Writer vs Painter: Denis Diderot’s “Salons”

Abstract

Diderot devoted more than twenty years (1759–1781) to his work as an art critic, he wrote not only nine reviews of exhibitions, but also a number of important aesthetic treatises. The philosopher himself considered the “Salons” to be the best of everything he wrote. The article is devoted to the specifics of verbal representation of the visual in the “Salons”, where the author uses a variety of stylistic, dramatic, narrative techniques. It is the artistic features that make the “Salons” an outstanding work not only in the field of art criticism, but also in literature: Diderot creatively uses all the possibilities of verbal communication, inventing new forms of poetic interpretation of painting. Based on three essays devoted to the paintings of J.-B. Greuze, “The Young Girl Grieving Over Her Dead Bird” (1765), J. O. Fragonard, “Coresus Sacrificing Himself to Save Callirhoe” (1765), and C.-J. Vernet’s “Walking” (1767), the article analyzes various forms of demonstratio ad oculos: dialogue, metalepsis, fantasy, parergon and hypotyposis, all of which allowed Diderot to create “living pictures” that he sought to embody in his innovative dramatic system simultaneously with the “Salons”. He turns to a variety of genres: dialogue, tragedy (Fragonard), erotic libertine novel and bourgeois drama (Greuze), promenade (Vernet). Analysis of the dramatic and philosophical treatises of the French enlightener allows us to see the integrity and systematicity of his thoughts on art and show the connection with the ideas of the era presented in the works of Kant and Lessing. Diderot’s “Salons” combine painting, literature and philosophy into a single whole.