Salon des Refusés

The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects”, is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863. As early as the 1830’s, Paris art galleries had mounted small-scale, private exhibitions of works rejected by the Salon jurors. The clamorous event of 1863 was actually sponsored by the French government. In that year, artists protested the Salon jury’s rejection of more than 3,000 works, far more than usual. "Wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints," said an official notice, Emperor Napoléon III decreed that the rejected artists could exhibit their works in an annex to the regular Salon. Many critics and the public ridiculed the "refusés", which included such famous paintings as Édouard Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass" "(Le déjeuner sur l’herbe)" and James McNeill Whistler's successfully exhibited their works outside the Salon beginning in 1874. Subsequent Salons des Refusés were mounted in Paris in 1874, 1875, and 1886, by which time the prestige and influence of the Paris Salon had waned.

Émile Zola incorporated a fictionalized account of the 1863 scandal in his novel "L'Oeuvre" "(The Masterpiece)" (1886).

Today by extension, "salon des refusés" refers to any exhibition of works rejected from a juried art show.

Salon des Refusés Atlantique [http://www.salonatlantique.org] , established by Steven James May in 2001 and based in Halifax, Canada, provides a venue for filmmakers rejected by the Atlantic Film Festival to screen their work.

ee also

* Avant-garde
* Salon (gathering)
* French art salons and academies

References

*Brombert, Beth Archer (1996). "Edouard Manet: Rebel in a Frock Coat." Boston: Little, Brown.
*Hauptman, William (March 1985). "Juries, Protests, and Counter-Exhibitions Before 1850." "The Art Bulletin" 67 (1): 97-107.
*Mainardi, Patricia (1987). "Art and Politics of the Second Empire: The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867. " New Haven: Yale U Pr.
*King, Ross (2006). "The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism" Bond Street Books, Canada