Abstract
In 1912, the painter Fernand Léger, stigmatised in an acute and modern way the revolutionary dimension of Impressionism, opening the way for modern criticism : “Les Impressionnistes, les premiers ont rejeté la valeur absolue du sujet, pour ne plus en considerer que la valeur relative. Là est le lieu qui rattache et explique toute l'évolution moderne”. * Through this meaningful sentence Léger situates the beginning of modernism with Impressionism. This quotation appears as a striking summary of what is now considered as a series of common places. However, in 1912, such a declaration, was in itself a little revolution, so, let us close examine the words picked by the painter, and let us try to put them in their context. First, the word Impressionism is a neologism, that was coined by a reactionary critic, at the occasion of the 1874 arts exhibition , standing in Nadar's gallery, and which gathered the works of most the guiding-figures of the New Painting, such as Monet, Renoir, who referred Pissarro. Leroy referred to the painters as “Impressionists”, in a derogatory way; he actually mocked what he judged as inferior artists, responsible for a random and unfinished absurd works. In contradiction with the consensual contemporary approach but standard and vague acceptation, the notion of “Impressionism”, which was coined retrospectively in a controversial purpose, never covered a pure aesthetic reality, which should be ruled by a clear set of doctrines and would advocate for a definite and single aesthetics. A study of the historical background leads us to realize, that this critic actually projected a definite and artificial derogatory vision, and a clear political dimension through this label, which was typical of a Conservative Bourgeois audience. So, immediately, the term of “Impressionist movement” does not seem devoid of any social and political connation, that echoes the different readings imposed to this Painting. In the same way, although a traditional heroic conception of Impressionism would tend to portray a unified movement, and elude the early years, 1874 does not mark the birth, or even social recognition of New Painting. The notion of “movement” covered actually a range of ex-students of the School of Fine Arts, who protested against the aristocratic and academic values and rules of the institution, and shared the same aspiration to a new form of expression, which would be more conform to the emerging modern society. Of course, such an aspiration echoed, and so was imbued in a larger political and social concern represented by the Bourgeoisie and the middle-classes, that had largely emerged of the Industrial Revolution.
