Read Online David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Malcolm Gladwell
Tags: Psychology, Social Psychology
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face-to-face with the big public.”
But the very things that made the Salon so attractive—how selective and prestigious it was—also made it problematic. The Palais was an enormous barn of a building three hundred yards long with a central aisle that was two stories high. A typical Salon might accept three or four thousand paintings, and they were hung in four tiers, starting at ground level and stretching up to the ceiling. Only paintings that met with the unanimous approval of the jury were hung “on the line,” at eye level. If you were “skyed”—that is, hung closest to the ceiling—it was all but impossible for your painting to be seen. (One of Renoir’s paintings was once skyed in the dépotoir. ) No painter could submit more than three works. The crowds were often overwhelming. The Salon was the Big Pond. But it was very hard to be anything at the Salon but a Little Fish.
Pissarro and Monet disagreed with Manet. They thought it made more sense to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond. If they were off by themselves and held their own show, they said, they wouldn’t be bound by the restrictive rules of the Salon, where Olympia was considered an outrage and where the medals were won by paintings of soldiers and weeping women. They could paint whatever they wanted. And they wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, because there wouldn’t be a crowd. In 1873, Pissarro and Monet proposed that the Impressionists set up a collective called the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs. There would be no competition, no juries, and no medals. Every artist would be treated as an equal. Everyone but Manet was in.
The group found space on the Boulevard des Capucines on the top floor of a building that had just been vacated by a photographer. It was a series of small rooms with red-brown walls. The Impressionists’ exhibition opened on April 15, 1874, and lasted one month. The entrance fee was one franc. There were 165 works of art on display, including three Cézannes, ten paintings by Degas, nine Monets, five Pissarros, six Renoirs, and five by Alfred Sisley—a tiny fraction of what was on the walls of the Salon across town. In their show, the Impressionists could exhibit as many canvases as they wished and hang them in a way that allowed people to actually see them. “The Impressionists were lost in the mass of Salon paintings, even when accepted,” the art historians Harrison White and Cynthia White write. “With…the independent group show, they could gain the public’s eye.”
Thirty-five hundred people attended the show—175 on the first day alone, which was enough to bring the artists critical attention. Not all of that attention was positive: one joke told was that what the Impressionists were doing was loading a pistol with paint and firing at the canvas. But that was the second part of the Big Fish–Little Pond bargain. The Big Fish–Little Pond option might be scorned by some on the outside, but Small Ponds are welcoming places for those on the inside. They have all of the support that comes from community and friendship—and they are places where innovation and individuality are not frowned upon. “We are beginning to make ourselves a niche,” a hopeful Pissarro wrote to a friend. “We have succeeded as intruders in setting up our little banner in the midst of the crowd.” Their challenge was “to advance without worrying about opinion.” He was right. Off by themselves, the Impressionists found a new identity. They felt a new creative freedom, and before long, the outside world began to sit up and take notice. In the history of modern art, there has never been a more important or more famous exhibition. If you tried to buy the paintings in that warren of top-floor rooms today, it would cost you more than a billion dollars.
The lesson of the Impressionists is that there are times and places where it is better to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond than a Little Fish in
But the very things that made the Salon so attractive—how selective and prestigious it was—also made it problematic. The Palais was an enormous barn of a building three hundred yards long with a central aisle that was two stories high. A typical Salon might accept three or four thousand paintings, and they were hung in four tiers, starting at ground level and stretching up to the ceiling. Only paintings that met with the unanimous approval of the jury were hung “on the line,” at eye level. If you were “skyed”—that is, hung closest to the ceiling—it was all but impossible for your painting to be seen. (One of Renoir’s paintings was once skyed in the dépotoir. ) No painter could submit more than three works. The crowds were often overwhelming. The Salon was the Big Pond. But it was very hard to be anything at the Salon but a Little Fish.
Pissarro and Monet disagreed with Manet. They thought it made more sense to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond. If they were off by themselves and held their own show, they said, they wouldn’t be bound by the restrictive rules of the Salon, where Olympia was considered an outrage and where the medals were won by paintings of soldiers and weeping women. They could paint whatever they wanted. And they wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, because there wouldn’t be a crowd. In 1873, Pissarro and Monet proposed that the Impressionists set up a collective called the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs. There would be no competition, no juries, and no medals. Every artist would be treated as an equal. Everyone but Manet was in.
The group found space on the Boulevard des Capucines on the top floor of a building that had just been vacated by a photographer. It was a series of small rooms with red-brown walls. The Impressionists’ exhibition opened on April 15, 1874, and lasted one month. The entrance fee was one franc. There were 165 works of art on display, including three Cézannes, ten paintings by Degas, nine Monets, five Pissarros, six Renoirs, and five by Alfred Sisley—a tiny fraction of what was on the walls of the Salon across town. In their show, the Impressionists could exhibit as many canvases as they wished and hang them in a way that allowed people to actually see them. “The Impressionists were lost in the mass of Salon paintings, even when accepted,” the art historians Harrison White and Cynthia White write. “With…the independent group show, they could gain the public’s eye.”
Thirty-five hundred people attended the show—175 on the first day alone, which was enough to bring the artists critical attention. Not all of that attention was positive: one joke told was that what the Impressionists were doing was loading a pistol with paint and firing at the canvas. But that was the second part of the Big Fish–Little Pond bargain. The Big Fish–Little Pond option might be scorned by some on the outside, but Small Ponds are welcoming places for those on the inside. They have all of the support that comes from community and friendship—and they are places where innovation and individuality are not frowned upon. “We are beginning to make ourselves a niche,” a hopeful Pissarro wrote to a friend. “We have succeeded as intruders in setting up our little banner in the midst of the crowd.” Their challenge was “to advance without worrying about opinion.” He was right. Off by themselves, the Impressionists found a new identity. They felt a new creative freedom, and before long, the outside world began to sit up and take notice. In the history of modern art, there has never been a more important or more famous exhibition. If you tried to buy the paintings in that warren of top-floor rooms today, it would cost you more than a billion dollars.
The lesson of the Impressionists is that there are times and places where it is better to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond than a Little Fish in
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