Research Catalog

Dreams of happiness : social art and the French Left, 1830-1850

Title: Dreams of happiness : social art and the French Left, 1830-1850 / Neil McWilliam.
Author: McWilliam, Neil.
Publication: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1993.

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Request for On-site Use Request Scan Not available - Please for assistance.	Text	Use in library	BH221.F83 M39 1993	Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 385 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

Responding to the decline of the monarchy and the church in postrevolutionary France, theorists representing a wide spectrum of leftist ideologies proposed comprehensive blueprints for society that assigned a crucial role to aesthetics. In this full-length investigation of social romanticism, Neil McWilliam explores the profound impact of radical philosophies on contemporary aesthetics and art criticism, and traces efforts to conscript the arts for doctrinal ends. He highlights the complexity and diversity of systems such as Saint-Simonianism, Fourierism, Republicanism, and Christian Socialism - movements that set out to exploit the effect of form on the previous linking of social art to narrow didacticism. This book seeks an understanding both of the conventions of artistic judgment and reception and of the aims and significance of radical political ideologies. Drawing on a broad spectrum of previously neglected journalistic criticism, visual material, and archival sources, together with key political texts by figures such as Saint-Simon, Philippe Buchez, and Pierre Leroux, this work reveals an important facet of radical history and modifies received understandings of French art in the wake of Romanticism. In the process it probes the role of culture within oppositional political practice, arguing that the ultimate failure to realize a social art exposes the limits of the radicals' break with dominant discourse and their hesitancy in forging links with a culturally disenfranchised working class.

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Ch. 1. Introduction. Radical Perspectives. The Aesthetic Dimension -- Ch. 2. Saint-Simon and the Promotion of a Social Aesthetic. Science, Progress, and the Intellectual. Art, Sentiment, and the Promotion of Industry. Art as Social Exhortation -- Ch. 3. From Positivism to Sentiment: The Aesthetics of Saint-Simonianism. The Reassertion of Positivism: Le Producteur. Prosper Enfantin and the Rehabilitation of Sentiment. Historical Theory and the Social History of Art. Assessments of Contemporary Production. Toward a New Conception of Form -- Ch. 4. Theory into Practice: The Frustration of Saint-Simonian Aesthetics. The Saint-Simonian Constituency. Marginality and Mal du siecle. From Menilmontant to Cairo. Why Were There No Great Saint-Simonian Artists? -- Ch. 5. Sentiment and Faith: Philippe Buchez and His Circle. The Primacy of Faith. History of Faith and History of Art. History as Synthesis and Prevision. "Sentiment," "Education," and "Art" -- Ch. 6. Pierre Leroux and the Aesthetics of Humanite. Psychological Theory and the Status of the Artist. Nature, Art, and the Symbol. Pierre Leroux and Theophile Thore -- Ch. 7. The Beauty of Happiness: Art Social and Fourierist Criticism. Harmony, Beauty, and Happiness. Prophecy, Luxury, and Nature. Reception and the Meaning of Form. Line, Color, and the Principles of Harmony. The Failings of Art and the Task of the Critic. Critical Positions and Artistic Production: Problems of Practice -- Ch. 8. Vision and Virtue: The Aesthetics of Republicanism. The Necessity of Virtue. The Moralization of Nature. Antiacademicism and the Politics of Truth. Meaning and Modernity -- Ch. 9. Conclusion. Class and the Snare of Culture. From Social Art to Socialist Realism.

ISBN

069103155X
9780691031552

LCCN

92038222

OCLC

ocm27187773
27187773
SCSB-9041474

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library