Courbet's Exhibitionism

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26 0 In addition to the commerce of the picture shop, Courbet's 1855 show also recalled the outdoor fairs, the immediate predecessors of the resolutely non-commercial, dignified Salon exhibitions. These lowly antecedents to the Salon continued to be an unwelcome memory of the past in the collective memory of Academicians and conservatives in general; hence their criticism of the Salon as a bazaar. Joined to this, however, was an even more frightening spectre of the future: the commercialization and commodification of art which, they feared, would happen under capitalism. In other words, to conservatives Courbet's show represented the worst of both the old and the new systems of art distribution. For us today it is less shocking and more laudable to see Courbet raging against an unjust State than to see him making a crassly commercial gesture. But to nineteenth century conservatives, it was the disturbing commercialism of his gesture rather than its political content that was shocking. After all, in 1855 the political opposition came from both left and right; with the repeated revolutions and counter-revolutions which had shaken France since 1789, almost everyone had had a taste of being in the political opposition at some time. II. Courbet's Exhibitionism as Carnival GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARTS Although I have been reading Courbet's exhibitionism as a function of capitalism and the new economic and social order, this should be underscored by a second level of interpretation which compounds the first: Courbet's exhibitionism as carnival. If the Louvre, the Palace FIG. 10. - Gustave COURBET. Le Retour de la Confirence, 1862. Destroyed. of ings, represented the aristocratic tradition, and the Palace of Industry (fig. 4) at the Universal Exposition represented the challenge launched by capitalism, then Co rbet's pavilion can be seen as disruptive of both orders. Carnival, of course, did exactly that. Carnival, thel period from Twelfth Night (6 January) to Ash Wedne0ay of each year, culminating in the revelry of Mardi Gras, celebrated the world-upside-down, the reversal of thel normal order of events. It was filled with feasting and drunkenness, dancing and orgies, masquerades and street theatre. Inversion was its basic premise, satire and pa ody its means: the lowly were raised up and the mi hty were abased; social, political, and moral order cold be safely transgressed. Carnival during the 1830s an~i 40s had become increasingly political; no one at -century had forgotten that the February Revolution of': 1848 had taken place during Carnival and that the two events had been intertwined in a grotesquely surrealist spectacle: carnival processions turned into mob 2s ri N U atmosphere, must be seen as the very antithesis of that, rigidly controlled and organized. This fact is important in',order to understand the contrast presented by Courbek's pavilion, at the very entrance to that Exposition; it I,fulfilled the carnivalesque function of deflating the pretentiousness of the mighty. And his gesture was indeed understood: Le Figaro described Courbet's pavilion, facing the Palais des Beaux-Arts of the Universal Exposition, as "Guignol's theatre next to La Scala of M lan ..z9 , ts, carnival floats into insurrectionary wagons poleon III had certainly not forgotten and his 1855 iversal Exposition, far from having a carnivalesque that is, the Punch and Judy show, a satirical and subversive institution of popular culture, juxtaposed to! its antithesis, the high art opera house.
COURBET'S EXHIBITIONISM Ever since Meyer Shapiro's brilliant article of 1941 "Courbet's Popular Imagery" 30, we have been aware of the relationship between Courbet's art and popular images. I would like to take that a step further and propose that Courbet's interest was not just in a generalized popular culture of Epinal prints and the customs of the rural bourgeoisie, but, with his instinct for the "most complete expression of a real thing" 31, Courbet focused on the most subversive and threatening aspect of popular culture, the only one that had both political overtones and a revolutionary history, namely carnival. The political carnivalesque informs Courbet's 1855 show. When Courbet wrote that his show "will really be enough to make Paris dance on its head", his statement conflated the two major features of carnival, revelry (fig. 5) with the image of the world-upside-down (fig. 6). The fear which Champfleury described as the conservative response to Courbet's show ("It's a scandal, it's anarchy, it's art dragged through the mud, it's a fairground spectacle") 32 was identical to their fear of carnival when all social order was transgressed. Taxile Delord, in Le Charivari described Courbet as a carnival barker shouting to artists to follow his example and abandon official expositions; 33 Gavarni drew just such an image of this popular carnival type as the introductory plate of "Les Debardeurs" (fig. 7). Daniel Stern (Marie d'Agoult) published an account of the invasion of the Tuileries in February 1848 which gives the flavor of Carnival/Revolution where masquerade and parody combine. Daumier's cartoon of the Paris gamin on the throne (fig. 8) is based on this incident. She wrote: "The children dress themselves up in velvet robes, turn the golden drapery fringe into belts, and pieces of tapestry into phrygian caps. The women pour over their hair the perfume that they find on the princesses' tables. They rouge their cheeks, cover their shoulders with lace and furs, decorate their heads with sprays of jewels and flowers; they deck themselves out with a kind of burlesque taste parodying extravagant dress" 34 . Compare this to Courbet's Young Ladies of the Village (fig. 9), criticized by Du Pays in L'/llustration as "the most anti-picturesque, the most unpleasant thing in the world: the pretention to elegance flaunted by the common people"35 . Even in conservative critics' frequent attacks on Courbet as the "apostle of ugliness", one can read the world-upside-down, for ugliness was the reversal of beauty, which to conservatives was the proper sphere of art. I am proposing that, if we look at Courbet in the light of carnival, we can better understand the hysteria his works provoked in conservative circles. Parody and 26 1 inversion assume a new and sinister dimension in the raucus Return from the Conference (fig. 10) featuring drunken priests, or the oversized Beggar's Alms (fig. 11) which the critic Chesneau claimed represented France 36 . Courbet constantly reversed the traditional hierarchical relationship of pictorial category to size: in paintings such as fhe Stonebreakers, The Grain Sifters, After Dinner at Ornans, ordinary people are elevated to 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 whose red-nosed beadles seem to mock the solemnity of the event. 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 as world-upside-do n, with the "normal" order of the world reversed: t~e monarch must now listen and learn, while the artist & ants the benefit of his example to the ruler 37 . FIG. 11. - Gusta~e COURBET. L'Aumone d'un mendiant d Ornans, 1868. Buprell Collection, Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries.
Page 1 and 2: COURBET' S EXHIBITIONISM In a lette
Page 3 and 4: described Courbet's 1855 show as an
Page 5 and 6: eople want to pay, so that their ju
Page 7: in France. It was only because of D
Page 11 and 12: FIG. 1 4. - C. THURSTON THOMPSON. "
Page 13: 18. Louis PEISSE, "Le Salon de 1843

Courbet's Exhibitionism

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