The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism Review
As a trained painter, art historian and teacher I found this book fascinating on several fronts. As a lover of the Napoleonic epoch, I have been familiar with Meissonier since my early teens, but knew nothing about him. As a painter, I am obviously familiar with Manet as the big bang of Modernism in the mid-nineteenth century. However, I have never read such an in-depth study of the various Salons. I had been led to believe (is it just me?) that Manet, and later Monet, Degas et al...had been rejected by the Salon so many times that they flew in the face of ridicule and set up their own 'Salon des Refuses'. I was amazed (and somewhat ashamed of myself to have not investigated this further) when I read in Mr King's book of how The Salon des Refuses had actually been set up at the insistance of Napoleon III! I was similarly surprised at how many of the 'younger' Impressionists were the co-exhibitors of Manet - Monet indeed gaining a fair amount of praise before Manet. The trite history we're usually given - Manet as the father of the movement followed by the 'younger' accolytes is largely nonsense. Also amazed that Cezanne, the arch 'Post Impressionist' was around - and well known in the 1860s. None of these people starved for their art and all did, to an extent court favour with The Salon, which, incidentally changed its judging procedure fairly early on so as to at least accomodate the new painting that was happening. Meissonier is praised by King for his anatomical studies of horses in motion. I had always assumed these were done with the benefit of stop motion photography but apparently Meissonier studied the animals in motion, himself often astride a horse or - from a privately built railway carriage. King compares this painstaking study to the scientific approach of Leonardo and Michelangelo. And why not? As an artist I can only respect a man who spent 10 years scraping off, restarting and wrestling with 'Friedland' to get it right. And, his painting is not 'tight', not 'dead'. Art history - as it's been handed down to us through the Modernist purges of the twentieth century is often a convenient nonsense. Monet was being a Post Impressionist after all, at the same time as Picasso was being a cubist at the same time Schiele was being an Expressionist. Idea for a book Mr King?
The author does a fine job of remaining neutral. My belief that Manet was a genius remains unshaken, though my guilty pleasures of admiring the historical exactitude of Meissonier have been completely turned around. About time the latter's staue was returned to The Louvre.
The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism Overview
The fascinating new book by the author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling: a saga of artistic rivalry and cultural upheaval in the decade leading to the birth of Impressionism.
If there were two men who were absolutely central to artistic life in France in the second half of the nineteenth century, they were Edouard Manet and Ernest Meissonier. While the former has been labelled the “Father of Impressionism” and is today a household name, the latter has sunk into obscurity. It is difficult now to believe that in 1864, when this story begins, it was Meissonier who was considered the greatest French artist alive and who received astronomical sums for his work, while Manet was derided for his messy paintings of ordinary people and had great difficulty getting any of his work accepted at the all-important annual Paris Salon.
Manet and Meissonier were the Mozart and Salieri of their day, one a dangerous challenge to the establishment, the other beloved by rulers and the public alike for his painstakingly meticulous oil paintings of historical subjects. Out of the fascinating story of their parallel careers, Ross King creates a lens through which to view the political tensions that dogged Louis-Napoleon during the Second Empire, his ignominious downfall, and the bloody Paris Commune of 1871. At the same time, King paints a wonderfully detailed and vivid portrait of life in an era of radical social change: on the streets of Paris, at the new seaside resorts of Boulogne and Trouville, and at the race courses and picnic spots where the new bourgeoisie relaxed. When Manet painted Dejeuner sur l’herbe or Olympia, he shocked not only with his casual brushstrokes (described by some as applied by a ‘floor mop’) but with his subject matter: top-hatted white-collar workers (and their mistresses) were not considered suitable subjects for ‘Art’. Ross King shows how, benign as they might seem today, these paintings changed the course of history. The struggle between Meissonier and Manet to see their paintings achieve pride of place at the Salon was not just about artistic competitiveness, it was about how to see the world.
Full of fantastic tidbits of information (such as the use of carrier pigeons and hot-air balloons during the siege of Paris), and a colourful cast of characters that includes Baudelaire, Courbet, and Zola, with walk-on parts for Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cezanne, The Judgment of Paris casts new light on the birth of Impressionism and takes us to the heart of a time in which the modern French identity was being forged.
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Customer Reviews
A must-read for all artists out there - S. Garcia - Washington, DC
Ross King does a superb job placing into perspective the lives of the artists that opened the door for all artists today. He is eloquent, sarcastic, and even hilarious. King presents great facts and tells us when his opinion or imagination is being presented.
Things you didn't learn in art history class - SBC - Columbus, Ohio
For people who love art and history, this is a well written and interesting book.
Not a page turner like "Dome," but a good job, Mr. King. - L. Howe Steiger - Oakland, CA
I picked up King's book in anticipation of the pending show this summer in San Francisco of Impressionist art from Paris's Musee d'Orsay. Those paintings are vastly familiar to most museum going Americans, and I wanted to look at them from a slightly different perspective, if I could. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed King's book Brunelleschi's Dome, I suspected I would be both amused and interesting informed by what King had to say. I was not disappointed. I very much enjoyed this book, even though it lacked the suspense of the former (who's going to get that darned dome done?).
"The Judgment of Paris" (a wonderful title, by the way, with its reference to the opening of the Trojan War) is neither a complete history of the coming of Impressionism nor a book about changing artistic techniques--there are lots of those around. Rather King has chosen to focus on the culture wars and the politics of taste, with the two poles of rising and falling taste, as others have pointed out, being defined as, on the one hand, the meticulous historic painting of the hugely popular Ernest Meissonier (whose art is today generally unknown and ignored) and, on that other, that upstart Edouard Manet whose paintings outraged both the Parisian public and the Powers that Be.
It's a great story, well told here, and one that rings with ironies oh so delicately extracted by Ross King, ironies, I might add, that echo in our own contemporary wars of taste, be it taste in art or food, style of fiction or style of political campaign.
Good job, Mr. King.
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