France’s relationship with alcohol, especially wine, has been marked for centuries by a division between celebration, economy, public health and social control.
The ambiguity now arrives at the Musée des Arts Précieux Paul Dupuy, in Toulouse, in the French wine-growing southwest, where “Ivresse” brings together posters, engravings and paintings to show how drunkenness was represented and discussed over time.
At the beginning of the 20th century, campaigns against drunkenness multiplied in France. In 1917, for example, notes , the Union of French Women Against Alcohol produced a poster in which a desperate woman tried to convince her drunken husband to abandon the bottle of wine. But French authorities, fearing damage to the economy, were hesitant to support a reduction in consumption. In the 1930s, official campaigns defended wine with slogans such as “Drink wine and live happily” or “Wines of France: health, joy, hope”.
According to Marie-Pierre Chaumet, responsible for the museum’s art collections, the French term itself drunkenness reflects this duplicity: it can refer to joy, exaltation and closeness to the divine, but also to loss of control and excess.
The exhibition shows how this ambivalence runs through history, from the Bacchanals of Ancient Rome, festivals dedicated to Bacchus, god of wine, seen by the Roman Senate as a source of public and political disorder. In Renaissance art, the theme allowed topics that were then taboo to be addressed, such as sexuality.
Some artists portrayed these celebrations as joyful feasts; others brought them closer to orgies led by witches. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the same uncertainty remained. A painting by Giuseppe Moretti, about a public celebration in Toulouse in 1775, shows wine flowing from fountains, aristocrats chatting elegantly and popular people involved in clashes.
The beginning of worry
In the 19th century, doctors and politicians began to warn about the effects of excessive consumption on health, family and work.
In 1873, the first French law against public drunkenness was passed.. Still, producers of wine, champagne and spirits continued to promote their products with sophisticated advertising, often with official support.
E, in schools, wine (and beer and the like) was only banned in canteens in 1956 for children under 14 years old, and only in 1981 for all students. Until then, it was normal to have wine, cider or beer in school canteens, especially at lunch, recalls .
Today, despite the fact that France has had one of the most restrictive laws in the West on advertising alcoholic beverages since 1991, the cultural defense of wine persists: even President Emmanuel Macron now drinks wine at lunch and dinner.
