The End of the Salon

The End of the Salon examines the cultural forces that contributed to the demise of an important exhibition centre for art in Europe and America in the late 19th century. Tracing the history of the salon from the French Revolution, when it was taken away from the Academy and opened to all artists, to the 1880s, Patricia Mainardi shows that its contradictory purposes, as didactic exhibition venue and art marketplace resulted in its collapse. She also situates the salon within the shifting currents of art movements, from modern to traditional, and the evolving politics of the Third Republic, when France definitively chose a republican over a monarchic form of government. An overview of the spectrum of art production at the end of the 19th century, government attitudes toward the arts in the early Third Republic, and the institution of exhibitions as they were redefined by free-market economics in the 19th century, are also provided. The book demonstrates how all artists were forced to function within the framework of the social, economic, and cultural changes then taking place and how art and social history are inextricably linked.