Théophile Gautier et le musée imaginaire

• Autores: Marie-Hélène Girard
• Localización: Revue de l'art, ISSN 0035-1326, Nº. 182, 2013 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Musées imaginaires), págs. 35-42
• Idioma: francés
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• Resumen

  • Théopile Gautier, indefatigable and self-styled art pilgrim and writer-journalist from 1831 to 1872, was an ardent champion of the museum. The "Etudes sur les Musées" (Museum Studies) written in 1849-1850, the accounts that pepper his travel narratives and above all his description of the Louvre in Hugo's "Paris Guide" (1867) all attest to his advocacy on behalf of the institution of the museum. His ambitious goal was to describe works of art in such a way as to give the reader a written equivalent of the work, or rather of the experience of the work, by using a technique he referred to as "transposition". His aims were pedagogical, encyclopedic, and curatorial. Although Gautier had long believed in the civilising virtues of the work of art, following his reading of Part II of Goethe's "Faust", translated and comented by Nerval in 1840, he also became convinced that past forms of beauty live on as so many shadows in the mythical "kingdom of Mothers" and that it was the role of the writer and of the artist to bring them back to life in a kind of ultimate imaginary museum. This museum without walls molded Gautier's views on museums within walls. It also ensured that his celebration of actual museums and his numerous descriptions of the treasures they housed could move beyond the preoccupations with national heritage he had shared with Hugo and Mérimée since the 1830s. As the 1867 writings included in the posthumous editions of the "Guide de l'amateur au musée du Louvre" (Art Lover's Guide to the Louvre) show, the critical authority Gautier had gained early his career allowed him to perpetuate a canon and format the gaze of his contemporaries. This radical collection of texts, both encyclopedic and literaty in character, does indeed anticipate Malraux's Museum without walls.