Part 5

The Cubist pictures in the Salon d’Automne, 1912, was the occasion of the following letter from M. Lempué, painter and doyen du Conseil municipal de la Ville de Paris, addressed M. Bérard, Sous-Secrétaire d’Etat des Beaux-Arts.[32]

If the voice of a municipal counsellor could reach you, I would beg you, would pray you to go and take a turn around the Autumn Salon.

Go there, sir, and although you are a minister, I trust that you will come away as much disgusted as are many people whom I know, and I hope, also, that you will say to yourself in an undertone: “Have I indeed the right to loan a public building to a lot of malefactors who conduct themselves in the world of art as do the _apaches_ in ordinary life?”

You will ask yourself, Mr. Minister, in leaving the place, if nature and the human form have ever before suffered such outrages; you will admit with regret that in this Salon the most trivial uglinesses and vulgarities that can be imagined are there displayed and accumulated; and you will again ask yourself, Mr. Minister, if the dignity of the Government of which you form part is not injured, inasmuch as it appears to take under its protection such a scandal by sheltering horrors like these in a national building.

The Government of the Republic, as it seems to me, ought to be more careful and more respectful of the artistic dignity of France.

A year ago, and for another reason, I wrote to your predecessor, who, by the way, took no notice of my letter; but what is astonishing--does he not let everybody think that he is a meridional, whereas he was born nowhere else than at Montmartre?

A friend whispers to me that you are from Orthez; we are, therefore, fellow-townsmen, for that is almost as if you came from Montrejeau; so then, “Dious bibant!” (Dieu vivant!) it will not be long before you will make known to the Belgian, Frantz Jourdain, who has very modestly set for himself the mission of reforming French art, and who, in order to thoroughly demonstrate his ability to do so, has deposited--I will not say offal--but the store of “La Samaritaine” almost opposite the Louvre, which fact is a sure proof of the superiority of his monstrosity of a structure over the beautiful architecture of the Renaissance. Please, therefore, make known to this architect that in the future he may locate his reforms and his reformers where he pleases, but not again in a public building, and for so doing, all those who have taste and love for beautiful things will applaud you.

Please accept, Mr. Minister, the assurance of my highest regards.

Lempué.

* * * * *

The Committee of the Autumn Salon, in reply, made the following statement:

The committee of the Autumn Salon considers that the only reply which it can make to the especially severe attacks that have been made on it this year is to make announcement of the principle that directs it:

“To admit all efforts of conscientious art, whatever they may be, however personal, and however strange they may seem to the ancient formulae.”

The Autumn Salon is not and does not wish to be the conservator of a school with a fixed formula; it wishes, rather, to remain the ground of generous combat and of the emulation necessary in a country like ours, in order to bring out and fructify both artists and works of art.

The Government, whose rôle is not to direct, but to encourage the artistic effort of the nation, can consider only in the most kindly way a Salon which has been the first to give reception to many artists now celebrated, which has given a place hitherto unknown to decorative art, and which, before all other expositions, has placed music and literature on a par with painting and sculpture.

* * * * *

Then the newspapers published the following item of news:

M. J. L. Breton, deputy from Cherbourg, proposes to put to the Assistant-Secretary of State for the Beaux Arts, in the course of the next discussion of his budget, a question regarding the “scandal” of the Autumn Salon, and to ask him not to allow the use of the Grand Palais for such manifestations, which discredit French art in our national palaces.

This is the question which was put to the consulting commission charged with giving its advice regarding the multiple concessions for the Grand Palais in 1913.

M. Pascal, of the Institute, who presented the question, concluded unfavorably. After a long and lively discussion, the commission ranged itself by a large majority on the side of the proponent.

Let us recall the protests that have been addressed to the Autumn Salon. They were the subject, a few weeks ago, of a letter from Mr. Lampué, dean of the municipal council, who protested against the invasion of _cubism_ into the galleries of the palace of expositions.

It is now up to M. Léon Bérard, Assistant-Secretary of State for the Beaux Arts, to take final action.

* * * * *

On varnishing day, Mr. Gabriel Mourey wrote in the Journal:

“What a pity it is that there is no law permitting the taking of legal action against painters who cultivate hatred of beauty in the public mind. These painters are the advance-guard artists and the Cubists.” M. Mourey neglected to tell us if the legal action which he proposes to us would be civil or penal. In our opinion, it would be necessary to make a distinction: The rich painters might be condemned to pay a penalty, and, so that the Government might not be liable to lose its rights where there is nothing, the poor painters might be hung up high and short.

Oh, tolerance! oh, progress! oh, the twentieth century!

In connection with the controversy “L’Art Décoratif” quoted the following letter from Boucher to his pupil Fragonard: “My dear Fragonard: You are going to see in Italy the works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and their imitators; I say to you in confidence and as a friend, _if you take these people seriously you are lost_.”

* * * * *

Not the least interesting and amusing feature of the lively article from which the above extracts are taken is its own denunciation of the cubists _en bloc_.

It resolutely assails the more orthodox critics for what they say about all the moderns _it likes_ and then it echoes their language in its own condemnation of a body of men who are striving earnestly in their way to do things.

* * * * *

_“Oh! tolerance, oh! progress!_ _Oh! twentieth century!”_

* * * * *

One has only to group the conflicting opinions of great painters and critics to see how much depends upon the point of view and the personal equation.

To say certain pictures are worthless is a matter of individual taste and judgment; they may be worthless to me and not to you, just as clothes one man likes another would refuse to wear.

But to say a school or a movement, irrespective of particular works, is a worthless movement involves not one’s taste but one’s philosophy of life; it involves the proposition that a movement in art that challenges the attention of the art-world _is so devoid of force of any kind_ that it is unworthy attention--an obvious contradiction.

Cubism has produced a lot of inane, uninteresting, and ugly pictures, pictures hopelessly bad in both line and color, but it has also produced pictures that are fine in line and color; but whether a particular picture is good or bad is of no importance whatsoever in comparison with the larger and more vital question:

_What is the relation of Cubism to the art of today and tomorrow?_

* * * * *

When the _Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ was founded in 1890 in a spirit of revolt against the old Salon _Société des Artistes Français_--which dates its expositions from 1673--the schism was complete and the movement was denounced as revolutionary. The art world was divided into two bitterly hostile camps. The two Salons seemed absolutely irreconcilable.

Now they exhibit side by side in practically the same building. The visitor can stand in the main gallery of the one and gaze into the galleries of the other. The only distinctions are separate catalogues and an extra charge of a franc or two if you wish to pass from the one to the other.

* * * * *

Passing from the old Salon to the newer, one still has--to a slight degree--the feeling of passing from older and more conservative pictures to a newer, lighter, and somewhat more modern collection. And there is a difference but it is so slight that casual visitors do not notice it. In fact nine out of ten who visit the two Salons would think they were in but one exhibition, selected and arranged by the same committee, were it not for the additional fee and the two catalogues.

There is no reason today why the two Salons should not coalesce and make one exhibition.

In less than twenty-five years the older has absorbed much of what was good in the revolutionary force of the younger, and so much of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the younger has subsided that the members of the new _Société_ fight side by side with the members of the old _against the two more radical exhibitions_, the _Salon d’Automne_, organized in 1903, and the _Société des Artistes Independents_, organized in 1884.

* * * * *

In time the Salon d’Automne will become quite as conservative as the two older Salons and there will be no reason why it should not exhibit and coalesce with the older.

What is happening in Paris has happened in Munich. The Munich Secessionists, once denounced as aesthetic anarchists, have so far subsided that they exhibit with the academic painters, retaining a faint show of identity by having the word “Secessionist” over the doors of the few rooms they fill.

The old Secession having subsided, the “Neue Sezession” has been organized by “Die Wilden” of Munich and that is now rampant; in ten or twenty years _it_ will be absorbed in the main stream and a still _newer_ secession challenge attention--and so on to the end of progress, for progress depends upon new and newer and ever newer departures. Already there is a division in the New Secession; the “Blue Riders” have withdrawn.

* * * * *

Months after the above was written the London correspondent of the “Chicago Tribune”--Nov. 2, 1913--wrote as follows about the post-impressionist exhibition in the Grafton Galleries:

Many of the pictures which would have provoked happy laughter three years ago now look quite ordinary. The public is inured to them as much as it is inured to Whistler or Degas, and in a little time some of them will be dealers’ pictures, just like the works of the Barbizon school.

There is, for instance, nothing extraordinary about the “Interior of a Café,” by VanGogh, except its quiet excellence. It is all seen as justly and yea as newly as a character in one of Tolstoi’s novels. One feels that any one could have painted it who had had the luck to see it so.

The “Boats at Anchor,” also by VanGogh, is merely a sound but not very interesting impressionist picture, and his flower piece is even academic in a delightful way. Cézanne’s “Boys Bathing” is one of those works on which the art of modern painters like M. Friesz is based.

It looks like a representation of something seen instantaneously, and yet at the same time it is all designed like a work of Nicholas Poussin’s.

M. Matisse’s “Joaquina” is timidly skied, but it is not in the least infuriating, like his famous gentleman in pajamas. Indeed, his method here justifies itself at first sight, for by no other means, one feels, could he have expressed the vitality of his sitter so simply and intensely.

M. Friesz’s “Garden at Coimbra” is one of the pictures that would have astonished us all three or four years ago, but which now looks only pleasant and simple. So are the works of M. Marquet and M. Doucet, and even M. Herbin no longer seems a bad joker. The “Polka” and “Waltz” of Mr. Severini, the futurist, are quite agreeable to the eye, if it refuses to allow itself to be puzzled by the mind; but, if futurist paintings can be academic, they are a little academic, or at least systematic. One feels that any one could be taught to do them pretty well in a studio.

Among the water colors there are some pleasant works by M. Doucet and some remarkable experiments by M. Pechstein. The color prints of M. Manzana are more Chinese than Japanese in spirit, especially the print of horses; and the lithographs of M. Matisse may help some earnest beginners to see some merit in his painting. At any rate, any one who looks at them must see that he can draw.

The exhibition contains a good deal of rubbish, but far less than most exhibitions of what is considered orthodox art.

* * * * *

The Salon d’Independants tends to remain radical notwithstanding it was founded so long ago as 1884 because it has but one article in its creed, “_the suppression of juries of admission and permission to artists to exhibit freely their works to the judgment of the public_.”

By paying five dollars any artist--real or supposed--is entitled to so much space and can fill that space with such pictures as he pleases, irrespective of their merit.

As a result, each exhibition contains original, revolutionary and radical work mixed with an immense amount of painting and sculpture that is hopelessly bad and some positively objectionable.

The continued vitality of the Independent Salon is due to the fact it has no officials or committees to control its exhibitions and check the appearance of radical work.

The three other Salons grow conservative in the natural ageing of their management; they start with all the enthusiasm of youth but as both members and officers get older they tend to monopolize much of the available space for themselves and, naturally, they admit only those newcomers whose work does not detract or distract from their own. That is the history of the Royal Academy in London, of the National Academy in New York, and of every organization _the management of which has the right to hang their own and reject the works of others_.

* * * * *

In the development of art _all_ these exhibitions have their values. They are not unlike an army in a campaign, with its scouts, its skirmishers, its advance guard, and its more slowly moving main body--in the end it is the main body that does the most work.

The _value_ of every _new_ movement lies in the possibility of its ultimately _contributing_ something to the mass, _not_ in the possibility of its _destroying_ what has been done.

* * * * *

One has but to recall that both Whistler and Manet--to mention no others--were obliged to exhibit in the Salon des Refuses of their day to realize that an _independent_ salon has its place in the art world quite as important as an official; in fact, wherever there is an _official_ exhibition there should be an _un_-official, or independent, as a natural complement, otherwise the opportunity of the public to see _for itself_ is limited by official discretion.

* * * * *

For instance, it is the rule of the National Academy in New York that every member and associate has _the right_ to hang a picture irrespective of its merits. As the space is limited the chance for new men is small indeed.

Furthermore it is the older men who pass upon the works of the newer and naturally they feel an instinctive aversion to paintings that clash with or distract attention from their own, hence the more radical, the more novel, the more interesting the picture the less chance it has of being accepted. This is both a fault and a virtue in the Academy--the fault and the virtue of extreme conservatism.

To correct the fault other exhibitions, held under freer conditions, are absolutely necessary not only to the progress of artists, young and old, but to stimulate interest in the public, to make the public feel that _it_ is something more than a passive spectator with nothing to say, but on the contrary _its sympathetic cooperation_ and _final verdict_ of approval are desired.

* * * * *

Nothing is more deadly to the art of a country than a single annual official exhibition such, for instance, as that of the Royal Academy in London, or the old Salon as it was thirty years ago in Paris.

The interest of the public is not aroused. The official selection is accepted as a matter of course. What is in the exhibitions is supposed to be good, what is not accepted is supposed to be bad.

As a result, the really good pictures in such exhibitions are not appreciated at their true value, while the poor are bought simply because they are there.

The truth is it requires the new salons, the independent exhibitions to give vitality to the old, to teach the public to appreciate the good in the old.

Good art, like everything else good, springs from controversy, _from the assertion of the individual_, from the mighty struggle of every sincere and enthusiastic man to convince the world that _he_ is right and that _his_ works and ways are better than those of all other men.

* * * * *

That is just what the new men are striving to do now--each is trying to convince the world _he_ is right, that _his_ methods, _his_ departures, _his_ theories are true.

The Cubist does not admit much of value in the Futurist, while the latter see nothing at all in Cubism. In short the “isms” are more at war among themselves than with the older schools.

Out of the seething conflict of forces good is sure to come; the amount of good depending directly upon the sharpness of the conflict.

V

WHAT IS CUBISM?

What is “Cubism?”

One more name added to the long roll of “movements” in art. Within the memory of living men we have had “Classicists,” “Romanticists,” “Idealists,” “Naturalists,” “Realists,” “Pre-Raphaelites,” and many more.

Today we have the “Neo-Impressionists,” the “Pointilists,” the “Luminists,” the “Futurists,” the “Orphists,” the “Sensationalists,” the “Compositionalists,” the “Synchronists,” the “Cubists”--tomorrow?

New and ever new departures, experiments, achievements.

All of which goes to prove that art is living, for the sign of life is flux.

* * * * *

The other day I saw three well-known American painters standing before a cubist picture laughing; _painters of forty years ago_ would have laughed quite as heartily _at the works of each of the three_.

The innovation of today is the conventional of tomorrow.

Because the names of Rembrandt and Hals are now household words in art we are quick to assume their pictures were always considered great. Not so.

Just now it is a fad of millionaires to own Rembrandts; consequently he is over-appreciated and ridiculously overpriced.

* * * * *

The bare thought of the scorn that greeted Wagner’s operas, the poems of Browning, and Whitman, sends a cold

chill down our backs, makes us pause in our headlong criticism lest we, too, pillory ourselves.

Violent judgments are good fun, but they often come back to plague us. Of Wagner’s “Meistersinger” Ruskin said:

Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-headed stuff I ever saw on a human stage that thing last night--as far as the story and acting went--and of all the affected, sapless, soul-less, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless, scrannelpipiest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest as far as its sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember, in my life by the stopping of any sound, not excepting railroad whistles, as I was by the cessation of the cobbler’s bellowing; even the serenader’s caricatured twangle was a rest after. As for the great “Lied,” I never made out where it began or where it ended except by the fellow’s coming off the horse block.

From which the inference is not unwarranted that Wagner did not please Ruskin!

* * * * *

Opposed to all movements in art and life is the _academic_ mind, fed on learning, steeped in tradition, hence conservative.

The term is not here used in a reproachful sense; on the contrary, the philosopher lays stress upon the value of the academic in progress; it is the element that preserves; it is the mass upon which humanity rests; it is the old and stable; it is the past upon which the future is built; it is the essential groundwork of new thought and new effort.

* * * * *

The life of the individual passes from the enthusiasms, the radicalisms of youth to the serene and self-satisfied outlook of old age which instinctively opposes novelty and change--the academic attitude.

Youth makes friends with every chance acquaintance, age shuns the strange.

We are all Impressionists and Futurists at some times in our lives, but we tend to petrify. Sclerosis of the _arteries_ is bad, but nothing compared with sclerosis of the _emotions_. We not only tend to become petrified as we grow older, but even in our youth we have our petrified sides, our hard spots.

However progressive we may be in certain directions we are sure to be stubbornly conservative in others.

The man who laughs at a cubist picture may be a cubist--that is, an innovator--in his profession or business.

The man who is a conservative in religion may be a radical in politics, and _vice versa_. As a matter of fact most of the followers of Lloyd George in England are the greatest sticklers for the inerrancy and the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, while most of the hide-bound conservatives are exceedingly tolerant toward “modernism” and “higher criticism” in the church.

So it goes. The merchant or manufacturer, the doctor or lawyer who is up to date in business or profession, who is keenly receptive toward the latest and most revolutionary methods, inventions, discoveries, may be--usually is--a hopeless reactionary toward other lines of human endeavor, a hopeless conservative when it comes, for instance, to looking at pictures.

* * * * *

Now and then one meets a man so sympathetically observant and receptive that, like a good rubber ball, he is resilient at all points of contact. But for the most part we are like defective balls, resilient only in spots, and, like rubber, we become less and less resilient with age.

* * * * *

Happy the man or woman who retains until late in life the power to react to new impressions and to experience new emotions.