Introduction
Texte intégral
1Dear Minister,
Dear Administrator,
Dear colleagues,
Dear Bénédicte,
Dear friends,
2It is a pleasure and an honour for me to introduce our new colleague, Bénédicte Savoy, who has been elected for five years as Chair of Cultural History of Art Heritage in Europe, 18th-20th Century. Although this Chair is a perfect continuation of previous Chairs pertaining to fine arts in our institution, it also offers a reorientation, a different point of view.
3Aesthetics and art history were granted a place at the Collège de France in 1878, and have remained there almost continuously ever since. They are therefore among the fundamental subjects taught here, and have been represented by eminent figures and even, sometimes, by two professors simultaneously.
4It is worth recalling that the first holder of this Chair, for whom it was created under the title of “Aesthetics and History of Art”, was Charles Blanc (1878-1882). His brother was the republican journalist Louis Blanc, a member of the 1848 provisional government and an advocate for workers’ rights and national workshops for the unemployed (ateliers nationaux), who was exiled for 20 years and later became a member of parliament under the Third Republic. Charles Blanc was head of the École des Beaux-Arts from February 1848 to 1852 and from 1870 to 1873, and thus, in a sense, Minister of Culture. As such, he also was a good republican. He was also editor-in-chief of the fine arts review La Gazette des beaux-arts, and the author of a colossal, 14-volume history of painting: Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles. Still under the same title, the Chair was subsequently held by the sculptor Eugène Guillaume (1882-1905), and then by the poet and curator of the Louvre, Georges Lafenestre (1905-1919). This succession bears witness to the doubts that existed at the time as to the definition of Art history as a discipline. In 1904, just before his election, Lafenestre had organized a major exhibition at the Louvre on the “French Primitives” – a reaction to the exhibition of Flemish Primitives held in Bruges in 1902. The Bruges show had been one of the first blockbuster exhibitions, to which crowds of enthusiasts travelled across Europe, from one art city to another. His aim was to show that France had painters on a par with the successively invented Italian and Flemish Primitives, for which purpose he even went as far as to rename Roger van der Weyden as Roger de la Pasture. The discovery of the French Primitives was motivated by a patriotic project: Lafenestre intended to “repair the injustice of a long stay in oblivion” and presented Jean Fouquet, whose entire known oeuvre was exhibited, as “our most national painter in the fifteenth century”. Although he extolled French art as it was before the Italian and Flemish Renaissances had taken over the definition of European art, the dispute over French Primitives was to last until World War II.
5Moreover, after the Great War, Lafenestre’s successor and Louvre curator of sculptures, André Michel (1920-1925), labelled his Chair “History of French Art”. Michel’s successor was Gabriel Millet who, despite being an archaeologist and Byzantinist, chose to revert to the more generic name of “Aesthetics and History of Art” (1926-1937), which by then had become established. The great Henri Focillon (1938–1942) likewise chose that title. His tenure was noteworthy but brief, for he had to leave occupied France to seek refuge in the United States, where he died shortly after having been dismissed by the Vichy regime for broadcasting Gaullist propaganda on the radio. He worked alongside Paul Léon (1932–1944), who held a Chair of History of Monumental Art and, like Charles Blanc before him, was also a former head of the École des Beaux-Arts. He too was dismissed by Vichy, as early as December 1940, when the anti-Jewish laws were implemented. As a result, the history of art was not represented at the Collège between 1940 and 1944, despite several offers for services and some recommendations from Maréchal Pétain’s cabinet, which the Assembly of Professors chose to ignore. It was only in 1951 that the vacancy, the only one since 1878, was filled – that was the above-mentioned gap – when the curator of painting at the Louvre, René Huyghe, was elected for 15 years as Chair of Psychology of Visual Arts (1951-1976). By then the traditional title was a thing of the past.
6The discipline, which had become well-established in this country’s higher education, then saw its distinction embodied by the simultaneous presence at the Collège de France of André Chastel, Chair of Renaissance Art and Civilization in Italy (1970-1984), and Jacques Thuillier, Chair of History of Artistic Creation in France (1977-1998). Thus, for about a decade, there were two brilliant Chairs of History of Art, one focused on Italy and the other on France. Following that, Roland Recht held a Chair of History of Medieval and Modern European Art (2001-2012).
7You will have noticed that this Chair has been held alternately by curators and professors, and that some of them have had a pronounced interest in heritage – a notion that is revived in Bénédicte Savoy’s project for a “Cultural History of Art Heritage in Europe from the 18th-20th century”.
8This is a relatively new research field, but it has developed substantially since Francis Haskell’s work on the social history of art, the history of the art market, the history of collections, museums, and exhibitions, and therefore, of taste through the intermediary of a history of institutions. Francis Haskell, who taught at Harvard, delivered a memorable series of lectures here, upon the invitation of André Chastel and Jacques Thuillier, in the spring of 1985: “Historians and fine arts: Difficult relationships”:
1. Historians discover images.
2. History and fine arts in the century of the Enlightenment.
3. History as a necromancy.
4. Fine arts as witnesses of history.
5. Fine arts and the history of culture.
What I particularly have in mind today is his book Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion, and Collecting in England and France, 1789-1914,1 for it bears on the period that Bénédicte Savoy also explores, but in different regions of Europe.
9Bénédicte Savoy’s first research pertained to “French despoilment of artworks in Germany around 1800”, and therefore to the circulation of artworks during the years of the Revolution and the Empire. The period that she scrutinised in this first study is the one dearest to her, but her research has encouraged her to take an interest in all manner of other subjects and to adopt some highly original ways to explore them.
10I am however moving too fast, and I should have started out by highlighting the fact that Bénédicte Savoy has always been passionate about the German language and culture, even before she graduated from high school. She spent most of her years at the École normale supérieure in Berlin rather than in Fontenay or Saint-Cloud, and has kept returning there ever since, first at the Marc Bloch Center and then at the Technische Universität, where she currently holds a Chair in Cultural History of Arts.
11Bénédicte Savoy has dedicated several books to heritage, from different perspectives: the birth of great institutions and the political – rather than just cultural – reasons that led to it (Napoleon’s Louvre, the museums of Berlin in the nineteenth century). Her research has gone so far as to call into question notions of national identity – which are very much debated at the moment – long before they became newsworthy. Whatever topic Bénédicte Savoy chooses to tackle, be it, for instance, the Humboldt brothers – I met her at the exhibition “Les frères Humboldt – L’Europe de l’esprit” (“The Humboldt brothers – Intellectual Europe”), held at the Observatoire de Paris in the context of Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) – for Nazi propaganda films, one is struck by the curiosity in her gaze, the non-conformity of her approach, a point of view that is always surprising yet ultimately always convincing. In addition to her enthusiasm for research as well as teaching, Bénédicte Savoy is not afraid to provoke the mind, to elicit reflection, though she never does so gratuitously. She rethinks subjects of her choosing and re-examines them with great academic exactness, without ever letting herself be intimidated by earlier studies.
12Her research focuses on history, art, and culture from the eighteenth century to the present. She works on relations between European countries, and especially on cultural and scientific exchanges between France and Germany in the nineteenth century. Her method characteristically relies on numerous primary sources studied in archives and museum reserves, and she has brought to light many elements that shook our conventional thinking, as for instance with Nofretete. Eine deutsch-französische Affäre, 1913-1931.2 She also does pioneering work on less-studied corpuses, such as filmography, newspapers and travel correspondence. Bénédicte Savoy engrosses her audience with audacious concepts. Her personal leverage has allowed her to launch several working groups, not only in her Technical University in Berlin, but also on an interdisciplinary and international scale. As a researcher, she is simultaneously meticulous and prolific, and very active in the academic and cultural scene. The impact of her work is now recognized both in Germany and in France, and throughout the world. She is a member of Berlin’s Humboldtforum and knows how to work with different teams. Her exhibitions and publications have earned her several awards: the Academy of Berlin’s prize, the French Academy’s Award for the influence of French language and literature (Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises de l’Académie française) in 2015 and, most importantly, the German research fund’s prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, also in 2015, the day after we contacted her to speak about the Collège de France.
13Bénédicte Savoy is at the forefront of the social sciences and of the world of arts and museums, in Berlin and in Paris. A true European, she has become an essential cultural medium between France and Germany. Her dual French and German culture shows in all her work, as she effortlessly goes from one language to the other, from one culture to the other, just as the Humboldt brothers did. At this point in her career, it was necessary that she return, at least part-time, to her birthplace, and we are particularly glad that the Collège de France can welcome her. Her presence among us will unquestionably be enriching not only for our institution, but also for the Parisian and French art world, in universities and in museums.
14The first lecture series that Bénédicte Savoy will introduce today is called “To whom does beauty belong?” It will focus on objects that she knows well, such as Nefertiti and the Parthenon frieze, from the perspective of their historical, artistic, cultural, and aesthetic status. These objects all have in common the fact that they were reconceived after being created. The question raised is that of a transfer from the present towards the past which reverses the order of heredity, since these works were rediscovered. It will, once again, be an original and provocative topic.
Notes de bas de page
Auteurs
Professor of the Collège de France, Chair of Modern and contemporary French literature: history, criticism, theory
Liz Libbrecht (trad.)
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