![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Exhibition I'd LOVE to see
Jun. 30th, 2005 02:49 pmThere's an exhibition on at the Jewish Museum in New York: The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons. From the introduction:
I've always been fascinated by the concept of salons, since reading about Madame de Staël, Natalie Barney and co in that era. It was an interesting exercise of a kind of power by individuals who were members of marginalised groups: women, women of "ill repute", Jewish women, lesbian women.
As well as the delightful clothes and witty conversation one associates with salons, the salon environment nurtured the arts and intellectual discussion in a way that would hardly have been possible in any other mileu at the time, in terms of salons breaking many social boundaries. And was certain women who were able to surround themselves with the interesting, intelligent and creative types of the time. While these women perpetuated plenty of prejudices themselves (Natalie Barney was fairly keen on some Fascist ideas before WWII), they provided a place where a fairly wide variety of people - including women - could meet and exchange ideas. And gossip, of course. There were plenty of male "social lions" who deprecated the salon setup, but who were launched on their way or had their careers enhanced nonetheless.
There is a pretty good round up of the exhibition in the Guardian Arts pages, with a wider discussion of the phenomenon as well. The exhibition's own site is interesting, with a virtual stroll through the gallery and some interesting info on some of the characters concerned.
Another quote from the Guardian:
I love dinner parties and the like where you end up having those fascinating discussions with your friends and their friends; how liberating (in the fundamental sense) it must have been to be able to experience that kind of cross-fertilisation in those times.
Finally,
A revival would be good, but the whole aim of it is to encourage that exchange of ideas across boundaries. We think of salons as middle-class and up groups of people, but in its day, of course, it was fairly radical having the aristocracy mixing with the commons, not to mention the mixture of sexes and religion. How would we achieve that kind of cross-fertilisation today?
The salon was an important and radical vehicle for the "democratization of the public sphere," providing a context in which nobility, artists and thinkers exchanged ideas across barriers of class, gender, nationality, economic standing, and religion, while society was rigidly defined along these lines. Salons enabled women and Jews — whose participation in official public life was restricted — to play a prominent role.
I've always been fascinated by the concept of salons, since reading about Madame de Staël, Natalie Barney and co in that era. It was an interesting exercise of a kind of power by individuals who were members of marginalised groups: women, women of "ill repute", Jewish women, lesbian women.
As well as the delightful clothes and witty conversation one associates with salons, the salon environment nurtured the arts and intellectual discussion in a way that would hardly have been possible in any other mileu at the time, in terms of salons breaking many social boundaries. And was certain women who were able to surround themselves with the interesting, intelligent and creative types of the time. While these women perpetuated plenty of prejudices themselves (Natalie Barney was fairly keen on some Fascist ideas before WWII), they provided a place where a fairly wide variety of people - including women - could meet and exchange ideas. And gossip, of course. There were plenty of male "social lions" who deprecated the salon setup, but who were launched on their way or had their careers enhanced nonetheless.
There is a pretty good round up of the exhibition in the Guardian Arts pages, with a wider discussion of the phenomenon as well. The exhibition's own site is interesting, with a virtual stroll through the gallery and some interesting info on some of the characters concerned.
Another quote from the Guardian:
[Fanny] Hensel's case [as a musician and composer who was woman and a Jew, last century] explains why all salons were run by women: women could not vote, were not economically independent, nor regarded as being capable of intellectual reflection or artistic creation. No wonder, then, that some of them withdrew into their domestic spaces and created there simulacra of better societies, ones where people of different economic standings, religions, rank and nationality could exchange ideas and be recognised both as individuals and as part of common humanity. Even if it meant having to listen to men witter incessantly about their sexual insecurities and career goals.
I love dinner parties and the like where you end up having those fascinating discussions with your friends and their friends; how liberating (in the fundamental sense) it must have been to be able to experience that kind of cross-fertilisation in those times.
Finally,
Arguably, even if salons are overdue for a revival, it would no longer be necessary for women to preside over them. Unless, that is, you believe that the desirable qualities for a salon host - agreeableness, tolerance and indulgence - are not just stereotypically female ones but really so.
A revival would be good, but the whole aim of it is to encourage that exchange of ideas across boundaries. We think of salons as middle-class and up groups of people, but in its day, of course, it was fairly radical having the aristocracy mixing with the commons, not to mention the mixture of sexes and religion. How would we achieve that kind of cross-fertilisation today?