Art and the French Commune

by Albert Boime

In this bold exploration of the political forces that shaped Impressionism, Albert Boime proposes that at the heart of the modern is a "guilty secret"--the need of the dominant, mainly bourgeois, classes in Paris to expunge from historical memory the haunting nightmare of the Commune and its socialist ideology. The Commune of 1871 emerged after the Prussian war when the Paris militia chased the central government to Versailles, enabling the working class and its allies to seize control of the capital. Eventually violence engulfed the city as traditional liberals and moderates joined forces with reactionaries to restore Paris to "order"--the bourgeois order. Here Boime examines the rise of Impressionism in relation to the efforts of the reinstated conservative government to "rebuild" Paris, to return it to its Haussmannian appearance and erase all reminders of socialist threat.


Boime contends that an organized Impressionist movement owed its initiating impulse to its complicity with the state's program. The exuberant street scenes, spaces of leisure and entertainment, sunlit parks and gardens, the entire concourse of movement as filtered through an atmosphere of scintillating light and color all constitute an effort to reclaim Paris visually and symbolically for the bourgeoisie. Amply documented, richly illustrated, and compellingly argued, Boime's thesis serves as a challenge to all cultural historians interested in the rise of modernism.

Genres: Art History, History, Art

234 pages, Hardcover

First published January 17, 1995

About the author

Albert Boime, was an American art historian and author of more than 20 art history books and numerous academic articles. He taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1968 until 1972, at Binghamton University from 1972 until 1978, and at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1979 until his death.

Reviews

[Hotavio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boime explores responses to the French Commune of 1871 by concentrating on the work of Impressionists. He deduces that all Parisians were effected by the civil war, whether in Paris or not. This especially held true of the Impressionists, who often took flashpoints in the battle for the city as the subject of their paintings. For the Impressionists, their work embodied a new French spirit of growth, optimism, and solidarity between classes even as the Third Republic struggled with partisian polarities fueled by the memory of Franco-Prussian defeat, civil war, and the massacre of Communards. Boime then branches off into thoughts on utopianism and anarchist feelings in vogue in the late 1800s as he centers on Seurat's Sunday on the Isle of La Grande Jatte. Lastly, he closes his thoughts with American sculptor Olin Levi Warner's defense of the Commune. Warner beseeched Americans to think factually about the Commune at a time when Americans were reading that they needed to fear its ramifications stateside. The book's closure with Warner is not the author's endorsement of the Commune, as Boime disagrees with Warner on a few points, but is relaying the demonization of the Communards, especially abroad. The final chapter was a welcome way of making the few month event relevant outside of France, especially considering the threats to the US government that labor unrest posed in 1877.

Art and the French Commune was a fascinating micro history. The book is heavy with art prints and often provides comparative illustrations of similar subjects divulged upon. Several themes are dealt with including issues of urban space and its planning, women's rights, nationalism, and social issues run prevalent (the author makes an obscure reference to the 93 Los Angeles riots early on). I felt there was a little too much on French thought, but that was only because that part did not appeal to my interests. There were also several quotes in the book in French where no translation was provided. The author did translate German quotes, however.