Abstract
Descartes used to say that reading good books is like engaging in conversation with the most cultivated minds of preceding centuries, or better yet, to read good books is akin to initiating a dialogue with brilliant authors who will reveal their best insights. Yet the problem lies in knowing, ‘what constitutes a good book?’ The same occurs with art: can we distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ art? Between the authentic pieces and its imitations? Are imitations art? What about parodies? Manet, eminent painter of the 19th century, copied, throughout his youth, dozens of paintings exhibited in the Louvre. He was a bona fide connoisseur of his predecessors’ art. Following Descartes, we can imagine that through the production of facsimiles, which represents another mode of reading, Manet prompted a fluid dialogue with painters who preceded him. The great stir arose with the exhibition of two of his paintings, Luncheon on the Grass (1863) and Olympia (1863), two parodic renderings of the famous works of Titian: Pastoral Concert (1509) and Venus of Urbino (1538). It marked the beginning of a symbolic revolution.
But what is a symbolic revolution? What occurs when a symbolic revolution takes place? Why are they so difficult to identify, particularly if they are successful? These are the principal questions Pierre Bourdieu’s (1930–2002) posthumous new book attempts to address, using the paradigmatic case of the painter Édouard Manet (1832–1883). The 586-page meticulously edited volume is now a tangible reality thanks to the efforts of its editors. The volume contains transcripts of 18 previously unpublished lectures about Manet that Bourdieu delivered in the Collège de France, during the winter of 1999–2000, as well as an unfinished and unedited manuscript discussed by the sociologist and his wife, Marie-Claire Bourdieu. Halfway through the text, we will find color reproductions of 42 paintings, printed on high-quality paper. Among these reproductions are the main examined works of Manet, including the works that inspired his art (Titian, Goya), a selection of his teacher’s work (Couture), and other works that serve to elucidate the context in which certain art forms emerged (Ingres, Delaroche, Gérome). The volume ends with more than 50 pages of notes (pp. 504–562) that reinforce the ideas presented in the lectures and the unfinished manuscript.
A text based upon lectures and an unedited manuscript provide a unique opportunity to observe ‘the master’ Bourdieu in action, to enter without disrupting his class, to sit at his desk, and to review his notes to understand a bit more about his perspicacious and penetrating thought process, his mode of organization, his capacity for work, his innovative spirit, his profound, interdisciplinary knowledge of canonic authors and of his contemporaries, his circuitous and slightly repetitive diction, which serves to reinforce his ideas, concepts, perspectives, and newly generated vocabulary.
Bourdieu’s objective, as it pertains to his classes and the unfinished manuscript completed by Marie-Claire, is to describe a successful symbolic revolution. As he indicates, successful revolutions are the most inscrutable, given that in the process of self-revelation, they establish new cognitive structures, and new approaches to perceiving and judging reality that are quickly taken for granted. Once these revolutions are implemented, we assume things are as they are, but we forget that before the symbolic revolution, things were not as we now think they were. Here emerges the difficulty in discerning when a symbolic revolution takes place.
For Bourdieu, Manet is a paradigmatic case of symbolic revolution. Manet propelled the development of modern art. During his youth, French art was state-sponsored art. The state was the titular head of the monopoly of art. It established basic rules for art, designated professors, organized art exhibits, and purchased works. The state was the producer of producers, the central bank of legitimacy, and the academy and the salon were the ‘arms’ that enabled the process. To understand art in Manet’s time and its legacy is the objective of the first lectures as well as the first half of the manuscript.
Bourdieu makes a concerted effort to examine Manet and the symbolic revolution, not from an intentionalist theoretical standpoint, but from the purview of dispositionalist theory. The philosophy of intentions deems all intention conscious, deliberate, and premeditated. Was the commotion generated by Manet conscious and premeditated? Bourdieu states surely not, and that Manet acted in accordance with his habitus, that is, his set of dispositions – a purely Bourdieusian concept – that were incorporated and inculcated consciously and unconsciously through his life. At the same time, the French sociologist affirms that not only is it necessary to understand the artist’s habitus, his system of dispositions that constitute his modus operandi, but also to posit it in relation to the space and time in which it took place. From the sociological standpoint, we must understand Manet as a habitus inserted into field, another wholly Bourdieusian concept.
In fact, the revolution attained by Manet could be described, according to Bourdieu, as the transition of a body (corps) to a field. To comprehend this leap, Bourdieu analyzes the morphological causes (Durkheim), which essentially were the increase in the number students in secondary education, which in turn brought about an increase of art and literature students. This excess of diplomas marked the beginning of the state’s diminishing monopoly over art. These morphological transformations (the multitude of parallel schools), in tandem with other technical factors, such as the appearance of the lithograph, the metal tube of paint, preprepared canvasses, and other types of materials that facilitated art production abroad, fertilized the terrain for a germinating revolution.
Another crucial aspect Bourdieu underscores is the role of art critics. The role of Mallarmé and Zola are especially relevant, and their regular contributions to periodicals about artworks. It is the writers – often established writers – who take over the composition of these critiques. A new mode of writing emerged: art criticism. The initial critiques of Manet are nearly derisive: critics hated his technique, his lack of perspective, his penchant for second-class genres, employing new formats, keeping his works ‘unfinished,’ and most of all his proclivity for painting everything that is morally offensive, unclean. The first critics concurred with the judges of the salon, who did not hesitate to rebuff Luncheon on the Grass (1863), exhibited in the Salón des Refuses for the public’s amusement.
However, Manet’s set of dispositions and the sum of his various forms of capital (social, economic, technical, symbolic) expanded throughout his life. This coincided with the emergence of an artistic field and a critical field which, enhanced by morphological and technical transformations, generated a culture diametrically opposed to that of academia. They balanced the institution of consecration, altered the extant logic system, weakened the belief that those who could not exhibit in the salon were doomed to commit suicide or retreat to the provinces, halted the central bank’s hold on legitimacy, and detonated a symbolic bomb; no doubt, they generated an authentic and successful symbolic revolution.
To read this text is at least a triple gift. First, because the text analyzes a concept of mayor importance (symbolic revolution) that is applicable to many disciplines and fields, such as education, religion, and family. Second, the text’s format is one to which we are less accustomed. We read few oral lectures, and we read even fewer unfinished manuscripts. Both texts betray some disadvantages vis-a-vis a classic book, but they also manifest clear advantages that one soon discovers. Finally, to read, listen to, and converse with one of the most respected contemporary sociologists is always a gift. Bourdieu applies the majority of concepts generated throughout his career to comprehend Manet and the symbolic revolution. The text is also an authentic manual of pure sociology where Bourdieu consciously or unconsciously ‘drops’ hints for the readers of the manuscript. One also discovers an incredibly reflexive scholar (‘after each lecture, I have a period of reflection on what have said,’ p. 55), a sincere and humble professor (‘I have a constant feeling of inconclusiveness,’ p. 56), an impressive innovator (see p. 65), and above all an insatiable worker who enables us to demolish pre-established notions. No doubt, Bourdieu is Manet.
Translated from Spanish by Natalia Rivera Morales