When was the new trend in art in the West criticized not by the public, but by people from the cultural sphere?
Charles Dickens was among those who despised Pre-Raphaelite art and harshly attacked Millet's "Christ in his Parents 'House" (later John Ruskin came to the artists ' aid). And Salvador Dali gave the lowest marks to the work of Mondrian (and the highest – to Vermeer). What other stories do you know?
There were many such confrontations. It seems to me that the most striking and high – profile case is the case betweenJohn Ruskin, renowned art critic, theorist, art historian, and artistBy James Whistler.
In 1877, the artist presented his nocturnes in a gallery in London. About what I saw, and in particular about the picture “Nocturne in Black and Gold: Ruskin Falling Rocket:
Here, by the way, is what this “paint bucket”looks like:
But the story doesn't end there. Whistler did not want to tolerate such an insult and sued Ruskin. Unfortunately, all these lawsuits ruined the artist.
It is interesting, by the way, that Ruskin was not particularly for academic painting. He pushed through the Pre-Raphaelites and was a fan of creativityBy William Turner. Here, for comparison, you can see how the painting of the latter looked at some moments of his creative activity:
Do you see the difference? Ruskin could feel it.
Conflict between Ilya Repin and the Mir Iskusstva community. When Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, a student of Repin's studio at the Academy of Fine Arts, became friends with Benoit and began to collaborate with his magazine, Repin kicked her out of his studio, and she had to move to another manager, Vasily Mata.
When Yelizaveta Zvantseva, a student of Repin's, with whom he had been unrequited in love for many years, opens a drawing school, and Somov and Dobuzhinsky teach there, in response to an exhibition of the school's works, Repin writes an article entitled “In the Hell of Python”:
“The editorial board of Apollo mistakenly took the name of the god of the sun, light and beauty: it completely serves the disgusting Egyptian deity-Python-an ugly raskoryak, in the form of a frog, he represents everything vile and harmful in human life…
My Virgil in the hell of Apollo was N. D. Ermakov. And when from the walls came into my eyes the disgusting paintings of cyclops — students of G. Bakst, I did not know where to hide, and grabbed my companion's shoulders so as not to fall from dizziness.
“Let's get out of here —” I say to my companion.
— Yes, you delve into these works, look closely, you can not so unfounded to blame…
A familiar voice, and I turned around.
This was said resentfully, to the point of annoyance, by E. N. Zvantseva, the headmistress of the Bakst school. It was so strange to see the venerable figure of a woman and hear the beautiful timbre of her voice in this miasma of artistic decay, this orgy of plastic ignorance.
“Look at these broken sausages-shafts instead of hands; bags full of dust instead of bellies; mangled, broken hands, footprints like bast shoes… And what audacity and cynicism: a female model in colossal size with such unsuitable funds!
… Does the manager find this possible for the exhibition? Who can stand this nightmare of canvases!!
“Yes, we had an Academy here and praised it very much —” Ms. Zvantseva says with dignity.
Me: What Academy? It can't be! Cursed be the Academy that can condone such vandalism of forms… and this wild smear of unbridled ignoramuses! They paint organisms like fences!
Yes, they only paint fences.
And I ran out into the street without saying goodbye.”
However, much later Repin recognized the work of the same Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, some other artists of the Art World.