A few Christmases ago, I bought my brother a book called “A Lexicon of Musical Invective,” a collection of contemporary (very) bad reviews of pieces of music from when they were first performed. It just occurred to me that I should try to do the same thing for artists!
Many of the artists whom we considered today to be great masters were not exactly welcomed with open arms by the art scenes of their own times. Some were outrightly scorned and accused of being madmen. Impressionists, for example, were considered strange to the point of insanity! Their paintings were unfamiliar, unprecedented; they looked unfinished, as if they had been dashed off hastily and haphazardly; they did not conform to the very traditional ideals established by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Here’s what was said about them and other painters, when their work was first shown. (Art criticism as we know it today began in the 18th century, so all of the reviews that follow are of artists from that period onward.)
Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” – 1863:
“What is this Odalisque with a yellow stomach, a base model picked up I know not where, who represents Olympia?” – Jules Claretie
Claude Monet’s “Impression Sunrise” – 1872:
“Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than this sea-scape.” – Louis Leroy
Paul Cézanne’s “A Modern Olympia” – 1874:
"Like a voluptuous vision, this artificial corner of paradise has left even the most courageous gasping for breath...and Mr. Cézanne merely gives the impression of being a sort of madman, painting in a state of delirium tremens.” – Marc de Montifaud
Henry Peters Gray’s “The Birth of Our Flag” – 1874:
“[It has] no more relation to the 19th century and to America than a stuffed dodo would have.” and the eagle resembles “an exasperated crow.” – Clarence Cook.
Camille Pissarro (in general) – 1876:
“Someone should tell M. Pissarro forcibly that trees are never violet, that the sky is never the color of fresh butter, that nowhere on earth are things to be seen as he paints them.” – Albert Wolff
James McNeill Whistler’s “Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket” – 1877:
“I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask for two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” – John Ruskin (Whistler responded to this critique by suing Ruskin for libel; Whistler won, but the case was so costly for him, he did not much from it, monetarily.)
Pierre-August Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party” – 1880-1881
"Had he learned to draw, M. Renoir would have made a very pleasing canvas out of his ‘Boating Party.’” – Albert Wolff
Picasso (in general):
“Among patients, two groups may be distinguished: the neurotics and the schizophrenics: The first group produces pictures of a synthetic character, with a pervasive and unified feeling-tone. When they are completely abstract, and therefore lacking the element of feeling, they are at least definitely symmetrical or convey an unmistakable meaning. The second group, on the other hand, produces pictures which immediately reveal their alienation from feeling. At any rate they communicate no unified, harmonious feeling-tone but, rather, contradictory feelings or even a complete lack of feeling. From a purely formal point of view, the main characteristic is one of fragmentation, which expresses itself in the so-called “lines of fracture”that is, a series of psychic “faults” (in the geological sense) which run right through the picture. The picture leaves one cold, or disturbs one by its paradoxical, unfeeling, and grotesque unconcern for the beholder. This is the group to which Picasso belongs.” – Carl Jung (a Swiss psychiatrist and one of Picasso’s greatest critics)