A History of European Art

(Steven Felgate) #1

In it are the people who thrive on life and those who thrive on death; it is
society at its best, its worst, its average.”


He continued, “I am in the center, painting; on the right are the ‘shareholders,’
that is, my friends, the workers, the art collectors. On the left the others...
the common people, the destitute, the poor, the wealthy, the exploited, the
exploiters; those who thrive on death.” Courbet’s irony is evident; his social
and political concerns are imbedded in this painting. Dense with ¿ gures and
predominantly dark in tonality, the painting is dif¿ cult to decipher in detail.
Note the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, who is seated at the far right; the
life-size lay ¿ gure (an articulated wooden ¿ gure that artists use in lieu of a
model) pointedly hung in the attitude of a cruci¿ xion on the left just behind
the easel (the side of “those who thrive on death”); and in the center, the
artist, his nude model, a small boy, and a dog.


Everyone in the center group is admiring the landscape that Courbet is still
painting. The female nude has nothing to wear and nothing to do except
admire it; the boy looks up in awe at the magical imitation of reality that
the painter has made; and the artist himself is con¿ dently demonstrating his
craft and achievement. Many have noted that this landscape painting has
a greater brightness, in a sense, a greater reality, than the rest of the huge
canvas, as though everything pales in comparison to this window onto the
real world, while the arti¿ cial congregation of the “shareholders” and the
“others” stands or sits about and takes little or no notice of the artist and
his work. The “seven years” of Courbet’s life referred to in the title began
with the revolutionary year of 1848, and the complex, subjective social and
personal allegory that his ego has permitted him to force on the public may
have roots in that fact.


We are still in the mid-1850s, and Courbet lived until 1877, but much would
change by then: war, civil war, the rise of a new society and a new artistic
movement. Courbet, caught up by forces he helped set in motion, died in
exile in Switzerland. Ŷ

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