Delicious Decadence: The Rediscovery of French Eighteenth-Century Painting in the Nineteenth Century by Guillaume Faroult, et al (review)

“Entre globalisation et provincialisation,” “Retrouver la France”—he reflects on the status of France’s government, the caliber of its civil service, the value of its elitist meritocratic system, its standing on the worldwide ladder of intellectual leadership, the condition of its “social model,” and the status of its political clout in Europe and the world. While absorbing Cohen-Tanugi’s perspective, it is helpful to keep in mind his professional background. He is a Paris-based international lawyer and a member of the Paris and New York bars. His practice focuses on such strategic areas as international mergers and acquisitions, arbitration, and corporate governance. He is a registered arbitrator with the French National Committee of the ICC’s Court of Arbitration and was the first French lawyer appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission to have served as an independent compliance monitor. Thus, when he writes that “[l]e chômage de masse qui plombe la croissance française en un cercle vicieux et pénalise toute une génération ne se résoudra pas par des incantations politiques” (81), we are able to appreciate his conclusive deduction; he asserts that unemployment would be resolved “par un changement de mentalités et un démantèlement des corporatismes et des carcans institutionnels, juridiques, fiscaux et syndicaux qui entravent la création d’entreprise, l’innovation, la concurrence, la prise de risque et l’investissement” (81). Furthermore, as the effects of globalization continue to alter how countries interact with one another in addition to how they view themselves and other countries, Cohen-Tanugi’s sagacity on France’s changes is reflected in his commentary on the September 2014 French public’s standing ovation response to Michel Legrand’s Parapluies de Cherbourg at the Théâtre du Châtelet which, according to him, means “le réconfort des retrouvailles avec un certain éclat français et l’oubli momentané de la misère des temps, après une rentrée politique particulièrement désastreuse”(105).While everyone holds a particular opinion about what a country should look like, regardless of whether that opinion is informed by cultural clichés, Cohen-Tanugi has done much to contribute to the current discussion on France and the French in today’s global village. Canisius College (NY) Eileen M. Angelini Faroult, Guillaume, Monica Preti, and Christoph Vogtherr, eds. Delicious Decadence: The Rediscovery of French Eighteenth-Century Painting in the Nineteenth Century. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. ISBN 978-1-4724-4921-4. Pp. 186. $100. Scholars and students of art history, the history of art collecting, and museum studies will value the publication of this volume, which brings together a variety of perspectives on art collecting and the market for French eighteenth-century art during the nineteenth century. All ten essays were presented originally at a 2008 colloquium held at the Wallace Collection in London, in conjunction with the exhibition, The 244 FRENCH REVIEW 89.2 Reviews 245 Collection of Louis La Caze. The title of both the colloquium and the current volume, Delicious Decadence, derives from the Goncourt brothers’ description of the style of François Boucher and the era of Louis XV.By the mid-nineteenth century,the Goncourt brothers were not alone in their reassessment of eighteenth-century art, which had earlier been rejected in favor of the neoclassical aesthetics of the school of David. As Preti clarifies in her introductory chapter, the mid-nineteenth-century reassessment of eighteenth-century painting did not absolve this art from the earlier accusation of “decadence” but rather was founded on a re-interpretation of the word itself from a negative critique of the “immorality” and “hedonism” of both Rococo aesthetics and the lifestyle of the eighteenth-century painters and patrons to an appreciation of aesthetic “modernity.” Several of the chapters investigate the history of art collecting and the changing taste for eighteenth-century aesthetics. In addition to Preti’s study, which focuses on early French amateurs and collectors, and offers suggestions for new research in this field, Marie-Martine Dubreuil’s chapter on transformations in aesthetic appreciation from 1830–1860 and Faroult’s study of Watteau and Chardin examine...