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Benjamin Constant

Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), or simply Benjamin Constant, was a Swiss political thinker, activist and writer on political theory and religion.

A committed republican from 1795, he backed the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797) and the following one on 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799). During the Consulat, in 1800 he became the leader of the Liberal Opposition. Having upset Napoleon and left France to go to Switzerland then to the Kingdom of Saxony, Constant nonetheless sided with him during the Hundred Days and became politically active again during the French Restoration. He was elected Député in 1818 and remained in post until his death in 1830. Head of the Liberal opposition, known as Indépendants, he was one of the most notable orators of the Chamber of Deputies of France, as a proponent of the parliamentary system. During the July Revolution, he was a supporter of Louis Philippe I ascending the throne.

Besides his numerous essays on political and religious themes, Constant also wrote on romantic love. His autobiographical Le Cahier rouge (1807) gives an account of his love for Madame de Staël, whose protégé and collaborator he became, especially in the Coppet circle, and a successful novella, Adolphe (1816), are good examples of his work on this topic.

He was a fervent classical liberal of the early 19th century. He refined the concept of liberty, defining it as a condition of existence that allowed the individual to turn away interference from the state or society. His ideas influenced the Trienio Liberal movement in Spain, the Liberal Revolution of 1820 in Portugal, the Greek War of Independence, the November uprising in Poland, the Belgian Revolution, and liberalism in Brazil and Mexico.

Biography
Henri-Benjamin Constant was born in Lausanne to the Constant de Rebecque family, descendants of French Huguenots who had fled from Artois to Switzerland during the French Wars of Religion in the 16th century. His father, Jules Constant de Rebecque, served as a high-ranking officer in the Dutch States Army, like his grandfather, his uncle and his cousin Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque. When Constant's mother, Henriette-Pauline de Chandieu-Villars, died soon after his birth, both his grandmothers took care of him. Private tutors educated him in Brussels (1779) and in the Netherlands (1780). While at the Protestant University of Erlangen (1783), he gained access to the court of Duchess Sophie Caroline Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He had to leave after an affair with a girl, and moved to the University of Edinburgh. There he lived at the home of Andrew Duncan and was befriended by James Mackintosh and Malcolm Laing. When he left the city, he promised to pay back his gambling debts.

In 1787, he returned to continental Europe, travelling on horseback through Scotland and England. In those years European nobility, with their prerogatives, came under heavy attack from those, like Constant, who were influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality. Constant's family criticized him for leaving out part of his last name. In Paris, at the home of Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard he became acquainted with Isabelle de Charriere, a 46-year-old Dutch woman of letters, who later helped publish Rousseau's Confessions, and who knew his uncle David-Louis Constant de Rebecque extremely well by virtue of a 15-year correspondence. While he stayed at her home in Colombier Switzerland, together they wrote an epistolary novel. She acted as a maternal mentor to him until Constant's appointment to the court of Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel that required him to move north. He left the court when the War of the First Coalition began in 1792.

In Braunschweig, he married Wilhelmina von Cramm, but she divorced him in 1793. In September 1794, he met and became interested in the famous and wealthy already married Germaine de Staël, herself brought up on the principles of Rousseau. They both admired Jean Lambert Tallien and Talleyrand. Their intellectual collaboration between 1795 and 1811 made them one of the most celebrated intellectual couples of the time.

Paris

After the Reign of Terror in France (1793–1794), Constant became an advocate of bicameralism and of an assembly like the Parliament of Great Britain. In revolutionary France this strand of political thought resulted in the Constitution of the Year III, the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients. In 1799, after 18 Brumaire, Constant was reluctantly appointed, on the insistence of Abbe Sieyes, by Napoleon Bonaparte to the Tribunat, despite grave reservations on the latter's part. Eventually, in 1802, the first consul confirmed in his doubts, forced Constant to withdraw because of the tenor of his speeches and his close connection with Mme de Staël.

Constant became acquainted with Julie Talma, the salonnière wife of actor François-Joseph Talma, who wrote many letters to him of compelling human interest.

In 1800, the Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise, an attempt to assassinate Napoleon, failed. Nevertheless, in 1803, at a time when Britain and France were at peace, Jean Gabriel Peltier, while living in England, argued that Napoleon should be assassinated. The lawyer James Mackintosh defended the French refugee Peltier against a libel suit instigated by Napoleon – then First Consul of France. Mackintosh's speech was widely published in English and also across Europe in a French translation by Madame de Staël. She was forced to leave Paris as a result.

De Staël, disappointed by French rationalism, became interested in German romanticism. She and Constant set out for Prussia and Saxony and travelled with her two children to Weimar. Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel welcomed them the day after their arrival. In Weimar they met Friedrich von Schiller. Due to illness Johann Wolfgang Goethe at first hesitated. In Berlin, they met August Wilhelm Schlegel, and his brother, Friedrich Schlegel. Constant left de Staël in Leipzig and in 1806 lived in Rouen and Meulan, where he started work on his novel Adolphe. In 1808, he secretly married Caroline von Hardenberg, a woman who had been divorced twice, (she was related to Novalis and to Karl August von Hardenberg). He moved back to Paris in 1814, where the French Restoration took place and Louis XVIII had become king. As a member of the Council of State, Constant proposed a constitutional monarchy. He became friends with Madame Récamier while he fell out with Germaine de Staël, who had asked him to pay back his gambling debts when their daughter, Albertine, married Victor de Broglie. During the Hundred Days of Napoleon, who had become more liberal, Constant fled to the Vendée, but returned when he was invited several times to the Tuileries to set up changes for the Charter of 1815.

After the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815), Constant moved to London with his wife. In 1817, the year when Madame de Staël died, he was back in Paris and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower legislative house of the Restoration-era government. One of its most eloquent orators, he became a leader of the parliamentary bloc first known as the Independents and later as "liberals". He became an opponent of Charles X of France during the Restoration between 1815 and 1830.

In 1822, Goethe praised Constant in the following terms:

"I spent many instructive evenings with Benjamin Constant. Whoever recollects what this excellent man accomplished in [later] years, and with what zeal he advanced without wavering along the path which, once chosen, was forever followed, realizes what noble aspirations, as yet undeveloped, were fermenting within him."

A Freemason, in 1830 King Louis Philippe I gave Constant a large sum of money to help him pay off his debts, and appointed him to the Conseil d'Etat. Constant is said to have fathered Albertine de Staël-Holstein (1797–1838), who later married Victor de Broglie (1785–1870). Constant died in Paris on 8 December 1830 and was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

Ancient and modern freedom
One of the first thinkers to go by the name of "liberal", Constant looked to Britain rather than to ancient Rome for a practical model of freedom in a large mercantile society. He drew a distinction between the "Liberty of the Ancients" and the "Liberty of the Moderns". The Liberty of the Ancients was a participatory republican liberty, which gave the citizens the right to influence politics directly through debates and votes in the public assembly. To support this degree of participation, citizenship was a burdensome moral obligation requiring a considerable investment of time and energy. Generally, this required a sub-society of slaves to do much of the productive work, leaving the citizens free to deliberate on public affairs. Ancient Liberty was also limited to relatively small and homogenous male societies, in which they could be conveniently gathered together in one place to transact public affairs.

The Liberty of the Moderns, in contrast, was based on the possession of civil liberties, the rule of law, and freedom from excessive state interference. Direct participation would be limited: a necessary consequence of the size of modern states, and also the inevitable result of having created a mercantile society in which there were no slaves but almost everybody had to earn a living through work. Instead, the voters would elect representatives, who would deliberate in Parliament on behalf of the people and would save citizens from daily political involvement.

Critique of the French Revolution
He criticised several aspects of the French Revolution, and the failures of the social and political upheaval. He stated how the French attempted to apply ancient republican liberties to a modern state. Constant realized that freedom meant drawing a line between a person's private life and that of state interference. He praised the noble spirit of regenerating the state. However, he stated that it was naïve for writers to believe that two thousand years had not brought some changes in the customs and needs of the people. The dynamics of the state had changed. Ancient populations paled in comparison to the size of modern countries. He even argued that with a large population, man had no role in government regardless of its form or type. Constant emphasised how citizens in ancient states found more satisfaction in the public sphere and less in their private lives whereas modern people favoured their private life.

Constant's repeated denunciation of despotism pervaded his critique of French political philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Abbé de Mably. These writers, influential in the French Revolution, according to Constant, mistook authority for liberty and approved any means of extending the action of the state. Alleged reformers used the model of public force of the Ancien Régime, and organised the most absolute despotism in the name of the Republic. He continually condemned despotism, citing the contradiction of a liberty derived from despotism, and the vacuous nature of this ideology.

Furthermore, he pointed out the detrimental nature of the Reign of Terror, as an inexplicable delirium. In François Furet's words, Constant's "entire political thought" revolved around this question, namely the problem of how to justify the Terror. Constant understood the revolutionaries' disastrous over-investment in the political sphere. The French revolutionaries such as the Sans-culottes were the primary force in the streets. They promoted constant vigilance in public. Constant pointed out how despite the most obscure life, the quietest existence, the most unknown name, it offered no protection during the Reign of Terror. The pervasive mob mentality deterred many right thinking people and helped to usher in despots such as Napoleon.

Commerce preferable to war
Moreover, Constant believed that, in the modern world, commerce was superior to war. He attacked Napoleon's belligerence, on the grounds that it was illiberal and no longer suited to modern commercial social organization. Ancient Liberty tended to rely on war, whereas a state organized on the principles of Modern Liberty would tend to be at peace with all other peaceful nations.

Constant believed that if liberty were to be salvaged from the aftermath of the Revolution, then the chimera of Ancient Liberty had to be reconciled with the practical to achieve Modern Liberty. England, since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the United Kingdom after 1707, had demonstrated the practicality of Modern Liberty and Britain was a constitutional monarchy. Constant concluded that constitutional monarchy was better suited than republicanism to maintaining Modern Liberty. He was instrumental in drafting the "Acte Additional" of 1815, which transformed Napoleon's restored rule into a modern constitutional monarchy. This was only to last for "One Hundred Days" before Napoleon was defeated, but Constant's work nevertheless provided a means of reconciling monarchy with liberty. Indeed, the French Constitution (or Charter) of 1830 could be seen as a practical implementation of many of Constant's ideas: a hereditary monarchy existing alongside an elected Chamber of Deputies and a senatorial Chamber of Peers, with the executive power vested in responsible ministers. Thus, although often ignored in France, because of his Anglo-Saxon sympathies, Constant succeeded in contributing in a profound (albeit indirect) way to French constitutional traditions.

Constitutional monarchy
Secondly, Constant developed a new theory of constitutional monarchy, in which royal power was intended to be a neutral power, protecting, balancing and restraining the excesses of the other active powers (the executive, legislature, and judiciary). This was an advance on the prevailing theory in the English-speaking world, which, following the opinion of William Blackstone, the 18th-century English jurist, had regarded the King as head of the executive branch. In Constant's scheme, the executive power would be entrusted to a Council of Ministers (or Cabinet) who, although appointed by the King, were ultimately accountable to Parliament. In making this clear theoretical distinction between the powers of the King (as head of state) and the ministers (as Executive), Constant was responding to the political reality which had become apparent in Britain for more than a century: that is, the ministers, and not the King, are responsible actors, and the King "reigns but does not rule". This was important for the development of parliamentary government in France and elsewhere. The King was not to be a powerless cipher in Constant's scheme. He would have many powers, including the power to make judicial appointments, to dissolve the Chamber and call new elections, to appoint the peers, and to dismiss ministers – but he would not be able to govern, make policy, or direct the administration, since that would be the task of the responsible ministers. This theory was literally applied in Brazil (1824) and Portugal (1826), where the King/Emperor was explicitly given "Moderating Powers" in addition to the executive power. Elsewhere (for example, the 1848 "Statuto albertino" of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which later became the basis of the Italian constitution from 1861) the executive power was notionally vested in the King, but was exercised only by the responsible ministers.

He advocated the separation of powers as a basis for a liberal State, but unlike Montesquieu and most of the liberal thinkers, he advocated four powers instead of three. They were:

Thus the Moderating Power was a monarch, a type of judge, who was not part of government, but served as a neutral power to the government, the Executive Power was vested in the ministers that the monarch appointed and they were, collectively, the head of government, the Representative Powers were a separation of the Monstesquieu's Legislative power, with the Representative Power of Opinion being an elected body to represent the opinion of the citizenry and the Representative Power of Tradition was a hereditary House of Peers and the judiciary was similar to the Montesquieu's Judicial Power.
 * 1) the Neutral Power of the Monarch,
 * 2) the Executive,
 * 3) the Legislative,
 * 4) the Judiciary.

Constant's other concerns included a "new type of federalism": a serious attempt to decentralize French government through the devolution of powers to elected municipal councils. This proposal reached fruition in 1831, when elected municipal councils (albeit on a narrow franchise) were created.

Imperialism and conquest
Constant was an opponent of imperialism and conquest, denouncing French colonial policy in the West Indies and elsewhere as racist, unjust, and a violation of basic principles of human equality. He supported an extension of civil and political rights to non-white colonial subjects. He supported the Haitian revolution, and argued that the institutions set up by Haitians were evidence that non-Europeans could found institutions equivalent to those of Europeans. He was a staunch proponent of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.

Comparative religion
Aside from his political and literary output, Constant spent forty years working on religion and religious feeling. His publications demonstrate his desire to grasp this social phenomenon inherent to human nature, which, in whatever forms it may present, is always a search for perfectibility. If its manifestations become rigid, splitting becomes inevitable. Thus, however religious feeling may present, it needs to adapt and evolve.

Constant is adamant that political authority should not meddle in the religious beliefs of the citizenry, even to defend them. In his view it is up to each person to decide where to seek their consolation, moral compass or faith. External authority cannot act upon someone's convictions, it can only act upon their interests. He also condemns a religion that is commonly regarded as utilitarian, since it degrades authentic religious feeling.

He considers that it was necessary for polytheism to decline in line with human progress. The more humans progress in their understanding, the more beneficial the effects of theism. Belief in a god has itself evolved. Christianity, especially Protestantism is, he argues, its most tolerant form and an indicator of intellectual, moral and spiritual evolution.

Novels
Constant published only one novel during his lifetime, Adolphe (1816), the story of a young, indecisive man's disastrous love affair with an older mistress. A first-person novel in the sentimentalist tradition, Adolphe examines the thoughts of the young man as he falls in and out of love with Ellenore, a woman of uncertain virtue. Constant began the novel as an autobiographical tale of two loves, but decided that the reading public would object to serial passions. The love affair depicted in the finished version of the novel is thought to be based on Constant's affair with Anna Lindsay, who describes the affair in her correspondence (published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, December 1930 – January 1931). The book has been compared to Chateaubriand's René or Mme de Stael's Corinne. As a young man, Constant became acquainted with a literary friend of his uncle, David-Louis Constant de Rebecque. She was Isabelle de Charrière, a Dutch woman of letters with whom he jointly wrote an epistolary novel, under the title, Les Lettres d'Arsillé fils, Sophie Durfé et autres.

Legacy
The importance of Constant's writings on the liberty of the ancients and of that of his time has dominated understanding of his work, as has his critique of the French Revolution. The British philosopher and historian of ideas, Sir Isaiah Berlin has acknowledged his debt to Constant.

Constant's wider literary and cultural writings (most importantly the novella Adolphe and his extensive history of comparative religion) emphasised the importance of self-sacrifice and effect of human emotions as a basis for social living. Thus, while he pleaded for individual liberty as vital for individual and moral development and appropriate for modernity, he felt that egoism and self-interest were not part of a true definition of individual liberty. Emotional authenticity and fellow-feeling were critical. In this, his moral and religious thought was strongly influenced by the moral writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and German thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, whom he read in reference to his religious history.

Essays

 * De la force du gouvernement actuel de la France et de la nécessité de s'y rallier (1796)
 * Des réactions politiques (1797)
 * effets de la Terreur'' (1797)
 * Principes de politique (1806)
 * Fragments d'un ouvrage abandonné sur la possibilité d'une constitution républicaine dans un grand pays (published in 1991 by Aubier, manuscript probably written between 1795 and 1810)
 * Benjamin Constant, "De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation dans leur rapports avec la civilisation européenne", Hanovre, Londres et Paris, Hahn et H. Nicolle, 1814,, ,
 * Réflexions sur les constitutions, la distribution des pouvoirs et les garanties dans une monarchie constitutionnelle (1814)
 * De l'esprit de conquête et d'usurpation dans leurs rapports avec la civilisation actuelle (1815) (against Napoleon Bonaparte)
 * Principes de politique applicables à tous les gouvernements représentatifs et particulièrement á la constution actuelle de la France (1815)/ Translated as: On the Sovereignty of the People, 1996
 * De la doctrine politique qui peut réunir les partis en France (1816)
 * De la liberté de l'industrie (1818)
 * Des élections de 1818 (1818)
 * Cours de politique constitutionnelle (1818-1820). Nouvelle édition 1836
 * De la liberté des Anciens comparée à celle des Modernes (famous speech delivered in 1819)
 * Mémoires sur les Cent-Jours (1819-1820)
 * Commentaire sur l'ouvrage de Filangieri (1822)
 * * De la religion, considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements. Tome premier; Tome II; Tome III; Tome IV; Tome V (1824–1834) (on ancient religion)
 * Appel aux Nations chrétiennes en faveur des Grecs (1825)
 * Discours de M. Bejamin Constant à la Chambre des députés. Tome premier; Tome second (1827-1828)
 * Mélanges de littérature et de politique (1829)
 * Choix de rapports opinions et discours prononcés à la chambre des deputés (1832)
 * Du polythéisme romain considéré dans ses rapports avec la philosophie grecque et la religion chrétienne (1833)
 * Correspondance de Benjamin Constant et d'Anna Lindsay – L'Inconnue d'Adolphe, publiée par la baronne Constant de Rebecque. (Plon, 1933).

Novels

 * Dennis Wood, Isabelle de Charrière et Benjamin Constant. À propos d'une découverte récente. [Sur Les Lettres d'Arsillé fils, Sophie Durfé et autres, roman écrit par Benjamin Constant et Madame de Charrière.] In : Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century; 215. (Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1982), p. 273–279.
 * Adolphe (1816) – quotes

Autobiographical writings

 * Le Cahier rouge (1807), published posthumously (1907)
 * Cécile (écrit vers 1809), published posthumously (1951)

Letters

 * Lettre à M. Odillon-Barrot, avocat en la Cour de cassation, sur l'affaire de Wilfrid Regnault Lettre à M. Odillon-Barrot, avocat en la Cour de cassation, sur l'affaire de Wilfrid Regnault, condamné à mort'' (1818)
 * 2me lettre à M. Odilon Barrot, avocat en la Cour de cassation, sur l'affaire de Wilfrid Regnault, condamné à mort (1818)
 * De l'appel en calomnie de M. le marquis de Blosseville, contre Wilfrid-Regnault (1818)
 * Correspondance Isabelle de Charrière et Benjamin Constant (1787–1805), Éd. Jean-Daniel Candaux. Paris, Desjonquères, 1996
 * Renée Weingarten, Germaine de Staël & Benjamin Constant. A dual Biography, Yale, 2008.
 * Lettres à Madame Récamier (1807–1830), Edition critique par Ephraïm Harpaz, Paris, Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1977.

Intimate Diary

 * Journaux intimes, Édition de Jean-Marie Roulin, Éd. Gallimard, collection folio classique n°6382, Paris, 2017. ISBN 978-2070792146

Other languages

 * Mauro Barberis, Benjamin Constant. Rivoluzione, costituzione, progresso (1988. Il Mulino, Bologna)
 * Paul Bastid, Benjamin Constant et sa doctrine, I–II (1966. Colin, Paris)
 * Pierre Deguise, Benjamin Constant méconnu. Le livre De la religion, avec des documents inédits (1966. Droz, Genève)
 * Stefano De Luca, Il pensiero politico di Benjamin Constant (1993. Laterza, Roma-Bari)
 * Béatrice Fink (dir.), Benjamin Constant : philosophe, historien, romancier et homme d'État (actes du colloque de l'université du Maryland, octobre 1989), Lausanne, Institut Benjamin Constant ; Paris, J. Touzot, 1991, 186 pp.
 * Luca Fezzi, Il rimpianto di Roma. 'Res publica', libertà 'neoromane' e Benjamin Constant, agli inizi del terzo millennio (2012, Firenze, Le Monnier)
 * François Furet, "La Révolution sans la Terreur? Le débat des historiens du XIXe siècle", in Le Débat pp. 13, 41. (1981)
 * Henri Guillemin, Benjamin Constant, muscadin, Paris, Gallimard, 1958
 * Kurt Kloocke, Benjamin Constant. Une biographie intellectuelle (1984. Droz, Genève)
 * Giovanni Paoletti, Benjamin Constant et les Anciens. Politique, réligion, histoire (2006. Champion, Paris)
 * Tzvetan Todorov, Benjamin Constant: la passion democratique (1997. Hachette, Paris)

title: Benjamin Constant


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BC United

BC United (BCU), formerly known as the British Columbia Liberal Party or BC Liberals, is a provincial political party in British Columbia, Canada. The party has been described as conservative, neoliberal, and being on the centre-right of the left–right political spectrum. The party commonly describes itself as a "free enterprise coalition" and draws support from members of both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties. Since the 1990s, BC United has been the main centre-right opposition to the centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP). Once affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, the British Columbia Liberal Party became independent in 1987. The party changed its name to BC United on April 12, 2023.

Until the 1940s, British Columbia politics were dominated by the Liberal Party and rival Conservative Party. The Liberals formed government from 1916 to 1928 and again from 1933 to 1941. From 1941 to 1952, the two parties governed in a coalition (led by a Liberal leader) to counter the ascendant Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. The coalition was defeated in the 1952 election by the new Social Credit Party, and the party went into decline, eventually losing its presence in the legislature in the 1979 election. It returned to the legislature in the 1991 election, coming in second and forming the Official Opposition, through the efforts of leader Gordon Wilson. Wilson lost a leadership challenge to Gordon Campbell in 1994. Under Campbell's leadership, the BC Liberals began to shift rightwards and distance themselves from the federal party. In the 2001 election, the Liberals won an overwhelming majority, which they held under Campbell and his successor Christy Clark until shortly after the 2017 election. The party remained in Opposition after losing the 2020 election.

Eight party leaders have served as premier of British Columbia: Harlan Brewster, John Oliver, John MacLean, Duff Pattullo, John Hart, Boss Johnson, Gordon Campbell, and Christy Clark. Since the 2022 leadership election, the party has been led by Kevin Falcon.

First government: 1916–1928
The divided Conservatives faced the Liberals in the election of 1916 and lost. The Liberals formed a government under Harlan Carey Brewster. Brewster had become leader of the Opposition, and was elected party leader in March 1912. He lost his seat a few weeks later in the 1912 election, which returned no Liberals at all.

In 1916, he won election to the legislature again through a by-election, and led his party to victory in a general election later that year by campaigning on a reform platform. Brewster promised to end patronage in the civil service, end political machines, improve workman's compensation and labor laws, bring in votes for women, and other progressive reforms.

The government brought in women's suffrage, instituted prohibition, and combated political corruption before his unexpected death in 1918. He is interred in the Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, British Columbia.

John Oliver succeeded Brewster as premier when Brewster died in 1918. Oliver's government developed the produce industry in the Nanook Valley, and tried to persuade the federal government to lower the freight rate for rail transport. The party managed a bare majority win in the 1920 election and only managed to govern after the 1924 election with the support of the two Independent Liberals.

Opposition and the Great Depression: 1928–1933
The Liberals managed to increase their vote in the 1928 election but lost close to half their seats. With the onset of the Great Depression and the implosion of the government of Simon Fraser Tolmie, the Liberals won the 1933 election.

Duff Pattullo: 1933–1941
The 1933 election brought into power Duff Pattullo and introduced into the legislature the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), a new social-democratic and democratic socialist opposition party.

Pattullo wanted an activist government to try to deal with the depression through social programs and support of the unemployed. Canada has been recognized as the hardest hit by the Great Depression, and western Canada the hardest hit within Canada. Pattullo's attempts were often at odds with the federal government in Ottawa.

Pattullo was also an advocate for British Columbia, and suggested the annexation of Yukon by BC, and the construction of the Alaska Highway to reduce the power of eastern Canada over BC. In the 1937 general election, his government was re-elected running on the slogan of "socialized capitalism".

"The Coalition": 1941–1951
The alternating government with the Conservatives came to an end with the rise of the CCF, who managed to be Official Opposition from 1933 to 1937 and were one seat less than the Conservatives in the 1937 election. In the 1941 election, the CCF came second. The election did not give the Liberals the majority they hoped for.

John Hart became the premier and Liberal leader in 1941 when Pattullo refused to go into coalition with the Conservatives. The Liberal members removed Patullo as leader and Hart formed a Liberal–Conservative coalition government, known in BC history as "the Coalition ". From 1941 to 1945, Hart governed at a time of wartime scarcity, when all major government projects were postponed. The coalition government was re-elected in the 1945 election. In that contest, Liberals and Conservatives ran under the same banner.

After 1945, Hart undertook an ambitious program of rural electrification, hydroelectric and highway construction. Hart's most significant projects were the construction of Highway 97 to northern British Columbia (of which the Prince George–Dawson Creek segment is now named in his honour) and the Bridge River Power Project, which was the first major hydroelectric development in British Columbia. He established the BC Power Commission, a forerunner of BC Hydro, to provide power to smaller communities that were not serviced by private utilities. In December 1947, Hart retired as premier. The Conservative Party agitated for its leader, Herbert Anscomb, to succeed Hart as premier, but the Liberals outnumbered the Tories in the coalition caucus and Hart was followed by another Liberal, Byron Johnson, known as "Boss" Johnson, with Anscomb as deputy premier and minister of Finance.

Johnson's government introduced universal hospital insurance and a 3% provincial sales tax to pay for it. It expanded the highway system, extended the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, and negotiated the Alcan Agreement, which facilitated construction of the Kenny Dam. The government also coped with the 1948 flooding of the Fraser River, declaring a state of emergency and beginning a program of diking the river's banks through the Fraser Valley. Johnson is also noted for appointing Nancy Hodges as the first female Speaker in the Commonwealth.

The Liberal-Conservative coalition government won the 1949 election – at 61% the greatest percentage of the popular vote in BC history. Tensions had grown between the coalition partners and within both parties. The Liberal Party executive voted to terminate the coalition and Johnson dropped his Conservative ministers in January 1952, resulting in a short-lived minority government which soon collapsed.

1952 election
In order to prevent the CCF from winning in a three party competition, the government introduced instant-runoff voting, with the expectation that Conservative voters would list the Liberals as their second choice and vice versa. Voters, however, were looking for alternatives. More voters chose British Columbia Social Credit League ahead of any other party as their second choice. Social Credit went on to emerge as the largest party when the ballots were counted in the 1952 general election. Social Credit's de facto leader during the election, W. A. C. Bennett, formerly a Conservative, was formally named party leader after the election.

At the 1953 general election, the Liberals were reduced to four seats, taking 23.36% of the vote. Arthur Laing defeated Tilly Rolston in Vancouver Point Grey. Although Social Credit won a majority of seats in the legislature, their finance minister Einar Gunderson was defeated in Oak Bay by Philip Archibald Gibbs of the Liberals. Gordon Gibson Sr, a millionaire timber baron, nicknamed the "Bull of the Woods", was elected for Lillooet as a Liberal.

Third party status: 1953–1979
During the early period of this time, the Liberals' most prominent member was Gordon Gibson Sr. He was a cigar-smoking and gregarious logging contractor who could have been premier but for a major political error. He was elected in 1953 for the Lillooet riding. In 1955, the Sommers scandal surfaced, and he was the only leader in the legislature to make an issue of it. W. A. C. Bennett and his attorney general tried many tactics to stop the information from coming out.

In frustration, Gibson resigned his seat and forced a by-election, hoping to make the Sommers scandal the issue. The voting system had changed, and he came a close second after Social Credit.

In the 1956 election, with the Sommers scandal still not resolved, the Liberals fared worse than in 1953. Arthur Laing lost his seat, and the party was reduced to two MLAs and 20.9% of the vote. In the 1960 election, the party won four seats with the same 20.9% of the popular vote as in 1956. In the 1963 election, the party's caucus increased by one more MLA to five, but their share of the popular vote fell to 19.98%. In the 1966 election, the party won another seat, bringing its caucus to six, and had an increase in the vote to 20.24%. In the 1969 vote, the party lost one seat, and its share of the vote fell to 19.03%.

In 1972, the party was led into the election by a new leader, David Anderson, who had been elected in the 1968 federal election as an MP for the Liberal Party of Canada. He and four others managed to be elected to the legislature, but with the lowest vote in party history at 16.4%.

After the British Columbia New Democratic Party (BC NDP) won the 1972 election, many supporters of the Liberal and Conservative parties defected to the Social Credit League. This coalition was able to keep the New Democrats out of power from 1975 until the 1990s. MLAs Garde Gardom, Pat McGeer and Allan Williams left the Liberals for Social Credit along with Hugh Curtis of the suddenly rejuvenated Tories. All of them became members of Social Credit Cabinets after 1975.

In the 1975 election, the only Liberal to be elected was Gordon Gibson Jr. as the party scored a dismal 7.24%. David Anderson was badly defeated in his Victoria riding, placing behind the New Democrats and Social Credit.

In the wilderness: 1979–1991
The 1979 election was the party's lowest point. For the second time in party history, it was shut out of the legislature. Only five candidates ran, none were elected, and the party got 0.5% of the vote.

The 1983 election saw a small recovery as the party came close to a full slate of candidates, but won 2.69% of the vote. The 1986 vote was the third and last election in which the party was shut out. Its share of the popular vote improved to 6.74%.

In 1987, Gordon Wilson became the leader of the provincial Liberal Party when no one else was interested. Wilson severed formal links between the provincial Liberal party and its federal counterpart. Since the mid-1970s, most federal Liberals in BC had chosen to support the British Columbia Social Credit Party at the provincial level. For the provincial party, the intent of this separation was to reduce the influence of Social Credit members of federal party. From the federal party's perspective, this move was equally beneficial to them, as the provincial party was heavily in debt.

Wilson set about to rebuild the provincial party as a credible third party in British Columbia politics. During the same period, the ruling Social Credit party was beset by controversy under the leadership of Bill Vander Zalm. As a result, multiple Social Credit scandals caused many voters to look for an alternative.

By the time of the 1991 election, Wilson lobbied to be included in the televised Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) debate between Vander Zalm's successor, Premier Rita Johnston and BC NDP leader Michael Harcourt. The CBC agreed, and Wilson impressed many voters with his performance. The Liberal campaign gained momentum, and siphoned off much support from the Social Credit campaign. While the BC NDP won the election, the Liberals came in second with 17 seats. Wilson became leader of the Opposition.

Official Opposition under Wilson: 1991–1993
Wilson's policies did not coincide with many other Liberals both in the legislature and in the party who wanted to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Social Credit. The Liberals also proved themselves to be inexperienced, both in the legislature and in building a broad-based political movement. They had a difficult time to build a disciplined organization that could mount an effective opposition against the New Democratic Party provincial government.

In 1993, Wilson's leadership was further damaged by revelations of his affair with fellow Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji. By this time, most of the caucus was in open revolt against his leadership. Wilson agreed to call for a leadership convention, at which he would be a candidate. Delta South MLA Fred Gingell became the leader of the Opposition while the Liberal leadership race took place.

Soon, former party leader Gordon Gibson and Vancouver mayor Gordon Campbell entered the leadership race. Campbell won decisively on the first ballot, with former party leader Gordon Gibson placing second and Wilson third. The leadership election was decided on a one-member, one vote system through which Liberals voted for their choices by telephone.

Wilson and Tyabji then left the Liberals and formed their own party, the Progressive Democratic Alliance.

Official Opposition under Campbell: 1993–2001
Once Campbell became leader, the Liberals adopted the moniker "BC Liberals" for the first time, and soon introduced a new logo and new party colours (red and blue, instead of the usual "Liberal red" and accompanying maple leaf). The revised name and logo was an attempt to distinguish itself more clearly in the minds of voters from the federal Liberal Party of Canada.

In early 1994, Campbell was elected to the legislature in a by-election. Under his leadership, the party began moving to the right, gaining support from members of the former Social Credit Party and, later, the provincial Reform Party. Some moderate Socreds had begun voting Liberal as far back as the Vander Zalm era. The Liberals won two former Socred seats in by-elections held in the Fraser Valley region, solidifying their claim to be the clear alternative to the existing BC NDP government. The Liberal party also filled the vacuum created on the centre-right of the BC political spectrum by Social Credit's collapse.

In the 1996 election, the BC Liberals won the popular vote. However, much of the Liberal margin was wasted on large margins in the outer regions of the province; they only won eight seats in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. In rural British Columbia, particularly in the Interior where the railway was the lifeblood of the local economy – the BC Liberals lost several contests because of discomfort that the electorate had with some of Campbell's policies, principally his promise to sell BC Rail. The net result was to consign the Liberals to opposition again, though they managed to slash the NDP's majority from 13 to three.

After the election, the BC Liberals set about making sure that there would be no repeat of 1996. Campbell jettisoned some of the less popular policy planks in his 1996 platform, most notably a promise to sell BC Rail, as the prospect of the sale's consequences had alienated supporters in the Northern Interior ridings.

Campbell government: 2001–2011
After a scandal-filled second term for the BC NDP government, the BC Liberals won the 2001 election with the biggest landslide in BC history, taking 77 of 79 seats. They even managed to unseat Premier Ujjal Dosanjh in his own riding. Gordon Campbell became the seventh premier in ten years, and the first Liberal premier in almost 50 years.

Campbell introduced a 25% cut in all provincial income taxes on the first day he was installed to office. The BC Liberals also reduced the corporate income tax and abolished the corporate capital tax for most businesses (a tax on investment and employment that had been introduced by the New Democrats).

Campbell's first term was also noted for fiscal austerity, including reductions in welfare rolls and some social services, deregulation, the sale of some government assets (in particular the "Fast ferries" built by the previous government, which were sold off for a fraction of their price). Campbell also initiated the privatization of BC Rail, which the Liberals had promised not to sell in order to win northern ridings which had rejected the party in 1996 but reversed this promise after election, with criminal investigations connected with the bidding process resulting in the 2003 British Columbia Legislature raids and the ensuing and still-pending court case. There were several significant labour disputes, some of which were settled through government legislation but which included confrontations with the province's doctors. Campbell also downsized the civil service, with staff cutbacks of more than fifty percent in some government departments, and despite promises of smaller government the size of cabinet was nearly doubled and parliamentary salaries raised. Governance was also re-arranged such that Deputy Ministers were now to report to the Chief of Staff in the premier's office, rather than to their respective ministers. In the course of the cuts, hospitals, courthouses and extended care facilities around the province were shut down, particularly in smaller communities, and enforcement staff such as the BC Conservation Service were reduced to marginal levels. Various provincial parks created during the previous NDP regime were also downgraded to protected area status, meaning they could be opened for resource exploitation, and fees for use of parks were raised.

In 2003, a drug investigation known as Operation Everwhichway led to raids on government offices in the British Columbia Parliament Buildings in relation to suspect dealings concerning the sale of BC Rail to CN in a scandal which became known as "Railgate" and the trial of four former ministerial aides for influence peddling, breach of trust and accepting bribes. The Liberals were re-elected in the 2005 election with a reduced majority of 7 seats (46–33). The Liberals were again re-elected in the 2009 election.

Shortly after this election the introduction of the HST was announced, contrary to promises made during the election campaign.

On November 3, 2010, facing an imminent caucus revolt over his management style and the political backlash against the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) and the controversial end to the BC Rail corruption trial and with his approval rating as low as 9% in polls, Gordon Campbell announced his resignation.

Clark government: 2011–2017
The party's 2011 leadership convention was prompted by Gordon Campbell's request to the party to hold a leadership convention "at the earliest possible date". The convention elected Christy Clark as its new leader of the party on February 26, 2011. Clark and her new Cabinet were sworn in on March 14.

Under Clark, the party charted a more centrist outlook while continuing its recent tradition of being a coalition of federal Liberal and federal Conservative supporters. She immediately raised the minimum wage from $8/hour to $10.25/hour and introduced a province-wide Family Day similar to Ontario's. Clark became premier during the aftermath of the 2008–09 recession, and continued to hold the line on government spending, introducing two deficit budgets before a balanced one for the 2013–14 fiscal year, which included a tax hike on high-income British Columbians. She also sought to take advantage of BC's liquified natural gas (LNG) reserves, positioning the budding LNG industry as a major economic development opportunity over the next decade. While the final years of Gordon Campbell's administration had seen far-reaching and progressive environmental legislation enacted, Clark was more measured in her approach to environmental policy. While continuing with BC's first-in-North-America carbon tax, she promised to freeze the rate during the 2013 election and her LNG development aspirations seemed to contradict greenhouse gas emissions targets set by the Campbell government in 2007. She also announced in 2012 that any future pipeline that crosses BC would have to meet five conditions that included environmental requirements and Indigenous consultation. Controversially, she indicated that one of her five conditions would be that BC receives its "fair share" of any revenues that accrue from increased pipeline and tanker traffic. This has put her in direct conflict with the province of Alberta, who sought increased market access for its bitumen through BC ports, yet adamantly refuse any arrangement which would see BC receive any royalties.

In 2011, Colin Hansen proposed the party change its name in order to avoid confusion with the unrelated Liberal Party of Canada and to better reflect its status as a coalition of many federal Conservative and Liberal voters. He did not propose an alternative name. Clark said she would consider a name change but was not in "any rush to do it".

During the 2013 election, Clark entered the campaign low in public opinion polls and trailing her main rival, Adrian Dix of the NDP, by as much as 20 points. The BC Liberals campaign slogan was "Strong Economy, Secure Tomorrow" and highlighted a balanced budget and strong development opportunities in the LNG sector as a reason for voters to elect them for a fourth term in office. Clark brought in strategists affiliated with the Ontario Liberal Party, such as Don Guy and Laura Miller, and federal Liberal figures, such as Mike McDonald, to run her office and campaign. The BC Liberals came from behind to secure a fourth term in office, however Clark was defeated in her Vancouver riding, but won a subsequent by-election in the Okanagan riding of Westside-Kelowna. After the election, she sought a thawing of relations between BC and Alberta over future pipeline projects, signing onto former Alberta premier Alison Redford's National Energy Strategy. In early 2014, the Liberals brought down a second straight balanced budget and introduced legislation to change BC's liquor laws to allow liquor sales in some grocery stores and allow children to sit with adults in pubs and restaurants where liquor is served.

In the 2017 election, the BC Liberals' seat count was reduced to 43, one seat short of a majority. On May 29, 2017, after final vote counting had completed, the BC NDP and the BC Green Party agreed to a confidence and supply agreement to ensure a stable minority government. Their combined 44 seats give them an advantage over the BC Liberals' 43, which was sufficient to defeat Clark's government on a confidence vote on June 29, 2017, after which Clark resigned as premier (effective July 18, 2017) and the lieutenant governor asked NDP leader John Horgan to form a government.

Rich Coleman became the party's interim leader following Clark's resignation.

Official Opposition under Wilkinson and Bond: 2018–2022

Andrew Wilkinson was elected party leader on February 3, 2018. He served as leader of the Opposition for two years. During the 2020 general election, Wilkinson was criticized by party members, including the membership chair, for his delay in removing Laurie Throness, a candidate and former MLA who had made anti-LGBTQ statements. After the party was defeated in the election, he resigned. Shirley Bond served as the party's interim leader until the 2022 leadership contest.

Falcon leadership and name change: since 2022
Kevin Falcon was elected leader of the BC Liberals on February 5, 2022.

During his leadership campaign, Falcon pledged to rename and rebrand the party. At the 2022 party convention, delegates passed a resolution to move forward with the name-change process, beginning with consultations with the party membership before putting it to a vote by the end of the year. After a province-wide survey, "BC United" was put forward as the potential new name for the party. The name was then put to party members on November 13, and on November 16, it was announced that the name change had been approved by roughly 80 per cent. The name change was later ratified and took effect on April 12, 2023.

The name change preceded a significant drop in polling numbers for the party, with the BC Conservatives – led by former Liberal MLA John Rustad, who defected shortly before the name change was finalized – surpassing them as the second most popular party in the province according to polls. After polling at 33 percent in the immediate aftermath of the name change, BC United suffered a further MLA defection to the Conservatives, and dropped to 19 percent in the polls, 6 points behind the Conservatives by that September. In 2024, two more BC United MLAs, Lorne Doerkson and Elenore Sturko, defected to the BC Conservatives. BC United has since suffered further defections from members and candidates. Some think that the name change led to voters not knowing that BC United was a continuation of the BC Liberals; a Léger poll released in October 2023 found that a third of voters did not know about the name change.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, both BC United and the BC Conservatives were polling at similar levels and appeared to be competing for overlapping demographics of voters.

Party leaders
Source: Legislative Library of British Columbia

Election results
Source: Elections BC

BC United Youth
BC United Youth is the youth wing of the party. The executive board is elected at an annual general meeting and is composed of five youth members: the president, vice president Communications, vice president Events, vice president Operations, and vice president Outreach. As of September 2022, these positions are held by Harman Khosa, Teddy O'Donnell, Olivia Wankling, Mark Dhillon and James Lehmann, respectively.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: BC United


text:
Suzanne Valadon

Suzanne Valadon (23 September 1865 – 7 April 1938) was a French painter who was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon at Bessines-sur-Gartempe, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She was also the mother of painter Maurice Utrillo.

Valadon spent nearly 40 years of her life as an artist. The subjects of her drawings and paintings, such as Joy of Life (1911), included mostly female nudes, portraits of women, still lifes, and landscapes. She never attended the academy and was never confined within a set tradition or style of art. Despite not being confined to any tradition, she shocked the artistic world by painting male nudes as well as less idealized images of women in comparison to those of her male counterparts.

She was a model for many renowned artists. Among them, Valadon appeared in such paintings as Dance at Bougival (1883) and Dance in the City by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1883), and Suzanne Valadon (1885) and The Hangover (Suzanne Valadon) (1887 - 1889) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Early life
Valadon grew up in poverty with her mother, an unmarried laundress in Montmartre. She did not know her father. Known to be quite independent and rebellious, she attended primary school until age eleven when she began working.

She had a series of jobs that included working in a milliner's workshop, at a factory making funeral wreaths, selling vegetables, and as a waitress. At the age of 15, she obtained a job in her most desired field: performing in the circus as an acrobat. She was able to work at the circus because of her connection with Count Antoine de La Rochefoucauld and Thèo Wagner, two symbolist painters, who were involved in decorating a circus belonging to Medrano. The circus was visited frequently by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Berthe Morisot and it is speculated that this was the inspiration for a painting of Valadon by Morisot. A fall from a trapeze that injured her back is what ultimately ended her circus career after one year.

It is commonly believed that Valadon taught herself how to draw at the age of nine. In the Montmartre quarter of Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model and a muse for artists, observing and learning their techniques, as she could not afford art lessons herself. She observed and learned from artists, such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, before becoming a noted and successful painter in her own right.

Model
Valadon began working as a model in 1880 in Montmartre at age 15. She modeled for more than ten years for many different artists including Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, Théophile Steinlen, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jean-Jacques Henner, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. She modeled under the name "Maria" before being nicknamed "Suzanne" by Toulouse-Lautrec, after the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders as he felt that she especially preferred modeling for older artists. She was Toulouse-Lautrec's lover for two years, which ended when she attempted suicide in 1888.

Valadon learned and furthered her art by observing the techniques of the artists for whom she posed. She was considered a very focused, ambitious, rebellious, determined, self-confident, and passionate woman. In the early 1890s, she befriended Edgar Degas, who was impressed by her bold line drawings and fine paintings. He purchased her work and encouraged her. She remained one of his closest friends until his death in 1917. Art historian Heather Dawkins believed that Valadon's experience as a model added depth to her own images of nude women, which tended to be less idealized than the representations of women by the male post-impressionists.

Morisot's 1880 drawing of Valadon as a tightrope walker preceded it, but the most recognizable early image of Valadon is in Renoir's Dance at Bougival from 1883, the same year that she posed for Dance in the City. In 1885, Renoir painted her portrait again as Girl Braiding Her Hair. Another of his portraits of her in 1885, Suzanne Valadon, is of her head and shoulders in profile. Valadon frequented the bars and taverns of Paris with her fellow painters and she was Toulouse-Lautrec's subject in his oil painting The Hangover.

Artist
Valadon was an acclaimed painter of her time, well-respected and championed by contemporaries such as Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. She was admitted to professional associations and her works were admitted to juried exhibitions. She lived a bohemian life with rebellious vision.

Valadon's earliest surviving signed and dated work is a self-portrait from 1883, drawn in charcoal and pastel. She produced mostly drawings between 1883 and 1893, and began painting in 1892. Her first models were family members, especially her son, mother, and niece.

Valadon began painting full-time in 1896. She painted still lifes, portraits, flowers, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes. Her work attracted attention partly because, by painting unidealized nudes, she upset the social norms of the time that were created by male artists.

Her earliest known female nude was executed in 1892. In 1895, the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel exhibited a group of twelve etchings by Valadon that show women in various stages of their toilettes. Later, she regularly showed at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. Valadon was the first woman painter accepted as an exhibitor in the Salon de la Nationale in 1894, which is notable since competition for acceptance was fierce.

She exhibited in the Salon d'Automne from 1909, in the Salon des Independants from 1911, and in the Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes during 1933-1938. Notably, Degas was the first person to purchase drawings from her, and he introduced her to other collectors, including Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard. Degas also taught her the skill of soft-ground etching.

After her marriage to the well-to-do banker Paul Mousis, in 1896 Valadon became a full-time painter. She made a shift from drawing to painting in 1909. Her first large oils for the Salon related to sexual pleasures and they were some of the first examples in modern painting with a man being an object of desire by a woman similar to that idealized treatment of women by male artists. These notable Salon paintings include Adam and Eve (Adam et Eve) (1909), Joy of Life (La Joie de vivre) (1911), and Casting the Net (Lancement du filet) (1914). In her lifetime, Valadon produced approximately 273 drawings, 478 paintings, and 31 etchings, excluding pieces given away or destroyed.

Valadon was well known during her lifetime, especially toward the end of her career, in the 1920s more specifically, as she helped to transform the female nude that depicted expression through a woman's experience. Her works are in the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Grenoble, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others.

Valadon's painting of an acrobat, L' Acrobate ou La Roue, sold in 2017 for £75,000 by Christie's Auction House.

Style
Valadon was not confined to a specific style, yet both Symbolist and Post-Impressionist aesthetics are clearly demonstrated within her work. She worked primarily with oil paint, oil pencils, pastels, and red chalk; she did not use ink or watercolor because these mediums were too fluid for her preference. Valadon's paintings feature rich colors and bold, open brushwork often featuring firm black lines to define and outline her figures.

Valadon's self-portraits, portraits, nudes, landscapes, and still lifes remain detached from trends and contemporaneous aspects of academic art. The subjects of Valadon's paintings often reinvent the old master themes: women bathing, reclining nudes, and interior scenes. She preferred to paint working-class models. Art historian Patricia Mathews suggests that Valadon's working-class status and experience as a model influenced her intimate, familiar observation of these women and their bodies. In this respect she differed from Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, who painted mostly women, but "remained well within the bounds of propriety in their subject matter" because of their upper-middle-class status in French society. Valadon's marginalized status allowed her to enter the contemporary male dominated domain of art through modeling and her lack of formal academic training may have made her less influenced by academic conventions. She has been noted for that difference in her paintings of the nude women. She resisted typical depictions of women, emphasizing class trappings and their sexual attractiveness, through her realistic depiction of unidealised and self-possessed women who are not overly sexualised. She also painted many nude self-portraits across the span of her career, the later of which displayed her aging body realistically.

Valadon emphasized the importance of the composition of her portraits over techniques such as painting expressive eyes. Her later works, such as Blue Room (1923), are brighter in color and show a new emphasis on decorative backgrounds and patterned materials.

Personal life
In 1883, aged 18, Valadon gave birth to a son, Maurice Utrillo. Valadon's mother cared for Maurice while she returned to modelling. Later, Valadon's friend Miquel Utrillo signed papers recognizing Maurice as his son, although the true paternity was never disclosed.

In 1893, Valadon began a short-lived affair with composer Erik Satie, moving to a room next to his on the Rue Cortot. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui, writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet". After six months she left, leaving him devastated.

Valadon married the stockbroker Paul Mousis in 1895. For 13 years, she lived with him in an apartment in Paris and in a house in the outlying region. In 1909, Valadon began an affair with the painter André Utter, a 23-year-old friend of her son. He became a model for her and appears as Adam in Adam et Eve, which was painted that year. She divorced Moussis in 1913. Valadon then married Utter in 1914. Utter managed her career as well as that of her son. Valadon and Utter regularly exhibited work together until the couple divorced in 1934, when Valadon was almost seventy. They continued a relationship until her death, nonetheless, and are buried together in the Saint Ouen cemetery in Paris.

Suzanne Valadon died of a stroke on 7 April 1938, at the age of 72, and was buried in Division 13 of the Cimetière de Saint-Ouen, Paris. Among those in attendance at the funeral were her friends and colleagues André Derain, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque.

Group exhibitions
After her death in 1938
 * 1894, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris
 * 1907, Galerie Eugène Blot, Paris
 * 1909, Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais, Paris
 * 1910, Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais, Paris
 * 1911, Salon d'Automne, Grand Palais, Paris
 * 1911 - continuing, Salon des Indépendants, Paris
 * 1917, Utrillo, Valadon, Utter, Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris
 * 1920, Second Exhibition of Young French Painting, Galerie Manzy Joyant, Paris
 * 1921, Young Painting, Palais d'Ixelles
 * 1926, (retrospective), Salon des Indépendants, Paris
 * 1927, Salon des Tuileries, Paris
 * 1928, Salon des Tuileries, Paris
 * 1933-1938, Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes, Paris
 * 1940, 22nd Biennale Internationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris
 * 1949, Great Trends in Contemporary Painting from Manet to our Day, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyons; 1961, Maurice Utrillo V. Suzanne Valadon, Haus der Kunst, Munich
 * 1964, Documenta, Kassel
 * 1969, Fourteenth Salon de Montrouge
 * 1976, Women Artists (1550-1950), Los Angeles County Museum of Art
 * 1979, Maurice Utrillo, Suzanne Valadon, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec
 * 1991, Albi: Utrillo, Valadon, Utter, Chateau Constant, Bessines
 * 1991, Utrillo, Valadon, Utter: la Trilogie Maudite, Acropolis, Nice

Solo exhibitions

 * 1911, the first solo exhibition of the work of Suzanne Valadon, at the Galerie Clovis Sagot
 * 1915, Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris
 * 1919, Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris
 * 1922, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
 * 1923, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
 * 1927, retrospective, Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris
 * 1928, Galerie des Archers, Lyons
 * 1928, Galerie Berthe Weill, Paris
 * 1929, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
 * 1929, Galerie Bernier, Paris
 * 1931, Galerie Le Portique, Paris
 * 1931, Galerie Le Centaure, Brussels
 * 1932, Galerie Le Portique, Paris
 * 1932, retrospective with a preface by Édouard Herriot, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris
 * 1937, Galerie Bernier, Paris
 * 1938, Galerie Pétridès, Paris
 * 1939, Galerie Bernier, Paris
 * 1942, Galerie Pétridès, Paris
 * 1947, Galerie Bernier, Paris
 * 1947, Galerie Pétridès, Paris
 * 1948, Tribute to Suzanne Valadon, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris
 * 1956, The Lefevre Gallery, London
 * 1959, Galerie Pétridès, Paris
 * 1962, Galerie Pétridès, Paris
 * 1967, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris
 * 1996, Suzanne Valadon, Pierre Gianada Foundation, Martigny
 * 2021, Barnes Foundation, September 26, 2021 to January 9, 2022, first major U.S. solo exhibition of Valadon's work
 * 2022, Glyptoteket, Copenhagen

Permanent collections

 * Albright-Knox, Buffalo
 * British Museum, London
 * Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
 * Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
 * Detroit Institute of Arts
 * Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
 * Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge
 * Indianapolis Museum of Art
 * Metropolitan Museum of Art
 * Minneapolis Institute of Art
 * Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar
 * Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon
 * Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
 * Museum of Modern Art, New York
 * National Museum of Women in the Arts
 * Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
 * Petit Palais, Geneva
 * Rose Art Museum, Waltham
 * Smart Museum of Art, Chicago
 * University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor

Illustrations

 * Jean Cocteau, Bertrand Guégan (1892-1943); L'almanach de Cocagne pour l'an 1920-1922, Dédié aux vrais Gourmands Et aux Francs Buveurs

Feminist commentary
As one of the best documented French artists of the early twentieth century, Valadon's body of work has been of great interest to feminist art historians, especially given her focus on the female form. Her work was candid and occasionally awkward, often characterized by strong lines, and her resistance to both academic and avant-garde conventions for representing the female nude have encouraged interest in her work: It has been argued that many of her images of women signal a form of resistance to some of the dominant representations of female sexuality in early twentieth-century Western art. Many of her nudes painted from the 1910s onward are heavily proportioned and sometimes awkwardly posed. The feminist critics assert that they are conspicuously at odds with the svelte, 'feminine' type to be found in the imagery of both popular and 'high' art. Her self-portrait from 1931, when she was 66, stands out as one of the early examples of a woman painter recording her own physical decline.

Like many other talented female artists, although she is known to have been an important modern artist, Valadon never had been given a solo exhibition by a U.S. art institution. Her first institutional solo exhibition in the U.S., at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, was scheduled to open in September 2021.

Honors and legacy
Both an asteroid (6937 Valadon) and a crater on Venus are named in her honor.

The small square at the base of the Montmartre funicular in Paris is named Place Suzanne Valadon. At the top of the funicular, and less than 50 meters to its east, are the steps named rue Maurice Utrillo after her son the artist.

Depiction in novels and plays
A novel based on the life of Suzanne Valadon was written by Elaine Todd Koren and was published in 2001, titled Suzanne: of Love and Art. An earlier novel by Sarah Baylis, Utrillo's Mother, was published first in England and later in the United States. Timberlake Wertenbaker's play, The Line (2009), traces the relationship between Valadon and Degas. Several have speculated Valadon was the basis for the character Suzanne Rouvier in the W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel The Razor's Edge. There were many parallels between Valadon's life and that of the Rouvier character.

Suzanne Valadon’s relationships with Edgar Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec are described in R.w. Meek’s two historical fiction novels, The Dream Collector, Book I “Sabrine & Sigmund Freud” and The Dream Collector, Book II “Sabrine & Vincent van Gogh.”

title: Suzanne Valadon


text:
S.C.I.E.N.C.E.

S.C.I.E.N.C.E. is the second studio album by American rock band Incubus. It was released on September 9, 1997, by Epic and Immortal Records. The album was certified gold by the RIAA, and is the second and final release to feature Gavin Koppel (known as DJ Lyfe), who first appeared on the 1997 Enjoy Incubus EP. It has been occasionally considered the band's proper debut album, due to the nature of their independent release Fungus Amongus.

Production
After recording their independent debut album Fungus Amongus, Incubus signed a seven-record deal with Epic Records/Sony-affiliated Immortal Records. An EP titled Enjoy Incubus was released by Epic/Immortal at the beginning of 1997, and Incubus would go on a European tour with labelmates Korn for the next few months. With Enjoy Incubus, the label's strategy was to build the band's fanbase through touring rather than radio airplay. Their first full-length major label effort S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was recorded during May–June 1997. Singer Brandon Boyd said "S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was done in six weeks at 4th Street Recording, a very small, charming studio in Santa Monica. Very different experience, but very important on this band's existence." During the recording, the band utilized older analogue gear that they described as having "phat sounds and spider webs." Incubus chose Jim Wirt to produce the album, since he had worked with them on earlier recordings. Guitarist Mike Einziger believed that Wirt helped encourage their creativity during the recording of S.C.I.E.N.C.E., saying in 1997, "he helps us come up with strange stuff and he likes it when we do. He doesn't try to change what we do, he tries to enhance it." Einziger added that, "when we signed our record deal and started working on this album, we were worried that someone would come along and tell us to hold back, and try and make our songs a little more palatable. But that never happened. They kinda just said, 'do whatever you want'. With that kind of support, we just let everything kind of run wild."

When S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was in the process of being recorded and mastered, the band went on some local mini-tours, in addition to appearing on the soundtrack for the movie Spawn. The soundtrack was released on July 29, 1997, by Epic/Immortal, and featured a collaboration with DJ Greyboy called "Familiar". This song also briefly appeared in the movie itself, which was released to theaters on August 1, 1997.

Musical style and influences
Musically, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. has been described as alternative metal, nu metal, funk metal, and rap metal. The album incorporates elements of multiple genres, including heavy metal, funk,  hip hop,  techno, jazz,   and electro. According to Rolling Stone writer Rob Kemp, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. "links funk metal to the rap-metal". "Magic Medicine", described as a trip hop track, samples a recorded reading of a children's book. Though sometimes retrospectively associated with it, the term nu metal was not yet in usage when S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was released, but rather terms such as alternative metal, funk metal and rap metal. In 1997, Boyd said "people are real quick to put labels on music, so I'm sure they're going to do that with us. But we think we're doing something cool, and judging from the responses that we've gotten from all over the world, others do too." Einziger has since stated that Incubus were not part of the same Southern Californian scene as bands like Korn and System of a Down during their independent years, despite having similar influences. In interviews from the late 2010s and 2020s, Boyd has said that he dislikes the nu metal label and doesn't consider the band's early work to be part of the movement. In a 2022 Metal Hammer interview, he remarked, "we weren’t trying to fit into a particular niche at a particular time. We were just kids being influenced by a small handful of bands that we grew up with."

The album as a whole has been labelled as a "weed-and-mushrooms influenced funk/metal freakout." Revolver describe Brandon Boyd as vocally "drawing on the eccentric funk-rap" of Faith No More, Primus and Red Hot Chili Peppers. They consider him to have a "goofy yet also badass presence" on S.C.I.E.N.C.E. Boyd has cited Faith No More's vocalist Mike Patton as being an influence from since he was an early teenager, as well as Patton's side project Mr. Bungle, who were also known for mixing a wide array of genres. In a 1998 interview, Boyd commented, "there's a definite influence from Faith No More. All of us have been listening to that band since when we were really young. We were like 14 or something when that album [The Real Thing] came out. They were an awesome band, they did some really groundbreaking things in their time, and it's kind of a bummer to hear that they broke up."

The band also became interested in emerging forms of electronic music around the making of S.C.I.E.N.C.E., with their previous full-length album Fungus Amongus having no influence from electronic genres. While playing at European festivals with Korn during early 1997, they recall being exposed to foreign electronic acts such as The Chemical Brothers.

Songs
About the opening song "Redefine", Boyd said in 1997: "Redefine" is about the creation of your own reality and your own world. The metaphor I used was humans being like Magic Markers. For so long, they painted black and white pictures in their life because that's all they thought they could do. But they can paint with a different color and make a very vibrant and beautiful picture if they take control.

On the single "New Skin", he further elaborated: In "New Skin", I attribute a scab to the present state of society. The way the scab looks in its worst state is gross and chaotic and horrible, that's now, but when it breaks away, there's a brand new piece of skin that's stronger than before. It's like creation out of chaos.

The song "Favorite Things", according to Boyd, related to the topic of religion: "My Favorite Things" is my personal beliefs about religion and how it oppresses the things I enjoy the most. Unfortunately, the simplest things, such as thinking for myself, creating my own reality and being whatever the hell I want to be each day of my life, are a sin. To be a good Christian basically means to give up the reigns of your life and let some unseen force do it for you.

The single "A Certain Shade of Green" has been described as being a song about procrastination. The line "Are you gonna stand around till 2012 A.D.?" is a reference to an interpretation of the Mayan calendar which dictated that the world would end on December 21, 2012. Boyd did not believe this to be true, but it was on his mind as his mother was researching it for a book called Maya Memory: The Glory That Was Palenque.

While recording "Nebula", Boyd said in 1997, "we found out what it's like to actually plug a phaser pedal into the wall while it's on. It sounds like a laser gun, and that's the first sound you hear in 'Nebula'." He added that for the song, "we used these walkie-talkies for children that have this Slinky-like coil between them. When you talk through them and hit the coil, it makes this natural reverb, like talking in another dimension."

Title
In 1997, Einziger claimed that the title reflected the experimental nature of the album, and the creative freedom the band were given. He was quoted as saying, "our album is called S.C.I.E.N.C.E. because we were able to experiment. We were able to take our time and get everything to sound the way we wanted it to — weird science and energetic funk." It has also been mentioned by various band members that the acronym S.C.I.E.N.C.E. stands for Sailing Catamarans Is Every Nautical Captain's Ecstasy. "Sometimes, we just sit around and come up with these for laughs. In other words, there's not just one meaning, it's just food for thought," said Boyd in 1998. In other early interviews, band members claimed that the title stood for Stupid Cops Invade Everyone's Natural Chaotic Energy, Sounds Cool in Eyes Near Communistic Entities and Surreal Cats in Economics Never Communicate Estacticly.

Touring
Shortly before the release of S.C.I.E.N.C.E., Incubus played a handful of shows with rap rock bands Phunk Junkeez and Shootyz Groove. To support the album, Incubus went on tour with 311 and Sugar Ray for the remainder of 1997. Incubus were initially only meant to perform on the first leg of this tour, but the response to them was so great that they were asked to stay for the rest of the tour.

In February 1998, DJ Lyfe was fired by the band, and was replaced by DJ Chris Kilmore. The reasoning given for his firing was because of creative and personal differences, and because Incubus could no longer be a "productive family" with him in it. Kilmore was originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and had moved to Los Angeles, where he was struggling to support himself. Prior to joining, Kilmore recalled sometimes not having enough money for electricity, telling Spin in 2001 that "It was cool, I just used candles at night." Kilmore was recommended by a friend of the band, and received a phone call on Friday February 13, 1998, where he was asked to audition. The audition took place the next day at the Sound Arena Studios in Reseda, Los Angeles. Kilmore remembered in 2019 that, "we sat around for 45 minutes just talking", adding "little did I know they were really just trying to get an idea of my personality. So we were talking everything from girls to aliens — all kinds of crazy stuff." During the last 15 minutes of the audition, bassist Alex Katunich (known by the stage name Dirk Lance) asked Kilmore to showcase his turntable skills. The other members of Incubus were impressed with Kilmore's playing and attitude towards life, with Einziger saying at the time, "after letting go of Gavin, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to acquire another member into the band, but then we met Chris and my opinion instantly changed." Following the end of the audition, Kilmore was given a cassette tape with 16 live recordings of Fungus Amongus and S.C.I.E.N.C.E. songs, as he had not heard any of the band's music at that point. In 2019, he recalled "later that night, they said, 'Can you come rehearse on Sunday?' I was like, 'No. It’s Valentine's Day, and I’m dating a Dominican redhead from Queens. So I cannot miss that.' So then, they were like, 'Well can you learn all these songs on Monday? Because we have a show on Tuesday.' I said yeah."

In 1998, the new lineup played shows with Far, Limp Bizkit and British band One Minute Silence, in addition to performing at the 1998 edition of Ozzfest, and at the inaugural edition of Korn's Family Values Tour. According to Kilmore, the band played a total of 305 shows between the time he joined the band and the end of 1998. Boyd found out that his long time girlfriend was having an affair while he was away on tour for S.C.I.E.N.C.E., inspiring the lyrical themes for Incubus's next album Make Yourself, which was noted for having a more melodic sound.

Regarding the change in direction on Make Yourself, Kilmore reflected in 2002, "I think what it was when we were touring behind S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was seeing all these other bands out there who were ripping off bands like Korn and the Deftones and 311, bands that we enjoy and that we love, I think when we realized that and we went into the studio to write Make Yourself, we said 'OK, let's not do that.'" Kilmore also recalls that, "during S.C.I.E.N.C.E. our crowd was all teenage kids wearing black and they were all men. Once 'Pardon Me' started getting some traction the crowd turned into half-girl crowds. Then when 'Stellar' and 'Drive' came out, those half-girl crowds became all screaming teenage girls in the front row." Einziger stated, "It was a very masculine time in music and we were associated with that. We would be playing Ozzfest tours with all these different bands who were our good friends and there was pressure to be like that. I think the tenderness and emotional side of the [later] music was a reaction to all that aggressive music that was happening at that time. Our reaction was to go in the other direction." According to Boyd in 2019 it "felt a little strange to be associated with some of the bands around that time who were very deeply misogynistic in their content and vibrationally kind of violent."

Release and reception
In early 1999, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. and Enjoy Incubus were estimated to have sold a combined total of 200,000 units. Following their commercial breakthrough on Make Yourself, sales for S.C.I.E.N.C.E. began to increase. By 2001, it had sold 370,000 units in the United States. Epic/Immortal released a remastered version of the album during November 2001, and in the next year sales rose to 500,000.

Critics wrote favorably of the album's diverse style. Pitchfork gave it an 8.7 out of 10, stating "this CD successfully combines all sorts of shit without sounding like a mess. Here you have a song: it's got a phat-chunk bass beat twanging fast in back, some crazy electro squornks and bleeps coming and going, sudden snatches of full-blown guitar-jam, a rapid-fire Patton-esque vocalist (Brandon Boyd), all the while someone scratching vinyl and a drummer back there hammering merrily along." AllMusic reviewer David Thomas wrote that the band "manages to make their songs upbeat and danceable as well as tunes to headbang to. An admirable feat in a genre that tends to reward decibel levels instead of quality."

On April 11, 1998, Darren Kerr of the Vancouver publication Drop D praised the album's incorporation of turntablism and trip hop. Kerr also noted similarities between Faith No More, who would announce their breakup just nine days later, writing "I would not dispute that Brandon of the Jungle's evil-lounge-singer-morphing-into-teeth-gnashing-maniac vocal style is emulative of Mike Patton. I also would not argue that a couple of these songs would not sound out of place alongside FNM tracks like 'Caffeine' or 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies'. However, guitarist Michael Einzinger and bassist Alex Katunich are mining a groove vein uniquely their own." CMJ New Music Report wrote in their September 1997 review that, "you've heard this kind of hip hop/metal fusion from bands like Faith No More, Living Colour, Rage Against the Machine and Biohazard, but Incubus has got a bit more funk in its trunk than any of those artists." They noted the album "distinguishes itself from run-of-the-mill surf/skate metal by including a real live DJ (DJ Lyfe) who thrashes as hard on the turntable as the rest of the guys." The review goes on to state that the band manages to create "monstrous riffs", saying "S.C.I.E.N.C.E.'s most memorable songs are the ones in which Incubus proudly bares its metal muscles." Spin in 1998 pointed out not only the band's usage of turntables, but also their usage of the didgeridoo and djembe instruments, which originate from Indigenous Australia and West Africa. In his August 1998 review, Jason Hradil of The Lantern wrote that Boyd has "an intense voice similar to Faith No More's Mike Patton." He further wrote, "Incubus changes tempo and style at least two to three times per song" and "one thing I'll guarantee, is that these young men will bring home their report cards with an 'A' in science." In an October 1997 article focusing on an Incubus concert with 311 and Sugar Ray, Dan Nailen of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News had a positive view of the band's music. He wrote, "combining super-phat beats, rap-style turntable-scratching and crunchy heavy-metal guitar riffs, Incubus is nothing if not unique. Add to the musical mix the pilable vocals of frontman Brandon Boyd, reminiscent of Faith No More's Mike Patton, and you have music as interesting as Sugar Ray's is lame."

Legacy
Dylan P. Gadino of CMJ New Music Monthly reflected in November 2001 that Incubus "dropped their major-label debut, S.C.I.E.N.C.E., the same year as some nix-metal founders — 1997 also saw the releases of Limp Bizkit's Three Dollar Bill, Y'all and Sevendust's eponymous disc — yet Incubus's music [was] generally more inspired and layered than the efforts of their brooding counterparts." In November 2001, Amy Sciarretto of sister publication CMJ New Music Report further wrote, "Incubus was poised to be hard rock's bastard child of Faith No More and Primus thanks to its resident hottie Brandon Boyd's easy-on-the-ears emulation of Mike Patton and Dirk Lance's bass thwapping. But between 1997's S.C.I.E.N.C.E. and 1999's Make Yourself, the album that broke Incubus at rock radio, the band took a stylistic turn." Rolling Stone commented in 2002 that "they broke through to the Ozzfest crowd with 1997's eclectic funk-metal album, S.C.I.E.N.C.E.." The 2003 book The Rough Guide to Rock claimed that it was "better and far more accomplished" than their previous releases Enjoy Incubus and Fungus Amongus. The book additionally states that it "gave the band a much smoother, groove-oriented sound. Splashes of funk were offset with driving riffage and spiky turntable shrapnel, while Boyd's lyrics began to encompass a more intellectual world-view than your average rock star."

In 2004, David Clayman of IGN called it "fairly impressive, considering the band's age and experience at the time of those recordings." That same year, Nick Romanow of the Daily Collegian reflected that with S.C.I.E.N.C.E., Incubus "had the potential to become the next Faith No More", noting that "the comparison was even heightened by charismatic frontman Brandon Boyd’s vocal similarities to Mike Patton, Faith No More’s innovative singer." Vice in 2013 considered it to be their heaviest release, as well as "what a more elastic and bold Red Hot Chili Peppers could be like." Loudwire stated in 2019 that it was "Incubus at their creative peak, and at their most insane", further adding, "before their music almost entirely mellowed out, Incubus were a high energy genre-bending band of misfits. The sophomore effort fused metal, hip-hop, trip-hop, funk, jazz and even a little bit of house music." On the album's 20th anniversary in 2017, Spin wrote that it mixes "cartoonish slap bass with bongwater-soaked guitar distortion [and] dubby drum-n-bass with samples from children’s audiobooks." They added, "it’s the sort of record that could have only been made in the late ‘90s. You’d almost expect it to have died in a psychedelics-related car accident before it reached the distinguished age of 20."

Geddy Lee of Canadian rock band Rush was a fan of the album, and at one point expressed interest in collaborating with Incubus. Tosin Abasi, guitarist of progressive metal band Animals as Leaders, has mentioned being influenced by it, with his band later touring with Incubus in 2022. The band's greatest hits releases The Essential Incubus (2012) and Playlist: The Very Best of Incubus (2013) both include songs from the album, while their initial greatest hits release Monuments and Melodies (2009) only included an acoustic version of "A Certain Shade of Green", which was not recorded during the S.C.I.E.N.C.E. era. In 2003, the song "Vitamin" was also featured in the horror film Final Destination 2.

Accolades
VH1 ranked the album tenth on their 2015 list of "The 12 Most Underrated Nu Metal Albums", while Revolver included it on a 2021 list of the "20 Essential Nu-Metal Albums". In 2020, Metal Hammer listed it as being one of the best metal albums released between 1996 and 1997, and also included it in their lists of the top 10 albums of 1997 and the top 20 best metal albums of 1997. When ranking Incubus's discography in 2020, Kerrang! placed S.C.I.E.N.C.E. third, remarking, "for fans of the band’s heavier, zanier leanings, this remains the high bar against which Incubus releases are now measured. Given the subsequent departures from this template, however, it’s likely those early adopters have been left disappointed. You could therefore argue that S.C.I.E.N.C.E. is something of a creative albatross around the band’s neck."

Live performance
Incubus did not often perform songs from S.C.I.E.N.C.E. between the mid-2000s and early 2010s, with Boyd telling Spin in 2017, "there was a period of years when we were knowingly rebelling against it, we were desperately trying to shake off the identity it had created around us. Our original fans would get mad, 'Why don’t you play more stuff from S.C.I.E.N.C.E.?' I think it only happened two or three years ago, when we were touring again, and started to revisit the songs casually in rehearsal studios and sound checks. We started to fall in love with them again. I think we just needed a friend break." He also said there are "tracks that are just kind of ridiculous, that we don’t really fuck with. One day we might."

Track listing
Notes
 * "Calgone" ends at 5:12; the hidden track "Segue 1" begins at 5:42
 * "Segue 1" is also known as "Jose Loves Kate Moss, Part 1"

Personnel
Incubus
 * Brandon Boyd – lead vocals, percussion
 * Mike Einziger – guitar, backing vocals
 * Alex Katunich – bass
 * Gavin Koppel – turntables, keyboards
 * José Pasillas – drums

Additional musicians
 * Charles Waltz – violin
 * Jeremy Wasser – saxophone on "Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song)"

Production
 * Jim Wirt – producer
 * Ulrich Wild – engineer
 * CJ Eiriksson – engineer
 * Donat Kazarinoff – engineer
 * Matthew Kallen – assistant engineer
 * Terry Date – mixing
 * Stephen Marcussen – mastering, remastering
 * Frank Harkins – art direction
 * Chris McCann – photography

title: S.C.I.E.N.C.E.