Dreams of Happiness ：Social Art and the French Left, 1830-1850 ( Princeton Legacy Library )

Publication subTitle ：Social Art and the French Left, 1830-1850

Publication series ：Princeton Legacy Library

Author： McWilliam Neil  

Publisher： Princeton University Press‎

Publication year： 2017

E-ISBN: 9781400887248

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780691031552

Subject： J1 Overview of World Art

Keyword： 世界各国艺术概况

Language： ENG

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Description

Responding to the decline of the monarchy and the church in post-revolutionary France, theorists representing a wide spectrum of leftist ideologies proposed comprehensive blueprints for society that assigned a crucial role to aesthetics. In this full-length investigation of social romanticism, Neil McWilliam explores the profound impact of radical philosophies on contemporary aesthetics and art criticism, and traces efforts to conscript the arts for doctrinal ends. He highlights the complexity and diversity of systems such as Saint-Simonianism, Fourierism, Republicanism, and Christian Socialism--movements that set out to exploit the ameliorative effect of aesthetic form on human consciousness--and challenges the previous linking of social art to narrow didacticism. This book seeks an understanding both of the conventions of artistic judgment and reception and of the aims and significance of radical political ideologies. Drawing on a broad spectrum of previously neglected journalistic criticism, visual material, and archival sources, together with key political texts by figures such as Saint-Simon, Philippe Buchez, and Pierre Leroux, this work reveals an important facet of radical history and modifies received understandings of French art in the wake of Romanticism. In the process it probes the role of culture within oppositional political practice, arguing that the ultimate failure to realize a social art exposes the limits of the radicals' break with dominant discourse and

Chapter

Cover

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

1. Introduction

Radical Perspectives

The Aesthetic Dimension

2. Saint-Simon and the Promotion of a Social Aesthetic

Science, Progress, and the Intellectual

Art, Sentiment, and the Promotion of Industry

Art as Social Exhortation

3. From Positivism to Sentiment: The Aesthetics of Saint-Simonianism

The Reassertion of Positivism: Le Producteur

Prosper Enfantin and the Rehabilitation of Sentiment

Historical Theory and the Social History of Art

Assessments of Contemporary Production

Toward a New Conception of Form

4. Theory into Practice: The Frustration of Saint-Simonian Aesthetics

The Saint-Simonian Constituency

Marginality and Mal du siècle

From Ménilmontant to Cairo

Why Were There No Great Saint-Simonian Artists?

5. Sentiment and Faith: Philippe Buchez and His Circle

The Primacy of Faith

History of Faith and History of Art

History as Synthesis and Prevision

"Sentiment," "Education," and "Art"

6. Pierre Leroux and the Aesthetics of Humanité

Psychological Theory and the Status of the Artist

Nature, Art, and the Symbol

Pierre Leroux and Théophile Thoré

7. The Beauty of Happiness: Art Social and Fourierist Criticism

Harmony, Beauty, and Happiness

Prophecy, Luxury, and Nature

Reception and the Meaning of Form

Line, Color, and the Principles of Harmony

The Failings of Art and the Task of the Critic

Critical Positions and Artistic Production: Problems of Practice

8. Vision and Virtue: The Aesthetics of Republicanism

The Necessity of Virtue

The Moralization of Nature

Antiacademicism and the Politics of Truth

Meaning and Modernity

9. Conclusion

Class and the Snare of Culture

From Social Art to Socialist Realism

Bibliography

Index

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