Birth of Venus, Alexandre Cabanel, 1863.

Life class at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1826 by Wilhelm Bendz.

Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles, and which is best reflected by the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart. In this context it is often called "academism", "academicism", "L'art pompier", and "eclecticism", and sometimes linked with "historicism" and "syncretism".

The art influenced by academies in general is also called "academic art". In this context as new styles are embraced by academics, the new styles come to be considered academic, thus what was at one time a rebellion against academic art becomes academic art.

The academies in history[link]

The first academy of art was founded in Florence in Italy by Cosimo I de' Medici, on 13 January 1563, under the influence of the architect Giorgio Vasari who called it the Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy and Company for the Arts of Drawing) as it was divided in two different operative branches. While the Company was a kind of corporation which every working artist in Tuscany could join, the Academy comprised only the most eminent artistic personalities of Cosimo’s court, and had the task of supervising the whole artistic production of the medicean state. In this medicean institution students learned the "arti del disegno" (a term coined by Vasari) and heard lectures on anatomy and geometry. Another academy, the Accademia di San Luca (named after the patron saint of painters, St. Luke), was founded about a decade later in Rome. The Accademia di San Luca served an educational function and was more concerned with art theory than the Florentine one. In 1582 Annibale Carracci opened his very influential Academy of Desiderosi in Bologna without official support; in some ways this was more like a traditional artist's workshop, but that he felt the need to label it as an "academy" demonstrates the attraction of the idea at the time.

Accademia di San Luca later served as the model for the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture founded in France in 1648, and which later became the Académie des beaux-arts. The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture was founded in an effort to distinguish artists "who were gentlemen practicing a liberal art" from craftsmen, who were engaged in manual labor. This emphasis on the intellectual component of artmaking had a considerable impact on the subjects and styles of academic art.

After the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture was reorganized in 1661 by Louis XIV whose aim was to control all the artistic activity in France, a controversy occurred among the members that dominated artistic attitudes for the rest of the century. This "battle of styles" was a conflict over whether Peter Paul Rubens or Nicolas Poussin was a suitable model to follow. Followers of Poussin, called "poussinistes", argued that line (disegno) should dominate art, because of its appeal to the intellect, while followers of Rubens, called "rubenistes", argued that color (colore) should dominate art, because of its appeal to emotion.

The debate was revived in the early 19th century, under the movements of Neoclassicism typified by the artwork of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Romanticism typified by the artwork of Eugène Delacroix. Debates also occurred over whether it was better to learn art by looking at nature, or to learn by looking at the artistic masters of the past.

Academies using the French model formed throughout Europe, and imitated the teachings and styles of the French Académie. In England, this was the Royal Academy. The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts founded in 1754, may be taken as a successful example in a smaller country, which achieved its aim of producing a national school and reducing the reliance on imported artists. The painters of the Danish Golden Age of roughly 1800-1850 were nearly all trained there, and many returned to teach and the history of the art of Denmark is much less marked by tension between academic art and other styles than is the case in other countries.

One effect of the move to academies was to make training more difficult for women artists, who were excluded from most academies until the last half of the 19th century (1861 for the Royal Academy). This was partly because of concerns over the propriety of life classes with nude models. Special arrangements were often made for female students until the 20th century.

Development of the academic style[link]

Since the onset of the poussiniste-rubeniste debate, many artists worked between the two styles. In the 19th century, in the revived form of the debate, the attention and the aims of the art world became to synthesize the line of Neoclassicism with the color of Romanticism. One artist after another was claimed by critics to have achieved the synthesis, among them Théodore Chassériau, Ary Scheffer, Francesco Hayez, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, and Thomas Couture. William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a later academic artist, commented that the trick to being a good painter is seeing "color and line as the same thing." Thomas Couture promoted the same idea in a book he authored on art method — arguing that whenever one said a painting had better color or better line it was nonsense, because whenever color appeared brilliant it depended on line to convey it, and vice versa; and that color was really a way to talk about the "value" of form.

Another development during this period included adopting historical styles in order to show the era in history that the painting depicted, called historicism. This is best seen in the work of Baron Jan August Hendrik Leys, a later influence on James Tissot. It's also seen in the development of the Neo-Grec style. Historicism is also meant to refer to the belief and practice associated with academic art that one should incorporate and conciliate the innovations of different traditions of art from the past.

The art world also grew to give increasing focus on allegory in art. Theories of the importance of both line and color asserted that through these elements an artist exerts control over the medium to create psychological effects, in which themes, emotions, and ideas can be represented. As artists attempted to synthesize these theories in practice, the attention on the artwork as an allegorical or figurative vehicle was emphasized. It was held that the representations in painting and sculpture should evoke Platonic forms, or ideals, where behind ordinary depictions one would glimpse something abstract, some eternal truth. Hence, Keats' famous musing "Beauty is truth, truth beauty". The paintings were desired to be an "idée", a full and complete idea. Bouguereau is known to have said that he wouldn't paint "a war", but would paint "War". Many paintings by academic artists are simple nature allegories with titles like Dawn, Dusk, Seeing, and Tasting, where these ideas are personified by a single nude figure, composed in such a way as to bring out the essence of the idea.

The trend in art was also towards greater idealism, which is contrary to realism, in that the figures depicted were made simpler and more abstract—idealized—in order to be able to represent the ideals they stood in for. This would involve both generalizing forms seen in nature, and subordinating them to the unity and theme of the artwork.

Because history and mythology were considered as plays or dialectics of ideas, a fertile ground for important allegory, using themes from these subjects was considered the most serious form of painting. A hierarchy of genres, originally created in the 17th century, was valued, where history painting—classical, religious, mythological, literary, and allegorical subjects—was placed at the top, next genre painting, then portraiture, still-life, and landscape. History painting was also known as the "grande genre". Paintings of Hans Makart are often larger than life historical dramas, and he combined this with a historicism in decoration to dominate the style of 19th century Vienna culture. Paul Delaroche is a typifying example of French history painting.

All of these trends were influenced by the theories of the philosopher Hegel, who held that history was a dialectic of competing ideas, which eventually resolved in synthesis.

Towards the end of the 19th century, academic art had saturated European society. Exhibitions were held often, and the most popular exhibition was the Paris Salon and beginning in 1903, the Salon d'Automne. These salons were sensational events that attracted crowds of visitors, both native and foreign. As much a social affair as an artistic one, 50,000 people might visit on a single Sunday, and as many as 500,000 could see the exhibition during its two-month run. Thousands of pictures were displayed, hung from just below eye level all the way up to the ceiling in a manner now known as "Salon style." A successful showing at the salon was a seal of approval for an artist, making his work saleable to the growing ranks of private collectors. Bouguereau, Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Léon Gérôme were leading figures of this art world.

During the reign of academic art, the paintings of the Rococo era, previously held in low favor, were revived to popularity, and themes often used in Rococo art such as Eros and Psyche were popular again. The academic art world also idolized Raphael, for the ideality of his work, in fact preferring him over Michelangelo.

Academic art not only held influence in Europe and the United States, but also extended its influence to other Western countries. This was especially true for Latin American nations, which, because their revolutions were modeled on the French Revolution, sought to emulate French culture. An example of a Latin American academic artist is Ángel Zárraga of Mexico.

Academic training[link]

Students painting "from life" at the École. Photographed late 1800s.

Young artists spent four years in rigorous training. In France, only students who passed an exam and carried a letter of reference from a noted professor of art were accepted at the academy's school, the École des Beaux-Arts. Drawings and paintings of the nude, called "académies", were the basic building blocks of academic art and the procedure for learning to make them was clearly defined. First, students copied prints after classical sculptures, becoming familiar with the principles of contour, light, and shade. The copy was believed crucial to the academic education; from copying works of past artists one would assimilate their methods of art making. To advance to the next step, and every successive one, students presented drawings for evaluation.

Demosthenes at the Seashore, a Royal Academy prize winning drawing, 1888.

If approved, they would then draw from plaster casts of famous classical sculptures. Only after acquiring these skills were artists permitted entrance to classes in which a live model posed. Interestingly, painting was not actually taught at the École des Beaux-Arts until after 1863. To learn to paint with a brush, the student first had to demonstrate proficiency in drawing, which was considered the foundation of academic painting. Only then could the pupil join the studio of an academician and learn how to paint. Throughout the entire process, competitions with a predetermined subject and a specific allotted period of time measured each students' progress.

The most famous art competition for students was the Prix de Rome. The winner of the Prix de Rome was awarded a fellowship to study at the Académie française's school at the Villa Medici in Rome for up to five years. To compete, an artist had to be of French nationality, male, under 30 years of age, and single. He had to have met the entrance requirements of the École and have the support of a well-known art teacher. The competition was grueling, involving several stages before the final one, in which 10 competitors were sequestered in studios for 72 days to paint their final history paintings. The winner was essentially assured a successful professional career.

As noted, a successful showing at the Salon was a seal of approval for an artist. The ultimate achievement for the professional artist was election to membership in the Académie française and the right to be known as an academician. Artists petitioned the hanging committee for optimal placement "on the line," or at eye level. After the exhibition opened, artists complained if their works were "skyed," or hung too high.

Criticism and legacy[link]

Academic art was first criticised for its use of idealism, by Realist artists such as Gustave Courbet, as being based on idealistic clichés and representing mythical and legendary motives while contemporary social concerns were being ignored. Another criticism by Realists was the "false surface" of paintings—the objects depicted looked smooth, slick, and idealized—showing no real texture. The Realist Théodule Ribot worked against this by experimenting with rough, unfinished textures in his painting.

Caricature (French bourgeoisie): This Year Venuses Again… Always Venuses!. Honoré Daumier, No. 2 from series in Le Charivati, 1864.

Stylistically, the Impressionists, who advocated quickly painting outdoors exactly what the eye sees and the hand puts down, criticized the finished and idealized painting style. Although academic painters began a painting by first making drawings and then painting oil sketches of their subject, the high polish they gave to their drawings seemed to the Impressionists tantamount to a lie. After the oil sketch, the artist would produce the final painting with the academic "fini," changing the painting to meet stylistic standards and attempting to idealize the images and add perfect detail. Similarly, perspective is constructed geometrically on a flat surface and is not really the product of sight, Impressionists disavowed the devotion to mechanical techniques.

Realists and Impressionists also defied the placement of still-life and landscape at the bottom of the hierarchy of genres. It is important to note that most Realists and Impressionists and others among the early avant-garde who rebelled against academism were originally students in academic ateliers. Claude Monet, Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, and even Henri Matisse were students under academic artists.

As modern art and its avant-garde gained more power, academic art was further denigrated, and seen as sentimental, clichéd, conservative, non-innovative, bourgeois, and "styleless". The French referred derisively to the style of academic art as L'art Pompier (pompier means "fireman") alluding to the paintings of Jacques-Louis David (who was held in esteem by the academy) which often depicted soldiers wearing fireman-like helmets. The paintings were called "grandes machines" which were said to have manufactured false emotion through contrivances and tricks.

This denigration of academic art reached its peak through the writings of art critic Clement Greenberg who stated that all academic art is "kitsch". References to academic art were gradually removed from histories of art and textbooks by modernists, who justified doing this in the name of cultural revolution^{[citation needed]}. For most of the 20th century, academic art was completely obscured, only brought up rarely, and when brought up, done so for the purpose of ridiculing it and the bourgeois society which supported it, laying a groundwork for the importance of modernism.

Other artists, such as the Symbolist painters and some of the Surrealists, were kinder to the tradition^{[citation needed]}. As painters who sought to bring imaginary vistas to life, these artists were more willing to learn from a strongly representational tradition. Once the tradition had come to be looked on as old-fashioned, the allegorical nudes and theatrically posed figures struck some viewers as bizarre and dreamlike.

With the goals of Postmodernism in giving a fuller, more sociological and pluralistic account of history, academic art has been brought back into history books and discussion. Nevertheless, since the early 1990s, academic art has experienced a limited resurgence through the Classical Realist atelier movement.^[1] Still, the art is gaining a broader appreciation by the public at large, and whereas academic paintings once would only fetch a few hundreds of dollars in auctions, some now fetch millions.

Major artists[link]

Books[link]

• Art and the Academy in the Nineteenth Century. (2000). Denis, Rafael Cordoso & Trodd, Colin (Eds). Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-2795-3
• L'Art-Pompier. (1998). Lécharny, Louis-Marie, Que sais-je?, Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 2-13-049341-6
• L'Art pompier: immagini, significati, presenze dell'altro Ottocento francese (1860-1890). (1997). Luderin, Pierpaolo, Pocket library of studies in art, Olschki. ISBN 88-222-4559-8

References[link]

1. ^ Panero, James: "The New Old School", The New Criterion, Volume 25, September 2006, page 104.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Academic art

• The Ravenswood Atelier-- Classical Atelier Training, Chicago, IL
• The Ashland Academy of Art Academic training in drawing and painting
• [1] Suzor-Coté Académique
• Academic art Academic art Movement
• Art Renewal Center dedicated to reappraisal of Academic art
• Dahesh Museum, NY foremost museum on Academic Art
• Academy of Classical Design classical training in drawing and painting
• Bridgeview School of Fine Art, New York emphasizes academic training
• Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide a journal of 19th century visual culture
• École des Beaux-Arts informative page from John Singer Sargent Gallery
• Grand Central Academy, New York Art school emphasizing the academic method
• Academic Art at the Artcyclopedia

Ștefan Luchian
A Housepainter (self-portrait), 1909
Born	(1868-02-01)1 February 1868 Ștefănești
Died	28 June 1917(1917-06-28) (aged 49) Bucharest
Nationality	Romanian
Field	Painting
Training	William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Nicolae Grigorescu
Movement	Impressionism, Post-impressionism, Symbolism
Patrons	Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, Take Ionescu
Influenced by	Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet
Influenced	Nicolae Tonitza

Ștefan Luchian (Romanian pronunciation: [ʃteˈfan lukiˈan], last name also spelled Lukian; 1 February 1868 – 28 June 1917) was a Romanian painter, famous for his landscapes and still life works.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

He was born in Ștefănești, a village of Botoșani County, as the son of Major Dumitru Luchian and of Elena Chiriacescu. The Luchian family moved to Bucharest in 1873 and his mother desired that he would follow his father's path and join the Military School. Instead, in 1885, Luchian joined the painting class at the Fine Arts School, where he was encouraged to pursue a career in art by Nicolae Grigorescu, whose work was to have a major impact on his entire creative life.^[1]

Starting in autumn of 1889 Luchian studied for two semesters at the Munich Fine Arts Academy, where he created copies of the works by Correggio and Rembrandt housed in the Kunstareal. After his return to Romania, he took part in the first exhibition of the Cercul Artistic art group.

He showed himself unable to accept the academic guidelines imposed by the Bavarian and Romanian schools.^[2] The following year, he left for Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian, and, although taught by the academic artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, became acquainted with impressionist works of art.^[3] Luchian's painting Ultima cursă de toamnă shows the influence of Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, but also echoes of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, Modernism, and Post-impressionism (also obvious in works created after his return to Bucharest).^[4]

Chronic illness and death[link]

Garoafe 1907; Vara 1912; Casa lui Mos Brebu la.

In 1896, together with Nicolae Vermont, Constantin Artachino, and the art collector, Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, Stefan Luchian was one of the main founders of Bucharest's Salonul Independenţilor, which was opened in front of the official Salon (the Romanian equivalent of the Paris Salon).^[5] Two years later, the group led to the creation of Societatea Ileana and its press organ, Ileana,^[6] with Luchian as the original illustrator.^[7] From then on Luchian began integrating Symbolist elements in his work, taking inspiration from various related trends: Art Nouveau, Jugendstil and Mir iskusstva (see Symbolist movement in Romania).^[8]

In 1900, Luchian contributed two pastels to Romania's Pavilion at the World Fair, and in the same year suffered the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis, the disease which, after some initial improvements, was to haunt him for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, he continued painting and, until 1915, had his works displayed in numerous exhibitions, albeit to a largely indifferent public.^[9] At his 1905 exhibition, the only buyer of a painting was his former teacher Grigorescu. Despite being appreciated by a select few (including the writer Ion Luca Caragiale),^[10] Luchian lived in poverty (the large fortune he had inherited was progressively drained).^[11]

Interior (Lorica), Luchian's last painting (1913)

Paralysed from 1909, he had to live the rest of his life in an armchair.^[12] This did not prevent him from working on an entire series of landscapes and flowers. He had begun flower paintings earlier, but from 1908 he concentrated all his creative energy into the subject. Toward the end of his life, Luchian was no longer able to hold the painter's brush with his fingers, and was instead helped to tie it to his wrist in order to continue work.^[13]

At the time, he had begun enjoying considerable success — a phenomenon which the writer Tudor Arghezi attributed to the momentary rise of Take Ionescu as a politician (Ionescu had become the center of a fashion and subject of imitation, and he was among the first to buy more than one of Luchian's paintings).^[14] As his disease became notorious, a rumor spread that Luchian allowed someone else to paint in his name; the scandal brough about Luchian's arrest under charges of fraud (he was released soon after).^[15] Arghezi took pride in being one of his few defenders.^[9]

One of the last events in Luchian's life was a visit paid to his house by composer and violinist George Enescu. Although the two had never met before, Enescu played his instrument as a personal tribute to the dying artist.^[16]

He died in Bucharest and he was buried at the Bellu Cemetery.

Legacy[link]

By the 1930s, Luchian's impact on Romanian art was becoming the subject of disputes in the cultural world, with several critics claiming that his work had been minor and the details of his life exaggerated.^[17] Arghezi was again involved in the polemic, and wrote passionate pieces which supported Luchian's art and attributed adverse reactions to jealousy and to Luchian's voiced distaste for mediocrity.^[12]

In 1948, Luchian was posthumously elected to the Romanian Academy. An art school in Botoșani bears his name.

His life was the subject of Nicolae Mărgineanu's 1981 film, Luchian, where his character was played by Ion Caramitru (Maria Ploae was Luchian's sister; other actors starring in the film where George Constantin, Ştefan Velniciuc, Florin Călinescu as Arghezi, and Adrian Pintea as Nicolae Tonitza).

Gallery[link]

Click on an image to view it enlarged.

• 

  Safta the Flower Girl, 1901

• 

  Portrait of a Woman 1901

• 

  The Well on Clucerului Street 1902-1904

• 

  Old Man Nicolae the Fiddler, 1906

• 

  The River Meadow at Poduri, 1909

• 

  Anemona Flowers, 1908

• 

  Hair Washing, 1911-1912

• 

  Alecu the Literary Man

• 

  The Mounted Red Hussar

• 

  Chrysanthemums

• 

  The Millet Beer Seller

• 

  The Laundress

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Ştefan Luchian, Biography at LinkDesign.ro (text originally published in the 1978 album Luchian)
• (Romanian) Ştefan Luchian at Artline.ro
• Tudor Arghezi, Scrieri. Proze, Editura Minerva, Bucharest, 1985
• Vasile Drăguţ, Vasile Florea, Dan Grigorescu, Marin Mihalache, Pictura românească în imagini, Editura Meridiane, Bucharest, 1970
• (Romanian) Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, "Artachino", in Observator Cultural; retrieved July 14, 2007

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ştefan Luchian

• Ştefan Luchian - Romania's First Modern Painter
• Ştefan Luchian: Biography
• Art History on Stamps - Ştefan Luchian
• Ştefan Luchian - paintings