| The Federation des Artistes was an assembly of over 400 artists that formulated arts policy for the Paris Commune in April and May, 1871. Although suppressed and subsequently neglected, it was the last and perhaps greatest of French artists' assemblies that had formed spontaneously during each of the Revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848. As such the Federation was the bearer of a long tradition of artistic republicanism--of democratic and corporatist solutions to problems in the organization of artistic life that had contributed to growing artists' discontent.; I first provide a context for the Federation's efforts by focusing on the contentious issues in arts administration of the nineteenth century--Salon regulations; patronage and education; purchase and commission policies.; This is followed by a prosopographical and ideological study of the Federation's members and their proposals: who they were, what brought them to the Commune, what experiences and values they shared, how they proposed to reform the practices of the art world. One innovation of my investigation, most apparent in this first of three sections, is the use of methodologically heterogeneous archival material in order to present a social history of these artists.; The next two sections address the question of the influence of the Federation's artists and programmes on the early Third Republic's Beaux-Arts reforms. I argue the direct impact of the Federation on the seminal reform efforts which commenced in Paris' Municipal Council in 1879, and its myriad legacy for the history of Impressionism and that of the various artists' societies of the 1870s and 1880s. The Third Republic's novel decrees on obligatory drawing education and its solicitude toward the decorative arts are also attributed to the ideas and personnel of the Federation.; The Federation is thus a crossroads that provides entry into a variety of themes and issues in the artistic, political and cultural history of late-nineteenth-century France, and that allows us to employ the perspectives of various disciplines. The Conclusion affords us the opportunity to reflect on the Federation's significance for certain topical issues: the status of Modernism, the relations between political and artistic radicalism, the true nature of the Commune, and the facets of historical continuity. |
