Other names
Academism

Academic Art

Definition
The term is directly linked to the academies and to the art produced there. Present in Europe since 1562, with the creation of the Academy of Drawing of Florence, disseminated throughout various countries during the 18th century, academies of art were responsible for establishing a standardised artistic training, anchored in practical teaching, above all in lessons in drawing from observation and copies of moulds, and in theory, which brought together the sciences (geometry, anatomy and perspective) and the humanities (history and philosophy). In arguing for the possibility of teaching every and any aspect of artistic creation through communicable rules, these institutions discarded the idea of the genius driven by divine inspiration or by intuition and individual talent. They broke with the version of art as craftsmanship, with this entailing a radical change in the status of the artist: no longer craftsmen in guilds, they came to be considered as theorists and intellectuals. In addition to teaching, academies were responsible for organising exhibitions, competitions, prizes, art galleries and collections, implying the control of artistic activity and the rigid setting standards of taste.

The clear association of the Academy with a specific aesthetic doctrine occurred with the creation in Paris of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648. Directed by the statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) and by the painter and art theoretician Charles Lebrun (1619-1690), the French Academy imposed an aesthetic orthodoxy, principally on the basis of the work of the French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), who was active in Rome. The passion for antiquity, revealed in allegorical scenes derived from mythology or history, and associated with expressive clarity and obedience to rules, defines the style of Poussin, which became the axis of the academic doctrine, above all from 1663 onwards, when Lebrun became the director of the Academy. With Colbert and Lebrun, the terms fine arts and academic art became the order of the day, accentuating the distinction between the major and minor arts, and pure and applied art.

The revolutionary sentiments disseminated in France intensified the criticism of the privileges of the Academy of the day, leading to its dissolution in 1793 (the Academy of Fine Arts was reformed in 1816). During the revolutionary period and afterwards, during the Empire of Napoleon, neoclassical painting came to the fore, including the painter Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) among its principal exponents. David led the movement for the end of the Academy, and also led the process for its refounding. From that point onwards, Neoclassicism appear to be directly related to academic production, going against Baroque exuberance and Rococo frivolity. The enthusiasm for ancient art and the recovery of the heroic spirit and the decorative patterns of Greece and Rome benefited, among other things, from archaeological research (from the discoveries of the cities of Herculaneum in 1738, and Pompeii in 1748) as well as from the work of German artists based in Italy, such as the painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779), author of the celebrated Parnassus (1761), and of the art historian and archaeologist Joachim Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768), the principal theorist of neoclassicism, with the publication of History of Ancient Art (1764). David exercised his style on the basis of the Italian experience which he knew closely (he was in Rome in 1774 and 1784) and the French examples of Poussin and Claude Lorrain (1600-1682). The austere diction of the compositions, at the same time both simple and grandiose, stripped of ornaments and irrelevant details, in which the firm line of the drawing prevails over colour, became the characteristic mark of David. The Oath of the Horatii (1784) and The Death of Socrates (1787) are clear examples of the neoclassical grammar deployed by the French painter, in which balance and precision of forms coexist. The painter of the French Revolution (see, among other works, The  Death of Marat, 1793), David was also a defender of Napoleon (Coronation of Napoleon, 1805/1807). At these two points, France staged the models of republican Rome and imperial Rome in both art and social life, in fashions and in simple manners, which rejected the exaggerations of the previous aristocratic style.

The official stamp of approval of the academies, associated with the intransigent defence of certain artistic ideals and standards of taste, made explicit in the prizes and competitions, brought with it a rejection of other forms and conceptions of art, entailing an inevitable conservatism. Whence the pejorative sense surrounding the notions of academic art and academicism, associated with official art, with the lack of originality and mediocrity. The great artists of the 19th century, including most of the impressionists, sought alternative channels to exhibit their works, on the fringes of academia. This, however, should not prevent us from understanding the reverberations of academic art in the world as a whole. In Brazil, the origin of academic art is linked to the creation of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (Aiba), officially inaugurated in 1826, which marks the start of higher artistic teaching in Brazil. The prizes and foreign travel grants awarded by Aiba played a decisive role in the training of artists such as Victor Meirelles (1832-1903) and Pedro Américo (1843-1905). In general terms, academic art within Brazil corresponds to an acclimatised neoclassical model, obliged to confront local nature and society. Among the various changes to the model is the predominance of landscape among the academic painters in Brazil, despite the hierarchy of genres, which regarded landscape painting as secondary.