Selected Writings on Art and Literature

by Denis Diderot, Geoffrey Bremner (Translator)

In this selection of writings, largely unpublished during Diderot's lifetime, the reader encounters the private man, an engaging character who uses his intellect critically to explore the relationship between Enlightenment thought and the arts. Often using a dialogue format, Diderot's critiques encompass an enormous range of interests in a duality of styles, spontaneous and subversive one moment, methodical and sober the next. He discusses the role of an audience with a character in his own fictitious play whilst his reflections on art and reality are illustrated by a stroll through one of his favourite landscape paintings.

Genres: French Literature

400 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1994

About the author

Work on the Encyclopédie (1751-1772), supreme accomplishment of French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot, epitomized the spirit of thought of Enlightenment; he also wrote novels, plays, critical essays, and brilliant letters to a wide circle of friends and colleagues.

Jean le Rond d'Alembert contributed.

This artistic prominent persona served as best known co-founder, chief editor, and contributor.

He also contributed notably to literature with Jacques le fataliste et son maître (Jacques the Fatalist and his Master), which emulated Laurence Sterne in challenging conventions regarding structure and content, while also examining ideas about free will. Diderot also authored of the known dialogue, Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew), basis of many articles and sermons about consumer desire. His articles included many topics.

Diderot speculated on free will, held a completely materialistic view of the universe, and suggested that heredity determines all human behavior. He therefore warned his fellows against an overemphasis on mathematics and against the blind optimism that sees in the growth of physical knowledge an automatic social and human progress. He rejected the idea of progress. His opinion doomed the aim of progressing through technology to fail. He founded on experiment and the study of probabilities. He wrote several articles and supplements concerning gambling, mortality rates, and inoculation against smallpox. He discreetly but firmly refuted technical errors and personal positions of d'Alembert on probability.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This came off of my home to-read pile. I don’t think I had gone looking for the title; it was a serendipitous find at the used book store. At first, I struggled and kept at it only because I admire Diderot’s “Jacques” and his leadership of the Encyclopedia project so much. The descriptions of the paintings in the Paris Salons of the 1760s particularly seemed like a waste of time for me. These paintings all display subjects and a style that fill room after room in major museums: mythology, religion, battles, ship wrecks, etc. I enjoy looking at them, but do I enjoy them enough to read detailed criticism?

And then suddenly I began to think about what his critical articles meant as ways to perceive, communicate, and critique art in 1767 as opposed to criticism in our internet age. In an age when masses of us fully expect to regularly visit multiple world capitals and personally view centuries of great art in an ever-expanding list of museums. And I had to think about how to reconcile Diderot’s admiration for paintings I would term sentimental or grandiose with my concept of his character. How to square that with the rationality of the Enlightenment? Finally, I absorbed a lot of still-relevant criteria by which to judge any art-work.

The salon criticism takes up about half of the book. There are selections from Diderot's journalism on works shown in 1763, 1765, 1767 and 1769. The artists include some we still know well, such as Chardin, Vernet, and Fragonard, some that I intend to investigate farther such as Greuze and those pretty much charred by Diderot’s assessments such as Boucher.

Right off the bat you know you are in a different century. Diderot could not include reproductions in a newspaper or journal; his readers were not inundated with thousands of image every day. Some probably only knew of a few prints. So he had to start off each critique by carefully describing the image. Along the lines of: ‘A man at the lower left placed on the porch of a ruined temple with his left arm raised and one foot turned to the right, in shapeless blue drapery, taking up the middle plane, gazing at a woman weeping over a child in her lap, while in the background on the right is a river and…and a group of three …and the clouds and atmosphere are ….’

I realized how accustomed I am to taking in a painting or print at a glance. Instead, here, I had to build it up element by element as Diderot described it. This was not a novel where I could customize a country village to suit myself. I had to come as close as I could to Diderot’s description so that I could understand and evaluate his evaluation of the work. Which often included reproaches for including too many figures with no relation to the subject, or draped clothing that gives no idea of the body beneath (a favorite jab), for jumbling the picture planes, ill-drawn parts of the body, and physical figures that do not suit the subject (he’s really harsh on the short stature of Carle Van Loo’s Augustus—historical accuracy be damned).

So I understood the picture much better before the critique because I had it firmly in mind. Then I followed his reasoning for the critique. Yet, at the end, he allows that no painter can do all things perfectly. Frequently Diderot declares a painting great despite all of the faults he has listed. Sometimes this is because of the spirit that the artist is still able to communicate, sometimes because of his technical expertise. It has been a long time since my art history classes, and my current reading is limited to newspaper reviews of museum exhibitions, but I don’t see much of this kind of writing. It requires a kind of serious attention that takes time and a willingness to see through another’s eyes.

Secondly, this really brought home how our cynicism has infected our attitudes toward art. Diderot had no qualms about admiring the sentiment in a picture of an artisan’s family at home, or the inspiration of a saint’s sermon, or the trauma of a ship wreck with a dark stormy sky and sea. The beauty and emotion were the proper subjects of a painting. Of course he would have sneered at Thomas Kinkaid and his ilk, but in 1767 if the painting were sincerely conceived and skillfully executed, emotion and beauty were appropriate goals. They were not at war with a rational view of the world.

There are two other pieces here that are worth reading. The first is an explanation of the need for an actor to be a cold-blooded technician on the stage, as opposed to an emotional in-the-moment performer. The second is paean to Samuel Richardson. Diderot admires ‘Clarissa’ greatly, and explains Richardson’s development of his characters at length. Many critics share this admiration. I have to say, having slogged through ‘Clarissa’ during a university summer school class on the birth of the English novel many years ago, I didn’t share it at the time and can’t summon the curiosity to go back and see if I was wrong.