By Krishna Purohit

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877)
The Desperate Man, 1844-45
Oil on canvas
17-3/4 x 21-5/8 in. (45 x 55 cm)
Private Collection, courtesy of BNP Paribas Art Advisory
Photo: © Michel Nguyen

There is nothing desperate about Gustave Courbet’s The Desperate Man (1844-45). A cross between heady Romantic ideals and a frenzied Johnny Depp, the painting is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s glamorous cover shot for its retrospective on the 19th century artist’s oeuvre.

With 130 works spanning six rooms, the show is the first of its kind in over three decades to deliver Courbet’s work in all of its Realistic anti-glory. Set up stylistically and chronologically, the exhibit begins with his numerous self-portraits. The gallery is an ode to Renaissance and Baroque masters in the artist’s usual idiosyncratic style. Smoky backdrops and loose brush-strokes invoke the names Caravaggio and Leonardo, but stop short of finishing the quotation. There is an eerie sense of being inside the artist’s boudoir, as the viewer realizes that painting after painting features only his distinctive visage.

Although, he would later cite directly from paintings, such as Titian’s Man with Glove (1520-22), his earlier works are like pages of a highly developed sketchbook, in which he masters the individual techniques of his teachers.

This sense of emulation and conformism quickly evaporates in the second half of the room. On the back wall hangs a large bucolic painting, which mainly features three young women and an unassuming cow. Through Les Demoiselles de Village (1850-51), Courbet caused a scandal at the 1852 Salon in Paris worthy of rock stardom. With his use of unidealized women and the term demoiselles, the artist threw social rank out the proverbial window, elevating village girls to the rank of city women.

Courbet’s cockiness and brilliance surrounds the viewer like a vintage leather jacket, worn around the edges by social reform and self-awareness. In The Meeting, or Bonjour, Monsieur Coubert (1854), the artist illustrates a highly fictionalized encounter between him and his patron, Alfred Bruyas. Unlike traditional depictions, which place the benefactor high above the artist, Courbet makes himself the painting’s protagonist.

The hallmarks of Realism saturate the artist’s paintings, as does an unflinching modernity. The uses of contemporary subject matter, without mythological trappings, and his society portraiture create an avant-garde body of work. Courbet’s individuality lies in his willingness to work with multiple genres of painting, as well as his interest in the works of older masters. He rejects the idealization and removal of subject matter from contemporary time, but not the artists themselves. Traces of Hals and Rembrandt works linger in Courbet’s paintings like half remembered memories.

In addition, the artist’s transparency and gripping subjects bring him even closer to the 21st century. His surprisingly progressive nudes are women with dirty feet and a raw sensuality not found in the perfected nymphs of the day. In the ever-controversial Origin of the World, still shielded from direct gaze by a partition, a stark image of a vagina confronts the viewer. There is no gauzy fabric playing hide and seek and no woman with a come-hither smile. The almost clinical nature of the painting is shocking not for its nudity, but for its frankness. Similarly, in Sleep the artist blatantly alludes to sex and lesbianism regardless of social taboos.

Throughout his career, the artist capitalized on the controversy that surrounded his works and fostered his reputation as a self-made rebel. Born to a family of wealthy landowners, Courbet set off for Paris to become a lawyer in 1840. Once there, he quickly discarded the idea and took upon the mantle of painter instead. Early on, it seemed as if he would follow in the preordained brush-strokes of Academy of Fine Arts, but in 1855, the artist made his first official break with Salon. He launched the Pavilion of Realism and exhibited his own rejected work with success. This battle between the Academy and artist would continue for the remainder of Courbet’s life, despite his influence on his contemporaries.

Somewhere between the nudes and landscapes, it becomes clear that Courbet is still a force to be reckoned with. His prolific paintings span decades and genres with a skill that seems uncanny. However, his rebel attitude and keen insight into social flaws makes him an unmistakably modern genius.

The exhibit will run until May 18, 2008 in The Tisch Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.