "M. Courbet, non contentTavoir eu onze tableaux admis A dExposition universelle,s'est passd l a fantaisie d'une exhibition spdciale, A deux pasdu palais des Beaux-Arts".

28. For carnival during this period, see Alain FAURE, ParisCarente-prenant. Du carnaval d Paris au XlX e siecle 1800-

COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM 265

1914, Paris, 1978; the February 1848 Revolution is discussed114-21. The basic work on carnival remains M.M. BAKHTIN,Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky, Cambridge, MA,1968.

29. Ajuguste VILLEMOT, "Chronique parisien", Le Figaro,8 juillet k855, 2. "Le thdatre de Guignol a c6td de la Scalade Milan'.

30. Meyer SCHAPIRO, "Courbet and Popular Imagery", inhis Modern Art. 19th and 20th Centuries. Selected Papers,New Yore,

', 1978, 47-85.

-31. See COURBET's letter to a group of students, Paris,

25 d6cernbre 1861; published in Le Courrier du dimanche, 29ddcembr 1861, reprinted in Courbet raconte par lui-meme etpar ses mis, Geneva, 1950, Vol. 2: 204-7. "L'imaginationdans Fart consiste A savoir trouver Pexpression la pluscomplete ',1 d'une chose existante, mais jamais e supposer ou 3crder cette chose meme".

32. CHAMPFLEURY (cited n. 4), I.33. T~xile DELORD, "Exposition des Beaux-Arts. IV. L'an-

nexe Co rbet", Le Charivari, 4 juillet 1855.34. Daniel STERN (Marie d'Agoult), Histoire de la Revo-

lution de~1848, Paris, 1850, vol. I: 140-41. "Les enfants serevetent e robes de chambre en velours, se font des ceinturesavec des Ifranges d'or et des torsades de rideaux, des bonnetsphrygien$ avec des morceaux de tentures. Les femmes fontruisseler dans leurs cheveux les essences parfumdes qu'ellestrouvent ~ur les tables des princesses. Elles fardent leurs joues,couvrent I leurs dpaules de dentelles et de fourrures, ornentleurs tet s d'aigrettes, de bijoux et de fleurs; elles se com-posent a , ec un certain gout burlesque des parures extrava-gantes".

35.

J. Du PAYS (cited n. 3), 72; on this painting, seePatricia

AINARDI, "Gustave Courbet's Second Scandal : LesDemoise les de Village", Arts Magazine 53 (January 1979)95-109 : "c'est-a-dire ce qu'il y a de plus anti-pittoresque, deplus ddp aisant au monde : les prdtentions de 1'dldgance af-fichdes ar les lourdaudes".

36. rnest CHESNEAU, "Salon de 1868", Le Constitution-nel, 16 j in 1868. tmile Zola also commented on Courbet's"bad joke" in this painting in his "Salon de 1868"; see $mileZOLA, Salons, F.W.J. Hemmings, Robert J Niess, eds.,Geneva /Paris, 1959, 136-37.

37. inda NOCHLIN, "CourbetIs Real Allegory: Rereading' The Pai ter's Studio"', in Sarah FAUNCE and Linda NOCHLIN,Courbet I Reconsidered, The Brooklyn Museum, New York,1988, 1 7 -41; Klaus HERDING, "Das Atelier des Malers -Treffpun t der Welt and Ort der Versohnung", Realismus alsWiderspruch: Die Wirklichkeit in Courbets Malerei, KlausHerding,', ed., Frankfurt-am-Main, 223-47.