In 1916, a trainee doctor befriended a wounded young soldier in a hospital in Nantes. André Breton was working in the neurological ward and reading Freud. Jacques Vaché was a war interpreter, moving across the front between the Allied positions and disrupting where he could; he once collected cast-off uniforms from different armies, including enemy forces, and sewed them together to make his own “neutral” costume. He sent Breton letters describing his “comatose apathy” and indifference to the conflict, though, he wrote, “I object to dying in wartime”.
Weeks after the Armistice, Vaché killed himself in a hotel room. Breton hailed him “the deserter from within” and one of the key inspirations for “The Surrealist Manifesto”, published in Paris in 1924.
This slim volume turned out to be the most influential artistic pronouncement of the century. Breton argued that rational realpolitik had created the catastrophe of the first world war. Championing the irrational, the subconscious, dream states — “pure psychic automatism” — he called for a revolution of the mind: “thought dictated in the absence of all control exercised by reason.”
I agree with your first sentence. I don’t agree with the bit about aesthetics. There’s lots of “pretty” art that has plenty of staying power. Just look at the Impressionists. Beauty can resonate just as powerfully as any “challenging” art. I’m sure the Romanticists would agree. Disruption also says nothing. Disrupting to what and who?
The Impressionists weren’t making art solely for aesthetics though. The results are considered beautiful in hindsight, but at the time the first Impressionist paintings were considered amateurish and poor quality - so their aesthetic qualities were not appreciated and they were disruptive. It was only later that the Impressionists’ use of colour was truly appreciated.
So my point is that it’s not whether art is pretty that gives it staying power. It’s about what the artist puts into the work. Art that is pretty just for the sake of prettiness rarely has staying power. Art that has a deeper meaning does, whether or not it’s pretty
That really depends on who you’re asking. I don’t like the word “disruptive”, it’s loaded and way overused, even beyond its connotations concerning art. Art historians and critics inflate their contributions to culture and actual historical impact. Impressionism (this is aside from its actual impact, I’m not saying it isn’t) is considered important, partially because self-appointed experts said it was so. That goes for any art movement. It’s all very synthetic and self-fulling. As you can see, I have a rather low opinion of art historians and critics.
I definitely agree with you on critics. It seems to me that critics, like all humans, have their likes and dislikes, but too often they set themselves up as the beginning and end of the discussion about what is “good” art, when the reality is they’re just expressing their opinions as facts. Whereas I feel everyone should make up their own minds about what art is to them, and what they like or don’t like.
But I don’t really agree with you on art historians. My experience with those who look at the history of an artistic medium is they tend to think everything is interesting and worth looking at, but in most settings where one might have contact with an art historian, they’re under pressure to whittle it down into digestible chunks for whoever they’re talking to (be it students, visitors at a museum/gallery, etc) - so of course they have to focus on the artworks that had the greatest impact on their surrounding culture and audience. There is, of course, an element of personal taste involved, because no human can be 100% objective, but there are some objective elements: the first piece in a completely new style or medium, which inspired others, is often more influential than the millionth piece in that style or medium.