The "return to antiquity" in the illustration of the interwar period in France: a socio-aesthetic approach

The return, during the interwar period, to Greco-Roman antiquity in the field of illustrated books has hardly attracted the attention of researchers, contrary to what can be observed in literature or art. We propose to identify the extent and characteristics of this phenomenon in France in literary illustration in the broad sense, illustrated books and art magazines, using a socio-aesthetic approach based on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of fields. We will first show that, at least in the case of illustration, it would be better to speak, in a diachronic perspective, of a "recourse to antiquity". We will then briefly present the field of illustration and its structure, and we will report on the results of a study on the distribution within this space of the magnitude and the various forms of these "recourses to antiquity", in an attempt to answer to the following questions: who has recourse to antiquity during the interwar period? Which antiquity is it (Greek or Latin, etc.)? And what are the motivations for these appeals? This analysis, initially focusing on illustrated books (Ovid's Metamorphoses illustrated by Pablo Picasso, etc.), will be extended to the case of art magazines, from L'Esprit nouveau to Minotaure. This study, covering the entire field of illustration, from widely distributed collections such as Antiqua (À l'Enseigne du Pot Cassé) to journals with a quite restricted readership such as Acéphale, will show that the so-called "return to antiquity" movement in illustration cannot be reduced to a mere component of a possible "return to order" at this time. This phenomenon, Virgilian or Ovidian, Apollonian or Dionysiac, will prove complex, moving and above all plural in terms of aesthetics, ideological underpinnings and motivations. Indeed, each artist or group of artists could call forth the ancients, some to exalt a cause, others to enlighten the period, others again to find refuge in a mythical past.