The Coevolution of French Art and Philosophy into 20th Century

Abstract

French artists and philosophers have played pivotal roles in the historical movements of their respective fields. At times, the values and timing of these movements overlapped with each other, such as the strict rules and formal structure of the Classicist artistic movement overlapping with the cause-and-effect, logic-focused philosophical movement of the Enlightenment. At other times, movements rose up as a response to their counterpart, as was seen with the emotional spontaneity of Romanticism as a response to the Enlightenment. While the back-and-forth, call-and-response relationship between these disciplines ran parallel to one another for nearly two centuries, they intersected between the 19th and 20th centuries, when French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty commented on the role of art in philosophy. He uses painters like Paul Cezanne, a post-impressionist sometimes called “The Father of Modern Art,” and poets like Stéphan Mallarmé, one of the leaders of the Symbolist poetic movement, as examples to show that art can provide more than just a pleasant experience–that it can show us things about our world even as it creates a world of its own. Their theories about space, language, and perception all point toward a deficiency in the world’s understanding of art, one that each hoped to rectify through his work. Examining the work of the French painters, poets, and philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries can provide a new perspective on the value of art when paired with philosophy and show that the two disciplines are not as distinct as they may seem.