In the nineteenth century, art demanded its
autonomy, but artists themselves did not overcome the contradictions
that tied them intrinsically to society. In 1824, apropos
of the Paris Salon, Adolphe Thiers proclaimed that "art must
be free, and free in the most unlimited sort of way". In
this respect, he was in step with the changes taking place during
his time and with the development of bourgeois liberalism, which
was competing with State and Church patronage. And yet,
the social mission of art was constantly making itself felt, particularly
when it came to expressing worries born of the upheaval in traditional
frames of reference.
Thus, in an age obsessed with the nature of
being in society, artists were expected to aid in the combined
advancement of science and morality. They had to give expression
to social Darwinism's dream of classifying, prioritizing, and,
ultimately, purifying everything. In particular, the fantasy
that one might confer upon individuals a stable and predictable
identity at least had the words to state this goal and the tools
to implement it.
To accomplish this task, a number of notions
had to be abandoned in particular, that of the soul in favor
of a unification of the field of medicine and physiology, as Jean
Starobinski has shown. One's attention had to be turned
steadfastly toward the relationship between physical appearance
and morality as well as toward the connection between organic
life, mental activity, and social life. Such was the movement
that swept Europe.
In their own way, artists latched onto the experiments
of Johann Kaspar Lavater and the physiognomists. It began
to be considered instructive to seek the inward in the outward
the temperaments, the humors, and the passions in physical appearance,
facial features, and the shape of the skull. This trend
was also going to have an influence on the art of portraiture
in the works of Delacroix, Runge, Feuerbach, Daumier, Dantan,
David d'Angers, and Degas. We know how much how Degas celebrated
Petite danseuse de quatorze ans (Dressed Ballet Dancer,
as this sculpture is entitled in English) owes to the prevailing
view of the "dangerous classes", as well as monkeys, as it presents
anomalies identified by Cesare Lombroso and the anthropologists
who said that they could spot on people's faces who was a criminal
throwback. Physiognomy quickly became the scientific norm,
its aim being to reconcile art and science to the point of merging
the two, if need be. Inevitably, it established friendly
relations both with religion and with an anthropology that claimed
to be effective in the battle against degeneracy, that old specter
the world of art could not do without, either.
In this landscape, where people were obsessed
with unveiling human nature through observation and representation,
the French painter, writer, and politician Jean-Baptiste Delestre
(1800-1871) introduced himself in a work on Physiognonomonie
(Physiognomy) as the person capable of diagnosing the
moral and social qualities of individuals according to criteria
of judgment inherited from the neoclassical ideal of beauty. After
having evinced an abiding interest in the body as the ground of
figurative representation, Martial Guédron now studies
this neglected thinking and practice in the new installment of
our Letter. Guédron himself is presently
at work on a book about the aesthetic foundations of anthropology
at the end of the Age of Enlightenment. Pierre Wat answers
him in his capacity as a specialist of European Romanticism. Wat
remains attentive to the contradictions built into the positions
adopted by Delestre, who dangerously wavered between an emphasis
on the singular and a will to grasp what is enduring in the form
and in the character of individuals.
