Paris Salon

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Honoré Daumier satirized the bourgeoises scandalized by the Salon's Venuses, 1864
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Honoré Daumier satirized the bourgeoises scandalized by the Salon's Venuses, 1864

The Paris Salon (French: Salon de Paris) is the official art exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris, France.

In 1673, the royally sanctioned French institution of art patronage, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (a division of the Académie des beaux-arts), held its first semi-public art exhibit at the Salon Carré. Beginning in 1725 the Salon was held in the Palace of the Louvre, when it became known as Salon de Paris.

The Salon's original focus was the display of the work of recent graduates of the École des Beaux-Arts, which was created by Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France, in 1648. Thereafter, the Salon influenced French high culture. Exhibition at the Salon de Paris was essential for any artist to achieve success in France for at least the next 200 years. Exhibition in the Salon marked a sign of royal favor.

In 1737, the exhibitions became public and were held, at first, annually, and then biannually in odd number years. They would start on the feast day of St. Louis (August 25) and run for some weeks. Once made regular and public, the Salon's status was "never seriously in doubt" (Crow, 1987).

The Salon exhibited paintings floor-to-ceiling and on every available inch of space. The jostling of artwork became the subject of many other paintings, including Pietro Antonio Martini's Salon of 1785. Printed catalogues of the Salons are primary documents for art historians. Critical descriptions of the exhibitions published in the gazettes marks the beginning of the modern occupation of art critic.

In the 19th century the idea of a public Salon extended to an annual government-sponsored juried exhibition of new painting and sculpture, held in large commercial halls, to which the ticket-bearing public was invited. The vernissage (varnishing) of opening night was a grand social occasion, and a crush that gave subject matter to newspaper caricaturists like Honoré Daumier. Charles Baudelaire and others wrote reviews of the Salons.

The increasingly conservative and academic juries were not receptive to the Impressionist painters, whose works were usually rejected, or poorly placed if accepted. In 1863 the Salon jury turned away an unusually high number of the submitted paintings. An uproar resulted, particularly from regular exhibitors who had been rejected. In order to prove that the Salons were democratic, Napoleon III instituted the Salon des Refusés, containing all the works that the Salon had rejected that year. It opened on May 17, 1863, marking the birth of the avant-garde. The Impressionists held their own independent exhibitions in 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886. Manet never exhibited in the Impressionist exhibitions but continued to exhibit in the official Salon. In 1881 the government withdrew official sponsorship from the annual Salon, and a group of artists organised the Société des artistes français to take responsibility for the show.

In 1903, in response to what many artists at the time felt was a bureaucratic and conservative organization, a group of painters and sculptors led by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin, organized the Salon d'Automne.

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