The Long Century of Mimesis: The Representation of Reality and the Concern for Style in 19th Century

Abstract

The nineteenth-century is widely recognized as a key period in Western art history, during which the dominant traditional trends in the representation of reality were deeply questioned and transformed. Even a cursory glance at the major paintings of the time reveals striking differences in both attitude and technique between the academic approach that prevailed at the beginning of the century and the modernist styles that marked the last decades. According to a classic narrative, the Romantics’ emphasis on expressing the artist’s inner life at the expense of the mimesis of nature laid the groundwork for subsequent transformations. My goal in this article is to search for a satisfactory explanation for the changes in nineteenth-century approaches to mimesis, without relying on a clear opposition between mimesis and expression that the classic narrative may imply. I mainly argue for a narrative centered on the artists’ pursuit of original modes of expression and distinctive temperaments, which I will briefly name as a “concern for style.” This alternative framework, I suggest, offers a better standpoint than the “mimesis vs. expression” opposition and the resulting narrative. To support this claim, I will begin by examining the transformation of French painting, focusing in particular on Eugène Delacroix and his influential advocate Charles Baudelaire. Through their works and ideas, I will explore how the diminishing centrality of mimesis can be understood in more nuanced terms. In the second part, I will introduce and elaborate on the idea of the “concern for style” as the central component of my argument, once again drawing primarily on Delacroix and Baudelaire. Finally, I will turn to some prominent “Realist” figures—most notably Gustave Flaubert—to show that the concern for style has been as central for them as it has been for the Romantics. In this way, I aim to show that this concern provides a good interpretive framework for understanding the nineteenth-century art as a whole.