Jeremy Hacker
Journal Entry #1
April 2nd, 2015
In the winter quarter of 2015 I attended a 3 week lecture series held by historian Thierry de Duve, which focused mostly on avant-garde art and French history, particularly dealing with modernism. The one thing that struck me when coming across this passage from Proust, “But none of them would go so far as to say ‘He’s a great writer, he has great talent.’ They did not even credit him with talent at all. They did not do so, because they did not know. We are very slow to recognize in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer the model which is labelled “great talent” in our museum of general ideas. Simply because that physiognomy is new and strange, we can find in it no resemblance to what we are accustomed to call talent. We say rather originality, charm, delicary, strength; and then one day we realize that it is precisely all this that adds up to talent.” (1), was that it closely resembled the way in which Manet’s art pieces were received by art critics around 1870. “More often than not, the critics judged that Manet could pull off successful morceaux, which, however, did not amount to tableau.” (2) A tableau in this context is a collection of successful parts, or, morceaux. In comparing Proust’s description of those judging Bergotte and the critics addressing Manet’s unsuccessful tableau, we see the timidness involved with judgment when something unique and new comes across our field of view, particularly forms of art which fail to meet what our memory of talented works are supposedly composed of. I think it’s easy to look in retrospect and tsk those who judge harshly, but I wonder at what lengths all of us may perform this somewhat harsh judgment toward something new and confusing. I imagine the rise of modernism, modern art in particular, came to fruition from the reflection of these unsure judgments and experimenting with notions of what makes art good, and whether it even matters. It’s in this respect of reflection that we see the genius of such modern artists as Manet, for they maintained a thin line separating themselves from traditional tableaus while still being able to be recognized as art worthy of examination.
Bibliography
1.) Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 137. Print.
2.) De Duve, Thierry. “The Invention of Non-Art: A History.” Artforum Vol. 52, No. 6, Feb. 2014, 197. Print.