Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)
Tanulmányok / Studies - Imre Györgyi: A modell / The Model
The Model GYÖRGYI IMRE 'It is precisely in the Nineteenth Century — at a time when older prototypes and motifs were transformed by new needs and motivations — that the social basis of sexual myths stands out in clearest relief from the apparently "personal" erotic imagery of individual artists.' Linda Nochlin : Nineteenth-Century Fe m ale Imagery. New York 1 972 1 Our exhibition features female nude imagery, which in 19th-century western art can be interpreted a thousand ways, from the world of street showmen to the culture of the arty elite of post-liberal cities. 2 Its depiction can be described within the context of sketchbooks and marginal notes of artists, just as among the objects of friendship charts or medical visual aids. They can also be discovered among items of exhibitions saturated with knowledge and representative contents, like Vénus de Milo or Vénus de mille eaux\ appearing in popular culture. If we intend to look through this flood of pictures —virtually boundless even in Hungary —we must draw our standpoints from the oeuvres themselves. The works displayed in the exhibition are, with a few exceptions, in the property of Hungarian museums. A greater part of them passed into public collections before 1914 (the latest date of the exhibition), that is to say, not made on private commissions. For this reason we thought best to examine the works within the framework of the era's developing national academy and museum. A model to this public domain 4 of 19th-century Hungarian arts —datable from the foundation of the National Museum (1802)—could be the British Museum (1753) or the Parisian Muséum National (1793) and connected to it the paradigm of the French academy. The Parisian museum was initially designed to present all fields of science and art in a single building: the new concept of museums and exhibitions originating from it later on played a role in the creation and interpreting of exhibits." The wellknown idea of Jean Clair is applicable to the entire process: 'The fact that the cultic, religious or social value of a work of art was ultimately replaced by exhibitions as something worthy, creating "a value" from the exhibition of anything —well, this is the transposition in the spirit of which the history of modern art is being written."' The majority of 19th-century conjectures on female imagery started out from Paris. One of the most important of them was the 1815 exposition in the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle of the plaster cast of the body of the African Sarah Bartmann (1789-1815), the 'Hottentot Venus', together with the preparation of part of her genitalia. (7//. 1) The exhibit came from the research laboratory of Georges Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy de SainteHilaire. 7 (Cat. HIS) The event —at the time of which the posing of female nude models was, and remained for decades afterwards, prohibited in most European academies —shortly preceded the arrival of the Elgin Marbles to the British Museum (1816). s Picasso creates his Les Demoiselles D'Avignon (exhibited Paris, 1907. III. 2) under the inspiration of African art, rising from the ties of museums and academies, at the end of the period. The ramifying diversity of incidents that occurred in the meantime can all be considered as different attitudes of the era. In the 19th century pictures of female nudes were also linked to certain issues —such as the paintings' body-like objectivity and identity, the freedom of the artist and the notion of vitality —that originated in the Humanist approach of the Renaissance: the 'renewed awareness of the human and secular values of artVfGzí. I-Í9) The ethical autonomy of Humanist artists was grounded by their moral disposition —concurrently considered the criterion of the depiction of delight. Thus the discussion of delight was connected to sovereign artistic conscience. Female imagery became the touchstone and symbol of artistic skill from the time when the concept became linked to the figure of the independent, i.e. non-guild member, academic Renaissance artist that only had the right to pose within the academy a live (female) nude model. The fame of the Carracci was also augmented by the fact that, according to accounts, the bases for cognition at their academy were live nude models. 10 The allegoric figure of Pictura became the complement of Humanist artist portraits. Their artistic freedom was respected and guaranteed by the artist and art-lover himself." Artists of the 19th century, however, broached these issues in a completely different manner following the paintings that focused on personalisation and perception of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. (Cat. 1—13) Images of the female body clothed in an irregular fashion or naked could have expressed the sovereignty of the artist. Georges Sand's donning men's clothes was the manifesto of an artist breaking with conventions. Gustave Courbet also demonstrates artistic autonomy through the 'real allegory' of the nude model he posed in LAtelier. The nude female figure on Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe had a scandalous effect with its blending of life and art. (III. 3, Cat. 1-14) Artistic liberty for 19th-century artists compared to the freedom of nature. This is what the anti-academic remarks of the end of the 18th century reflect, such as those of Lagrenée or Heinrich Meyer. 12 In 1792 Goya wrote in his memorandum on the reforming of the San Fernando Academy of Madrid: 'Let academies be unrestrictive [...] by banishing all slavish servility, as is usual in infants' schools'. 13 According to the educational programme Schelling developed for the Academy of Munich —which was defined by its constitution (1808) partly as an educational institute and ^ partly as a society of artists 14 —training should proceed from 5 the mechanic to the intellectual level, the condition of which o> is for the teacher to sustain his pupils in the greatest liberty iand vigour. 1 '' Neither did 19th-century states —that regarded ancient Greek society as their role model —leave 'free artists' ^ c to themselves with their endeavours. 16 Í
