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The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848-1851
When this book and its companion volume, Image of the People , appeared in 1973, they were taken as a challenge to the way art was usually written about. "This book," said the Times , "is a product of that school of art history whose history is as well read as its art, and whilst it covers only a small area of time and place, Clark's approach and style are such that it throws up enough ideas and pleasures to illuminate far beyond its rather special circumstances. It is suffused with wit and pathetic irony."
T. J. Clark's subject is painting and printmaking in the years following the 1848 Revolution in France, "a time", he argues, "when art and politics could not escape each other." The book tells the story of a handful of artists trying to take advantage of that unfamiliar—and short-lived—situation. Daumier and Millet are central, particularly in their dealings with the new State's art patronage machine; Delacroix figures as painter and diarist, in agonized withdrawal from the possibility of change, haunted by his own Liberty Guiding the People ; and Baudelaire is depicted, after a moment of tortured political involvement in the first months of the Republic, as the great poet of postrevolutionary despair.
T. J. Clark's subject is painting and printmaking in the years following the 1848 Revolution in France, "a time", he argues, "when art and politics could not escape each other." The book tells the story of a handful of artists trying to take advantage of that unfamiliar—and short-lived—situation. Daumier and Millet are central, particularly in their dealings with the new State's art patronage machine; Delacroix figures as painter and diarist, in agonized withdrawal from the possibility of change, haunted by his own Liberty Guiding the People ; and Baudelaire is depicted, after a moment of tortured political involvement in the first months of the Republic, as the great poet of postrevolutionary despair.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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About the author
T.J. Clark
35 books63 followersTimothy 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]
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]
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December 21, 2015
hard to get any better than this, liberty leading the people, &c. when everyone else wanted to be one of dali's melty clocks, i wanted to be marianne.
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March 1, 2011inspiring and now
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