Volume 29, Number 3 · March 4, 1982
Enemies of Realism
By Charles Rosen, Henri Zerner
"The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830-1900" the St. Louis Art Museum, the Glasgow (Scotland) Art Gallery and Museum. November 1980-January 1982
an exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum,
The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830-1900
by Gabriel P. Weisberg
Cleveland Museum of Art, distributed by Indiana University Press, 360, 440 illustrations pp., $50.00
One evening at a dinner party, a lady is supposed to have turned to Degas and asked him aggressively, 'Monsieur Degas, why do you make the women in your paintings so ugly?' and he replied, 'Because women are generally ugly, Madame.' The story may not have all the authority one might desire, but it illuminates an essential facet of French avant-garde Realism. Degas's pictures are beautiful, but the beauty of the picture in no way embellishes what is portrayed: the dancers in Degas's famous ballet pictures are made neither more nor less attractive by the painting. Flaubert's prose, distinguished and beautiful in itself, does not disturb the banality of the contemporary life he represented. Pictures and novels thereby can lay a double claim, first to absolute truth undistracted by aesthetic preconceptions, and then to abstract beauty, uninfluenced by the world that is represented.
Review, 4971 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |