Salons: Man Ray in the hen house
Charles X hands out the honours at the 1824 Salon at the Louvre in this painting of paintings by Francois-Joseph Heim. You can see it at the Louvre today, which isn’t nearly this crowded anymore.
Online murmurs of approval over a 2005 exhibition at New York’s Jewish Museum might leave one thinking that modern art and gossip have always been kissing cousins, or at least snuggle bunnies. I found the reviews of “The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons” inadvertently chuckle-worthy, though, of course, my mirth wasn’t exactly politically correct.
There’s something about salons anyway that reeks of absurdity. The most famous art salons – in Paris during the 19th century – were nothing more than droll competitions, with exclusion often far more damaging to an artist’s self-esteem than inclusion was any benefit. At best the salons were a shot at stardom, at worst a corrupt tool of elitist social climbers and hidden-agenda fat cats.
Leaving aside Leninist dialectic, though, the big Parisian salons were very much the Oscars of their time. All juried art competitions are risky sprints with dodgy rationales, but for generations, the Académie des beaux-arts’ official Salon de Paris involved major suck-up time, a fevered popularity campaign and, with the prize in hand, more viewers coming through the box office and thus more money in the bank, the better to mount next year’s entry. See the rest.
