Modernism Adrift: Meier-Graefe at the Edge of Impressionism

Modernism Adrift: Meier-Graefe at the Edge of Impressionism, Conférence de Victor Claass (INHA)
With his pioneering writings on modern art, German art critic Julius Meier-Graefe (1867–1935) played a decisive role in the canonization of Impressionism at the turn of the twentieth century. By subversively defending the paintings of Manet, Renoir, and Cézanne across the Rhine, he alienated the conservative elites of the Empire, who remained suspicious of the spread of modernism. Throughout his Franco-German career, which was punctuated by virulent polemics and shaken by the outbreak of the First World War, Meier-Graefe fought against the grip nationalism held on artistic narratives. His project to regenerate German culture was thus inseparable from his efforts to federate a pacified Europe of images. While his Francophile progressivism and the vitalism of his approach to painting have sometimes been emphasized, a study of his involvement in the cultural-political debates of his time reveals a more nuanced personality. This paper will analyze the surprising jolts and paradoxes of Meier-Graefe’s transnational career, which alternated between phases of unbridled enthusiasm and intense disillusionment. Meier-Graefe reveals himself as a thinker of the decline of culture and a champion of an idealized vision of modernism, of which Impressionism incarnated both the quintessence and the swan song.