1861 Géricault – Chesneau (2)
Géricault Life
1870 (circa) L’Odalisque allongée (Detail) Jean-Joseph-Benjamin-Constant, Musée d’Orsay.
Ernest Chesneau’s 1861 study of Théodore Géricault “Le Mouvement moderne en peinture: Géricault” appeared in the Revue Européene, XVII, 1 October (pp. 483-511). Read part 2 of Chesneau’s important essay below.
1861 Chesneau – Géricault
III
“…David’s pitiless reaction against the ancient academic school had a legitimate goal; the master wanted to rip out from the world of art all the pretty, agreeable, parasitic weeds that prevented healthy plants from thriving. Had David simply done that even today he would still be receiving nothing but unanimous approbation. However, he wanted to go farther; and unhappily committed to a cause which yielded nothing. He dreamed of setting forever the rules of absolute beauty. His error was enormous; he dreamed of the impossible, embracing an idea which was at the very least a violent anachronism, a step backward, at a time when the modern beauty of pure expression was being revealed in the public life of France with a vigor hitherto unknown.
If David, who had lived long enough in Rome, had more attentively studied the monuments of the history of his art, he would have no doubt appreciated that in all the arts which we call ‘plastic,’ expression exists in inverse proportion to the purity of the plasticity. It is said that in the works which best express the absolute beauty which he sought, the moral content is nil, or almost nil; and that often, in contrast, moral expression springs forth with an extraordinary force in those works which move farthest away from this ideal. David’s illusion was so much more regrettable because he was powerful enough as a painter to accept a truth which he had unwittingly submitted to as a politician. The most noble sentiments emerged through the least beautiful mask, as David himself perceived beauty; and at times these sentiments included those which were among the most odious. Though his efforts were founded upon reason, they had to collapse and fall from his hands because, even by his own criteria, he was following a false path. He would be successful, but this success would not produce any lasting result – it was necessary to create, and not imitate. I do not know which French painter said a century before the birth of David: “Our figures should be living models of antique statues, rather than animated copies.” These words were a law formulated precisely for the painter of the Sabines. Yet, David ignored this law and did not know how to apply it. He would realize individual success, perfectly assured, and nothing more.
As the chief of the school, David pursued this project in vain; for nothing could be grounded upon a principle which was nothing but the suppression of nineteen centuries of human endeavour. Some modern aestheticians now set about to attribute the decline of Italian art to Raphaël. When we judge an eminently material art by the nature of its processes, we go too far and take too little account of the material execution which compresses the long history of the Italian schools into a single time, a time of primitive masters whose works we regard as the stumbling steps of an art in its infancy. We never shared the English pre-Raphaelites singular, but understandable, error; however, we will be compelled to recognize that the religious paintings of Raphaël contain nothing of the expressions of mysticism, of the intense religiosity, which illuminate the imperfect works of Orcagna, of Cimabue, of Giotto. If we cast a glance upon the schools of the North, our judgement receives stunning confirmation. The master of Anvers, the creator of carnal beauty, has never spoken to us except by our senses. Who wishes to compare the cascades of flesh of Rubens to the bizarre, sometimes simian, creations, (consider Christ Descending the Cross) in which Rembrandt pulls at all the chords of the human soul? The one, more than the other, is close to an absolute beauty, while the other is still very far. But Rembrandt, do we not commonly agree, realized often this ideal of expressive beauty which we all understand, and that we all admire today in art and in life; while Rubens, who undeniably possessed other merits, and some very great, remains always at some considerable distance? What should we then conclude, if not that the sentiment of beauty is indefinitely renewable; that David, having searched for ways to deny this essential truth and transport to the present the goal of art formed two thousand years in the past, Géricault could do nothing but pre the future? that David having worked to deny this essential truth and impose the goal of art formed two thousand years in the past, Géricault had no choice but to prepare a preview of the future? This was the logical effect of human development, to replace the study of the human body with the study of man, to search for the expression of modern beauty, instead of searching for the absolute beauty of antiquity.
It is through this process that the Charging Chasseur, the Wounded Cuirassier, and the Raft of the Medusa seduce us. It is because we rediscover in each a part of our own miseries, our own sadnesses, and our own ambitions. The Chasseur, the least dramatic of the three pieces, does it not stir within us that particular feeling of our race for the love of the great glory of war? Does it not excite this nervous sensibility (sentimentality, perhaps) which causes our eyes to brighten and tear-up at the sight of a flag, or even more at the sound of bellicose fanfare! One can never speak enough of the need that man has to express, to express himself, or to see himself expressed in art, and the secret charm which he finds there. It must be that this sentiment is natural and innate, because it is embraced by all the religions except one, one which led a powerful nation to nothingness. Because all peoples have loved and encouraged the purely representative arts, these must therefore be legitimate, for God gives poets and artists to all men.
If Géricault was not a poet in all the truth of the term, he was an artist. Death carried him away upon a prelude. For the Raft of the Medusa is not any other thing. He took reality into his heart and, as he had a somber soul, it was the reality of sadness that he expressed, and it is in this way that he was able to sound his note of poetry, a note heavy and muffled, but penetrating. The weaknesses of his prelude can be traced back to the lessons in prosody given him by Guérin, whose learned poetry rang false in the ear of this young man and contrary to the free expression of his romantic sentiments.
By adopting a point of view broader and more general than we have hitherto employed, we will more surely be able to cast a brighter light upon the two terms of thesis and antithesis: classical and romantic. Before entering into considerations of a more elevated order regarding the subject of this grave debate, we must first discover the antagonisms posed in these works. Let us hasten to say, as we approach the question of considering the classical and the romantic, that Géricault did not produce anything romantic and that he ignored the word, even as he practiced the thing. This conflict did not affect his violent and determined character until after his death, and we will make this case more strongly in a forthcoming study of Mr. E. Delacroix. Let us say again: that the romanticism of Géricault began immediately after him; and, had he lived, Géricault would have most certainly kept it within strictly maintained and specific limits, rather than permit the concept to sprawl and separate into the confusion which we witness today. With these conditions laid bare, we more clearly understand the need to ignore the modern exaggerated expression of these principles, and begin our inquiry by examining them as they appeared in the work of those who first posed them to the 19th century: from David and from Géricault.
Whenever we find ourselves face to face with a problem which is posed poorly, and in obscure or vague terms, a source of errors and further fruitless discussions is invariably the regrettable result. Unhappily, this is the case in respect to the discussion that occupies us now. The universal education which familiarizes us with classical works and gives us our sense of that term requires me to undertake no additional definition; it suffices that we know that classical refers in a general manner to the works of antiquity, and more precisely to the works of Greek antiquity from which all others derive, or are imitations. That which is true of poetic productions, or literature, by a just correlation of the phenomena of spirit, is equally true of artistic manifestations. And since we are tightening our focus within the circle of aesthetic productions, it may be better to admit that the word classic, and the classic type, originates in the works of which the sculptures of the Parthenon are the manifest ideal.
The opposition between the romantic and the classical is such that after having penetrated the origins, the manifestations, the reason and the manner of being of the second term, the simple examination of a series of inverse propositions suffices to provide us with an exact key to the first, and allows us to know its mechanism and its soul, the motor and the movement. We do not have to define the first term of the problem, and we will learn much from analysing the value which the term romantic represents.
If we explore deeply all the discord between men, the smallest to the greatest, be sure that we will always find the source of this conflict in some religious opposition. And so it is in this case. The history of western civilization is divided into two great epochs: before Jesus Christ, and after Jesus Christ. This division is not in the least sense arbitrary. The transitions were slow and confused, it is true. The world did not wake up one morning to a world entirely different to that of the day before; the world did not suffer the shock which rocked Mount Atlas when the son of Jupiter retired upon his couch. But whether over a century or a day, the passage from one moral state to another moral state actually took place. Now, after nineteen centuries, we have the right to consider its duration as nothing. Or, better yet, to no longer take it into account. In that earlier other period, the divine descended to the level of men. In the period subsequent, man stammered his aspirations towards an unknown god, a god which divinized itself. For us, God made man; but antiquity made god as man: which meant that the plastic perfection of man’s art was sufficient to make reality of his ideal. The ideal of antiquity was limited, determinate, finite, and, as a consequence, expressible by finished means of art. The modern ideal is infinite, indeterminate, and unlimited. This has shaped our methods of expression; faced with this much greater challenge, we find that our methods are not varied enough, and remain finite. Our methods and means reveal themselves to be insufficient to satisfy us fully; they are condemned to imperfection.
But is this here our last word that we have to pronounce upon the modern aesthetic? For our part, if it is, we must remain profoundly sad. Must the poet smash the ivory lute, the painter rend his canvases, and the sculptor cast aside his chisel? Let us reassure ourselves; let us see whether this imperfection, to which we recognize we are doomed, is not relative and superior to the entirely fatal perfection of antiquity. The religion of Greece is one burning ambition to make the most of life, the natural result of physical perfection. The justice of proportions, the elasticity of limbs, the development of organs, constitutes the healthy state, the life free of all imperfection, as a form of Olympian bliss, the art charged with representing this joy in all varieties derives from the pagan imagination, and so would have to be necessarily and fatally perfect. To make this observation takes nothing from the genius of the great artists of the century of Pericles. But their genius must not make us forget that, despite their personal initiatives, their progress in an art towards a point so clearly understood and determined meant that they could associate in their works, and accommodate a strange cooperation. The collective ideal is translated by a gathering of collective efforts. We are now able to conclude on this point and to say: Greek art, if it was not perfection itself, we can say as strongly as possible in respect to its design, Greek art would be nothing and would not even exist, other than as the brilliance of religious expression, because this art was itself the religion of Greece, an entirely physical religion – religion as plastic as its art – its art as plastic as its religion.
If our assertion is erroneous, it will be easy for us to discover our error by submitting our assertion to another test, and one, I think, more convincing. At the moment of the birth of Socrates, the arts of Greece were in full force. Socrates, the first, invoked something other than an idol, his god was not the form, he revealed an abstract god, he taught the idea. His disciples followed and propagated the new doctrine, Plato lends him the strength of his thought and protection of his eloquence. The idea grew, even as the material was annihilated and disappeared; Greek art fell rapidly into decadence and became a trade which would be sold to Rome.
Christianity expanded upon the idea, and elevated it above all else, made it ascend towards the sky. And, yet, did Christianity perhaps denigrate matter too much? Did it dismiss also the form enclosing the idea, to deify it and to reveal the infinite? From the day when the human spirit accepted the idea of the infinite, man discovered that his means of expression were insufficient to realize his absolute ideal, as we have said. But in an admirable exchange, in the degree that humanity climbed towards the divine, the divine descended to it, and within each man burned that little flame, part of the limitless hearth that envelopes us all. Art had no greater aim than to spread beyond the heat of this light that which is colored differently according to each individual. The collective effort became impossible, an unknown power appeared and we see the emergence of individuality. The collective ideal could no longer be generated except by special effort. From here, facing the same object, this fecund variety, inexhaustible, of interpretations equally beautiful in different forms even if antipathetic, the sentiment of modern beauty is finally found. One can define it as the individual expression of collective sentiments illuminated by an interior flame. That one judges all the great modern artists on this measure, and from which emerges their greatest glory: Michelangelo and Raphaël, Lesuer and Poussin, Rembrandt and Ruysdaëel. (1.- This progression of the collective to the individual in art was established in Italy from Byzantine art to Leonardo de Vinci, and in the north from gothic art to Rembrandt.)
This truth has been often obscured and then forgotten by men of good will. The schools always contribute to this in wanting to submit to rules, rules which cannot be adopted and adhered to without risks. We learn that tradition is useful, it succeeds in suppressing errors; but this rule was deleterious. Over the centuries, in the countries where the arts were the most regulated, the most enslaved, the arts were always liberated by a man who protested, and who by himself returned to the truth, because he does not depend on our will to determine whether the truth is within us, or not, and that nothing can stifle him. Like those rivers that are suddenly swallowed in an abyss, then flow beneath the earth charging upon cities, mountains and forests to retake after great distances their impetuous course, once more beneath the light of the sky; even the true in humanity can disappear before our eyes by routine, by the spirit of partisanship, by the fatalities of a moment; but always comes out of this night with new brilliance.
The romanticism of Géricault was an attempt at a renaissance of truth in art. We now see how superfluous is the need to prove how gross the error of David was, if one is considering the question. The principle of his reform consisted of reviving an aesthetic that even the early rays of the modern age managed to wither. David’s reform was placed in flagrant opposition with the constant development of the human soul, it was not just immobilized, but degraded when faced with an art moving into a new domain. All the forces of our religious soul thus opened to infinity by Christianity, even supposing them aided by an ardent desire, could not have furnished this step backwards. I admit this is a chimeric hypothesis; the fruit re-entering the seed, the sap descending from the high branches back to the roots.
The Raft of the Medusa was a protest, unconscious perhaps, but all the more vigorous, an energetic reaction of the spirit of life against the spirit of death. Romanticism was thus an affirmation of the incessant and progressive variety of the world of beauty. It would be a time-consuming and pointless exercise to describe the history of romanticism because the term does not correspond to the ideas it was made to express. The terms was born in Germany in the last century and, even in its first attributions, quickly became too narrow to embrace the ramifications of the intellectual discoveries that it was intended to serve. But, if we abandon our attempts to define and explain this improper expression, we do not have to step back from that which the term represents. As we anticipated, by examining more closely the classical ideal we discover a clear definition of the other term of the antithesis. From this vantage point we can identify those who are the romantic talents. Let us be explicit, so that there is no ambiguity. The romantic manifests itself in different times. Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Paul Veronese, Rubens and his student Van Dyck, Rembrandt, the admirable Rembrandt, are all romantics and nothing other, because each, according to their spirits and their time, translates the modern idea, the part of the divine idea which they shared and was within them.
Géricault is of the same family as the great painters. Like them, he passionately loved his art. A sole moral disposition inside him fought against his ardor as an artist. The stumbling block of this great intelligence was the spirit of adventure. He was in a position to give to himself a rich career, and that is what he did. Yet, because of the discord between his soul and his spirit he savored nothing; he was unable to concentrate and allowed his work to suffer. It was thus that we see him leaving for London in the company of Charlet and the economist Brunet on the pretext of exhibiting his painting in England. On several occasions during this voyage Gericault felt entirely disgusted with life. The colonel de La Combe describes the Medusa painter’s final suicide attempt:
“…Charlet, returning to the hotel at an advanced hour of the night, learned that Géricault had not left during the day. Fearing some sinister project from his companion, he went straight to his room. He knocked and obtained no response; he knocked again, heard nothing, and so forced open the door. He was in time! A brasier burned still and Géricault was lying unconscious upon his bed. After efforts revived him back to life, Charlet cleared everyone from the room and sat at the foot of the bed near his friend. – ‘Géricault,’ he said to him in the most serious manner, ‘we have seen already several times that you want to die; if this is your path, we cannot stop you. In the future, you will do as you please, but at least allow me to offer you a word of advice. I know you are religious; you know that once dead, it is before God that you must give account: then how will you respond?…you did not merely dine.’…”
(Mr. de la Combe adds this footnote, the spirit of which we can only fully support: “To the timorous souls who managed to be shocked by these words, we say this: The discourse that Charlet serves up to Géricault is a curious mix of affection and raillery. This approach would not surprise anyone familiar with Charlet’s style and manner. Raillery for him was a gift so clear, and a talent so imperious, that he could induce smiles during the most solemn of occasions. If he had offered Géricault some serious words inspired by philosophy or religion to turn him away from a voluntary death, perhaps he would not have succeeded in saving him. Raillery, in restoring the lively power of joy into the soul which wanted to pursue death, came to the rescue of religion and of philosophy. – Gustave Planche, Étude sur Géricault. (Charlet, sa vie et ses lettres) by Mr. de la Combe, Paris, Paulin and Le Chevalier.)” – This sally provoked laughter from Géricault, who promised to never again to try to take his own life. He kept his word. Yet, perhaps… Did he not sense that all new attempts of this kind were needless – that his days were numbered? Did Géricault have a presentiment of his looming death?)
In London, however, he worked diligently and, as if dreaming of some great equestrian composition, Géricault resumed his studies of horses, a life-long passion he never abandoned, even upon entering the studio of Guérin. The Chasseur à cheval is a sufficient proof of that. It is from this time in England that we date his beautiful collection of lithographs, in which he emphasized all the races of horses in their most varied attitudes. Some collectors also possess some similar painted studies completed during the Empire, the Louvre has three or four. These reveal to us much about the order of qualities in French painting; yet, they also confirm certain others, which we must study attentively if we hope to learn how Géricault understood and rendered the horse.
IV
After man, of all beings created…”
Read part III of Chesneau’s essay here.