Abstract EN:

Gautier's art criticism followed the same evolution as his literary thinking. It praised romanticism before standing aloof from it. But, between 1836 and 1838, he transferred to art criticism the priesthood every writer is supposed to fulfill within society. He defended the artist's sovereignty; he introduced romanticism in journalism, and the practiced the criticism of beauties through descriptions: in fact, he had invented the artist criticism. Gautier considered that Paris and Munich were the two studios where the future was taking shape, that is was however in Paris that Ingres, through drawing, and Delacroix, through colors, had reformed painting and trained those who would later make up the synthesis of their art. Gautier also noticed, from 1837 on, the decline of the pictorial romanticism and the growing influence of drawing and style. This binary system was applied in landscape, but not in sculpture which is a principally antique art, meant to show only beauty. In Gautier’s aesthetics, the superior artist would shelter both a microcosm and an ideal, contrary to the naturist who copies nature. His mission was to express his own vision of the beauty, and Gautier widespread this mission to the whole life. By designing objects, the artist would regain his lost priesthood, educate society and lead to a new renaissance. By developing such an utopy, by divinizing art which had become the supreme value and a refuge to forget reality, Gautier expressed an aesthetics which was at the same time romantic, as it awarded a major position to the artist, eclectic, since it accepted color and drawing, and innovative, for it would foreshadow many trends of the second half of the century.