Customer Reviews

Courbet's Realism

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I went out of my way to read and understood everything in this book. I wanted to see a good example of current art history and what warrants the glowing reviews on the back cover. It was an admittedly self-inflicted torture.

This book does not help us understand Courbet. The author, Fried, makes a vaguely interesting distinction between theatrical staging of a painting and an "absorptive" one in which the figures are unaware of being observed. He claims that Courbet's career can be defined by its powerful avoidance of the theatrical in favor of the "absorptive." However, he tells us that Courbet was probably unaware of this metaphorical pursuit. So Fried embarks on a very elaborate tracing of Courbet's unconscious efforts to avoid theatricality. He makes tortured efforts at explaining away contradictions to his theory - efforts almost as tortured as mine at reading his book. He makes preposterous claims. For instance, Courbet is seen as a "painter-beholder" subsumed into his own painting with the shovel of one of his "Stonebreakers" representing his paintbrush and the basket of rocks of the other representing his pallet. These two actors in the painting are on the wrong sides for Courbet's left and right hands, so Fried wastes our time making explanations. Then, Fried tells us that the postures of the two figures constitute the two initials of Courbet's name. There are very many things that can be said about the contents and effects of a painting. In my opinion, there are none more unworthy than these remarks.

It would be easier for me to claim that Fried only deals with symbols and illustrated ideas, but discussions of style do creep into his analysis, grudgingly. Sometimes he is quite perceptive about Courbet's use of paint, but Fried shows no delight in Courbet's work. He just looks for support of his crackpot claims and takes us on one obsessive path after another. His way of thinking in abstractions piled on abstractions apparently requires the invention of words such as "spectatorhood," "embodiedness," and "detheatricalization" and phrases like "single absorptive continuum." Numerous laughable sentences in this book can take a very long time to unravel - if you can do it.

There are lots of intriguing issues about Courbet's revolutionary and problematic qualities. Fried's quasi-Freudian approach doesn't illuminate any of these. It comes across as an egotistical claim to be first to discover a profound truth about Courbet which even the artist himself was unaware. Fried constantly refers to his "claim" and his "reading." I suggest that, instead of "reading" the paintings, he LOOK at them.

Michael Fried is always a polemist, but he is also a great critic and an incredible sensitive thinker. Although you cannot agree with all his assumptions on Courbet, is always a great learning reading him and discussing his arguments. If you want to get good scholarship on Courbet, you must read it.