COURBET'SEXHIBITIONISMBYPATRICIA MAINARDIIn a letter to his patron Bruyas, Courbet describedhis vision of the show he planned to mount for the 1855Universal Exposition: "From here I can already see anenormous tent with a single column in the center; forwalls, scaffolding covered with canvas, all mounted ona platform; then the employees, a man in a black suitminding the office, opposite the canes and umbrellas,then two or three ushers. This will really be enough tomake Paris dance on its head. It will be without questionthe best comedy that's been played in our times; thereare some people who will get sick over it, that's forsure"~.Across the letter he sketched a tent (fig. 1). Inreality,asanewly discovered photograph shows(fig.14), Courbet's pavilion was rectangular, not a tentat all, and this drawing, appearing across an unpub-lished letter, was a private fantasy rather than a publicfact.And yet the public did apprehend his gesture, evenwithout benefit of his drawing. On reading his lettertoday we might well wonder: Who would laugh at thiscomedy, and who would get sick over it ? What wasthe nature of Courbet's exhibitionism" ? - a word en-tirely relevant, as we shall see, to the contemporary dis-course surrounding this artist. By placing in context thevarious aspects of Courbet's endeavor as they appearedto his contemporaries, we can gain a more profoundsense of the reasons for which he was both praised anddamned in his own time.Although the negative criticism which first greetedCourbet's work has been taken by modernists as a par-adigmatic example of the persecution of the avant-gardeartist by an uncomprehending public, I have arguedelsewhere that Courbet in 1855 was actually supportedby the professional artists'periodicals2.La Revue uni-verselle des Arts, La Revue des Beaux-Arts, Journal desArts, L'Artiste,all either praised him or were sympa-thetic to his plight. The most savage attacks in 1855came from critics and caricaturists working for periodi-cals of the conservative right, such as A.J. Du Pays ande-1Q4'Q ulenbotsinL'Olustrationj.Nonetheless, as this nega-tive criticism ha always taken center stage, it is im-portant toexploe the nightmare vision that Courbetpolitical conservatives.presented to aestetic andFIG.1.-GustaveCOURBET.Autograph letter with a sketch ofthe 1855 Pavilion.254Today we focus on Courbet's gesture of mountinghis show and we see it as a gesture of defiance to thegovernment that had rejected both hisStudioand hisBurial; indeed it was, as Champfleury wrote at the time,"an incredibly audacious act"4.Our focus on the gesturefits in well with modem political imperatives, the heroi-cization of the individual standing alone against an un-just state. The issues embodied in Courbet's gesture,Individualism, Self-confidence, Defiance, Genius, areall qualities which define the modern - usually male -hero. They are also, however, qualities which define theself-mademan of early capitalism, the entrepreneur.FIG. 2. -Title Page, Catalogue of Courbet's 1855 Exhibition.GAZETTE DESBEAUX-ARTSThislatterlreferenthas been largely ignored by art his-torians,butboth interpretations, defiant hero and entre-preneur,shouldbe explored, for in the nineteenthcentury, they were by no means mutually exclusive.To begin to see Courbet's exhibitionism as hiscon-temporarie''swould have seen it, we will have to under-standfirstl,the exhibitionstructureas they saw it,second, traditionalexhibition sites as they understoodthem, and third,the decorum of exhibitions at that time,forCourbet'sgesture could only assume meaningagainstthecommonly accepted fabric of expectationsandprocedures.In giving the broad outlines of theseissues, it trust be stressed that, although I am here fo-cusingonthenegative, contemporary opinion heldvariousattitudes,both positive and negative, towardseach.Throu0outmost of the nineteenth century, the majorevent inI-Irenchexhibition practice was the Salon, theannual, sometimes biennial, exhibition of contemporaryart. Untilthe1789 Revolution, it had operated as a mo-nopoly,controllingFrench artistic life and careers. OnlymembersOfthe Academy could participate and alterna-tive exhibitions were suppressed. The Academy hadbeenfoundedand was maintained as the Governmentagency in charge of aesthetics: its members receivedsalariesa~dstudios, and State commissions were orig-inally reserved for them. Academicians had, however,elevated their status from that of artisans by rejectingallhintsf commerce and so, in the Academic Salonof the An ienR6gime,artists did not exhibit works forsale but"consentedto show to a limited public somepicturescommissionedin advance for a specific desti-nation"5.!,,Althoughinrealitymany Academiciansworked injavariety of modes, this elite attitude towardsartproductionsurvived well into the nineteenth century,definingo~epole of the spectrum of attitudes towardsexhibitionIpractice. That pole can be summedupin thewordexposition;inboth English and French it pre-servedthelconnotationof a didactic, morally instructiveshow.Thewordexhibition,on the other hand, whilemeaninglinEnglish simply a show, assumed innineteenth] century France a pejorative connotation ofostentationand immodesty. A commercial enterprise,hop window display, would be an exhibition,rsonal behaviour we today would label ex-This negative attitude towards anythingsuch as aas wouldhibitionistcommercialderived from traditional aristocratic disdainfor corn*rce, which, in the nineteenth century, wasidentified ]with England, the leading commercial poweramong nations;hence the pejorative use of the Englishwordexhibition7.Needless to say, conservative criticsdescrinotaiheadi(fig.adishAimonoprincthe Pingt(and iworl,Courtroutledipronof eSaloser\whiindipealabdenechassbayin()satha~wedoweth,to,re,sipritswthttn0l.didescribed Courbet's 1855 show as an "exhibition" andnot an "exposition". Courbet himself provoked this byheading his own catalogue EXHIBITION ET VENTE(fig.2) "Exhibition and Sale", a title more fitting fora display of furniture or rugs than of high arts.After the 1789 Revolution, the Academy had lost itsmonopoly over the Salon, which was then opened, inprinciple at least, to independent artists. Nonetheless,the Academy continued to maintain that it was degrad-ing to make a direct appeal to the public to sell pictures,and that true artists did not produce easel paintings butworked on commission for Church and State.TheyoungCourbet made his entrance to the Salon during thetroubled years of the 1840s