Carnegie Mellon's Center for the Arts in Society presents

CAS Research Forum

Special guest speaker Frédérique Desbuissons
Associate Professor of Art History
Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France

Portrait of the Artist as Beer Drinker: Gustave Courbet

Tuesday, April 22- 4:30 PM
Baker Hall 154R

Reception to follow

That Gustave Courbet (1821-76) drank beer would have had a minor, anecdotal value in the history of his artistic career if his contemporaries had not turned his taste for the drink into the crux of a cultural, perhaps even ethnic interpretation of Realism.  When his sometime champion, the writer Francis Wey, attributed Courbet’s self-indulgence and the decadence of his painting to the artist’s acquaintance with Nordic barbarians who preferred beer, he brought to a head several decades of material and symbolic associations.  Join us  as Professor Desbuissons argues that what was at stake in Courbet’s painting and his consumption of beer were one and the same: the betrayal of French classicism.  
  Desbuissons is the author of several articles on the French artist Gustave Courbet, as well as the author of a forthcoming monograph. She is a participant in the international symposium organized by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris to coincide with the current exhibition of Courbet which will travel to New York to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008.