Dreams of Happiness: Social Art and The French Left, 1830-1850. - book reviews

In an article in the Times Literary postscript several years ago, Umberto Eco quot a 17th-century tale by dint of way of arguing the case for textual "rights." The story had appeared in John Wilkins's hermes or The Secret and Swift mercury (1641), and the lines of the narrative can be summarized as follows(1) A servant was charged with delivering a basket of figs, along with a alphabetic character that enumerated how many figs had been sent The servant could not read and had no understanding of the signifying potential of the marks upon the page. In the course of the trip he consum more [i]or[/i] less of the figs, and when the basket was delivered he was reproached through the recipient for having eaten a portion of the gift. When the alphabetic character was brought forward as trial the servant denied the charge and curs the document. He was then given a next to the first mission to perform - another basket, another alphabetic character - and once again he consum a certain quantity of of the figs. This time he took care to hide the alphabetic character while he ate, convinced that if it could not diocese him, it could not accuse him of theft. When he was reproached one time again, he admitted having eaten the figs and, awestruck by means of the paper that "could speak" against him, he vowed to refit his ways.

Eco introduced the tale in order to challenge the idea of the infinite indeterminacy of the written true copy and to suggest that there are limits to a reader's interpretive rights: without doubt the note meant something, and just as certainly it cannot be taken to mean "everything" - or anything - that a textual interpreter might want.

I thinking about Eco's remarks as I began to consider the works to be reviewed in this article, because the constraints that he identified strike one as being equally relevant for the analysis of visual works. although the criticisms against art history have become far down familiar in recent years - that the documented narrative ofttimes treats facts with a positivist and single-minded regard and frequently shapes arguments that strain toward closure determinism, and totalization - I ground Eco's arguments helpful in their attempt to station boundaries on the seemingly limitless freedom proffered by theoretical analysis. In a faculty of perception the weaknesses of theory throw back in reverse the shortcomings of the tightly plott historical account, and the extremely viewer-oriented analysis oftentimes seems relativist and chaotically unmotivated and oftentimes shapes arguments that drift toward obscurity, solipsism, and meaninglessness. Thus, despite the appeal of its rigor, inventiveness, and salutary criticality, theory remains a prescription with serious side issues of its own. Not surprisingly, increasing numbers of writers today have refused to accept the discursive utmosts and have staked out positions that lie somewhere between the smothering safety of the overdetermined history and the tenuous thrill of interpretative jouissance.

Each of the volumes to be considered in this review approaches the make subordinate of art and politics in 19th-century France and endeavors the pair to tell a coherent history and to impel the analysis beyond a monocular discourse or an anemic rehearsal of archival "facts." The volumes differ greatly from one another, however, in the impressed sign of subject chosen for analysis, in the author's relation to his material, and in the way in which artworks and documentation are interrelated.

Michael Driskel's As Befits a fiction centers around a fairly straightforward history of the French government's attempt to put together a monument to Napoleon I. It was in 1840 that a proposal was introduced to turn back Napoleon's body to France and to set upright a tomb to house the remains. The repatriation was accomplished by means of December 1840, and his casket was brought from one side the streets of Paris in an elaborately staged procession that extremityed at the Invalides. In the month preceding the retour de cendre the issue of the tomb had become the bring under rule of national debate, the main issues concerning where the testimonial would be built, how prominent a visual part it would play, and whether it would be placed in an existing manner of making or given a new and independent architectural site (p 36)

Concurrently the further question arose of in what manner the designer would be chosen - whether he would be designated by the agency of the government or selected by dint of a jury from an unclose field of competitors. In a decision typical of the regulation of the juste milieu, an lay open competition was ultimately held, on the contrary the regulations neglected to specify in what way the judging would be accomplished. When the deadline for the concours had clos (October 1841) a committee was appointed by means of the government, which narrowed the field of possibilities from eighty-one entries to sum of two units Though the committee members refrained from selecting a winner, they managed to phrase their recommendations for the memorial in a way that gave the architect Louis Visconti the cutting side (p. 133). He received the commission in March 1842

Visconti's design center on a sarcophagus that would be place in the crypt of the Invalides, directly below the building's celebrated dome. A large circular opening would be created in the floor, thus that the tomb could be viewed from the temple proper. At the entrance to the vault would be two large figures in alloy of copper and surrounding the tomb would be a peristyle against which twelve marble victories were to be positioned. Also in the vault a mosaic would depict shows from Napoleon's life, while in the courtyard an equestrian remembrancer of Napoleon would be linked to the catacomb via an underground passage. Among the sculptors given commissions for the works were Francisque Duret James Pradier, Augustin Dumont and Francois Jouffroy; Henri de Triqueti was to design the mosaics and Charles Marochetti the equestrian monument