Why Did Nineteenth-Century Art Mark the End of Academic Art?
- Art d'Histoire
- Feb 20
- 3 min read
If the Classical 17th century successed in drawing a sharp line between the Artist (who thinks) and the artisan (who makes), the French Revolution indirectly and the Industrial Revolution came to shatter it. By the 19th century, a deep anxiety gripped the French art world: what if Art was becoming nothing more than a commodity? This fear crystallized during the great Universal Exhibitions and Salons, which became battlegrounds where art struggled against industry for supremacy.
"What are we going to do in this bazaar?" (London, 1851)
The first shock occurred in London in 1851, at the "Great Exhibition." The English administration made a radical decision based on a technicality: painting was excluded because it was considered a "Liberal Art" (a product of the mind), but sculpture was admitted because the processes of casting and carving aligned it with the mechanical arts.
For French artists, this was a humiliation. When offered the chance to participate, they refused en masse. "Art is not industry," they retorted, "what are we going to do in a bazaar?". They saw this as a regression, undoing the hard-won work of ennobling the fine arts that had been established in the 17th century to distinguish them from common craftmen and led to the establishment of the French Royal Academy of Art and Sculpture, l'Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture.
The Melancholy of Art (Paris, 1855)
Four years later, in Paris, the government attempted a compromise. To prevent works of art from being "soiled" by the proximity of machines, a separate building was constructed: the Palais des Beaux-Arts. The goal was to maintain a sanitary distance between genius and the factory.
However, the symbolism was cruel. On the pediment of the Palais de l'Industrie, the sculptor Élias Robert depicted two allegories: Industry appeared confident, holding an anvil and looking toward the future, while Art appeared melancholic, head bowed and wrists hanging limply, as if she had already lost the fight. The separation was merely a façade; the industrial logic was winning.
The Triumph of the "Joyful Bazaar" (Paris, 1867)
The defeat was consummated in 1867. This time, there was no separation. The exhibition was organized in concentric circles. To reach the gallery of Fine Arts, located in the center, the visitor had to traverse kilometers of noisy machines and manufactured goods.
Critics like Émile Galichon were horrified by this shocking commodification of culture, describing it as a "joyful bazaar" where statues rubbed shoulders with wheelbarrows and bedpans. The old quarrel had been settled by the market: art was literally suffocated. Sculptures were crammed onto crates, and paintings were stacked four or five rows high in narrow hangars, reaching ten meters into the air. They were no longer treated as works of the spirit, but as stock—merchandise in the great supermarket of the modern world.
This blog is based on the anthology sheets of primary sources offered by Art d'Histoire Academy.
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