Eugene Delacroix

A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

In this volume, Elisabeth Fraser shows that artists and the works they created in the Mediterranean during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were informed by mutual dependence and reciprocity between European nations and the Ottoman Empire. Her rich exploration of this vibrant cross-cultural exchange challenges the dominant interpretation of European relations with the East during the period, revealing a shared world of fluid and long-sustained interactions.

Voyagers to and from the Ottoman Empire documented their journeys in prints, paintings, and lavishly illustrated travelogues; many of these helped define Europe’s self-identified role as heir to Ottoman civilizations and bolstered its presence in the Islamic Mediterranean and beyond. Fraser finds that these works illuminate not only how travelers’ experiences abroad were more nuanced than the expansionist ideology with which they became associated, but also how these narratives depicted the vitality of Ottoman culture and served as extensions of Ottoman diplomacy. Ottomans were aware of and responded to European representations, using them to defend Ottoman culture and sovereignty. In embracing the art of both cultures and setting these works in a broader context, Fraser challenges the dominant historiographical tradition that sees Ottoman artists adopting European modes of art in a one-sided process of “Europeanization.”

Theoretically informed and rigorously researched, this cross-cultural approach to European and Ottoman art sheds much-needed critical light on the widely disseminated travel images of the era—important cultural artifacts in their own right—and provides a fresh and inviting understanding of the relationships among cultures in the Mediterranean during an era of increasing European expansionism.
ISBN: 978-0-271-07320-0

Contents:

Part I: Power in Question

- Chapter 1 Reading Choiseul in the Gaps of the Orientalist Archive

- Chapter 2 In the Shadow of les Grands: Cassas’s Orientalist Self-Fashioning

Part II: Ottoman Culture Abroad

- Chapter 3 The Translator’s Art: Mouradgea d’Ohsson, Ottoman Dragoman in Paris

- Chapter 4 Miniatures in Black and White: Melling’s Istanbul

Part III: Contradictory Contact

- Chapter 5 Skin of Nation, Body of Empire: Louis Dupré in Ottoman Greece

- Chapter 6 A Painter’s Renunciation: Delacroix in North Africa

LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE: ALLEGORY, LITERATURE AND
REALITY
Abstract
Liberty Leading the People of French Romantic artist Eugéne Delacroix (1798-1863)
presents allegory and reality together. It is also related to literature. In this study, the figures
in the painting were examined one by one to try to find links with allegory, reality and
literature. This painting shows the day of the July Revolution of 1830, when the most violent
conflict took place in Paris around the Hotel de Ville. However all the sources referring to
this painting indicate that this image is an allegory. The reason for that is the figure of
Liberty leading with the flag of France. In this figure, the goddess of Liberty of the 1789
revolution, the powerful female image of Barbieri's poem La Curée and the revolutionary
Anne-Charlotte are all together. Although different identities -like the artist himself or
Etienne Arago,a writer and politician-, were suggested for the figure with a top hat
representing the bourgeois class in the painting, this figure allegorizes working class, not
the bourgeois class hiding in fear during the conflicts, as in Barbieri's poem. Also, the figure
of the street child in the painting represents the children who have really participated in the
1830 revolution and even became a source of inspiration for literary work. Victor Hugo
(1802-1885) immortalized him in the novel of Les Miserables in the name of Gavroche.
Key Words: Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, allegory, Barbieri, La Curée, Libertas,
Feronia, pileus, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas

Representations of Medea in 17th- and 18th-century French painting and art criticism

The article’s aim is to analyse three paintings (those of Pierre, de Vanloo and Delacroix) and a drawing attributed to Poussin, all of which have Medea as their subject. Critiques (written by La Font de Saint-Yenne, Diderot and Gautier) and Bellori’s description of these pictures are also examined. By the analysis, the article’s goal is to shed light on the changements in the pictorial conception of Medea as a subject, as well as to reveal them in their literary reception in the 17th and 18th centuries. The article seeks to answer – among others – the following questions: what are the criteria that the critics of the Salons insist on? To what extent do they relate to the exhibited image? Or do they rather serve as illustrations for the artistic principles valued by the critics?


« Pas une goutte de sang qui tombe de la pointe de son poignard » :
Représentations de Médée dans la peinture française et les écrits de critique d’art des XVIIe-XIXe siècles

L’article vise à analyser d’une part trois peintures (celles de Pierre, de Vanloo et de Delacroix) ainsi qu’un dessin attribué à Poussin, ayant tous pour sujet l’histoire de Médée, d’autre part les textes critiques (celui de La Font de Saint-Yenne, de Diderot et de Gautier) et la description de Bellori qui sont censés rendre compte de ces images. À travers les analyses, l’article prétend mettre en lumière les changements survenus dans la conception picturale du sujet de Médée aussi bien qu’éclairer ceux qui avaient lieu dans leur réception littéraire aux XVIIe-XIXe siècles. Il tâchera de répondre, entre autres, aux questions suivantes : quels sont les critères mis en jeu par les critiques de Salons ? En quelle mesure correspondent-ils à l’image présentée ? Ou bien servent-ils plutôt à illustrer les principes artistiques chers aux critiques ?

409 pages, 98 color illustrations and 97 ink drawings.
Available in paperback and hardback at Amazon. e-book at Peter Lang Publishing: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4331-3959-8

"Paris in Architecture, Literature and Art" is a student textbook and teacher manual in cultural studies that capitalizes on the little exposure liberal arts students have to architecture, and the widespread popularity of Paris across the curriculum. Designed for a college course in the humanities, the book is also suitable for a High School course or a study abroad program in Paris.

The student textbook focuses on Paris, which throughout history has been the stage and experimental ground for artists and intellectuals from all over the world, making it the crucible of western thoughts and consummate material for an interdisciplinary study. Each chapter presents a cultural movement such as the Gothic, classical, romantic and modern that are predominant in the Parisian landscape. The interdisciplinary approach promotes critical thinking, inspiring students to identify and translate esthetic concepts from one discipline to another, and explore, for instance, what impressionist literature or cubist architecture might be.

(version 2022-09-16) Alors que les Mille et Une Nuits ont diffusé une idée sublimée de l’Orient dans l’imaginaire occidental, les milieux intellectuels du XVIIIe siècle et les événements historiques du début du XIXe siècle ont développé progressivement une image tyrannique de l’Orient et de ses gouvernants. La peinture d’histoire, pour partie consacrée à ces épisodes contemporains, s’est attachée à représenter des personnages sanguinaires qui exerçaient une fascination sur les voyageurs européens. Parmi eux, Méhémet-Ali dont le massacre des Mamelouks rebelles en 1811 est considéré comme la preuve tangible du caractère despotique des gouvernants orientaux. À la suite des sujets romantiques s’ouvrant volontiers à l’Orient, les Salons officiels de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle ont présenté des sujets orientalistes plus violents ou sanguinaires, semblant s’éloigner des références historiques. Ce sont ces particularités que nous tenterons d’examiner en nous appuyant que quelques œuvres picturales du XIXe siècle français. Nous accompagnerons celles-ci de récits littéraires ou historiques qui nous ont semblé appuyer ou éclairer le sujet peint. Il conviendra alors de s’interroger sur ces représentations despotiques et repérer si elles trahissent une réelle brutalité du pouvoir ou si elles se confondent avec des descriptions occidentales subjectives faisant du despotisme un atavisme créé par l’Occident. L’étude de motifs guidera notre démarche pour souligner la prégnance de certains d’entre eux, parfois répétés comme des clefs de lecture, et révéler comment l’orientalisme deviendra un outil critiquant à la fois la barbarie musulmane et le colonialisme.

La storia - l’Illuminismo (1750-1850)
I motivi della rottura con l’arte tradizionale
• A partire dalla metà del XVIII secolo si forma una filosofia dell’arte estetica. È allora che si produce una profonda rottura nella tradizione artistica e ha inizio il nuovo ciclo storico dell’arte, quello che si chiama moderno o contemporaneo. L’arte non viene più riferita ai grandi ideali conoscitivi, religiosi, morali, ma ad un ideale specificamente estetico. Si afferma così l’assoluta autonomia della sfera dell’arte e contemporaneamente si pone il problema del suo coordinamento alle altre attività umane, cioè del suo posto e della sua funzione nel sistema generale della cultura dell’epoca.
Questo cambiamento della tradizione figurativa si determina a causa di due fattori.
• Uno è la cultura dell’Illuminismo, secondo cui la natura non è più la rivelazione dell’ordine certo e immutabile della creazione, ma semplicemente l’ambiente dell’esistenza umana, individuale e sociale; non è più un modello, ma uno stimolo a cui variamente si reagisce.
- Quello che era il valore assoluto e a priori della natura come rivelazione o modello dato dall’alto, nell’arte moderna viene sostituito dall’ideologia intesa come immagine che la mente si fa della realtà come si pensa che sia o come si vorrebbe che fosse. Il pensiero dell’Illuminismo, che è all’origine della cultura moderna, non pone la natura come una forma data e immutabile, che si può soltanto imitare o rappresentare: la natura che gli uomini percepiscono con i sensi, interpretano con l’intelletto, mutano con l’agire (è infatti dal pensiero dell’Illuminismo che nasce la tecnologia moderna, che non ripete la natura ma la muta) è già una rappresentazione mentale che ha nella mente tutti i suoi possibili sviluppi.
• Un altro motivo che, nel Settecento, determina la fine di quello che potremmo chiamare il ciclo classico e l’inizio del ciclo romantico o moderno è la trasformazione dei mezzi tecnici di produzione, con tutte le conseguenze che comporta nell’ordine sociale e politico. Era inevitabile che la nascita della tecnologia industriale, determinando la progressiva crisi dell’artigianato, provocasse la trasformazione delle strutture e delle finalità dell’arte, che della produzione artigianale aveva rappresentato il culmine, la ragione metafisica, il modello. Il trapasso dalla tecnologia dell’artigianato, che utilizzava le materie e imitava i processi della natura, alla tecnologia industriale, che agisce sulla natura trasformando rapidamente l’ambiente, è una delle cause principali della crisi dell’arte moderna: esclusi dal sistema tecnico-economico della produzione, gli artisti diventano intellettuali borghesi in rapporto di tensione e spesso di aspra polemica con la stessa classe dirigente di cui fanno parte. I rapidi sviluppi del sistema industriale, sia sul piano sociale sia sul piano tecnologico, spiegano il continuo mutare degli orientamenti artistici, il succedersi delle tendenze o delle poetiche, la loro forte accentuazione ideologica, i loro contrasti.
Le fasi
• Nella prima fase preromantica si sviluppano due poetiche, sublime e pittoresco, e successivamente verso gli inizi dell’800 anche la poetica del paesaggio.
• La seconda fase è quella Neoclassica, fino all’inizio del 1800, influenzata da grandi scoperte, come quella archeologica di Pompei. Dal punto di vista teorico vi sono due importanti figure:
1. Winckelmann, architetto ma soprattutto teorico che tratta di classicità in molte delle sue opere. Ritiene che è in Grecia che si è sviluppata la parte più creativa della classicità, inclusi gli ordini architettonici.
2. Mengs, architetto boemo, opera anche a Roma. Sostiene che l’apporto dei romani era fondamentali per l’uso dell’arco e del sistema trittico, dando ai Romani un’identità distinta, ma non più o meno importante. I Romani inseriranno dei loro modelli architettonici tra i quali il tuscanico (ripreso dai fenici, correzione del dorico) e il composito. In generale, il Neoclassicismo riprende i canoni greci e latini, seguendo la proporzione, l’armonia e la bellezza delle forme.
- La bellezza nella classicità è data dalle proporzioni e dall’armonia. Nei ritratti veniva infatti divisa la grandezza del viso per poi riproporlo secondo le grandezze armoniche tra loro.
- L’armonia nasce allora dalla proporzione, una consonanza di distanze metriche. Viene definita da Policleto attraverso il canone policleteo e via via con lo sviluppo di altri
- La natura nel classico è positiva (“mediterranea”), che invita alla pacificazione dell’uomo con il mondo. Dal punto di vista culturale, la classicità è associata al mediterraneo.
• La terza fase (1820-1850) è quella della reazione romantica. Tra le figure più influenti ci sono: Schlegel (teorico tedesco), Novalis (poeta tedesco), Viollet Le Duc (teorico francese), Pugin e Ruskin (architetti inglesi). Quest’ultimo scrive libri come “The seven lamps of architecture” e “The stones of Venice”, che tratta il concetto di restauro romantico.
- Sullo scenario italiano abbiamo Lodili e Miuzia, che si occupano di edifici pubblici e su come l’architettura deve essere funzionale allo stato.
- La bellezza romantica non è stereotipata ma dissonante e si ritrova in elementi che mancano di armonia, suscitando una bellezza nuova determinata dall’irregolarità e un’attrazione inspiegabile.
- La natura è nordica, minacciosa, oscura e fredda, che a volte suscita anche timore, ma che allo stesso tempo affascina, facendo scaturire il sublime.
• In generale, Neoclassicismo e Romanticismo costituiscono due importanti fasi di uno stesso processo storico, che risultano tra loro profondamente connesse sul piano artistico e culturale nonostante le loro differenze. Sia gli uni che gli altri, infatti, vivono alla costante ricerca di forme espressive che si dimostrano in grado di far evadere dall’insoddisfazione di uno oggi in sempre continua e spesso troppo rapida evoluzione.
- Mentre il Neoclassicismo si fa promotore del ritorno dell’ordine, ispirandosi ai modelli classici, il Romanticismo esalta la fantasia e la sensibilità personale.
- Il modo di vedere e sentire la natura rende perfettamente l’idea della contrapposizione di logica fra i due movimenti: l’artista romantico si sette parte integrante della natura e vi si immerge profondamente, mentre l’artista neoclassico, al contrario, si sforza di rimanerne estraneo e di indagarne razionalmente le caratteristiche al fine di padroneggiarla, negandole qualsiasi valore poetico ed espressivo e usandola come elemento di contorno.
- L’arte neoclassica non vuole quindi essere imitatrice della natura ma dei modelli ideali che di essa hanno elaborato i classici. Ne consegue, però, che mitizzando l’età classica come l’età dell’oro, il Neoclassicismo compie fatto un’operazione assolutamente irrazionale, contraddicendo le sue premesse illuministe e preludendo in modo chiaro a quella che sarà la reazione romantica verso le dimensioni della soggettività.
I concetti dell’arte estetica
• Distinguendo un “bello pittoresco” ed un “bello sublime” Kant distingue due giudizi che dipendono da due tipi di atteggiamento dell’uomo nei confronti della realtà: su di essi, e sulla loro relazione dialettica, fonda infatti la “Critica del giudizio”, dove organizza tre categorie estetiche:

La COULEUR selon Charles Baudelaire Le tonnerre ne gronde plus dans le lointain, il tonne juste au-dessus de ce sujet qui a suscité tant d'interrogations et tant d'affirmations non fondées. Les plus grands spécialistes de Baudelaire ont parlé de sa vision des couleurs, et les plus grands spécialistes des couleurs ont évoqué leur vision de Baudelaire.

Download the sample chapter, "Gothic Paris: Notre-Dame and the Île de la Cité," from www.mayspangler.com. The Teacher Manual e-book (753 pp., 18 b/w ill., 59 colored ill.) for “Paris in Architecture, Literature and Art” is available for download from Peter Lang’s website. For textbook and manual examination copies, please contact customerservice@plang.com or 1-800-770-5264.

The teacher manual provides detailed commentaries of all documents presented in the student textbook, with analysis that will be engaging to a scholar but also accessible to instructors without a background in architecture, literature, or art. The wide variety of pedagogical features gives flexibility for instructors to fit their specific areas of interest, as well as those of the target audience. Among those, preamble activities and timelines introduce chapters’ main idea, observation questions build critical reading and analyzing skills, interactive activities foster cooperative learning, and projects lead to oral and short film presentations.

Depicting the charged theme of a king’s imminent death, Delacroix’s work issued from a visual culture in which representation of the royal body was highly susceptible to attacks, slanderous interpretations, and seditious acts.  The artist’s choice of the legendary last king of Assyria, famous for his sensual indulgence, suggestively conjured up a carnal ruling body, not the sacral body envisioned by the Bourbons.  More specifically, French literary and political texts had long explicitly defined princely misrule as “sardanapalien.”  Delacroix’s image drew on traditional tropes of anti-royal protest evoking a disordered, irrational, perverse and gender-confused royal body, tropes that were revived in the Restoration, particularly during the crisis of Charles X’s reign.

Que vaut la caution dantesque inventée pour défendre l’immoralité de Baudelaire ?  L’article montre que la critique du xixe siècle qui le consacre « Dante français » déplore qu’il n’ait su être qu’une perversion du Dante catholique et angélique. Contre ce portrait, Baudelaire peint un visage sombre de Dante, allant jusqu’à déceler l’emprise de l’Enfer sur la Vita Nova. La Béatrice baudelairienne, paradoxalement idéalisée pour sa cruauté, devient une allégorie du pouvoir de destruction de l’amour.

What is the value of the Dantesque commendation invented to defend the immorality of Baudelaire? This article shows that the nineteenth-century criticism that calls him the “French Dante” deplores the fact that he could only be a perversion of the Catholic and angelic Dante. In contrast with this portrait, Baudelaire painted a dark vision of Dante, going as far as to detect the grip of Hell on the Vita Nova. The Baudelairean Beatrice, paradoxically idealized for her cruelty, becomes an allegory of the destructive power of love.

DOI : 10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-07116-7.p.0163

A newly discovered sheet of copies of details from two of Goya’s Caprichos is here identified as one of many drawings that Eugène Delacroix made of prints by the man he described as ‘a great artist whose compositions and energy have so often inspired me’.

It is a general assumption of our volume that, under certain conditions, perception changes and develops over time. The main forms of developing perception include aesthetic and spiritual perception. The primary object of aesthetic perception is reality inasmuch as it can manifest beauty. The primary object of spiritual perception is reality inasmuch as it can convey divine presence. In this chapter, I develop analogies between aesthetic and spiritual perception.

While in exile for trying to raise the people of Paris against Napoleon III, Victor Hugo writes “Les Misérables,” where describes popular areas such as the Place de la Bastille. The specter of the Bastille Fortress represents the most critical event in French history when the people of Paris took it over on July 14th, 1789, while the July Column in construction commemorates the July 1830 revolution that only brought another king to power. Hugo suggests the new republic needs to return to the source of the first, true revolution, and the plaster model of an elephant abandoned on the Place de la Bastille incarnates such a return. The elephant further serves as a refuge to Gavroche, whose creative play with words and talent at manipulating language makes him a poet of the street. Gavroche, like Hugo, understands the revolution in which he will participate and eventually die must first happen in the realm of the poetic because language produces the structures of society and justice.

Delacroix's controversial Massacres of Chios provoked internal conflicts in the Restoration arts administration, which nonetheless bought the painting in 1824, in an irregular and politically risky procedure, without the King's official approval.  This essay argues that the apparent urgency of this acquisition reveals the regime's attempted management of a volatile public sphere, as it sought to reinvest culture with the royal authority of the prerevolutionary period.

Singolare quindi il percorso dell’inno Giovinezza, invocato
dal poeta maledetto Emilio Praga già nel 1864, poi da
Giovanni Croce in una sorta di profezia di guerra (di cui
non vedrà l’esito perché morirà nel 1911), passato attraverso
D’Annunzio e lo spirito religioso di Giulio Gianelli, tra influenze e spunti scapigliati, romantici, goliardici, cristiani,
irredentisti, crepuscolari e futuristi.
Tra tutti, chi avrebbe trovato le parole con cui incastonare
quei fermenti esplosivi in musica sarebbe stato un poeta
studente.
Ed è da notare che Eugène Delacroix, nel 1830, realizzando
il dipinto destinato a divenire icona di rivoluzioni per
diversi popoli, aveva caratterizzato il ragazzo combattente
accanto alla Libertà ponendogli sul capo un berretto da
studente.
Un riferimento “rivoluzionario” è pure presente nel Commiato,
nella strofa dedicata ai “fratelli non redenti” ovvero
i goliardi che nell’impero asburgico protestavano per poter
avere un’università italiana.
Era il periodo delle Lettere triestine dell’allora studente
Scipio Slataper, che qualche anno prima era stato socio, sotto
falso nome, della “Giovane Trieste”44.
Quando compose Il Commiato, Nino Oxilia aveva quell’età
di cui Praga aveva scritto, rivolgendosi alla giovinezza: Dammi per poco ancor la vaga aureola
che han presa i disinganni;
il coraggio, la fede, e le vertigini
de’ miei vent’anni
Era il 1909, l’anno del Manifesto del Futurismo. E in quella
primavera Nino Oxilia aveva vent’anni ancora da compiere.
Come scrisse nel Commiato:
ma siam forti, abbiam vent’anni,
l’avvenire non temiam

Contemporary Islamophobic discourses lack two of the important figures of classic orientalism: 1) the " Jew " as an " oriental " ethnoreligious figure akin to " Muslim, " and 2) of the " harem " as an eroticized trope of male domination. Their near-disappearance signals that Islamophobia is no longer entirely generated by the same impulses as the classic orientalism of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Islamophobia is defined by hostility to Muslims, but classic orientalism also included other forms of affect. Islamophobia imagines Islam and Muslims as the irredeemably Other, with no links to the Christian traditions of the West, while classic Orientalism typically saw Islam as a Semitic religion akin to Judaism, and therefore as representing an inferior but nevertheless related form of civilization to Christianity. The " Semitic race, " too, was held to be white, while Islamophobia today has contributed to the racialization of the prototypical Muslim as " brown. " The imagined relationship between Christianity and Islam in twenty-first century Islamophobia recognizes no historical and theological contiguity, and has replaced supersession with the clash of civilizations as the form of imagining the relationship between the West and Islam and Muslims. The clash of civilization concept has no use for the harem inmate, a figure that, as the target of overt desire, had not been entirely removed into absolute alterity. This image of the lascivious Orient was connected to that of the Semitic Jew, the " Jewess " being the trope in classical orientalism that united the gendered biblical imagination with the orientalist. To be sure, in spite of the large affective gamut of classic orientalism it was still at its core a discourse of colonial power and white supremacy. It is just that, with the disappearance of the two complex tropes of the Semitic Jew and the harem inmate in contemporary Islamophobia, the unadorned nucleus of orientalism has been starkly revealed, and everything else has been shed.

On the development of the ideas on expression and 'ut pictura poesis' in French Salon reviews and other art critical and theoretical writings of the Restoration period and the early years of the July Monarchy, with chapters on the writings of the critics Planche and Delecluze

Gris sobre Gris © 2011 by Antonio Navas Montilla is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
From his beginning, the grey color has been considered the color of the theory and the sadness, and even the “dead color” of the painting. However, sometimes the grey color turns out to be knotted to the body as an image of the sense of touch. Placed in this contradiction, we propose to approach the grey as phenomenon of gestation of the modern art. ///***///***///***/// ///***///***///***/// APUNTE ACLARATORIO: Gris sobre Gris © 2011-2013 by Antonio Navas Montilla is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
1)Esta es la intervención completa de la conferencia del mismo título celebrada en el III Encuentro de Jóvenes Investigadores de Historia del Arte (UCM) celebrado el 5 de mayo de 2011. Por requisitos de la editorial respecto al número de páginas me he visto obligado a prescindir de algunas de las esenciales que abordaban el color como MANIERA en favor del desarrollo del contenido proyectado aquí y enfocado desde los fundamentos de la pintura moderna. No obstante las adjuntaré y haré públicas en mi tesis doctoral. En cualquier caso, espero haber logrado transmitir con el mayor rigor y claridad posible esta idea fundamental: que es el color el que arruina los principios fundamentales de la pintura en el mundo moderno. 2) Mi aportación consiste en pensar la transformación(concepto clave para mí) de la pintura mediante la teoría del color del siglo XIX, especialmente en Delacroix, Cézanne y Van Gogh, pasando por Walter Benjamin y hasta Paul Klee. Inicio la reflexión con un Sujeto recurrente en conversaciones anotadas en los escritos de Delacroix y Van Gogh: "pintar a una muchacha rubia a la manera del Veronés". Esta es la clave que conceptualiza la práctica del "encarnado".Más que con la célebre Ninfa del Ghirlandaio estudiada posteriormente por Warburg, la cuestión debe estar motivada por afinidades con la Venus de Dresde de Giorgione/Tiziano y, más concretamente, con la Olympia de Manet. Pero no he pretendido apuntar hacia individualidades históricas concretas desde un punto de vista iconográfico. Porque dado que no es en realidad el "subjectum"el que nos habla de la modernidad de la pintura-esta es en profundidad mi tesis-, mi investigación no podía demorarse demasiado en aquella joven rubia o en el empedrado de los boulevares de París, como tampoco en sus transeúntes, traperos o en Le vin des chiffonniers de Baudelaire que tan importante fue para Benjamin. De ningún modo son las locomotoras o los fumadores lo que me interesa destacar aquí. Ni tan siquiera el interminable muro que separa la fábrica del camposanto, los obreros o los bebedores confundidos a altas horas de la noche con el lodo de las calles.Y es que lo que resulta evidente en toda la pintura francesa del siglo XIX es justamente la "tonalidad", que aquí entiendo como MANIERA. Porque es el "tono", que incluye color y forma desde el color(recordemos también la edición latín/italiano del "NATURALIS HISTORIA" de PLINIO que cito en el ensayo) el que acaba por arruinar los conceptos fundamentales de la historia del arte desde el color. Pero es además el "tono" -y aquí vemos ya cómo se derroca y "revoca" los principios fundamentales de la historia del arte, el que apunta a una nueva forma de entender la pintura que finalmente sintetizo en Paul Klee. Mi propuesta es que el síntoma de lo moderno, el fundamento formador de la realidad histórica del mundo moderno en términos pictóricos, es la expresión del ideal de la belleza y la destrucción de la pintura desde la tonalidad. Desde la sensualidad del "tono", si se quiere. Pero del "tono", del mismo tono, con el que Delacroix o Van Gogh pintan los cuerpos con independencia del tema. De esta manera el "PATHOS" de la pintura moderna, su KRISIS, se sitúa en el "INS-TANZ", en el instante del "tono", en la DECISIÓN que el presente histórico, tan crucial en el arte moderno como advierto con Benjamin, expresa./// Por otra parte también se comprenderá que enuncie mi reflexión desde lo "trágico" por ser éste justamente el contexto natural del conflicto de semejante tensión ///. Por lo tanto, lo trágico radica en la confusión del tono, en el conflicto de su instante. Y de ahí que trágico sea, por decirlo definitivamente y con Cèzanne, gris sobre gris. /// /// JUNIO DE 2013 Nota aclaratoria del artículo Gris sobre Gris © 2011 by Antonio Navas Montilla is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

The influence of process metaphysics on the development of abstraction between 1800 and the second half of the 20th century can best be exemplified with the case of the American Expressionist painter and theoretician Robert Motherwell (1915-1991). Taking as its starting point Motherwell’s exposure to the History of Idea of Romanticism, Arthur O. Lovejoy’s yearlong seminar at Harvard (1937-38), the artist’s affinity with fluid forms through motion brushstrokes in Romanticist painting is analyzed as a preformative stage of his own transitory creations. This is done by structural comparison between Motherwell’s written reflections and Romanticist art theory. Motherwell’s specific perception through Bergson’s and Whitehead’s lens of immanence and multiplicity, I argue, resonates Lovejoy’s principle of ‘‘Romantic Evolutionism,’’ in its turn from being to becoming, derived from the philosophies of the Spiritualist Maine de Biran and the Idealist-Empiricist George Berkeley.

Témoin de l’âge d’or de la peinture romantique et des débuts de la photographie, Baudelaire apparaît, à la fin du xxe siècle, comme l’idéaltype de l’écrivain critique d’art. Cependant, si son Salon de 1846 a été immédiatement remarqué, c’est d’abord comme poète que le xixe siècle l’a reconnu.
Rien d’étonnant à ce que l’institutionnalisation de son œuvre conduise à la distinction de plusieurs moments et, ainsi, à l’identification de la critique d’art en tant que telle. Ce qui étonne davantage, c’est la promotion de ces écrits au rang de modèle, alors même que Baudelaire était contemporain de critiques d’art influents comme Étienne-Jean Delécluze, Gustave Planche ou Théophile Thoré-Burger. Cette relecture ne s’éclaire qu’une fois replacée au sein de la question plus large des rapports de la critique d’art avec la littérature, c’est à-dire par une analyse conjointe des évolutions du genre de la critique d’art, des rapports entre littérature et histoire de l’art et des conflits de légitimité qui opposent artistes et professionnels.
La critique d’art de Baudelaire est d’abord remarquée, quoique tardivement, pour l’originalité de sa méthode, si bien que le poète en vient à passer, au moment de son intégration au canon littéraire, pour l’inventeur d’un genre. Cependant, le développement d’une perspective historiciste sur la question, à partir des années 1960, suscite une réévaluation de ces écrits.

Berlioz' Mémoires (1870) and Delacroix's Journal (1893) are commonly seen as two of the greatest records of Romantic creativity. They also share a common background in French Romanticism, and are powerful instances of two great forms of autobiographical writing. This essay takes these features into account, but also contrasts the two Romantic artists — and human individuals — recorded in these books.

This research paper sets to investigate thel attribution and provenance of a nineteenth-century painting discovered in the Makarios III Cultural Foundation Gallery, Nicosia. The historical research is establishing Pierre Andrieu, Eugène Delacroix’s most valuable assistant, as the artist responsible for the Nicosia painting, and sheds light on our understanding of Delacroix’s workshop practices; particularly in the aspects of art replication, collaborations and apprenticeship.

Orientalist and colonial representations of harems have resulted in the association of North African women with domestic confinement. North African authors such as Assia Djebar (1980), Malek Alloula (1981) and Fatima Mernissi (1994), however, suggest that this view is biased. While focusing largely on Fatima Mernissi's memoir, Dreams of Trespass, this article builds on these authors' exploration of the various ways in which women of the Maghreb are portrayed, in order to provide a clearer understanding of the dynamics of women's space in the context of colonial North Africa.

In spring 1834, when he started writing The Girl with the Golden Eyes, Honoré de Balzac was imbued with by Eugène Delacroix’s work and figure. Both shared an attraction towards the Orient which betrayed their tendency to romanticism. In 1834, the exhibition of the painting The women of Algiers in their Apartment encouraged a new impetus of the novelist’s oriental genius. From 1830, Balzac started to fulfill a dream: competing with Delacroix’s art by portraying the inside of a harem in the short story The Girl with the Golden Eyes, which he dedicated to the romantic painter. The hero, Henri de Marsay, conquers Paquita Valdès who is locked up in a luxurious Parisian hotel by her protector and lover, the Marquise of San Real. Paquita Valdès’s fatal passion for the Count unfolds against the backdrop of an oriental-like boudoir where Delacroix’s cherished colours prevail: yellow and red. This duo of colours, which sustains the unity of the twofold short story, prompted the following comment by Albert Béguin, a literary critic: “Balzac took up the challenge of competing with visual arts and expressing through linguistic means what painters usually say through the play with colours.” Hence the problematic question which motivates our study: How does Honoré de Balzac reproduce the romantic painter’s shape and colour language? We will first examine how the inordinate ambition to see everything and to have everything seen is expressed through Balzac’s art of composition, which he borrowed from Delacroix. The consecutive analyses of open and enclosed spaces will highlight Balzac’s treasured aesthetic law: the law of contrasts. The article will then show the aesthetic impact of the bodies and their stances upon the reader-viewer. Finally, the last part will focus on the suggestive potential of colour and motions in The Girl with the Golden Eyes.

Compte-rendu de l’exposition du tableau de Delacroix au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg et considérations sur les questions posées par la transformation d’une œuvre en argument de la politique culturelle et sociale d’un gouvernement. Quelques mots sur le blocage des nominations des directeurs généraux des musées belges.