France’s national culture radio chain puts the KO on critical oasis “La Dispute”

by Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2020 Paul Ben-Itzak

Several years ago I met a young playwright from Montpellier, come to Paris to premiere a piece about Michael Jackson in a small theater on a mythic alley in the shadows of the Montmartre cemetery where Boris Vian once debated the finer points of pataphysics with his neighbor Jacques Prevert, whose “The Dead Leaves” (you know it as “Autumn Leaves”; the French always were more morbid than the Americans) had been introduced by a young singer named Yves Montand in Marcel Carné’s Montmartre-Barbes post-war film fantasia “Les portes de la nuit.” (When the portes — doors — of the Barbes Metro close for the night, the portes of a magical night begin.) We’d gotten off to a bad start because I was annoyed that my roommate had announced he’d be staying with us without asking if this was okay by me, and after I insisted that he smoke his E-cigarette on the balcony. But where we found common ground was in our shared passion for “La Dispute,” a nightly one-hour program on Radio France’s putatively middle-brow station France Culture in which an eclectic and heterogeneous gathering of mostly erudite and culturally literate critics from various newspapers and magazines — including many younger new voices — discussed and debated on average four usually new (if often mainstream) works or exhibitions from a different genre every night: Theater (with the occasional dance concert), film (to which television series were eventually added), the plastic arts, music (including both new releases and operatic productions), and literature (with the occasional graphic novel tossed in). Even if the selection, steered by subject-versatile host Arnaud Laporte, was often too mainstream for my liking — the overblown productions of the Comedie Francaise getting too much attention, the much more diverse, international, and contemporary offerings of the Theatre de la Ville Sarah Bernhardt too little, the films often movies with which the station had promotional partnerships — the discussion itself was aesthetic-intellectual candy for an inveterate critic and editor of critics like me. (Radio’s answer to Dance Insider quoi.) For young artists marooned in the provinces and thirsty to know what their colleagues in Paris were up to like my new friend — and unlike the puff pieces that constitute most of the rest of France Culture’s arts coverage, particularly a noontime program “The Big Table,” which mostly consists of the unctuous, ingratiating host’s uncritical cheerleading of ostensibly new work from the same limited circle of chou-chous to whom she tosses soft-ball, if not downright silly, and rarely challenging questions — if La Dispute was important for the window it provided to current cultural offerings in the capital, it was also vital for the exposure it offered to the cultural and critical debates which marked the current Zeitgeist. (Translation: What critics were saying about the work. And because there were always at least four critics on the 7-years + old program counting Laporte, whose tendency to correct the verbal flatulences of some of his younger colleagues I could also relate to, you could trust that the global output would be balanced, and not just reflect the tastes, jaundiced outlook, and prejudices of one sour critic.) And — unlike the promotional, ingratiating, and uncritical programs which make up most the rest of France Culture’s arts coverage — for the artists who listened, as well as critics and the arts-interested and art-literate public, besides furnishing a vicarious experience of the work of art, with regular listening one acquired a pretty good idea of the various critics’ optics and thus could imagine how one might have reacted to the work oneself had one been able to experience it first-hand. (I can hear Laporte chiding me for all those ‘one’s.)

For the art exhibitions in particular — where Laporte always began by asking one of the critics to describe the lay-out of the show — one really felt like one was there, perambulating around the museum or the gallery with the critics, even moreso when the one taking you on the tour was the perceptive and droll Corinne Rondeau.

Of course, the justification for eliminating a critical program centered on current cultural offerings at this historical moment is probably that the offerings will be thinner — and potentially more dangerous to attend where it invovles sitting in a closed space for two+ hours — in Covid-times. For the second argument, I guess each critic has to make his/her own choice. But the first just doesn’t fly for music recordings, film (where preview DVDs are usually available), and particularly literature (France Culture had already eviscerated what remained of its book programs in favor of more pop cultural-oriented coverage of the same old artists everyone already knows about), where the effervescence of new titles for the current ‘literary re-entry,’ numbering over 500 from mainstream publishers alone, begs for a little critical guiding in navigating them, and not just the effusive and ingratiating soft-ball questions one hears on, say, the “The Big Table.” (Rarely big enough to feature artists or writers not already famous and among the host’s chou-chous.) (Laporte: “That’s three times you’ve used ‘ingratiating,” Paul. “It’s less awkward than ‘Journalistic lap-dog,’ Arnaud.)

But where France Culture’s decision — which seems to have been abetted by Laporte, who offered absolutely no explanation on the initial broadcast of the show which replaced La Dispute Monday in the same time-slot, yet another interview and feature program with no critical perspective (besides perhaps Laporte’s) — is really a cop-out, and fails its public, is the hit this represents for the theater and dance and plastic arts sectors in their attempts to re-launch in a challenging moment which has them fighting for their lives, figuratively anyway. (With sales up, the book business — a solitary spectating adventure which one can practice at home, after all — seems to have experienced a re-bound.) Museums and galleries have bravely re-opened (after a summer in which national institutions like the Louvre particularly took a hit because of the drop-off in international tourists, even though the locals did take advantage of the opportunity to view their national treasures in less crowded conditions), despite the evident hesitation of visitors to return to any closed space, even with masks (not a cheap undertaking given the high insurance costs, particularly for imported art) and attendance limits meant to encourage social distancing. And theaters are forging ahead despite the evident anticipated loss of at least a third of their box-office revenues, if they do the safe and correct thing and leave an empty seat between each spectator, as the Theatre de la Ville – Sarah Bernhardt in Paris has committed itself to doing. Despite the automatic blow to its coffers this announces, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, director of the TDLV’s Seine-side and Montmartre spaces, and his team have taken the financially courageous decision of announcing a uniform ticket price of 20 Euros (places can normally go for as much as 40). This after Demarcy-Mota — belying the naval-gazing tendency of many arts organizations and artists, and I don’t mean just here in France (want me to name names? How about “Dance NY,” with its ludicrous campaign insisting that dancers are ‘necessary workers’?) — had taken the lead in initiating a coalition with health and educational organizations to develop a detailed plan of action for continuing to create art in healthy, artistically dynamic and adventurous, and educational contexts, settings, and circumstances in a time of cholera.

Then there’s the role critics can play as monitors of publicly funded art; the government announced Wednesday that 2 billion Euros from the national ‘re-launch’ plan will be directed to the culture sector — which indicates a) that the government at least has not abandoned that domain (President Macron recently named a high-profile former official from Nicolas Sarkozy’s government as minister, signaling the importance he attaches to the sector), and b) with 2 billion Euros culture and creation are not going to stop in France, so there will still be something to criticize. And critics can play a vital rule in helping ensure that this limited resource is spent judiciously, responsibly, and creatively.

And what did France Culture — which vaunts itself in house ads as advancing the ‘esprit d’ouverture,’ with Laporte opening his new program by claiming it is ‘engaged’ at the side of culture and creation — do? It abandoned ship, shamelessely reducing itself into a promotional agency for a limited number of its hosts’ favorite artists and theaters (frequently the same names the station has been promoting for 10 years, a modern version of the type of coronated, State-sanctioned artists a young playwright named Victor Hugo once decried), now officially devoid of any critical discourse, of the objective intermediary the critic who is concerned not with selling culture but its critical and credible transmission can be for an audience. (“Engaging” on the side of culture doesn’t mean just putting out uncritical puff pieces and interviews, it means *engaging* aesthetically and intellectually with the work, as a critic.) To copy a phrase from the Surrealist Léo Malet — another Montpellierard who, after flirting with the anarchists, hanging with Andre Breton, being one of the first to experiment with collage street poster art, and hawking newspapers from a corner near the French Stock Market, went on to become the father of the modern French Private Dick, his Nestor Burma a kind of Philip Marlowe as re-mixed by Boris Vian — by cancelling “La Dispute,” France’s marquee source for national radio cultural coverage with a self-proclaimed ‘esprit d’ouverture’ has put the K.O. on cultural criticism for the mass audience radio has the potential to reach, as it continues its spiral from dumb to dumber.

Protected: Le Feuilleton (the Serial): (English translation followed by V.O. française) Exclusive! “Trompe-l’Oeil,” Michel Ragon’s saga of artists, dealers, critics, & anti-Semitism in Post-War Paris, Part 14: Anti-Semitism rears its concrete head in the Abstract art World (Subscriber-only content; to learn how to subscribe, e-mail paulbenitzak@gmail.com.)

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Le Feuilleton (the Serial): (English translation followed by V.O. française) Exclusive! “Trompe-l’Oeil,” Michel Ragon’s saga of artists, dealers, critics, & anti-Semitism in Post-War Paris, Part 13: The Empire Strikes back against Abstract art (Subscriber-only content; to learn how to subscribe, e-mail paulbenitzak@gmail.com.)

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Pendant l’exil: When Victor Hugo revisited the rues & houses of the Old Blois of his youth, thanks to an artist

Eau-forte extracted from “Rues et maisons du Vieux Blois,” by Armand Queyroy. Printed by Delâtre, Paris, 1864. Introduction by Victor Hugo, extracted from la Gazette des Beaux Arts. Ouvrage dedicated by Queyroy to “Madame le Masson souvenir affectueux.” Technique: eau forte. Place: Blois (Arrondissement de), Blois (Canton de), Blois (Commune de). Author: Armand Queyroy. From the Departmental Archives of the Loire-et-Cher.

by Victor Hugo
Translated by Paul Ben-Itzak

Translation dedicated to Lucie and Lionel, Travailleurs intellectuelles Parisiens, maintenant exiles … pas loin de… Blois….

Just before the virus hit, I found the ideal place in Paris — an apartment-atelier on the rue Daguerre, no less, where it’s no doubt perched atop a portion of the Catacombs — from which to launch Les Editions Hèléne, a publishing house specializing in English translations  of French literature and on French art. In addition to being on the Meridian of Paris, where miracles always seem to happen to me, the rental comes with other happy accidents related to future work and translation projects. In pondering whether I should (and could) wait until there’s a vaccine to return to Paris — thus prolonging my own exile from Lutèce for at least another year — I considered the case of Victor Hugo, who did not let a little thing like 18 years of exile from Paris and France stop him from producing some of the best literature ever. Besides “Les Miserables,” there were poems, essays, political tracts, appeals (famously, for clemency for John Brown), and correspondence. Not just exchanges with peers including George Sand, but appreciations like the following 1864 letter to Armand Queyroy on the occasion of the publication of “Rues et maisons du Vieux Blois,” a collection of eaux-fortes or etchings printed by Delâtre, in Paris. And of course, coming from the pen of Victor Hugo, these souvenirs do not just reflect one of the Great Man’s Proustien — madeleine — moments; Hugo manages to squeeze in a political discourse which reveals his sometimes nuanced disposition towards French monarchic heritage. But above all, where this discourse touches me is in its illustration of the nexus between literature and the fine arts.  Like what you’re reading? If you are not already a subscriber, advertiser, or family member, please help pay  for our hard work in increasingly expensive and risky times by making a donation today. Just designate your payment in dollars or Euros via PayPal to paulbenitzak@gmail.com , or write us at there to learn how to pay by check.– PB-I

(Extracted from “Pendant l’Exil,” 1852 – 1870, Victor Hugo. Paris, Nelson, Editeurs. Images from the Archives  of the Loire-et-Cher department of France. The letter also served as a preface to Queyroy’s publication.)

Hauteville House, [Guernsey,] April 17, 1864

Monsieur, I want to thank you. You’ve just enabled me to re-live the past. On the 17th of April, 1825 — 39 years ago to this very day (allow me to note this minor coincidence, which is interesting to me at least) — I arrived in Blois. It was early morning. I’d come from Paris. I’d passed the night in the mail-wagon, and what is there to do in the mail-wagon? I’d done “The Ballad of the two Archers”; then, the final verses finished, as the day had not yet dawned, all the while watching through the dim light of the track lights on either side of the train the troops of Orleans cows descending towards Paris, I’d dozed off. The conductor’s voice awoke me. “Voila Blois!” he’d cried.

I opened my eyes and saw a thousand windows at the same time, an irregular and pell-mell pile of houses, of steeples, a chateau, and on the hill a crown of tall trees and a row of gabled, pointed stone facades on the edge of the water, an entire city resembling an amphitheater, capriciously spread out on the ledges of an inclining plain and, except that the Ocean is wider than the Loire and doesn’t have any bridges leading to the other side, practically identical to this city of Guernsey where I live today.

The Sun was rising over Blois.

Fifteen minutes later and I was on the rue du Foix, number 73. I knocked on a small door giving onto a garden; a man who was working in the garden came to open it for me. He was my father.

That night, my father lead me to the mound which overlooked the house, and which harbored “Gaston’s tree”; I now saw again from the heights of the city what I’d seen that morning from its depths; the aspect, for that matter, was, if somewhat severe, even more charming. The city, in the morning, had seemed to me to have the gracious disorder and practically the surprise of waking up; the night had softened its angles. Even though it was still light, the Sun had only just set, there was a debut of melancholy; the blurring of twilight had taken the edge off the points of the rooftops; the rare scintillating of candles had replaced the dazzling diffusion of the aurora on the window-panes; the profiles of things were subsisting the mysterious transformation of night; the rigidness was losing the battle, the curves winning; there were more elbows, less angles. I looked on, almost mellowed by this effect. The skies had a vague breath of summer. The city appeared to me, no longer like it had that morning, gay and ravishing, haphazard, but harmonious; it had been cut into compartments of a beautiful whole amounting to an equilibrium; the planes had receded, the stories superimposed themselves with impeccable timing and tranquility. The cathedral, the bishopry, the black church of Saint-Nicolas, the chateau, as much a citadel as a palace, the ravines mixed up with the city, the slopes and descents where the houses at times climbed, at times tumbled, the bridge with its obelisk, the beautiful serpentine curves of the Loire, the rectangular bands of willows, at the extreme horizon Chambord, indistinct with its forest of turrets, the forest into which was sunk the antique route known as ‘Roman bridges’ marking the ancient bed of the Loire, all this seemed vast and gentle. And after all, my father loved this city.

Which today you have rendered back to me.

“Blois, la rue Chemonton et ses escaliers.” Reproduction of an engraving à l’eau-forte by Arrmand Queyroy, 1890. 247 X 135 mm; (object) 266 X 205 mm. Papier Gestetner. Technique: eau forte. Place: Blois (Arrondissement de), Blois (Canton de), Blois (Commune de). Author: Armand Queyroy. From the Departmental Archives of the Loire-et-Cher.

Thanks to you, I’m in Blois again. Your 20 etchings reveal the intimate city, not the city of palaces and churches, but the city of houses. With you, one is there in the streets; with you, one enters into the ramshackle hut; and so many of these decrepit edifices, like the dwelling in sculpted wood on the rue Saint-Lubin, like the hotel Denis-Dupont with its stairway lantern and oblique bay windows following the movement of the spiral staircase of Saint Gilles, like the house on the rue Haute, like the very low arcade of the rue Pierre-de-Blois, exposing all the Gothic fantasy or all the Renaissance graces, augmented by the poetry of dilapidation. Being a hut and being a jewel are not mutually exclusive. An elderly lady who has heart and spirit, nothing is more charming. Many of the exquisite houses drawn by you are that elderly woman. One is happy to make their acquaintance. One retrieves them again with joy when one is, like me, their old friend. What things they have to tell you, and what a delicious return to the past! For example, take a look at this fine and delicate house on the rue des Orfevres, it seems to be engaged in a tete-a-tete. One is fortunate to be amidst all this elegance. You make us recognize everything, so much are your sketches portraits. It’s photographic fidelity with the liberty of great art. Your rue Chemonton is a chef-d’oeuvre. I’ve scaled, at the same time as these good paysans of Sologne painted by you, the steep steps of the chateau. The house of statuettes on the rue Pierre de Blois is comparable to the house of Musicians in Weymouth. I’ve retrieved everything.

“Blois, vue de l’Hôtel d’Alluye.” Eau-forte extracted from “Rues et maisons du Vieux Blois,” by Armand Queyroy, Printed by Delâtre, Paris, 1864. 188 X 267 mm; (object) 308 X 482 mm. Papier vergé.Technique: eau forte. Place: Blois (Arrondissement de), Blois (Canton de), Blois (Commune de). Author: Armand Queyroy. From the Departmental Archives of the Loire-et-Cher.

Here’s the tower of Argent, here’s the high somber gable at the corner of the rue des Violettes and the rue Saint-Lubin, here’s the hotel de Guise, here’s the hotel de Cheverny, here’s the hotel Sardini with its arches in three-centered curves, here’s the hotel d’Alluye with its gallant arcades from the time of Charles VIII, here are the Saint-Louis steps which lead to the cathedral, here’s the rue du Sermon, and at the end the practically Roman silhouette of Saint-Nicolas; here’s the pretty cantwise turret referred to as Queen Anne’s Oratory. The garden where Louis XII, gouty, liked to promenade his mule in a garden behind this turret.

“Blois, view of the rue des Violettes and the rue St-Lubin.” Eau-forte extracted from “Rues et maisons du Vieux Blois,” by Armand Queyroy, Paris, Imp. Delâtre, 1864. 255 X 157 mm; (object) 299 X 423 mm . Papier vergé. Technique: eau forte. Place: Blois (Arrondissement de), Blois (Canton de), Blois (Commune de). Author: Armand Queyroy.  From the Departmental Archives of the Loire-et-Cher.

That Louis XII, like Henry IV, had his amiable sides. He made many blunders, but was a good-natured king. He tossed the procedures launched against the Vaudois into the Rhone. He was worthy for having the valiant Huguenot astrologist Renée de Bretagne, so intrepid before Saint-Barthélemy and so proud in Montargis, as a daughter. As a youngster, he’d spent three years in the Tower of Bourges, and he’d tasted the iron cage. This experience, which might have rendered another man mean, made him debonair. He’d entered Genoa, victorious, with a golden bee-hive on his coat of arms and this motto: Non utitor aculeo. He was good, and he was brave. In Signaled, to a courtesan who warned him, “You’re exposing yourself to danger, sire,” he responded, “Get behind me.” It’s also he who said: “A good king is an authentic king. I prefer being ridiculous with courtesans to being overbearing with the people.” He said: “The ugliest beast to see walk past you is a procurer carrying his dossiers.” He hated judges eager to condemn who tried to exaggerate the fault to envelope the accused. “They are,” he said, “like cobblers who stretch out the leather by pulling on it with their teeth.” He died from loving his wife too much, just like François II later on, gently killed the one like the other by a Marie. The honeymoon was short. On January 1, 1515, after 83 days or rather 83 nights of marriage, Louis XII expired, and as it was New Year’s Day, he told his wife: “My darling, for a New Year’s gift I give you my death.” She accepted, sharing the present with the Duke of Brandon.

“Blois,  front, old houses at the foot of the St.-Louis cathedral.” Reproduction of an engraving à l’eau-forte by Armand Queyroy, 1865. 250 X 160 mm; (objet) 266 X 205 mm. Papier Gestetner. Technique: eau forte. Place: Blois (Arrondissement de), Blois (Canton de), Blois (Commune de). Author: Armand Queyroy. From the Departmental Archives of the Loire-et-Cher.

The other phantom who dominates Blois is as loathsome as Louis XII was sympathetic. It’s this Gaston, half Bourbon, half Medici, a Florentine from the 16th century, cowardly, perfidious, spiritual, who said of the arrests of Longueville, Conti, and Condé: “Lots of net! Capture at the same time a fox, an ape, and a lion!” Curious, artist, collector, fascinated with medals, filigrees, and sweetmeats, he might spend his mornings admiring the cover of an ivory box while his men lopped off the head of one of the friends he’d betrayed.

“Blois, vue de l’Hôtel d’Amboise et d’une rouennerie en gros (marchand d’étoffes et de tissus).” Reproduction of an eau-forte engraving, extracted from “Rues et maisons du Vieux Blois,” by Armand Queyroy, Paris, Printed by Delâtre, 1864. 202 X 157 mm; (object), 266 X 205 mm; papier Gestetner. Technique: eau forte. Place: Blois (Arrondissement de), Blois (Canton de), Blois (Commune de). Author: Armand Queyroy. From the Departmental Archives of the Loire-et-Cher.

All these figures, as well as Henry III, the Duke of Guise, and others, including this Pierre de Blois whose main claim to fame was being the first person to pronounce the word ‘transubstantiation,’ I’ve found them again in leafing through your precious collection. I contemplated your fountain of Louis XII for a long time. You’ve recreated it as I saw it, so old, so young, charming. It’s one of your best plates. I’m almost certain that the ‘Rouennerie en gros,’ recorded by you vis-a-vis the hotel d’Amboise, was already there in my time. You have a real and fine talent, the coupe d’oeil which grasps the style, the sure, agile, and strong touch, plenty of spirit in the engraving and a good dose of naiveté, and that rare gift of being able to evoke light in shadows. What strikes and charms me in your etchings is the broad day, the gaiety, the prepossessing aspect, this joy in the commencement which contains all the grace of morning. The plates which seem to be bathed in an aurora. Indeed it’s there, Blois, the Blois that is precious to me, my luminous city. Because that first impression on arriving has stuck with me. Blois for me is radiant. I only see Blois in the rising Sun. These are the effects of youth and of the homeland.

I’ve let myself go on at length talking with you, monsieur, because you’ve given me great pleasure. You’ve found my weakness, you’ve touched the sacred corner of memory. I’ve sometimes felt a bitter sadness; you’ve given me a gentle sadness. To be gently sad, this is a pleasure. I’m in your debt. I’m happy that it is so well preserved, so little changed, and so parallel to what I saw 40 years ago, this city to which this invisible tangle of ties of the soul, impossible to break, still attaches me, this Blois which saw me as a teenager, this Blois whose streets know me, where a house has loved me, and where I’ve just strolled in your company, looking for the white hair of my father and finding my own.

Monsieur, I shake your hand.

Victor Hugo

“Blois: the steps of the chateau and the vestiges of the ancient Jacobins gate.” Reproduction of an eau-forte engraving by Armand Queyroy, 1865. 240 X 128 mm; (objet) 266 X 205 mm. Papier Gestetner. Technique: Eau-forte. Lieu(x) :Blois (Arrondissement de), Blois (Canton de), Blois (Commune de). Author: Armand Queyroy. From the Departmental Archives of the Loire-et-Cher.

Protected: Le Feuilleton (the Serial): (English translation followed by V.O. française) Exclusive! “Trompe-l’Oeil,” Michel Ragon’s saga of artists, dealers, critics, & anti-Semitism in Post-War Paris, Part 12: Bartering painting for meals on the place de la République (Subscriber-only content; to learn how to subscribe, e-mail paulbenitzak@gmail.com.)

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: Le Feuilleton (the Serial), 11: Exclusive! “Trompe-l’Oeil,” Michel Ragon’s saga of artists, dealers, critics, & anti-Semitism in Post-War Paris; Part 11: Secret Origins of Abstract Art (Subscriber-only content; to learn how to subscribe, e-mail paulbenitzak@gmail.com.)

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Le Feuilleton (the Serial),10: Exclusive! “Trompe-l’oeil,” Michel Ragon’s saga of artists, dealers, critics, & anti-Semitism in Post-War Paris; Part 10: Conflicts

To demonstrate how the Abstract Art of which Michel Ragon was one of the first champions is very much a living tradition, where possible the Dance Insider / Paris Tribune are including art from current or recent exhibitions with our exclusive, first-ever English-language serialization of Michel Ragon’s “Trompe-l’oeil.” Above, from last year’s exhibition at the Galerie Berthet- Aittouarès (in, bien sur, Saint-Germain-des-Prés): Vera Molnar, “Montparnasse d’après Klee en bleu vert et rouge,” 2006. © Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès.

by and copyright Michel Ragon
Translation copyright Paul Ben-Itzak
From “Trompe-l’oeil,” published in 1956 by Éditions Albin Michel

Part 10 in the Paris Tribune / Arts Voyager exclusive English-language translation of Michel Ragon’s seminal 1956 novel taking on the world of Abstract art, artists, art collectors, art dealers, and art critics in Paris, as well as post-War anti-Semitism in France. For the first nine  parts, click here. For more on Michel Ragon, in French, click here. To learn how to support our work, e-mail artsvoyager@gmail.com . To support us through PayPal, just designate your donation to paulbenitzak@gmail.com .

Fifteen days later, in the throes of correcting the proofs of the second issue, Fontenoy felt a sudden surge of discouragement. Blanche was working in her atelier at the Cité Falguière. He dropped everything and went to see his companion.

Walking down the Boulevard Montparnasse, he took stock of the results of the first issue of the revue. It was too soon to draw any conclusions, but he had the impression of hurtling against a wall. Like Manhès, what had pleased him about this adventure was the battle to come, the possibility of finally saying in print everything he’d been stifling about this conspiracy against the movement of painting that he loved. This revue would be a little bomb which would go off in the midst of the conformists, the cabals. They’d be forced to respond to so many specific accusations. But neither L’Artiste, nor Le Figaro, nor any other newspaper had yet noted, even with two measly lines, the new revue’s existence. Everything continued just as it had been, as if the revue didn’t exist at all. Some booksellers in Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés had put it in their windows. Its successful launch depended on them, and on eventual subscriptions in response to the comp. copies that had been sent out.

Blanche was flattened out on her stomach on the divan, working on a water-color. Fontenoy plopped down next to her. In the atelier, numerous water-colors had been framed behind glass, ready for the imminent exhibition.

“You know,” she remarked, continuing to paint, “it’s no laughing-matter to try to get the bookshops to sell the revue….”

“I know. But it’s the only way to spread the word.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You made the rounds of the art bookshops that you know well, and that know you. No problem. You leave the copies on consignment and they say thanks. But me, I hit the other bookshops. You have no idea how they react. Some don’t accept consignments as a matter of sheer principle. They tell me: ‘When you come back to pick up the unsold copies, they’ve disappeared under a pile. They can’t be found and we have to pay you anyway. Two months later they surface and are unsellable. No no, no consignments.’ ‘Okay, so buy a fixed number of issues.’ ‘You must be joking. We’re inundated as it is!’ And those are the nice ones. Others take a quick look, disabusedly shrug their shoulders, and say no. Some pick up the revue, leaf through it, and burst out in guffaws: ‘Ah! Cool, it’s a take-off? I get it — very clever…. But our customers won’t get it at all.’ I was, however, able to place a few copies that were accepted on consignment, begrudgingly, and in those cases most likely because of my gorgeous eyes.”

In a corner of the atelier Fontenoy spotted the pile of rejected revues. He had a sudden spurt of revolt, of anger:

“But how the hell are we supposed to get off the ground if the newspapers give us the silent treatment, if the bookstores refuse consignments, if the subscription drives meet up with nothing but negligence and indifference!?”

Fontenoy perceived that hostility to their cause wasn’t the only factor. The bookstores held themselves above the internecine factional squabbles, but their detached attitude could become just as lethal, if not moreso, as any frontal attacks.

Blanche straightened up her material on the table, cast a last glance at the fresh water-color she’d just finished and came over to sit next to Fontenoy, lacing her plump arms around him.

“Worries, worries, worries! How’s about putting your ‘big ideas’ aside for a moment and getting back to the two of us? Have you finished the preface for my exhibition? What are you planning, for me, in the revue?”

“All that on the other hand is going very well,” Fontenoy responded with lassitude. “Look, I have the text for your preface right here in my pocket. Read through it. For the revue, Rinsbroek will talk about you, it’s preferable.”

“And you won’t put in any of my images?”

“That’ll be up to Rinsbroek.”

“Come again? But what good does it do then to be the editor-in-chief?”

“Rinsbroek wants to talk about you. He’ll say what he judges needs to be said and we’ll publish a reproduction of your work if he considers that you merit it.”

Blanche bit her lip. Fontenoy grasped her tenderly around the waist and kissed her on the temple:

“Listen, Blanche. Don’t get upset. I’m being brutal, but we have much bigger worries these days. Your exhibition will go quite well and in all probability we’ll publish a photo in the revue. Rinsbroek’s article will certainly sing your praises, otherwise he wouldn’t have accepted the assignment. But on principle, I just want to make it clear, once again, that I won’t put any pressure on him. It’s just not comprehensible. It’s as if you’re asking me to employ the very methods in our revue that we’re fighting against when others practice them.”

Blanche didn’t answer. She read over Fontenoy’s handwritten text for the preface:

“How set are you on citing Klee? I know you just mean to use it as a reference, but won’t that just make them think that I imitate him, like all the rest?”

Fontenoy replied, exasperated: “Delete Klee if he bothers you so much!”

Blanche got riled up:

“I like Klee. I don’t deny that. But the reference here just bothers me.”

And she put her dainty little finger on the sheet of paper. “It’s like your phrase: ‘Blanche Favard is an abstract painter who composes with parcels of memory.’ I understand what you’re getting at. My compositions include forms which resemble foliage, even landscapes. I agree. But what will Charles Roy say? The Salon des Réalitiés Nouvelles jury is quite capable of rejecting my submissions under the pretext that they’re Naturalist.”

“So now it’s Charles Roy’s opinion that matters the most to you!?” Fontenoy exclaimed, stupefied.

“I just don’t want to get everyone’s hide up like Manhès.”

“You’ll succeed, Blanche,” Fontenoy re-assured her, thoughtfully. “And what’s more, you’re talented.”

Huysmans to Puvis to Zola: When the author of ‘J’accuse’ touted a monumental artist who refused to go with the tide

From the exhibition Huysmans from Degas to Grünewald: As seen by Francesco Vezzoli, in principle running April 3 through July 19 at the Strasbourg Museum of Contemporary Art (after an earlier run at the Orsay Museum, to whose boffo press service we owe these images): Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), “Jeunes filles au bord de la mer (Young women at the sea-side), 1879. Oil on canvas, 205.4 x 156 cm.  Paris, Musée d’Orsay. Photo © musée d’Orsay / rmn. (For more art from the exhibition, click here.)

Text by Emile Zola
Translated by Paul Ben-Itzak

One of the benefits of the Orsay Museum’s latest penchant for re-envisioning  the late 19th-century work which is its charge through the eyes of contemporaneous critics  is that the polyglot writers often dictate a polyglot selection of artists which means that major figures overdue for their own solo shows get a cameo. Such is the case with the exceptional  Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898)’s 1879 oil “Jeunes filles au bord de la mer (Young women at the sea-side),” which features in the work exhibited at the Orsay and theoretically to be exhibited through July 19 at the Strasbourg Museum of Contemporary Art for  Huysmans from Degas to Grünewald: As seen by Francesco Vezzoli. Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) may well have referred to himself as a “Dutchman putrefied with Parisianism,” but if we’re to judge by the Puvis painting above, his tastes were anything but. It’s no surprise that in 1880 — a year after this tableau was made — Emile Zola invited Huysmans to collaborate in the collection “Les Soirées de Medan.” Which connection is enough of a pretense for us to turn the Puvis floor over to the great man, as Zola singled out the painter in his review of the 1875 Salon, published in two “Letters from Paris” which appeared in Le Sémaphore de Marseille of May 3 and 4 and in “Le Messager de l’Europe” in Saint-Petersburg. Today’s translation and art goes out to Holly, and to all the Holly Golightlys of the world, in esperance for the period when we’ll all be able to go lightly again. — PB-I

I’ve saved Puvis de Chavannes’s large tableau for the end. Secluded at the Sainte-Croix convent, Radegonde gives refuge to poets and protects the world of Letters against the epoch’s barbary. Here at last is a truly original talent, who trained himself far from any Academic influences. He alone can succeed in the art of decorative painting, in the vast frescos exposed to the raw light of public institutions. In our times, with the crumbling of classic principles, the fate of mural paintings has become critical. The nobility of heroes, the simplicity of the drawing, every rule which makes the tableau a type of bas-relief in which the ‘cooler’ colors have trouble standing out in the midst of the marble of churches and palaces, have collapsed, making way for the explosion of the romantic brush. And suddenly, it seems to me, Puvis de Chavannes arrives and finds a breach in this impasse. He knows how to be interesting and alive, in simplifying the lines and painting with uniform tones. Radegonde, surrounded by nuns in white gowns, is listening to a poet declaiming verse between the walls of a convent. The scene exudes a grandiose and peaceful charm. To tell the truth, for me Puvis de Chavannes is but a precursor. It is indispensible that large-scale painting is able to find subjects in contemporary life. I don’t know who will be the painter with the genius to know how to extract the art of our civilization, and I don’t know how he’ll do it. But it is indisputable that art does not depend on either draperies or the antique nude; it takes root in humanity itself and consequently every society must have its own conception of beauty.

From Emile Zola, “Ecrits sur l’Art,” copyright 1991 Editions Gallimard.

Father is the child of the man: Chagall par Apollinaire, in poetry and criticism

From the exhibition “Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine… Paris pour école, 1905-1940,” in principle opening April 2 at the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism in Paris, where it runs through August 23: Marc Chagall, “The Father,” 1911. MahJ, dépôt du Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI. © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN Grand Palais / Philippe Migeat © Adagp, Paris 2020. Click here to read more about the exhibition.

Criticism & Poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire
Translations by Paul Ben-Itzak

(Like what we’re doing? We are continuing to post, daily when possible, under extremely difficult circumstances because we believe that in these perilous days it’s vital to share reasons to live, and art is one of them. If you have not yet donated or subscribed to the DI/AV, please join Lewis Campbell and others by doing so today in designating your payment in dollars or Euros through PayPal to paulbenitzak@gmail.com , or write us at that address to ask how to donate by check.)

Not only did the Surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire review Chagall’s show before it traveled from Paris to Berlin in 1914; his poem “Rotsoge” served as the preface to the exhibition catalog. Our translation of that poem, re-titled “A travers l’Europe” for the poet-critic’s monumental “Calligrammes,” follows the review below.  Today’s translations dedicated to my father Ed Winer, who died December 7, 2019 at the age of 81. And to all our valued living elders, because if there’s another reason we’re featuring this painting today, it’s this: Years ago, jogging down to the river from my digs in Fort Worth, Texas, I used to come across a sign on the outskirts of the (private) golf course that bordered the water: “Dr. Dan Patrick, for U.S. Senate.” This week that same Dan Patrick, now lieutenant governor of the Lone Star state, told Fox News (the president’s main information source) that (as Democracy Now reported) maybe all the old people should just let themselves die off, as a sacrifice to the young people so that America can get back to work. Where’s the A.M.A. (American Medical Association, which should sanction Dr. Patrick) when you need it? For more on the exhibition “Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine… Paris pour école, 1905-1940” at the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism in Paris where (in theory) you can see the real McCoy of the Chagall painting, click here .

Marc Chagall

by Guillaume Apollinaire

(From L’Intransigeant, June 4, 1914.)

The Jewish race has not yet shone in the plastic arts. In the modern movement, for example, only Pissarro can be cited as having played an important role among the pioneers of Impressionism.

Being presented at this moment at the Sturm gallery in Berlin, which has exposed a large number of the young French painters and particularly [Robert] Delaunay and Léger, is the work of a young Russian Israelite painter, Marc Chagall. To this information I’d like to add that one can see his paintings in Paris at the Malpel gallery on the rue Montaigne.

Chagall is a colorist full of an imagination which, sometimes springing from the fantasies of Slavic folk imagery, always surpasses it.

He’s an extremely varied artist, capable of monument-scale paintings, and he doesn’t let any system cage him.

His show, which I caught before it travelled to Germany, includes 34 oils, water-colors, and drawings from different periods. I prefer his more recent work and above all his “Paris as seen from the window.”

Collected in Guillaume Apollinaire, “Chroniques d’Art” (1902-1918), copyright 1960 Librairie Gallimard and compiled and annotated by L.-C. Breunig. Including the lead to the poem below which served as preface to the Chagall exhibition catalog.

****

A travers l’Europe

by Guillaume Apollinaire

To M. Ch.

Rotsoge
Your scarlet visage your biplane metamorphosed into a hydroplane
Your circular house where a pickled herring swims.
I must have the key to the eyelids
Happily we spotted M. Panado
And we’re assured on that account
What do you see my dear M.D….
90 or 324 a man in the air a veal who sees through her mother’s stomach.

I’ve looked for so long on the roads
So many eyes are shut along the roads
The wind makes willow-groves cry
Open open open open open
Look oh just look therefore
The old are bathing their feet in the wash-basin
Una volta ho intesto dire Chè vuoi
I burst into tears at the memory of your childhoods

And you you show me a harrowing violet
This little painting where there’s a car reminds me of the day
A day made up of mauve morsels yellows blues greens and reds
Where I went to the country with a charming chimney holding its dog by the leash
It’s gone it’s gone your little reed-pipe
Far from me the chimney smokes Russian cigarettes
The dog barks at the lilacs
The night-light has petered out
Petals have shat on the gown
Two golden rings next to the sandals
have lit up on the Sun
But your hair is the trolley
riding through Europe dressed with little multi-colored lights.

From “Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War (1913-1916),” copyright Librairie Gallimard 1925 and Club du meilleur livre 1955.

Kisling to Man Ray as Met takes the relay

As part of the exhibition Photography’s Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection, in principle running through June 28, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, New York, it’s still a helluva town is presenting: Man Ray (American, 1890–1976), “Nude,” ca. 1930. Gelatin silver print. We like the photo because it suggests the inspiration of this painting by Man Ray’s fellow Montparnassian Moshe Kisling. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, promised gift of Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary.  © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris. Image © the Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo by Eugenia Burnett Tinsley and Juan Trujillo.