Elie Faure
(Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, 1873-Paris, 1937) French art historian.His culturalist approach to the artistic fact is exposed in his two most representative works: Art History (1909-1921) and The Spirit of Forms (1927).He is also the author of The builders (1914) and of Other lands in sight (1923).
He belonged to the famous maternal line Reclus's family, and studied medicine, a profession that he practiced in parallel with his literary works.From his youth, however, he frequented the rooms of the Louvre and related to artists such as Auguste Rodin and Claude Monet.He was deeply committed to the Dreyfus case, which marked a milestone in his literary career; thereafter his art criticisms were published in various newspapers, and together with the lectures he delivered at the Popular University formed the basis of his Art History , the first volume of which was published in 1909.
Elie Faure (detail of a drawing by Picasso, 1922)
Apart from his political views, Elie Faure was influenced by Nietzsche and Georges Sorel; and it is precisely them, together with Lamarck, Dostoevsky and Cézanne, that he praises in an evident way in The Builders (1914), a work of great density, rich in new insights about Dostoevsky in particular.During World War I Faure served on the front lines as a military physician, and in 1917 he published Sainte-Face , one of the best war books of the time.
Of his later works stands out The spirit of forms (1927), written as a theoretical conclusion to his History of art , of which he constitutes the fifth volume. The spirit of forms is a kind of synthesis of the artistic activities of humanity; the author never considers the works from an academic point of view, but takes from them material or pretext to reflect on the profound unity of the universe, of men and of their art.This concept is expressed by the law of "universal analogy": what is in man is similar to what is in the world.Therefore, to understand it is necessary to always go back to the source, and understanding is identified with love.
The second law is that of "universal alternation", which links to great artistic movements the variations in the relationship between the individual and society.In the golden periods of architecture, anonymity is the rule and man cannot be distinguished from the crowd.Then, as the individual emerges from social groups, the statue emerges from the stone of the buildings to descend into the gardens and public squares.And finally, the painting, which is no longer anonymous, enshrines the triumph of each one.At this point decay begins, during which artists spend their own efforts on objects without greatness.Then, the cycle resumes: the social group regains importance, the primacy of architecture returns.
Faure deals with the work of art in relation to its creator.The work expresses the drama of the creator, who hesitates between the state of the "confused god" and that of the "intelligent soul", that is, between mystical intoxication and cold reasoning.But there is no choice; the truth is at the apex of the movement in which the two tendencies perpetually supplant each other.The artist accepts the passions, orders them and, through the work that expresses them, also orders the passions of the crowd.The work is thus powerful and capable of "creating." This is Faure's third law.Art and man, born of passion, are not conceivable without the maximum freedom, and the creator cannot be subject to any law.Art is the game in which man relentlessly invents and destroys his own symbols to outwit death, just as the world is a divine game.There is nothing to be expected of from the artist's life but life itself, and its reward is in the exercise of life and work, and, finally, in death.
The secret of art is, then, the secret of man and his diversity: "When you have understood the profound movements of a trend opposite to yours...you experience for it a strange tenderness that derives from recognize in it your own doubts, your same conflicts ".In this thought is the formulation of a high ideal of humanist culture, which makes The Spirit of Forms not only an essay on aesthetics (as such hypothetical and debatable), but an introduction to the art of living: if it is not given to all to be sculptor or poet, at least it is possible for each one to make of his own life an increasingly perfect work, that is, to "multiply his own fervor to live".
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