Gustave Courbet was “The most arrogant man in France,” according to the title of Petra ten Doesschate-Chu's study of Courbet and the media culture of the nineteenth century from 2007. He not only expressed his artistic self-confidence, which bordered on hubris, towards his clients Look, but also in increasingly acute demonstrations of autonomy and declarations of independence from the art institutions that have been established for centuries. Conflicts were programmed. According to recent research on art patronage, a patronage relationship can be described as successful if it follows a logic of mutual dependence between artist and client: on the part of the artist in the sense of support, on the part of the client with regard to an autonomous artistic creation that is independent of him the hoped-for added value is made possible in the first place.
Previous patronage research has primarily viewed cultural production as a one-sidedly dependent functional variable that can be instrumentalized. In the reciprocal model of art patronage developed by Ulrich Oevermann, however, the need for subsidies and funding dependence of cultural and artistic production is supplemented by the point of view of the arbitrary nature of artistic productions, which are characterized by autonomous aesthetic design. However, if the artist takes his demonstration of autonomy and his postulate of independence to the extreme, as is the case with Courbet, conflicts with the client are bound to arise. The patronage relationship is in danger of failing.
A Masonic secret society
The banker's son Alfred Bruyas from Montpellier, a Courbet collector from the very beginning, felt called upon to save modern art from an ignorant public by supporting it through patronage. In an extremely garbled and in many places incomprehensible letter style, he ascribed to himself a messiah role in this mission, in which he wanted to lead contemporary art to the “solution” that he had repeatedly and emphatically called for, a “solution” that Bruyas probably believed I didn't know exactly what that meant. Courbet was to be included in this Masonic secret society, whose mission was understood only by its only two members.
The initiation of the patronage relationship between Courbet and Bruyas seems, as is so often the case, to have taken place through a picture: in 1853, Bruyas bought Courbet's “Bathers,” in which he depicted a modernized variant of the Christian proclamation or noli me tangere may have recognized that the subject appealed to him. But the failure of this relationship can also be traced back to a painting: in his “Rencontre” from 1854, Courbet depicts the meeting of artist and client as a moment of forced artistic demonstration of autonomy.
The painter does not pander to his future client's messianic fantasies. Rather, he gives himself the image of a craftsman roaming freely like a bird on the roller coaster, who carries everything he needs to practice his profession with him and does not burden himself with unnecessary possessions. At the same time, Bruyat's money possessions are downclassed as meaningless. The encounter takes place between Courbet on the right, his patron Bruyas and his servant Calas, and Bruyas' dog on the left.
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