academies.
Most art criticism in France was related to the Salon exhibitions and these provided the main
opportunities to educate the public, prior to the introduction of public museums. Reviews of the Salons
also reflected changes in public taste and broader social tensions, serving as an intermediary between the
official concerns and policies of the state and the views of a broader public (Wrigley, 1993, 161). There
was a standard agenda (inherited from the seventeenth century) of items to be discussed in relation to each
work discussed: expression, composition, costume, drawing, color, chiaroscuro, airs de tête (the
expressions of heads and faces) and drapery in the case of paintings; with notions of grandeur, nobility,
dignity and respect for classical prototypes featuring heavily in discussions of history painting. There was
a general avoidance of the esoteric, dwelling rather on how plausible a painting’s system of
representation was to the general viewer. Salon criticism and “men of taste” more broadly could in theory
pose a significant threat to the Académie royale and its authority. After the demise in the early century of
the Académie’s lectures and debates on art, “theory” became the concern of circles of authority outside
the institution, such as that led by Pierre Crozat, who served as artistic adviser to the Duc d’Orléans and
enjoyed strong relations with the Regency Court and the Palais Royal. He gathered at his home other
collectors, theorists and critics such as PierreJean Mariette, Jean de Jullienne, Du Bos, Caylus and
Bachaumont (see Chapter 2; Crow, 1985, 22–41).
The relationship between art criticism and centers of power was among the reasons for the growing
politicization of this genre of writing. Wrigley (1998, 136–137) argues that, in France, political debate
and dissent were often displaced into art criticism because they were forbidden in public. In turn, art
criticism affected the “material and discursive matrix” (the social conditions and representations of
power) in contemporary art (Wrigley, 1993, 4). When La Font de Saint Yenne launched, in his 1747
Reflexions, an attack on decadent (rococo) art, he allied aesthetic with political causes, from notions of
civic duty to support for the Parlements and their challenge to royal authority (Wrigley, 1993, 185–186).
As pamphlet literature proliferated in the two decades preceding the Revolution, much of it had an anti
court flavor, as well as challenging the authority of the Académie in the name of the public (Crow, 1985,
180–186). After the Revolution there were some largely unsuccessful attempts by art critics to bring order
to society (Wrigley, 1993, 166–167). Even in nations where political tensions were less acute, art
criticism often served as commentary on the health of nations and societies. Mythmaking grand
narratives and historicist accounts of art served the interests of reform movements by identifying cycles of
health, decadence, death and regeneration in a range of civilizations, from Italy (felt to be a “dying”
civilization in the eighteenth century, its visitors dazzled mainly by its distant past) to the prospering
societies and cultures of France, Britain and Germany. The growing fashions for neoclassicism and
primitivism in art were associated with a quasibiological regeneration of late eighteenthcentury
civilizations (Craske, 1997, 219–250). Such ideological reconstructions of history suited the new taste
for national schools and histories of art. In 1745 AntoineJoseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680–1765)
published the first part of the first history of French painting, his Summary of the Lives of the Most
Famous Painters (Abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres), based on celebrity biographies in the
manner of Vasari’s 1550 Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (Le Vite de’piu
eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori) (Berger, 1999, 233).
It was rare for journals to have an explicit polemical allegiance. However, the Année Littéraire founded
by ÉlieCatherine Fréron (1718–1776), professor and professional critic, was openly hostile to key
Enlightenment thinkers, such as Voltaire. Censorship laws did little to curb the efforts of critics who went
on the offensive, as these laws tended to be enforced strictly only during political crises, such as those
provoked by the Maupeou affair and the end of Louis XVI’s reign: René NicolasCharlesAugustin de
Maupeou (1714–1792) was the chancellor who challenged the power of the Paris Parlements. The