Review by Choice Review
Sanchez's study of the Artists Federation in the Third Republic is an excellent analysis of the organization's role in the revolutionary movement following the Paris Commune of 1871. He prefaces his study by discussing the Federation's ideological antecedents before carefully reconstructing the short-lived organization's vicissitudes during the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, and its aftermath. Based on archives, contemporary literature, classic secondary accounts, and recent studies that have clearly linked artists' dissatisfaction with the Salon system and the growing numbers of impoverished painters to alternative associational structures, Sanchez presents a detailed prosopography of the 47 elected artists (painters, sculptors, decorative artists) who made up the Federation's Commission. The study raises critical questions regarding the role of artists during transitional political and economic times. Beneath the political turmoil in 19th-century France were long-range structural transformations brought about by industrialization and a more fragmented market economy, to which artists were not immune. Additionally, persecution, exile, and disgrace of communard artists by the Republican government during the 1870s suggest analogies to persecution, exile, disgrace of 20th century artists--from the Bolshevik revolution through the 3rd Reich to the fall of communism in 1989-90. A decidedly important addition to the growing literature that integrates visual culture into the larger political and social framework of modern European history. Upper-division undergraduates and above. M. Deshmukh; George Mason University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
