Le Salon caricatural est le compte rendu comique composé de charges d’œuvres d’art exposées au Salon. Les premiers Salons caricaturaux apparaissent au début des années 1840, et c’est sous le Second Empire que ce genre de revue parodique atteint son apogée, obtenant un succès dans la presse satirique illustrée. Sous prétexte de faire rire, cette critique en images met en œuvre un moyen efficace de juger l’art, qui fonctionne en contrepoint de la critique d’art écrite. Les enjeux critiques que propose cette imagerie comique s’inscrivent en fait comme découlant des discussions sur les rapports entre l’image et le texte, ainsi que le révèlent les trois modèles de 1846. Sensibles à l’actualité artistique, les dessinateurs du Salon caricatural jouent souvent un rôle multiple, tantôt celui du railleur inoffensif, tantôt celui du critique sérieux, tantôt encore celui de l’artiste exposant. Dans les revues parodiques se reflètent non seulement la réaction caractéristique du public bourgeois, mais parfois aussi le goût personnel et les jugements esthétiques des dessinateurs eux-mêmes vis-à-vis des œuvres d’art contemporaines. Face à un art en pleine transition durant le Second Empire, le Salon caricatural prend part d’une manière active à la réception de l’art par une formule sarcastique qui traduit à la fois le dégoût pour l’école classique en voie de déclin et le rejet des formes novatrices, notamment Courbet et son réalisme. Cette version drolatique et insolite de l’histoire de l’art fournit aussi une nouvelle perspective à l’histoire de la critique d’art. / The Salon caricatural was a comic review consisting of caricatures of art works exposed at the Salon. The first Salons caricaturaux appeared in the early 1840s, and it was under the Second Empire that this type of parodic review reached its height, obtaining success in the illustrated satirical press. Under the pretext of humor, this critique in images provided an efficient method of judging art, working in counterpoint to written art criticism. The critical issues proposed by this comical imagery were in fact the products of debates on the relationship between image and text, as the three 1846 models reveal. Conscious of contemporary artistic currents in art, Salon caricatural cartoonists often played multiple roles; at times inoffensive mocker, at times serious critic, and at times exposing artist. These parodic reviews reflected not only the characteristic reaction of the bourgeois public, but also on occasion the personal tastes and aesthetic judgments of the cartoonists themselves with respect to contemporary works of art. With art in a major period of transition during the Second Empire, the Salon caricatural actively participated in the reception of art through a sarcastic format that translated both the distaste for the declining classical school and the rejection of innovative forms, notably those of Courbet and his realism. This humorous and peculiar version of art history also provides a new perspective to the history of art criticism.

Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945) is considered one of the most influential art history scholars. His study entitled "Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe" ("Principles of Art History"), published in 1915, gained considerable response, both critical and favourable. In the study, Wölfflin attempted to explain transpersonal principles of periodically repeating artistic evolution. This evolutionary process, culminating in two phases, conditions entire artistic output (architecture, sculpture, painting, artistic craft), which thus developes within predetermined limits. Wölfflin defined each phase by concepts-pentad that gives a true picture of its character. First of the climaxes is the art oriented according to the analogy with the sense of touch; the second one is the artistic output defined by the analogy with the sense of sight. Wölfflin deduced the contradiction of the "linear style" (fixed to objects) and the "painting style" (wedded to purely optical qualities) from evolutionary degrees of human imaginantion, which developes precisely from haptic to visual projections. This progression - as emphasized by him - is always one-way and can not be reversal. Both these style-types are being permeated by various, historicaly conditioned culturally-historical contents that represent an outer component of the...