An influential thorn

Ah, Courbet. The bad boy of 19 c. French painting, a divo, and, crowed the cock, "the most arrogant man in France." So far, so good. This show is huge, comprehensive, and revelatory. The early self-portraits show him as a fine-featured, long-haired romantic, assuredly gazing at the viewer. He's good-looking and he knows it: an alterna-Johhny Depp. The delicacy of his face contrasts with the roughness of the background landscape-- the paint is actually textured. A few years later, "The Desperate Man" makes him the poster child for struggling artists everywhere--AAARGH! the trials and tribulations of creating! Tellingly, he never parted with this painting.
Attitude, don't give me no platitude...Courbet courted controversy: splashing decidedly non-stately peasants across large canvases threatened the establishment. Mon Dieu! Le paysannerie! C'est un scandale! Les grandes peintures sont seulement pour les sujets historiques! (To 21 c. eyes, the fuss seems quaint.) By 1850, when his mammoth "The Artist's Studio" was rejected by the Salon (en culé!), he set up his own exhibit* and issued the Realist Manifesto, vowing "to represent the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my own era according to my own understanding of them." Call this the precurser of photojournalism (Koudelka, Salgado) and later, Impressionism. But his realism was still bucolic (think Dutch) compared to Hogarth's urban grit and just about anything by Goya (sniff sniff).
Courbet handled the psycho-sexual deliciously. With a few sly titles, he veered into not-yet-named conceptualism. Take a look at the life-size "Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine" (click on image to enlarge), which has its own wall: these gals are obviously not "demoiselles". The one lolling on her stomach appears louche --relaxed?-- in every sense of the word. From revealed ankle to post-coital expression, she's different. No allegory here, nothing mythological, and certainly nothing to do with the church. She's sexual, period. The title is an illusion, an allusion to the contrary. And Courbet was nothing if not contrary. But this canvas is only foreplay compared to the next room, a chamber of nudes.
Luscious, racky, ready and ripe, bursting with carnality: a modern sensibility. Oozing sensuality is "Bacchante", a take on a classic but distinctly a voluptuary of any age. She revels in her en plein air nakedness. (This painting is stirring in more ways than one.) "The Sleepers" is something Bertolucci might appreciate, gauzy and soft, inviting yet innocuous. Lesbians, not dykes. Tucked in a side gallery is "The Origin of the World", realism's apo- theosis.† Erotica elevated, not by a pillow but by the title. So, is Courbet playing scientist or Soul Man? The artist kept mum. This oil was for private delectation, comissioned by a Paris-based Turk. The most forthright work of its age, it still has the power to amaze.
The show detumesces with a group of (albeit splendid) landscapes, seascapes, and work he did in self-exile in Switzerland. Only an old, sad man paints pictures of bruised fruit.
"When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important."


Gustave Courbet, at the Met
212-535-7710
through May 18
www.metmuseum.org

*a digression: Funny, why does this sound familiar? Why is innovation so often thwarted by those who set the status quo? Are they afraid of the new? Or unable, or afraid their inabilty might become known, to discern between the new and powerful and the new and mediocre? As we all know, progress necessitates change, but not all change is progress.

†(Can it get more real? mmm, it could...glisten.)

p.s.--The Met is really missing out on revenue. Why no Courbet condoms?

images, from top:

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877)
The Desperate Man, 1844-45
Oil on canvas
17-3/4 x 21-5/8 in. (45 x 55 cm)
Private Collection, courtesy of BNP Paribas Art Advisory
Photo: © Michel Nguyen

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877)
Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine, 1856-57
Oil on canvas
68-1/2 x 81-1/8 in. (174 x 206 cm)
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877)
The Origin of the World, 1866
Oil on canvas
18-1/8 x 22 in. (46 x 55 cm)
Paris, Musée d'Orsay