Case Study 2: Maria Camille

I really enjoyed reading the second case study in The Challenge of Avant-garde. I find it very interesting to dive deeper into the different ways one can define avant-garde. In this case study we are introduced to an author who signed her works as Marie Camille De G. who had very strong convictions about the purpose of avant-garde work and the way in which it should affect a society. She had beliefs rooted in God and in the ideals of the utopian socialist Saint-Simon. The ideals of avant-garde works as set forth by Saint-Simon desire for art to adhere to a standard of leading a society to do good, to generate a better society. Just like Saint-Simon, Maria Camille calls for the avant-garde arts to be politically progressive with the hopes of it leading society or transmitting a vision of the utopian socialist future as a better and more progressively equal place for all of its members to reside in.

Along with sharing Saint-Simonian ideals I feel in a way she also shares mild feminist ideals. Maria Camille is very off put by works like that of Eugene Delacroix because they show nothing more than “female boredom and inaction”. She felt that avant-garde works needed to inspire a feeling of empowerment in the woman of working class. She calls for images of woman as guides to humanity and leaders of social struggles. In one of her writings she tells artists to allow paintings to show a true views of the “sufferings of the poor.” Also Maria Camille feels artists should strive to emotionally arouse spectators to the evils of capitalism. Overall she strives to instruct avant-garde paintings to work on a social level to work to in some way influence the future by bringing on a social change with the end result being equality of resources, race, and class.

One work of art I feel expresses the exact message that Maria Camille was calling for is that of Jean-Francois Millet. His work, The Gleaners despite the soft warmth initially felt by this painting the scene is one of extreme poverty. Rich land owners who had a plentiful harvest would then open up the already harvested fields to the rural poor to collect whatever wheat the could scour from the barren field. This work was extremely arduous and time consuming to just collect enough wheat to produce a single loaf of bread. The painting shows three woman, in what appears to be the hazy heat of the afternoon. Two woman bend down and scavenge their surrounding area for fragments of usable wheat. The third woman is standing slightly hunched to provide some kind of relief to her hurting back. I feel that Millets scene is one that fits Maria Camille’s ideas of avant-garde work.

I feel that this painting is a good example of what Maria Camille wanted avant-garde work to feel, look, and influence the viewer. I feel this way because this work is not some idealized image of woman laying around in luxury or woman in a demeaning way what so ever. This image shows the strength within a woman who is simply trying to survive on a day-to-day basis. This painting reflects the suffering of the poor because this painting shows the raw truth of life in poverty, while others are in excess. When I look at this painting I feel sort of disgusted that of all the wheat that must have been harvested from the vast wheat field there are still people in extreme poverty. Also If I was alive during this time I feel that this image would completely inspire in me a feeling of needed social change. These feelings that this image arouses within me are the feelings that Maria Camille only hoped would be achieved some day through the works of avant-garde artists.