Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution

by T.J. Clark

When Image of the People and its companion volume, The Absolute Bourgeois, appeared in 1973, they signaled a new direction for writing about art. "The book's success is crucial," wrote Michael Rosenthal, "because there are few models for this type of study, and it is of necessity pioneering." New Left Review said the book's great merit was that "it elucidates a number of crucial theoretical problems through the concrete analysis of a concrete situation. To the eternal—and false—question: 'What is revolutionary art?' Clark gives an implicit reply by substituting for it another, more fertile one: 'What were the effects of a particular Revolution upon pictorial practice?'"

Clark's focus is on Gustave Courbet in the four years following 1848. His book aims to show how Courbet's wholesale recasting of the terms and ambitions of modern art, in paintings like The Stonebreakers and A Burial at Ornans, was bound up with the texture of French history at a fateful moment: the battle of pamphlets and images being waged in the countryside in 1849-50, the search for a means to connect with a "popular" audience, the deepening enigma of peasant politics, and the confusions and dangers of class.

Genres: Art, History, Art History, Nonfiction, France, 19th Century, Academic

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Timothy James Clark often known as T.J. Clark, is an art historian and writer, born in 1943 in Bristol, England.

Clark attended Bristol Grammar School. He completed his undergraduate studies at St. John's College, Cambridge University, he obtained a first-class honours degree in 1964. He received his Ph.D. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London in 1973. He lectured at the University of Essex 1967-1969 and then at Camberwell College of Arts as a senior lecturer, 1970-1974. During this time he was also a member of the British Section of the Situationist International, from which he was expelled along with the other members of the English section. He was also involved in the group King Mob.

In 1973 he published two books based on his Ph.D. dissertation: The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic, 1848-1851. Clark returned to Britain from his position at the University of California, Los Angeles and Leeds University to be chair of the Fine Art Department in 1976. In 1980 Clark joined the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University. Chief among his Harvard detractors was the Renaissance art historian Sydney Freedberg, with whom he had a public feud.

In 1988 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley where he held the George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair as Professor of Modern Art until his retirement in 2010.

In 1991 Clark was awarded the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award. Notable students include Brigid Doherty, Hollis Clayson, Thomas E. Crow, Serge Guilbaut, Margaret Werth, Nancy Locke, Christina Kiaer, Michael Kimmelman, Michael Leja, John O'Brian, Bridget Alsdorf, Matthew Jackson, Joshua Shannon, and Jonathan Weinberg.

In the early 1980s, he wrote an essay, "Clement Greenberg's Theory of Art," critical of prevailing Modernist theory, which prompted a notable and pointed exchange with Michael Fried. This exchange defined the debate between Modernist theory and the social history of art. Since that time, a mutually respectful and productive exchange of ideas between Clark and Fried has developed.

Clark's works have provided a new form of art history that take a new direction from traditional preoccupations with style and iconography. His books regard modern paintings as striving to articulate the social and political conditions of modern life.

Clark received an honorary degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2006. He is a member of Retort, a Bay Area-based collective of radical intellectuals, with whom he authored the book Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, published by Verso Books.[1]

Reviews

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was more interested in the bohemian climate and Baudelaire, Courbet, and the like than the descriptions of the paintings themselves. For all the hype of how it shocked the bourgeoisie it seems it all boiled down to peasant rage. Epater le bourgeoisie!

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my review of the recent Courbet retrospective, see http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/schwabsky.

[Abby]

read for class

[سیــــــاوش · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Painting of People by T. J. Clark is a really engaging look at Gustave Courbet’s work. The book focuses on how Courbet painted ordinary people, like peasants, workers, and everyday people, without sugarcoating anything. Clark shows how Courbet made the struggles of lower-class people meaningful in art. Key paintings discussed include A Burial at Ornans and The Stonebreakers, which show how Courbet gave importance to people usually ignored in art.

The book is full of high-quality images of Courbet’s paintings and lots of original sources like letters and reviews, making it informative and interesting. Clark also talks about lesser-known works, like Francis Wey’s Biez de Serine, and compares them to Courbet’s to show the bigger social and artistic picture.

Some parts on Courbet’s style and technique could be clearer, and the link between his art and the political context could be stronger.

Overall, it’s a very readable and enjoyable book that helps you understand Courbet’s social realism and how he showed the lives of ordinary people in his art.

[Caleb Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing one… super bitchy book, could be written only a Brit who has such codified ideas of all the social classes. cheeky gossip in between these explanations of social and visual rupture Courbet was doing. And the whole time acknowledging how much a weird idiosyncratic idiot he was, installing courbets personal intellectual limitations into the function of his critique is awesome and handled so well.

This and sentimental education back to back would go crazy.

[Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book about a great artist. I enjoyed it very much.

[Uriah Marc Todoroff · Rating 3 out of 5]

High quality reproductions. Written in a distinct prose style. The introductory essay is a great thesis statement for what the social history of art is--good citation fodder. The rest of the essays do an excellent job of constructing the relevant society, and I was especially interested in reading about Baudelaire. Lots of primary citations, which was nice.

There is a fair amount of formal analysis in the text, but I'm not entirely convinced of its quality. In parts, it seems to veer into metaphor, or just not really making much sense. There also could have been more of an effort to connect the forms and general style of Courbet's Realism to the political situation of the time.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little random, but if you want to know about how Courbet was strange and the strange days he lived in, go for it. I like to know that my men are all in black for a reason, and that the colours on the coffin cover have been reversed. Who wouldn't?

[David-Baptiste Chirot · Rating 4 out of 5]

(just wrote a review which sems to have ben left behind wil have to rewrite later)
excellent book!