During the 1970s in Paris, the then unused Gare d’Orsay train station was chosen to become a new museum, the Musée d’Orsay. This new museum would focus its contents to a select time period, 1848 to 1914, and would showcase the art and design of the western world during that time. The collection began to grow and acquire artifacts in 1978, while not opening officially to the public until 1986. The bulk of the museum’s collection came from three other Parisian institutions that had changed their mandates. The first being the Louvre museum, the second was the Musée du Jeu de Paume, which had since dedicated itself entirely to impressionism, and the National Museum of Modern Art, which had undergone a move to the Pompideau and only taking artists born after 1870 with it. During this time, virtually none of the museums in Paris had a permanent photographic section. The museum would become one of the first to create and keep a dedicated photographic collection. The collection did the most of its growing during the 70s and 80s, entirely from scratch since they could not dip into the museum collections like the other areas of the Orsay. By the museum’s opening, the photographic collection already numbered around 12,000 pieces. Now, the collection numbers around 45,000 works, including around 10,000 negatives.
Musée d’Orsay.
While the general museum collection fits within a specific time span, the photographic collection has many notable exceptions. Given that the beginnings of photography are a mere decade prior to the museums timeline, it would be silly to leave it out. Works by Alfred Stieglitz on the other end of the timeline show the end of the Pictorialist movement and the beginning of experimental photography. These two combine to signal the end of some 19th century influences on photography. The collection’s current curator, Thomas Galifot, along with a fellow PPCM student, Claudia Pfeiffer, were on hand to show us some of the amazing d’Orsay photographic collection. We also had the luxury of having the entire museum to ourselves, since it is closed to the general public on Mondays. There is nothing quite like an empty museum.
A very quiet Monday afternoon.
I think one of my favorite items that were shown to us at the museum was a series of hand-tinted, stereo-view daguerreotypes of nudes. Just writing that brings a smile to my face and a fond memory of the works, even now. First of all, I had never seen a daguerreotype as a stereo-view! A daguerreotype is meant to be a perfectly unique item, it’s very purpose and creative process is somewhat against what a stereo-view is. To then have them both daintily hand-tinted, and mounted to be held in a stereo viewer, is something very, very different. The nudes themselves harkened back to the artistic tradition on the time when the daguerreotypes were created, the gentile poses in which the women are merely objects in the image. The stereo-view aspect of the photographs also enforces the male gaze, voyeur, aspect of the imagery, purely by definition of what a stereo-view is meant for. I would have loved to have seen these works in a viewer, I can only imagine how striking and shocking the works were in 3D at the time. On a side note, they reminded me of a clip from a tangent on a BBC quiz programs called Qi. Bill Bailey, one of the shows panelists, told a story about Louis Daguerre just being a guy despite inventing the camera. It’s a little crass, but quite funny. One can find said clip, here.
Aren't they beautiful?
Many of the other works that Galifot brought out for us show great influence from the Barbizon School of Art, something that was remarkably prevalent in the larger collection of the museum. Eugene Cuvelier, a collector of art and photography, was also a photographer of ‘French life studies.’ These studies were scenes of the countryside and its peasants, and were purchase or commissioned by various painters to use as studies for their work. Cuvelier was not known for his still life, but the museum does have two of them within their collection. One that was shown to us, of which my attempts to reproduce are so bad I’m not putting them up here, reminded me very much of the Dutch painting tradition of still life, although slightly more sparse; only one dead animal and bunch of greenery. A second photographer that came up was a British photographer, Peter Henry Emerson, someone that I had never really heard of until this visit. Many of Emerson’s work are excellent examples of the Barbizon school in the medium of photography; his works have high horizon lines that, coupled with the light, have the peasants in the photograph highlighted and ennobled. The museum actually has two books made by Emerson, the first being a collection of platinum prints of Barbizon styled images. As it turns out, Emerson had a change of heart throughout his career. In 1889 he wrote and published “The Birth of Naturalistic Photography,” only to publish “The Death of Naturalistic Photography” in 1890. Apparently, Emerson was a great admirer of James McNeill Whistler, and as a result, was eventually convinced that photography wasn’t art.
Norfolk Broads by Peter Henry Emerson.
More works by Emerson.
Some interesting still life works by Adolphe Braun were brought out next. Originally trained as a fabric designer, Braun began his photography career with photographs of flowers. These images were transferred onto printing blocks for wallpaper and fabric designs, and turned out to be an extremely successful project. He also photographed museum pieces as records for the museums. Galifot brought out some of the floral works, and they are quite stunning. They are a form of decorative arts by themselves in an interesting way. Not only are they designed to be design elements of nature, but they are also highly stylized to give that design. Braun was known to stage and alter the flowers he was working with greatly, some of them are completely unrecognizable to botanists since they have been clipped and styled so extensively. It’s a ‘natural’ design, in a very loose sense of the phrase.
A floral design by Adolphe Braun.
*A new term was coined on this visit, and may be used throughout the upcoming paragraphs. The word is actually peasants, but it is now pronounced peezents.
Art history with Marta time!
During the 1840s-60s, painting was very much “plein air” in the countryside. The Barbizon school, its name taken from the village where many of the artists of the time stayed while painting en plein air, espoused the ideals of ennobled peezents and romanticized natural scenes. Light was very important, and special attention was paid to sunsets and the affects of light on the subjects. The usual subjects for these works, peasants and farm workers, were placed up against the light and highlighted. Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners is an example of this style, its lowly subjects’ simplicity emphasized by the composition and use of primary elements (such as colours).
So very empty.
Back to Porn versus Art. Throughout history, eroticism, or erotic forms within art was legitimized through style and context. If the subject matter was away from us, such as a biblical story or figure, the nudity is dematerialized with historic context. For example, Jupiter and Antiope by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres features a prominent nude, female form, but since the painting is of a mythical scene, the nudity is not important.
The idea of voyeur and nudity changed slightly with Edouard Manet’s Olympia, something we were privileged to see in the flesh (so to speak), without the massive, fire marshal calling crowds the painting was drawing in. This painting, groundbreaking at the time is modern in two specific ways. The first is that despite the classical title, the piece is of a modern subject, a prostitute. Also this prostitute makes eye contact with the viewer of the painting, she has control. The second, modern aspect of this work is that there is a great emphasis on the inherent aspects of the medium. Olympia features flatness, in colour and plane, along with visible brushstrokes all of which lend to the painting’s place within Modernism.
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