In 1800, the Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi found drawing to be “a general human matter,” “eine allgemeinmenschliche Sache.” This maxim is at once both a claim and a vision. Pestalozzi raised drawing to the rank of a fundamental anthropological fact supposedly preceding all ethnic, cultural, social, and professional differentiation. Seen before the backdrop of European tradition, however, the equalization and universalization of drawing claimed here entailed a subtle departure from the dominant art paradigm in which drawing had been embedded since the establishment of the theory of disegno in the Renaissance. This privileged status of drawing as the shared foundation of the fine arts was not only useful for separating artists from the sphere of craftsmanship, but had also earned drawing a fixed place in the cultural repertoire of the European upper classes. The ability to express oneself in
drawing was a cultural technique where mastery was de rigueur for members of both the nobility and bourgeoisie. Using textbooks, drawing lessons, and private drawing schools, the methods of the academic art practice were anchored in the education and lifestyle of the upper classes. The theory and praxis
of lay drawing might have differed from professional artistic drawing in terms of expectations, but not in relation to its overarching aesthetic apparatus of categories and “rules of truth.” …
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What sails here under the flag of caricature is nothing other than an early form of blunt and bleak social realism. The group makes a powerful and monumental impression, misery in the dimension of a history picture, and that’s exactly how it was meant to be. The publisher of La Caricature, Charles Philipon, like most […]
From the early Eighties on George Montbard became mainly known for his illustrated travelogues from the Greater Maghreb. But he was also a wanted editorial illustrator, who managed to translate the blurred photographs and rough sketches of his collagues into exciting and catchy graphics. He developed a very special mastery in the field of the […]
George Montbard (real name: Charles Auguste Loye) was one of the most brillant and versatile illustrators of the 19th century. The staunch republican started his career as a political caricaturist during the imperial rule of Napoleon III. He worked for “La Rue”, the legendary antiautorical magazin of his friend Jules Valles. The anarchist author assembled […]