The Function of Art According to Proudhon: A Tool for Moral Improvement
- Art d'Histoire
- May 28
- 3 min read
Upon the posthumous publication of the writings of the philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1865, Du principe de l’Art et de sa destination sociale, a recurring question was posed:
Must artistic creation be of social utility, or is aesthetics sufficient unto itself? This question is, moreover, central to the understanding of the term "avant-garde."
"Avant-garde" is an expression born from the pen of the Count of Saint-Simon. An avant-garde artist is one who serves the political project of Saint-Simonianism. But ten years later, in his preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, Théophile Gautier wrote exactly the opposite:
“There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can be of no use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly”
The conception of art by the anarchist-socialist Proudhon aligns with Saint-Simon's definition, which was already largely outdated in the 1850s–1860s: that which is useful for teaching the public right and wrong is beautiful. And he takes Courbet's painting as an example of useful art!
The Proudhonian Ideal: The Supremacy of the Subject over Technique
Proudhon defends a strictly utilitarian conception of painting and sculpture; its sole objective residing in the moral and physical improvement of the French people. His ideal in art in no way refers to academic canons of beauty, nor to choices of color, nor to the virtuosity of the line—all of which are vain and pernicious bourgeois preoccupations.
A canvas is considered only through the prism of its subject. The artist, as conceived by Proudhon, is a moralist whose form of expression matters little, provided it is understood by the public.
The Artist as Auxiliary to the Utopian City
Proudhon, who defended many of Courbet's works, was not for all that an admirer of the raw truth of daguerreotypes, for the good artist must have the capacity to capture the unobservable: caste prejudices, the aberrations of religion, and the immense diversity of human passions.
Seen from this angle, Courbet's merit would reside not in his brushstroke, but in his capacity to paint a faithful mirror of society, which would lead the public to modify its behaviour: it would evaluate itself and correct its vices; a fat and ugly nude, as in The Bathers (1853), would encourage it to work and would fuel a growing contempt toward the wives of men of independent means.
Courbet, supposed to be Proudhon's friend, is nonetheless treated almost as an imbecile in the treatise, for failing to be docile enough and for having himself attempted to write the theory of his painting... which is reserved for the philosopher of anarchism.
Inspired by a mechanism close to Aristotelian catharsis, the work of art is thus intended to substitute itself for lived experience in order to instruct humanity.
Proudhon's Aesthetic Theory Ridiculed
His contemporaries judged the treatise harshly.
Gustave Flaubert, in his correspondence with the Goncourt brothers, spoke of an absolute ineptitude. He castigated the incompetence of the Proudhonian approach, believing that this strictly social vision signaled the death of art.
As the Zolienne weapon was very often derision, Émile Zola openly mocked the elevation of Courbet to the rank of leader of a movement of moralising painters, reduced to daubing sermons on a canvas for the benefit of a hypothetical ideal city.
Proudhonian theory proposes a system where creation has no role except as an instrument of propaganda, a question widely debated in the 20th century.
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