Shaking Things Up in the Art World: The Biennale de Paris and the Salon des Refusés

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aesthetic philosophy, aesthetic standards, aesthetics, Alexandre Gurita, Alexandre Gurita's Biennale de Paris, André Malraux, art, art blog, art history, Claudia Moscovici, conceptual art, contemporary art, controversial art, Déjeuner sur l'herbe, Edouard Manet, Emile Zola, fine art, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, history of art, Impressionism, la Biennale de Paris, le Biennale de Paris, Le Salon des Refusées, pluralism in art, postmodern art, Romanticism and Postromanticism, Shaking Things Up in the Art World: The Biennale de Paris and the Salon des Refusés, the Biennale of Paris, the Impressionist movement

André Malraux the founder of the Biennale de Paris by Gisèle Freund in 1935. © Agence Nina Beskow

As an inherently subjective field despite (or perhaps because of) its many changing standards, art has been surrounded by controversy (at least) ever since the Impressionists changed the aesthetic standards of the Academy in the nineteenth century. What was at stake then in the heated debates surrounding the official Salon is similar to what is at stake now in the controversy surrounding the Biennale de Paris: an understanding of art, its forums, its distribution and its cultural value. The Biennale de Paris was launched by Raymond Cogniat in 1959 and set up by the writer André Malraux, who was at the time the Minister of Culture. Its role was to showcase creative talent worldwide and to provide a place where artists, critics, gallery owners, and others involved in the fields of art could share their work and exchange ideas. But ever since Alexandre Gurita took over the BDP in 2000, this forum has been plagued by debates that get to the core of the meaning and place of art today: should it be a place or places? Who counts as an artist? What is art? What counts as an artwork? Who should give it value or cultural meaning?

Will the real Biennale de Paris please stand up?

According to Gurita, the controversy surrounding the Biennale de Paris “would make a best-seller”. The BDP originally directed by Malraux was abandoned by the Ministry of Culture in 1985. Between 1985-2000, there were debates and investigations concerning the ways in which to modernize it and how to relaunch it. In 2000, Alexandre Gurita took over this project and changed it radically, from within. Through the notion of  « invisual art »⁽¹⁾, he broke the sacred law that says « art = art objet » which creates an automatic dependency between art and work of art. He asserts that art can express itself otherwise than through art objects and declares : « There is no proof  that art is depending from the art object. For that reason we can assume the contrary ». In a move that the sociologist of art Pierre Bourdieu would have been proud of, he also challenged the hierarchies imposed by all the mediators – art critics, gallery owners, museum curators – between artists and their public. In so doing, he also disposed with the idea that some artistic spaces – like museums of contemporary art or posh galleries – are privileged spaces to exhibit artwork. Some of the French officials and art critics were up in arms, even though many of them had applauded Bourdieu, one of the most highly consecrated philosophers and sociologists of art, for proposing exactly the same ideas. Gurita just put them into practice.

In his ground-breaking book, Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu argued that society uses “symbolic goods, especially those regarded as the attributes of excellence, […as] the ideal weapon in strategies of distinction” that shape various hierarchies, especially class hierarchies. The art world is still filled with such social distinctions, which aren’t only class-based, by the way. As I’ve argued before, most contemporary artists–no matter what class or place they come from–don’t have meaningful access to the public. Aside from a handful of (mostly postmodern) artists, most artists find it impossible to showcase their art in museums of contemporary art or in the most prestigious galleries. In turn, this means that collectors don’t get to see and buy their artwork and that critics don’t view it and discuss it. To change this hierarchical system of distinction, Alexandre Gurita dispensed with the mediators (gallery and museum curators) between the artists and the public. The participants set themselves the dates and the places for their own activities. On its official website, http://biennaledeparis.org  the reinvented Biennale de Paris includes the following tenets, a true Manifesto of a new aesthetic pluralism:

« The Biennale de Paris was launched in 1959 by André Malraux with the purpose of creating a meeting place for those who would define the art of the future. After a hiatus of several years, the Biennale was relaunched in 2000. Since then it has not ceased in its efforts to unravel art from institutions. The Biennale de Paris rejects the use of art objects, which are too alienated by the market. It does not confine itself to a framework that would hinder its present actions or its political, economic and ideological evolution. By acting upon everyday life and its unfolding realities, the Biennale seeks to redefine art by using criteria which rejects the idea of the artist as the sole protagonist in his work. Simply stated, the Biennale de Paris refuses to participate in today’s conventional art world. By mixing genres, exploiting porous frontiers and practicing the redistribution of roles, the Biennale de Paris allows art to appear precisely where it’s not expected. Furthermore, the Biennale de Paris has its own guidelines⁽²⁾.

"Déjeuner sur l'herbe", Catherine et Jacques Pineau, Biennale de Paris 2004

In a personal interview, Gurita told me that he perceives undermining the system of distinction as “an instrument of liberty placed at the service of art. In 2000 my act created an enormous scandal and enraged certain representatives of the system. Others, however, liked the idea that an artist combats an institution.” Not everyone in France greeted this radical overhaul quite as enthusiastically. Government officials initially disowned the Biennale de Paris, claiming that the real Biennale was moved to Lyon. Even art critics–who generally can’t praise enough the cutting-edge and avant-garde art–weren’t too flattering. Did the Biennale escape them? In the Editorial of Beaux-Arts Magazine, for instance, Fabrice Bousteau referred to the project as “the regrettable Biennale de Paris, mixing expos, concerts, performances, conferences, and accomplish with the creators of the whole world in several areas of the city” (May 2007). The critic for France’s elite leftwing newspaper, Libération, adopted the official government position that the Biennale de Paris has been transferred to Lyon: “Since 1991, France itself has its Biennale in Lyon. The latter picks up the slack from the defunct Biennale de Paris, which had its last meeting in 1985.” (Libération, April 2006)

The objective of the new Biennale de Paris is nothing less than changing the idea of art as a unified domain of cultural production and rigid, hierchical distinctions. More than that, it proposes an art “without pieces of art, an art without exhibition, an art without spectatorship, an art without curatorship, authors without authority.” As for when it happens, don’t set your calendars, since that’s also relative. “The Biennale de Paris takes place when it happens. It exists in real time. Each biennial begins when the previous ends. Associated practices evolve over the course of successive editions.” Where does it take place?  “The Biennale de Paris takes place where it happens. Relocating itself, it looks for a reciprocity with the practices locality, in order to ponder over and modify social, economical, political and ideological backgrounds.

The Precedent of Impressionism and the Salon des Refusés

"Déjeuner sur l'herbe", Edouard Manet, Wikipedia Commons, Warlburg.edu

Before you conclude that you’re finding yourself in one of Eugen Ionesco’s absurdist plays, I’d like to remind you that the art world has often been subject to radical redefinition from within. To stick to the theme of French culture, I’ll use the Impressionist movement as an example. The Biennale de Paris is not the only one to be rejected by the establishment. It finds itself in good company, since the Impressionists –  are arguably still the most popular artists in the world–were rejected as well.

If any art collection can be said to have a profound impact upon the history of art and aesthetics, the paintings exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 would certainly be on a top ten list. This collection of paintings marks both a change of views about what counts as good art and a liberating shift in the institutions that consecrated French art to begin with. Before this crucial moment, the production of good art was heavily regulated. From the seventeenth-century, when Colbert instituted the first Salon that would display the art of the painters of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, the Salons and the Academy largely determined artistic standards. Even when the Salon was opened to all artists in 1791, the rules by which they were judged did not become less rigid, even though the number of artists who could display grew substantially as did the public patronage of the arts.

When in 1863 the official Salon rejected 3000 pieces out of the 5000 submitted by artists, with hindsight we can safely say that it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In a half-mocking, half-appeasing gesture towards the rejected artists, Napoleon III authorized a Salon de Refusés in a space that was distinct from the prestigious Salon sponsored by the Académie.

Like Napoleon I, the Emperor utilized art to express the glory of the French empire. The standards of the official salon were set by the traditional Count Nieuwerkerke, who was the Intendant of the Beaux Arts. He lived in a seventeen room suite in the Louvre and regulated all artistic life at court. By the 1860′s, however, artists and intellectuals–especially in more liberal newspapers– began to object to the rigid standards of the Academy and the Salon. Many of them demanded inclusion in the Salon for a wider range of talented artists.

Napoleon III paid a visit to the Salon and told Nieuwerkerke–perhaps in part to clip his wings–that many of the works rejected were just as good as those accepted. He then ordered that all the works rejected by the Salon be shown in the Palais de L’Industrie in its own show that would be called, condescendingly, the Salon de Refusés. This created the opportunity for new artists such as Manet, Pissaro and Whistler –the generation that had a profound influence upon modern art and especially upon the Impressionist movement–to become more visible in the public eye.

Manet also proved to be a key factor in the dissolution of the Salon de Refusés, however. Once the Emperor saw his Déjeuner sur l’herbe, he was shocked by its undisguised sexuality and agreed with the Academy that the first Salon de Refusés should also be the last. Nonetheless, the controversy stirred a heated debate over the nature of modern art and eventually opened the way for the Salon des Indépendants, galleries, and other institutions that soon rivaled and eventually exceeded the official Salon’s influence upon art. In fact, in a reversal of aesthetic values, less than twenty years after the Salon de Refusés, the artists associated with this controversial exhibit, particularly Manet, would be enshrined as the founders of modern art. Conversely, the official Salon art would fall into disrepute as mechanical, uninventive, formalistic: in short, l’art pompier, a pejorative term used to describe David’s Roman headgear, which resembled the helmets of firefighters (pompiers). As it often happens, the most effective subversive, anti-establishment artists and artistic movements often become–by their sheer cultural impact and visibility–the new establishment in art.

I believe that a similar process is at work in the manner in which Alexandre Gurita is redefining our understanding of the art world today. His pluralistic understanding of art opens up the field of cultural production to diverse artists, locations, modes of giving cultural value, and audiences. Although his project may have been accused by some of nihilism, I’d say that there’s a big philosophical –  actual – difference between pluralism and nihilism. Nihilism represents a flat denial of all values, be they ethical or aesthetic. By way of contrast, pluralism supports the value of a multitude of standards. Although pluralism can be relativistic, it doesn’t have to be. The standards for many aesthetic values can be defended and validated. Personally, as the founder of a more or less traditional movement in art (postromanticism.com) I’ll take artistic pluralism over rigid hierarchy any day.

As I have argued in my previous article, The Conformism of Postmodern Style, I object to the fact that elitist practices in museums of contemporary art and in some galleries impose a certain conformity (which I loosely associate with postmodern art) upon the art world. In so doing, they don’t give diverse artists a real, fair and democratic shake at presenting their works to the public. But, to my mind, envy of those artists who have “made it” or tearing down the entire artistic establishment is not the solution. Opening up the art world from within is. The French have a saying about this: Vive la différence! The art that Alexandre Gurita endorses – invisual art – is as far removed from my more traditional postromantic art movement as you can get. However, to my mind, the real issue is not imposing one standard of what constitutes good or true art, but making it possible for different kinds of artists and artistic styles to be shared with the public in a multitude of venues. This is what the reincarnated Biennale de Paris directed by Gurita aims to do.

In such a newly redefined art world – or art fields, more like it–it’s possible for more traditional artists like the postromantics to coexist and share cultural space and ideas with the more avant-garde postmodernists.  And if anybody in France still accuses Gurita of political correctness, they can blame it on Pierre Bourdieu, who, incidentally – and ironically – won the prestigious Médaille d’or du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). This goes to show that it pays to shake things up and repudiate cultural consecration. You might even get awarded a medal for it!

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

⁽¹⁾ The invisual is visible but not as art. Invisual do not need to be seen to exist.

⁽²⁾ -Orientations : The Biennale de Paris rejects exhibitions and art objects. It refuses to be ”thought by art”. It identifies and defends true alternatives. It calls for “non-standard practices”.

-Strategy : To be liquid. If the ground floor is occupied, occupy the floor below.

-An Invisual Art : No serious proof exists that art is dependent on the art object. We can therefore assume the opposite. The Biennale de Paris promotes invisual practices which do not need to be seen to exist. The invisual is visible but not as art.

-A Non-Artistic Art : The Biennale de Paris defends an art which does not obey the common criteria for art: creative, emotive, aesthetic, spectacular…

-An Art which Operates in Everyday Reality : The Biennale de Paris promotes practices that relegate art to the background in order to conquer everyday reality.

-A Public of Indifference : With the Biennale de Paris there are no more art spectacles. The Biennale addresses what it calls “a public of indifference”: persons who, consciously or accidentally, interact with propositions that can no longer be identified as artistic.

-A Unified Criticism : Organised as a network, the Biennale de Paris constitutes a critical mass composed of hundreds of initiatives, which would otherwise have been isolated and without impact.

Repression in Contemporary Art

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artistic freedom, artistic repression, artistic repression in contemporary art, censorship, censorship in art, censorship in contemporary art, Claudia Moscovici, elitism, freedom, freedom of expression, lack of freedom, lack of power of expression, no artistic freedom, no freedom, no freedom of expression, postmodernism, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, repression, repression in contemporary art, snobbery

We assume that artists are free to express themselves however they wish in Western societies. Aside from extreme and harmful forms of art, we believe that there is no censorship in the world art. I believe, however, that this so-called artistic freedom is largely illusory. Contemporary artists may have the freedom to express themselves however they wish, but many of them lack the freedom to be visible to the public. In the world of art and literature, for all practical purposes, what isn’t seen by the public doesn’t exist.

Artistic freedom and aesthetic value are interrelated. Art that is not considered valuable by the artistic establishment—art critics, museum curators and art historians—doesn’t even get the chance to be evaluated by the public.  Such art doesn’t make it to museums of contemporary art like the Guggenheim. It also doesn’t get discussed in the art sections of influential newspapers and art magazines. Analogously, literature that is not considered valuable by the publishing establishment—literary agents, editors, publishers and critics—doesn’t get a readership because it never makes it into print. So artistic freedom isn’t just about creating whatever one wants in the privacy of one’s home or studio without the fear of being arrested or shot for it.  Although this basic freedom is very necessary, artistic freedom also entails a correlate liberty: namely, the public’s freedom to be exposed to a wide variety of artistic and literary styles. That way we can make our own choices and express our personal tastes.  When there’s only one politician or political party to vote for on a ballot it generally means there’s no real freedom of choice in politics. When there’s only one artistic current or style displayed in museums of contemporary art it means there’s no real freedom of choice in art.

Artistic freedom requires an openness or pluralism in our cultural environment. It depends upon the artistic and literary establishments giving a variety of styles a fair shake. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that such an open-minded cultural environment exists in the art world in the United States today. I admit right away that I’m not impartial about aesthetic matters.  In 2002, the sculptor Leonardo Pereznieto and I began an international aesthetic movement, called postromanticism.com, which celebrates sensuality, passion and beauty in contemporary art.  But my argument for artistic freedom is more general than my preference for a certain type of art. I’d be curious to know if readers share my impressions of the contemporary art world (or not).

Many art critics are far more optimistic than I am. For instance, scholars who focus on contemporary art describe the liberating effect of “the end of art.” What they mean by this is that the elitist standards associated with the traditional art promoted by art academies and the salons, which made “good” art subject to very specific and rigorous rules, have died since the development of modern and postmodern art. In postmodern art in particular, they claim, artists can do whatever they please in a cultural environment where everything goes. Some scholars and art critics, such as Hal Foster (The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture) and Arthur Danto (After the end of art), celebrate this pluralism or interpret it as an inevitable cultural evolution. Others, like Susi Gablik (Has modernism failed?), tend to be somewhat more critical or at least ambivalent about it. Last but not least, organizations like artrenewal.org, begun by Fred Ross, lament the dissolution of aesthetic standards and promote Realism as an alternative.

In my estimation, this supposed artistic pluralism, or openness to diversity in art, is largely illusory. While it’s no doubt true that the hierarchy between “high art” or “good art” and “low art” or “bad art” has been seriously undermined, the kind of contemporary art that is displayed by museums of contemporary art or discussed by art critics and scholars who specialize in contemporary art remains strikingly uniform, even prescriptive. So while a pluralism in standards of value exists, it’s unfortunately overshadowed by a simultaneous dogmatism in the kind of art that’s being displayed, discussed and taken seriously by the artistic establishment for the past forty years or so. If one visits museums of contemporary art and departments of Studio Art and Design, one is struck by the conformity of thought and the similarity of artistic styles. One notices that only or primarily the art that’s currently considered “cutting-edge” and “postmodern” is presented as a valid part of the contemporary art scene.  By way of contrast, contemporary artistic styles that are more traditional in inspiration—especially Realism and Romanticism—are ignored or dismissed as “antiquated,” “old-fashioned,” “kitsch” or just plain “derivative.” The message of the current art establishment seems to be: “everything goes” as long as it’s not traditional, realist or resembles what the general public conventionally views as “art.”

If all or most contemporary artists created in a postmodern style, then the conformism would not be the direct result of any kind of dogmatism imposed from above by the artistic establishment.  Similarly, if the public only liked postmodern installations and ready-mades, then the fact that museums of contemporary art display such art would also be a reflection of the public taste. But that’s not what actually happens in our culture today. If anything, there seems to be aninverse relation between the art that the public prefers and what critics, scholars and museums curators consecrate. While the public tends to like and buy works in the Realist tradition, this kind of art is rarely featured in museums of contemporary art or discussed by art critics and scholars today. I find this automatic exclusion of certain artistic styles and dogmatic valorization of others a disturbing cultural phenomenon in a supposedly free and democratic society.

Growing up in Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist regime, I remember noticing the uniformity of contemporary art. During the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods, art had to be done in a certain “Social Realist” style. Sculptures and paintings commonly represented in a realistic (yet also idealized) style communist heroes fighting against our country’s invaders or workers combating the bourgeois oppressors. Drama and fiction predictably staged the on-going heroic battle of the proletariat against the threat (or temptation) of bourgeois values.  Granted, the dogmatism in art and literature was not one of the things that bothered our family most about living in totalitarian Romania. Nor was it what led us, ultimately, to immigrate to the United States. We had more pressing concerns than the impoverishment of high culture: we had to deal with the poverty of our daily lives. The lack of food and consumer goods and the constant monitoring by the Secret Police (Securitate) posed much more serious, and pressing, problems, which I depicted in my novel, Velvet Totalitarianism.  Nonetheless, the ideological homogeneity and censorship of art and literature was a symptom of a more general political and cultural repression: of the lack of choice and freedom that characterizes life in totalitarian regimes and that, by way of contrast, constitute two of the most attractive features of democratic societies.

After immigrating to the United States, I became especially interested in the link between artistic/intellectual freedom and political/social freedom. In college and graduate school, I studied literature and art: two aspects of culture that were dictated from above in communist Romania. It was not long before I noticed that contemporary art in Western countries also appears to be homogeneous, even if in a completely different (one could say, opposite) way from the Socialist Realism prescribed in Eastern Europe during the communist era. Rather than being Realist in style and bearing a clear ideological (Marxist) message, Western contemporary art seems to be deliberately anti-representational and anti-interpretation (as Susan Sontag describes the formalism of contemporary literature in her groundbreaking book, Against Interpretation). Some of the most important museums of contemporary art—the Guggenheim and MoMa in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris—consistently display pop art in the style of Andy Warhol and installations made up of trash and other materials and assisted ready-mades that carry the tradition of Duchamp to an extreme—all of which loosely fit into the flexible category of “postmodern art.”

I also noticed that the kind of art that actually sells in American galleries doesn’t seem to be the kind that’s displayed by museums of contemporary art or praised by art critics. If one visits art galleries all over the United States, one is much more likely to find contemporary paintings and sculptures in the Realist and Modernist traditions—up to and including Abstract Expressionism. The contrast between the kind of art that people enjoy seeing, buying and displaying in their homes or offices and the kind of art that critics praise may be a symptom of the fact that since the nineteenth century (more specifically, since Théophile Gauthier’s notion of “art for art’s sake” gained popularity) art has made certain claims to purely aesthetic value. Since then, critics have maintained that artistic value lies not in how well art sells (or its market value), but in its purely “aesthetic” qualities. The influential twentieth-century art critic Clement Greenberg, who popularized Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism in general, made the strongest case for this understanding of art solely on its own terms.

Yet in an era of supposed cultural pluralism, it seems somewhat suspect to assume that the kind of art that a large section of the general public prefers must necessarily be of poor quality. It’s also elitist and dogmatic to assume that only the art that critics and museums of contemporary art favor reflects “real” aesthetic value. Although the process of artistic consecration differs in the West from how art gained value in Eastern Europe during the communist era, the end result is, unfortunately, strikingly similar: artistic uniformity and conformism. Under communism, such uniformity was imposed from above by the state apparatus, through ideological indoctrination and censorship. In the United States, it occurs in a more complex, or “overdetermined” manner, through what the French sociologist of culture, Pierre Bourdieu, calls the processes of “consecration” which give art its “cultural capital”: namely, through the institutions that study, display, discuss and disseminate contemporary art. If art were truly democratic and the field of cultural production were truly pluralistic, as some critics maintain, wouldn’t a wide range of contemporary styles of art be granted value, provided that they were well executed? If I keep the qualifier—if they were well executed—it’s because, in my understanding, cultural pluralism doesn’t imply that all art is necessarily equal in quality. For as long as people will have standards of taste and value, by definition, not all art will be regarded as equally good or equally bad.

In my estimation, pluralism entails a democratization of art, where a wide range of diverse and distinct artistic styles are given a real chance to be considered, discussed and judged by the general public: by being displayed in museums, taught in courses, discussed by art critics and… debated on art and culture blogs, such as this one.  But pluralism in the sense that some postmodern critics use the word today–i.e. as the dissolution of the difference between “good art” and “bad art”—strikes me as dangerously similar to what occurred under the reign of Socialist Realism.  All Socialist art was by definition “good”: declaring that some artists were more talented than others was regarded as an old-fashioned and elitist bourgeois distinction.

Whatever the difference between good and bad art may be, I think that this distinction is worth preserving. A meaningful cultural pluralism doesn’t automatically do away with artistic standards. Instead, it multiplies the choices offered to the public. When a culture eliminates artistic choice and the standards by which people can evaluate different styles of art and presents only a few styles of art as valid—which is what I’m afraid is happening in our country today–the result is the flattening of art to ideology.

This creates a dull conformism that, no matter how much it’s justified or hailed by the artistic establishment, leaves the public feeling deeply skeptical about the value of contemporary art. As the New York art critic Suzi Gablik states, many people tend to view contemporary art “as a loss of craft, a fall from grace, a fraud or a hoax…” (Has Modernism Failed?, 13)  For art to be vibrant and alive in a culture, it has to be taken seriously—or at least enjoyed with pleasure—by a large section of the viewing public, not just by a small elite of critics, artists and scholars who appear to many of us to be praising the Emperor’s new clothes.

Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com

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