Art in France, 1900–1940 (The Yale University Press Pelican History of Art Series)

340 Pages·2001·175.182 MB·English

by  Christopher Green

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PELICAN HISTORY OF ART
ART IN FRANCE
1900-1940
CHRISTOPHER GREEN

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PELICAN HISTORY OF ARE
FOUNDING EDITOR: NIKOLAUS PEVSNER
CHRISTOPHER GREEN
ART IN FRANCE
1900-1940

Christopher Green
Art in France igoo-ig^o
Yale University Pxess
New Haven and^onaïto
To the research students who have worked with me
at the Courtauld Institute
Copyright © 2000 Chrisopher Green
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole
or in part, in any form (Beyond that permitted by Sections 107
and 108 fo the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviews for the
public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Set in Ehrhardt by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong
Printed and bound by CS Graphics, Singapore
Designed by Beatrix McIntyre
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green, Christopher, 1943 June 11
Art in France: 1900-1940 / Christopher Green.
p. cm. - (Yale University Press Pelican history of art)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-08401-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Art, French. 2. Art, Modern - 20th century - France.
I. Title. II. Series.
N6848.G73 2000
7O9/-44/O9O4i - dc2i
99-089522
Title page illustration: Henri Rousseau, The Dream, 1910. Oil on
canvas, 204 x 298 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of Nelson A. Rockefeller
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Preface ix
PART ONE: ART MADE HISTORY
Introduction t
i. Monuments to the Third Republic: The Great Exhibitions of 1900,
1923 and 1937
Before and After 1900 4
Before and After 1925 5
Before and After 1937 8
Art in France, 1900-40: French and Transatlantic Perspectives 12
2. Modern Movements in France, 1900—40
Making Fauvism 15
Making Cubism 19
Making Dada 26
Making Surrealism 28
Modern Movements and ‘Abstract Art’, 1912-40 32
Avant-gardes, Dominant Values and Histories 34
PART two: lives in art
Introduction 39
3. Framing Lives
Democracy, Diversity and Direction: Officials and Institutions 39
Different Artists, Different Markets 43
Fixing and Unfixing Categories: Painters, Sculptors and Others 47
Poets and Professionals: Writing on Art 50
Winning for Modernism: The Dealers and Collectors 53
4. Celebrated Lives
The Conditions of Success 60
Crossing Boundaries: Foreign Artists in France, 1900-40 61
Crossing Boundaries: Women Artists in France, 1900-40 65
Being a Modern Master: Matisse and Picasso, Brancusi, Mondrian,
Giacometti and Others 68
Being Marcel Duchamp: A Singular Double Life 77
PART three: making art
Introduction 82
5. Representing Nature; Seeing Art
Expression and Decoration: From ‘Art Nouveau’ Bing to Matisse 82
Likeness and Deformation, Analysis and Synthesis: From Matisse into
Cubism 91
‘Pure Painting’ and the Table au-objet: Cubists, Orphists and Matisse as
Cubist 99
The Idea in the Work: Kupka and Mondrian 104
Art and ‘Evolution’ no
VI · CONTENTS
6. The Languages and Objects of Art
Metamorphosis and the Semiotics of Cubism 112
Metaphor and Metamorphosis: Surrealists and
Cubists 115
Allegory and Myth: From De Chirico to
Guernica 126
Words and Things: From Duchamp’s Large Glass to the ‘Surrealist Object’
128
Art and ‘Revolution’ 138
PART four: representing modernity
Introduction 141
7. The Experience of Modernity and the ‘New Spirit’
Representing Modern Ideas: Abstraction, Science and Bergsonism 141
Representing Modern Experience: Photography and Painting, Futurists and
Simultanists 147
Representing War and Peace: Léger and the Purist ‘New Spirit’,
1913-28 152
The Palais de la Découverte: Representing Science and Technology at the
Exhibition of 1937 158
8. Modern Spaces; Modern Objects; Modern People
Domestic Modernity: From the Maison Cubiste to the Pavilion de 1’Esprit
Nouveau; from Collage to Léger’s Manufactured Objects 161
Modernity and Gender: Working Women and Independent Women; Wives
and Mothers 165
Representing Modern Society: Class, Political Engagement and the
‘Realism’ Debate in the 1930s; Worlds of Work and Leisure 173
PART five: history, tradition and the french nation
Introduction 185
9. Modernism and the Re-invention of Tradition, igoo-18
‘One must become classical again by way of nature’: From Denis and
Maillol to Matisse 187
The Challenge of Tradition: The Presence of the Past in the Work of the
Cubists and of Derain, 1907-14 196
Being Modern and Traditional in Wartime, 1914-18 201
10. From Peace to Crisis: Traditions in Conflict, 1918-40
France, Foreigners and ‘the Art of the Occident’ 206
The Unity in Diversity of France: The ‘Call to Order’ in Paris and the
Regions, 1918-30 209
‘Greater France’ at the 1931 Colonial Exhibition; Matisse and Orientalism
217
The Cult of the Past, the ‘Ecole Française’ and the ‘Métèques’: Humanism
and Xenophobia, 1924-40 222
From Modern Master to Refugee: Chagall, 1938-41 230
PART six: resisting modernity; resisting civilisation
Introduction 233
ii. Primitivising the Modern, 1 goo-18
The ‘Naïve’, the ‘Sincere’ and the ‘Savage’ : From Rousseau in the ‘Cage
des Fauves’ to the Demoiselles d’Avignon 235
Being ‘Primitive’ in Early Twentieth-Century Paris: Henri Rousseau, ‘le
Douanier’; Constantin Brancusi, ‘This Peasant from the Danube’ 244
Against Modernity, Against Logic: ‘Primitive Mentality’ and Bergsonian
Intuition 251
CONTENTS · VII
i2. Counter-Cultural Art, igi8~40
Change and Contradiction; The Provocations of Brancusi, Duchamp and
Picabia 254
Releasing Images: Surrealist Strategies of Liberation 260
The World as Myth: Psychoanalysis and Other Surrealist Preoccupations
270
De-civilising Culture: From Magic to Bassesse 278
The Visual Art of Opposition: Picasso and Guernica, Surrealism and
Politics, Collage and War 285
Notes 291
Select Bibliography 306
Index 312
Photographic Acknowledgements 322
Acknowledgements
Art in France, igoo-iQ4O has a personal history for me Sanda Miller, Jennifer Mundy, Gavin Parkinson, Alexandra
which goes back three decades and more to my earliest Parigoris, Cathy Putz, Penelope Rook, Julian Stallabrass,
engagement with French art in the twentieth century. Michael Stone-Richards, John Welchman, Sarah Wilson
Across those decades I have accumulated more debts than and Jonathan Wood. The book is dedicated to the students
can possibly be recalled here; but my gratitude to all who who have worked with me: not only those I have named, but
have helped me over many years remains warm and undi­ those others, working on art outside France, who have
minished. The book itself was drafted in the twelve months helped me keep alert to new possibilities.
between October 1997 and September 1998. I could not Three of those named above were also among the friends
have written it without that period of concentrated looking, and colleagues who helped me manage the passage from
reading, thinking and writing. My first and most fundamen­ draft to final text by reading the book in its early drafts. A
tal debt is to the Leverhulme Trust, which made this possi­ writer’s hope is that their text will be so absorbing that, for
ble with the award of a Senior Research Fellowship. anyone reading it, time will simply disappear. This is, of
Confidence, bordering on foolhardiness, is needed to set course, an illusion: the hours and days given by those who
out on a project like this. I am not self-sufficient enough to read my drafts were, I know well enough, very real; and I
have that kind of confidence without the backing of others know too the pressures that can make freeing even the
who I respect. The unstinting support and warm encour­ briefest periods so difficult. Mark Antliff and Patricia
agement I have had from Dawn Ades, Eric Fernie, John Leighten read drafts of the later parts of the book, and made
Golding, John Milner and Michael Podro has been essential. key suggestions, which have led to changes of considerable
So too has been that of many colleagues in the Courtauld importance; Sanda Miller read the earlier parts in a very raw
Institute, those who teach with me in the ‘Modern Section’ state, and, as only a friend could, rammed home the impor­
most consistently of all. At certain points in the develop­ tance of accessible prose; Fay Brauer and John Milner read
ment and writing of the book, crucial contributions have the book in its entirety and gave me the sharpest point-by-
been made by my friends Christian Derouet, Hélène point critiques which were of enormous value; my colleagues
Lassalle and Alan G.Wilkinson. I especially want to record at the Courtauld, Margaret Garlake and Sarah Wilson, also
here my gratitude for Hélène Lassalle’s speedy response to read the book in its entirety, and both, from their very differ­
my request to help find a photographer to record a mural in ent perspectives, made me aware of gaps to be filled, errors
the Sorbonne. The photographer she found, Jacques to be avoided and, judgements in need of reconsideration.
Faujour, deserves my special thanks too for the dispatch and Yale University Press has provided the guidance, tactful
quality of his work in difficult circumstances. Another editing and unruffled professionalism which is now so much
friend who supplied a much-needed photograph, and to what I expect from them that I am in danger of taking it for
whom I am extremely grateful, was Liliane Caffin Madaule. granted. It was John Nicoll who suggested that I write the
I do not believe that lone scholarship, the usual research book for the Pelican series, when I first brought him the idea
mode in the Humanities, can produce a book of this kind. of a book on art in France between 1900 and 1940. The
Certainly, I could not have written many sections, or devel­ knowledge that he was behind the project throughout was
oped key arguments, without my own research as a ‘lone immensely important to me. Sally Salvesen, the editor of the
scholar’, but, besides my enormous debt to the many others Pelican series, has kept an expert eye on the project from its
who have produced significant research in the field, I owe early synoptic stages to the end; her confidence in it has also
a major debt to the students who have worked with me. kept me going. Sally Nicholls has collected together the
Where I have drawn directly from their work, I have made photographs for the book and cleared the reproduction
specific acknowledgements in the body of the book to those rights with great patience and resourcefulness. And Beatrix
students as well as to other specialists, but here I would like McIntyre has edited the text and designed the book with
to underline my debt to the research students of the judicious skill, retaining her humour and good nature
Courtauld Institute by naming names. All of the following throughout, whatever the pressures.
have been my teachers in the field: Fiona Bradley, Fay Over many years, Charlotte, Abigail and Toby have made
Brauer, Sophie Bowness, David Cottington, Penelope even the most challenging things (this book included) seem
Curtis, Simon Dell, Patrick Elliott, John Finlay, Matthew possible. Theirs has been the biggest contribution of all. I
Gale, Romy Golan, Memory Holloway, Valerie Holman, sometimes wonder how they have had the forbearance, quite
William Jeffett, Julia Kelly, Elizabeth Legge, David Lomas, apart from the generosity of spirit, to give me so much.