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Jules Dalou and the Problem of Monumental Commemoration in Third-Republic Paris

Getson, Jennifer
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1372866676

Abstract Details

2013, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History of Art.
Jules Dalou (1838-1902) was the greatest monument-maker of the Third Republic, but he has long been eclipsed by the fame of his greatest rival Auguste Rodin. This dissertation examines how the aesthetic attributes of Dalou’s public sculptures in Paris participated in the complex process of formulating republican meaning and community during the early French Third Republic. My analysis focuses on the public reception of his monuments as determined not only by their iconographical content and the manifest political agendas of their creator and/or patrons but also as dependent upon their formal and stylistic characteristics as key aspects of their communicability. The dissertation begins with a discussion of sculptural theory, which established the medium as an inherently neoclassical and therefore fundamentally limited art form—a belief that resonated throughout the century and particularly influenced the creation of public monuments. I then investigate Dalou’s two monumental reliefs for the Salon of 1883—La Fraternite and Mirabeau repondant a Dreux-Breze dans la seance du 23 juin 1789—which disrupted sculptural norms by Dalou’s utilization of a dynamic, painterly style on the one hand, and a historical, naturalistic style on the other. In my investigation of Dalou’s largest and most important public monument, the Triumph of the Republic, I engage with the theoretical work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I argue that Dalou’s break with neoclassical sculptural traditions and subsequent embrace of the work’s material presence results in a monument that works through what Deleuze and Guattri call “fabulation,” rather than commemoration. The Triumph therefore has the potentiality to fabulate a republican community, due to the powerful “affect” of Dalou’s style. The sculptor’s next public work, the Monument to Delacroix, through a combination of its allegorical content, style, and material constituted a kind of visual affirmation of the most fundamental Deleuzoguattarian strategies instigated by the Triumph, i.e. temporality, fabulation, and affect. During the 1890s, Dalou’s art would take a significant turn. I examine his monuments to Boussingault, Leclaire, and Alphand in terms of the sculptor’s negotiation between naturalism and monumental conventions, and between individualism and collectivism. In the end, I argue that these monuments suggest an allegiance to the formation of a social, public, and specifically republican community through the communicative ability of public works that is simultaneously troubled by the underlying social strife of the period. I briefly address Dalou’s never executed Monument to Labor as a final example of that tension in his later works. I conclude with a short comparison between Dalou and Rodin in order to highlight the difference in their approaches to sculpture. Rodin’s sculptures increasingly spoke to the modern alienated, private viewer, whereas Dalou’s works addressed themselves to an imagined public and incorporated a vision of a republican collective. It was ultimately this approach that led to Dalou’s success as the greatest monumental sculptor of Third Republic France.
Andrew Shelton (Advisor)
Lisa Florman (Committee Member)
Christian Kleinbub (Committee Member)
336 p.
Art History
Jules Dalou; public sculpture; monumental sculpture; public monuments; French Third Republic sculpture; Triumph of the Republic; Monument to Delacroix; Monument to Alphand; Monument to Leclaire; Monument to Boussingault

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Getson, J. (2013). Jules Dalou and the Problem of Monumental Commemoration in Third-Republic Paris [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1372866676

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Getson, Jennifer. Jules Dalou and the Problem of Monumental Commemoration in Third-Republic Paris. 2013. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1372866676.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Getson, Jennifer. "Jules Dalou and the Problem of Monumental Commemoration in Third-Republic Paris." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1372866676

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1372866676
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© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.