A sign inside a Montmartre real estate agency reads, "The street artists are the new Impressionists."
***
In the late 1800s, the official Paris Salon dominated the French art world, enforcing rigid academic standards for what qualified as acceptable "art." Works that didn't conform were often rejected, but in 1863, Emperor Napoleon III established the Salon des Refusés - an exhibition for these “rejects" - following widespread complaints about the Salon's overly strict jury. This alternative showcase highlighted innovative painters, including early figures like Édouard Manet, and helped legitimize avant-garde styles. It paved the way for independent exhibitions, weakening the Salon's monopoly. By 1874, a group of rebellious artists - including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others - organized their own show outside the traditional system. Art critic Louis Leroy reviewed it mockingly in the newspaper Le Charivari, deriding Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise, as a mere “impression" - unfinished and sketchy, like wallpaper in its early stages. Intended as an insult, the term "Impressionists" stuck. The artists embraced it proudly, and their independent exhibitions continued, ultimately revolutionizing modern art as the once-dominant Paris Salon faded into obsolescence, much like the horse and buggy, in an era of change. - BPJ
