bLOGOS/HA HA: before | art moderne

David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

06 September 2016

before | art moderne | after

Looking at some comic sketches in a volume of Le Monde Illustre, we note with interest that by 1865 (see the various dates discussed below) there was already reckoned a readership for a public spoof about "a project for a symbolic statue of modern art". Consolidation of this new movement is clear in the terminoLOGOS/HA HA (''l'art moderne") and in its mock monumental stature. (What is that thing he's holding out?)

Projet d'une statue symbolique de l'art moderne.
Le Mois Comique, par Edmond Morin et Zed.
Le Monde Illustre, p.269, 1865

History of modern Art: roots in the 19th century

Although modern sculpture and architecture are reckoned to have emerged at the end of the 19th century, the beginnings of modern

painting can be located earlier.^[5] The date perhaps most commonly identified as marking the birth of modern art is 1863,^[6]

the year that Édouard Manet showed his painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe in the Salon des Refusés in Paris. Earlier dates have also been proposed, among them 1855 (the year Gustave Courbet
exhibited The Artist's Studio) and 1784 (the year Jacques-Louis David completed his painting The Oath of the Horatii ).^[6]

NB It is The Oath of the Horatii that the Outsiders run past and leave us to regard in Goddard's 'Bande à part' (Band of Outsiders) a century after the Projet d'une statue symbolique de l'art modernes, making this another contender worthy of consideration at the starting line of post-Modernism.

- Ed. bLOGOS/HA HA

In the words of art historian H. Harvard Arnason: "Each of these dates has significance for the development of modern art, but none categorically marks a completely new beginning .... A gradual metamorphosis took place in the course of a hundred years."^[6]

- from Wikipedia