Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

In this essay, I trace the search for organization from state-run salons and academies in the nineteenth century; the rise of dealer-critic system and anti-salon alternative organizations and exhibitions of Impressionism; through the new institutional forms of Modernism. The state-run organization of the arts in the nineteenth century provide the backdrop to the organizational innovations of the Impressionist painters, such as the Salon des Refusés (1863), Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs (1874), and Groupe des Artistes Indèpendants (1884). New institutional forms continued to proliferate within Modernism before and in the immediate aftermath of the Great War, such as Bauhaus (established in 1919 in Weimar, Germany); formal artist groups such as Der Blaue Reiter (1910-16) and Die Brücke (1905-1914); and epic, alternative exhibitions such as the Armory Show (1913). Further, artistic movements like Futurism, Cubism, Russian Futurism and Suprematism, and Constructivism all included to conceptions of space and organization. Yet, it is not simply the search for organization that defines this period. The success of the search for organization would also transform the function of art in society, introducing art into the Habermasian public sphere.