Salon des Indépendants, Paris 1884

Since 1884, the Salon des Indépendants has played a key role in the history of world art.

Salon des Indépendants, annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, held in Paris since 1884.

In the course of revolutionary developments in painting in late 19th-century France, both artists and the public became increasingly unhappy with the rigid and exclusive policies of the official Salon, an exhibition held sporadically between 1667-1737 and annually thereafter by the Académie Royale de Peinture, which had maintained almost total control over the teaching and exhibition of art since about 1661.

Edgar Degas | Repasseuses | Musée d'Orsay

In 1863 the Salon des Refusés was held for innovative artists whose works had been rejected by the official Salon.

In 1880, the Salon rejected the work of many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters; consequently, in 1883 the Impressionists organized a second Salon des Refusés.

By 1884 the Société des Artistes Indépendants had been founded, to hold unjuried exhibitions, which would accept the work of any artist who wished to participate.

Catalogue of the first Salon des Indépendants. Paris, December 1884

The group’s first show, held in the pavilion of the city of Paris, included paintings by Odilon Redon, Henri-Édmond Cross, Paul Signac, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat, whose Bathers at Asnières (1883-84) had been refused by the official Salon that same year.

By 1905 Henri Rousseau, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and the Fauves had all exhibited at this annual show.

The Salon des Indépendants (held since 1950 at the Grand Palais in Paris) had about 3,000 members at the turn of the 21st century.

Many have received international acclaim for their role in avant-garde art movements.

The Salon des Indépendants is now only one of many outlets for new art in Paris, along with the Salon d’Automne, Salon de Mai, Salon de la Jeune Peinture and Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, among others. | Source: © Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Georges Seurat | Bathers at Asnières, 1884 | National Gallery, Londra

The Salon des Indépendants was not created by chance.

When it was created in 1884 in Paris, at the initiative of the neo-impressionist artists Seurat, Signac, Cross, Dubois-Pillet, Angrand, the Salon des Artistes Indépendants responded to an urgent need.

For innovative artists, it was a question of creating a tool that would allow them to live from their painting, as they intended to do it, without concession: an artists' salon with completely free access.

Without a jury... and without reward.

The impressionist painters, in their fight to conquer light, had proven, during twenty long years of absolute misery, that it was futile to try to cross the barrier of the jury of the only existing salon, the official Salon.

In the middle of the 19th century, its conformism made it intransigent in the face of anything new.

Tired of the repeated refusals they were subjected to in front of this academic sanctuary, a few young artists decided to take their fate into their own hands.

They did not want to repeat the painful experience of their impressionist elders.

It was not without risks.

Thirteen years after the Commune and its bloody repression, wanting to free oneself from the tutelage of a jury, rejecting both the principle of patronage and the practice of co-optation in exchange for submission to established norms, represented a courageous act.

At a time when the Parish bulletin was mandatory for obtaining a job, "Neither jury nor rewards" the slogan of the Impressionists, became the watchword of these revolutionary painters.

They abandoned the condition of "refused" which was that of any innovative artist during the 19th century, to face the freedom which was hardly easier to assume.

Georges Seurat | A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884 | rt Institute of Chicago

But at least they had the hope of interesting the critics, of showing their works and finally of selling them.

In a period when there were few galleries, the innovative artist finally escaped the vicious circle where his infamous condition of "refused" was equivalent to a condemnation to exclusion and misery.

Another risk was having to admit, in the absence of any form of selection, a large number of amateurs.

Was not Thore-Bürger's formula appropriate to overcome resistance: "In art, freedom is still the best means of order and justice".

In their time, eminent artists were refused by juries, defenders of official taste: Delacroix, Courbet, Daumier, Manet, Puvis de Chavannes, Whistler, Fantin-Latour, Théodore Rousseau, Corot, Jongkind, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Guillaumin, Van Gogh ... were among them! | Source: © Society of Independent Artists

Henri Edmond Cross |La Plage de Saint-Clair | Sotheby's

Il Salon des Indépendants non è frutto del caso.

Quando fu creato nel 1884 a Parigi, su iniziativa degli artisti neoimpressionisti, Seurat, Signac, Cross, Dubois-Pillet, Angrand, il Salon des Artistes Indépendants rispondeva ad una necessità imperativa.

Per gli artisti innovativi si trattava di creare uno strumento che permettesse loro di guadagnarsi da vivere con la loro pittura, come intendevano farlo, senza concessioni: un salone per artisti con accesso completamente gratuito.

Senza giuria... e senza ricompensa.

I pittori impressionisti, nella loro lotta per la conquista della luce, avevano dimostrato, durante venti lunghi anni di povertà assoluta, che era vano voler oltrepassare la barriera della giuria dell'unico salone esistente, il Salon Ufficiale.

A metà del XIX secolo, il suo conformismo lo rende intransigente di fronte a qualsiasi novità.

Stanchi dei ripetuti rifiuti a cui furono sottoposti davanti a questo santuario accademico, alcuni giovani artisti decisero di prendere in mano il proprio destino.

Non volevano ripetere la dolorosa esperienza dei loro antenati impressionisti.

Non è stato senza rischi.

Tredici anni dopo la Comune di Parigi e la sua sanguinosa repressione, volersi liberare dalla tutela di una giuria, rifiutando sia il principio del clientelismo sia la pratica della cooptazione in cambio della sottomissione alle norme stabilite, ha rappresentato un atto coraggioso.

In un'epoca in cui il bollettino parrocchiale era obbligatorio per ottenere un lavoro, “Né giuria, né premi”, lo slogan degli impressionisti, divenne la parola d'ordine di questi pittori rivoluzionari.

Abbandonarono la condizione di “rifiutato” che fu quella di ogni artista innovatore nel corso dell'Ottocento, per affrontare una libertà difficilmente più facile da assumere.

Ma almeno avevano la speranza di attirare l'attenzione della critica, di mostrare le loro opere e, infine, di venderle.

In un periodo in cui le gallerie erano poche, l’artista innovativo uscì finalmente dal girone infernale dove la sua famigerata condizione di “rifiutato” equivaleva ad una condanna all’esclusione ed alla povertà.

Un altro rischio era quello di dover ammettere, in assenza di qualsiasi forma di selezione, un gran numero di dilettanti.

Non era forse adeguata la formula di Thore-Bürger per superare le resistenze: “Nell'arte la libertà è ancora il miglior mezzo di ordine e di giustizia”.