Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The 'Aestheticism' of the "Action d'art" Group, 1906-1920
Author(s): Mark Antliff
Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1998), pp. 101-120 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360616 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 13:52 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Oxford Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The 'Aestheticism' of the Action d'art Group, 1906-1920 Mark Antliff 1. This article is based on research undertaken at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; I am grateful to the staff of those institutions for their help. Thanks go to Matthew Affron, Allan Antliff, and Patricia Leighten for their comments and suggestions. 2. For a synoptic overview of the Artistocratic movement, see Florian Parmentier, La Litterature &I'Epoque: Histoire de la Litterature Francaise de 1885 a nos jours (Figuiere: Paris, 1913), pp. 224-31. 3. Between 1907 and 1920 the 'comrades of Action d'art' collaborated on a number of journals devoted to the theme of Artistocracy: La Foire aux chimeres (1907-08), Les Actes du poetes (1908-11 ), La Forge (1911 ), Le Rhythme (1911-12), and L'Action d'art (1913, 1919-20) being chief among them. After World War One, Emile Armand and Lacaze-Duthier continued to propagate Artistocratic anarchism in the journal L'En dehors (1922-39), which Armand declared to be 'un organe de realisation individualiste anarchiste'. For example, see Emile Armand, 'Ressurection', L'En dehors, 13 May 1922, p. i; and Lacaze Duthier, 'En Mediocratie', L'En dehors, no. 6, February 1923, pp. 1-2. 4. For a lengthy discussion of the Bergsonian dimension of Artistocratic theory, and the relation of that movement to Futurism and Neo- Symbolism, see Mark Antliff, Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1993), pp. 135-67. 5. Robyn Roslak, 'The Politics of Aesthetic Harmony: Neo-Impressionism, Science, and Anarchism', Art Bulletin, September 1991, pp. 381-90. 6. For an overview of Neo-impressionist utopian imagery, see Roslak, 'Organicism and the Construction of an Utopian Geography', Utopian Studies, Vol. 1, no. 2 1990, pp. 96- 114; and John Hutton, Neo-lmpressionism and the Searchfor Solid Ground: Art, Science, and Anarchism in Fin-de-Siecle France (Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, 1994), pp. 128-48. For cogent discussions of the anarchist import of Camille Pissarro's images of peasants, see Robert Herbert, 'City vs. Country: The Rural Image in French painting from Millet to Gauguin', Artforum, February 1970, pp. 44-55; and Paul Smith, Impressionism: Beneath the Surface, (Abrams: New York, 1995), pp. 113-43. The question of how art and politics interrelate is a vexing one: this is particularly true when one considers various attempts in pre-World War I France to forge a rapprochement between the aesthetic and the political.1 Perhaps the most understudied group to develop such a synthesis were the anarcho-individualist artists and writers associated with the doctrine of 'Artistocracy', first propounded in 1906 by the anarcho-individualist Gerard de Lacaze-Duthier in his book L'Ideal Humain de I'Art.2 Joined by artists and critics, Lacaze-Duthier succeeded in founding a number of literary venues promoting the Artistocratic creed, the most significant of which was the journal L'Action d'art, founded in 1913.3 Although L'Action d'art appeared intermittently, ceasing publication after 1913 and only reappearing in 1919, the journal forged a link between anarchists and some of the most significant literary and artistic figures of the day, including Neo-Symbolists associated with Vers et prose (1905-14) such as Paul Fort and Guillaume Apollinaire; the Futurists Ugo Giannattasio and Gino Severini; the Cubist Albert Gleizes, and Atl (Gerardo Murillo), later the leader of the Mexican Muralist movement. The Artistocrats' adaptation of the theories of the philosopher Henri Bergson to their anarchist doctrine won them the support of Bergsonians within the Neo-Symbolist and Futurist milieux. Thus avant-garde aesthetics and aestheticized politics were conjoined under the banner of Artistocratie; this paper will examine the complex history behind that synthesis.4 The Artistocratic association of avant-gardism, aestheticism, and anarchism charted here runs counter to standard histories of the era, for an alliance of this type is widely thought to have reached its zenith before 1900, when the Neo- Impressionists justified their aesthetic precepts on the basis of the anarcho- communism of Petr Kropotkin, Elisee Reclus and Jean Grave. As Robyn Roslak has demonstrated, the Neo-Impressionists drew parallels between the aesthetic harmony achieved through their contrast of complimentary colours and the social harmony that would arise in a society governed by Kropotkin's anarcho-communist doctrine of mutual aid.5 In paintings such as Camille Pissarro's Apple Pickers, Eragny (1888) or Paul Signac's In Times of Harmony (1895-96), the aesthetic harmony encoded in Neo-Impressionist technique had a counterpart in representations meant to approximate an agrarian utopia, composed of self-sufficient anarchist communes.6 It is commonly held that the fin-de-siecle demise of anarcho-communism signalled the death knell for any alliance between avant-garde artists and anarchists. With the founding of the syndicalist Confederation Generale du Travail in 1900 and the Parti Socialiste in 1905, theories of class consciousness and strike action came to dominate leftist discourse. Anarcho-syndicalist and socialist organizations, argues John Hutton, 'rejected the notion of the anarcho-communists that the golden age would arrive through the natural evolution of society'; instead change would only occur 'through concerted human action'.7 Arguing that forging a new class consciousness was the motor of revolution, the anarcho-syndicalists contested the Neo-Impressionists' disavowal of class in the name of individual freedom. OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 99-120 (C) OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff But more importantly, according to Hutton, anarcho-syndicalism 'opened up the possibility of a new source and patronage for art, as well as a new audience: the workers in their unions and local party organizations'.8 As a result the anarcho-communists and their modernist sympathizers reportedly lost much of their support among the working class after 1905. Far from signalling the end of any alliance between anarchists and modernists, the decline of anarcho-communism and rise of anarcho- syndicalism led modernists to embrace a third type of anarchism, namely, the anarcho-individualism promoted by groups like the Artistocrats.9 Based on the theories of Oscar Wilde, Max Stirner and Nietzsche,t0 anarcho- individualism took one of two forms: the armed violence of reprise individuelle or a metaphorical revolt against social conventions in favour of individual self- expression. In the former instance the anarcho-individualist adopted an 'illegalist' posture and challenged society through symbolic acts of violence, such as Auguste Vaillant's famous bombing of the Chamber of Deputies in 1893. In the latter case individual protest was restricted to a revolt against bourgeois norms, a stance that led to the aestheticization of politics, wherein acts that departed from social norms were declared beautiful by virtue of their compatibility with personal desires. Indeed reprise individuelle and aestheticized politics were frequently conjoined in the mind of anarcho-individualists: hence Laurent Tailhade's famous justification of Vaillant's bombing on the basis of the 'beauty' of this gesture of individualist affirmation. 1 After the turn of the century that synthesis was broached again, but this time in the art of Pablo Picasso, whose aesthetic innovations were compared to Vaillant's propagande par le fait by anarchist sympathizers like Andre Salmon and Guilliaume Apollinaire. Anarchism also inspired the Fauvist Maurice Vlaminck who hoped 'to burn down the Ecole des Beaux Arts' with his 'colbalts and vermillions'. 2 Thus the aestheticization of politics remained a key component of anarchist rhetoric long after reprise individuelle had been abandoned as a viable mode of anarchist protest. With the birth of the Artistocratic movement in 1906, anarcho-individualism won over new recruits from the Neo-Symbolist, Futurist and Cubist movements. Why did Artistocratic theory in particular appeal to the modernists? In part its attraction stemmed from the Artistocrats' aestheticization of politics and disavowal of the class-based precepts of anarcho-syndicalism. In part it resided in the Artistocrats' correlation of aesthetic innovation with individualist revolt, a synthesis commonly deployed by critics in defence of modernist painting. Thus while the Artistocrats, like many modernists, clearly saw themselves as an elite vanguard of radical consciousness, the psychological rather than purely economic foundation of that radicalism meant that the artistocrats could recruit allies from artistic bohemia as well as from the working class. Concurrently, they defined their enemy, the bourgeoisie, in psychological as well as economic terms. Bourgeois mentality was overly intellectualized they charged, following Bergson, and was thus in opposition to the intuitive creativity of the Artistocrat. Moreover although the Artistocrats rejected anarcho-communism, they nevertheless developed a theory of collectivity on the basis of a Bergsonian notion of intersubjectivity. These anarcho- individualists argued that notions of collectivity and individualism were not mutually exclusive, a position that resulted in cooperative ventures such as the creation of the Theatre d'Action d'art. The involvement of the Bergsonian Futurists Severini and Giannattasio in the theatre project in turn testifies to its historical importance. However, there were Artistocrats who were prepared to challenge the modernists on economic and political grounds. For anarchists 7. According to John Hutton the syndicalist movement emphasized 'the growth of new collective labor and activity of workers as a distinct class in society, rather than the decision of each individual to embrace the ideals of anarcho-communism'. See Hutton, 'The Blow of the Pick: Science, Anarchism, and the Neo- Impressionist Movement', Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1987, p. 338 and Hutton, Neo-lmpressionism and the Search for Solid Ground, pp. 209-18. In a recent book on Pissarro, Martha Ward has taken a more nuanced approach, arguing that the Neo- impressionists, under Signac's leadership, adjusted their imagery to the syndicalist cause. Works such as Signac's lithograph Les Demolisseurs (1896) reportedly indicated 'Signac's endorsement of a more active and aggressive notion of public art'. See Martha Ward, Pissarro, Neo-lmpressionism, and the Spaces of the Avant-Garde (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1995), pp. 235-40. 8. Hutton, Neo-impressionism and the Search for Solid Ground, p. 218. 9. On the anarcho-individualist circles after 1900, see Richard Sonn, Anarchism & Cultural Politics in Fin-de-siecle France (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln and London, 1989); Patricia Leighten, Re-Ordering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897-1914 (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1989); Joan Halperin, Felix Feneon: Aesthete and Anarchist in Fin-de-siicle Paris (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1988); and Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang (Rebel Press: London, 1987). The most resilient journals propounding anarcho-individualism after 1900 included L'Anarchie (1905-1914), founded by Libertad, and L'En dehors (1922-1939), edited by Emile Armand. 10. On anarcho-individualism, see Hutton, Neo-Impressionism and the Search for Solid Ground, pp. 54-9; and Antliff, Inventing Bergson, pp. 143-47. 11. Sonn, Anarchism & Cultural Politics, p. 257. 12. On Picasso see Leighten, Re-Ordering the Universe, chapters 3 and 4; for Vlaminck's association of anarchism with his Fauve aesthetic, see Maurice Vlaminck, Tournant dangereux: souvenirs de ma vie (Librairie Stock: Paris, 1929), trans. M. Ross, Dangerous Corner (Elek Books: London, 1961), pp. 11-2. 102 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group like Atl and Lacaze-Duthier, the Cubists' and Futurists' involvement in commercial galleries and state-sanctioned salons was proof of the falseness of 13. Gerard Lacaze-Duthier, 'L'Artistocratie', their aesthetic convictions. Their opinions differed markedly from that of L'ldee Libre, October 1912, pp. 153-5. Unless Andre Colomer, an artistocrat who found the Bergsonian aesthetics of the otherwise noted all translations are my own. Cubists' and Futurists' compatible with Artistocratic theory. Giannattasio and 14. Lacaze-Duthier, 'L'Artistocratie', Severini were well aware of such scrutiny; how they responded to this pp. 153 55. Artistocratic debate is worth examining. To properly understand that debate 1Lacaz hier, 'LArt', LAction diar, 15 we must begin by studying the aestheticized critique of capitalism developed 1Marc Duth1er, by the movement's founder, Gerard de Lacaze-Duthier. 16. Lacaze-Duthier, 'Mediocratie, Artistocratie', L'Action d'art, 15 February 1913, p. 4. Aestheticized Politics This dimension of Action d'art politics permeated a series of articles written by Lacaze-Duthier. In 'L'Artistocratie' and related articles in L'Action d'art, Lacaze-Duthier distinguished between the 'mediocratie' of parliamentary democracy and the 'artistocratie' of anarcho-individualism.13 The democratic system had an aesthetic analogue in the 'ugliness' of acts motivated by political or economic gain, as opposed to those acts that were the product of one's need to express oneself in an individual and thus 'beautiful' manner. Predictably, bourgeois culture, politics, and social conventions are deemed ugly, while acts of revolt against the mercantile bases of such culture are labeled artistic. In 'our epoch of ugliness and decadence', Lacaze-Duthier laments, the public focuses on 'the noise of politicians', on the 'pettiness and egoism' that is the result of their desire for personal gain. Moreover, since they contribute nothing to the 'nobility' or 'heroism' of humanity, they try to identify themselves with such grandeur by becoming patrons of the arts. However, 'there are heroisms superior to all recompence', and since politicians, like the bourgeoisie, can only judge a work by its monetary value, they only reward artists who have succeeded on the art market. They are unable to discern which works embody the creative essence of a given era. That creative force is in the gestures of those who are 'disinterested', the artists and thinkers who reject base or material motives and therefore place no value on the material awards proffered by the state or the sale of paintings at the salon. Thus material gain has no role to play in motivating artistic creation, and true artists are immune to the 'egoisme des mediocres', 'the honours of the state', or the 'applause of the crowd'. 'Their recompences are in themselves, and not in success.'14 In his analysis of what constitutes bourgeois as opposed to Artistocratic art, Lacaze-Duthier focuses on those institutions which, to his mind, act to impede self-expression and ally art production to the money economy. On this basis the Artistocrat rejects art promoted within state academies, the gallery system, or that developed by 'the coterie of independants' who belong to the alternative salons.'5 Three interrelated themes pervade Lacaze-Duthier's criticism: distinctions between bourgeois and Artistocratic forms of art, an aestheticization of politics, and a vitalist definition of the Artistocratic state of mind. While he dismisses academicism and anti-academic art on material grounds for catering to the economic interests of the state or the art market, academics are also critiqued on the basis of a vitalist theory of artistic expression. 'We break with the stupid art of academies' proclaims Lacaze-Duthier, because 'they represent inaction and impotence; they destroy, by pretending to conserve that which exists, for they only retain, from tradition, from evolution, waste; that which is living and positive is misunderstood and condemned by them.'16 Academies 'distort tradition' by identifying it with the slavish imitation of the art of the OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 103 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff past; an Artistocrat, in embracing the 'living and positive', adheres to tradition by emulating its novelty. As the product of genius, art is the product of individual creativity; 'to copy' the products of such genius 'is to distort them'.17 At the heart of Lacaze-Duthier's definition of true art is a correlation between creativity and novelty. 'Life is an unending creation', and because art is a form of creation it is as novel as life itself. Those who side with beauty thus side with life and reject 'the classifications which mutilate life, the arbitrary categories which restrain its elan'.18 This correlation between artistic creation and a vital elan derives from the Bergsonian criticism of fellow Artistocrat Andre Colomer, who declared artistic creation to be the product of the Artistocrats' intuitive experience of the lan vital. Like Lacaze-Duthier, he thought artistic activity synonymous with a revolt against societal norms, while the 'utilitarian' and 'mercantile' motivations were manifestations of an 'intellectual' impediment to the intuitive elan vital of each creative individual. To assess an object or activity on the basis of its monetary value alone robbed it of its qualitative significance, just as the uniqueness of an experience or thing would be lost if each were treated as interchangeable with another, as it was when its value was measured in coin. Colomer cited Bergson in this regard, noting that the philosopher identified such normative and homogenizing criteria of evaluation with an intellectual rather than intuitive point of view. For Bergson, an intellectual perspective robs experience of its qualitative import and fails to recognize that life, like art, is the product of creative activity. In sum, Colomer gave Lacaze- Duthier's anarchism epistemological weight by aligning the Artistocratic revolt with what was then the most powerful critique of materialism in France.'9 17. Lacaze-Duthier, 'L'Art', p. 4. 18. Lacaze-Duthier, 'Mediocratie, Artistocratie', L'Action d'art, 1 February 1913, p. 4. 19. For a detailed discussion of Colomer's relation to Bergson, see Antliff, Inventing Bergson, pp. 136-55. 20. Lacaze-Duthier, 'L'Artistocratie', pp. 153- 5. 21. For a full discussion of the anarchist import of these statements by Apollinaire and Picasso, see Leighten, Re-Ordering the Universe, chapters 3 and 4. 22. Guilliaume Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters: Aesthetic Meditations (Figuiire: Paris, 1913), trans. Lionel Abel (George Wittenborn Inc.: New York, 1970), p. 23; for a discussion of the anarchist valences of Apollinaire's criticism, see Leighten, Re-Ordering the Universe, pp. 53-63. Anarchism and Avant-Gardism Since artistic tradition is composed of successive radical innovations, the Artistocrat emulates tradition by being as radically innovative as past artists. 'The true tradition', states Lacaze-Duthier, 'is a tradition of revolt and emancipation. The tradition we represent is the tradition of free ideas. Every idea is revolutionary. . . . Of past art, all that which had been new, all which was opposed to prejudice and habit, is our tradition.' According to Lacaze- Duthier, 'it is by building that we destroy', for 'genius edifies and constructs without cease, and it is by affirming the reality of the ideal that it ruins the agitation of mediocraties'. 'Creation', therefore, 'follows its course in the midst of ugliness and its errors.'20 The creative artist is everywhere confronted by a society that shuns novelty and embraces an academic art that conforms to state-sanctioned bourgeois values. This correlation between creativity and novelty and identification of aesthetic vanguardism with revolutionary change is a paradigm that pervades Cubist-related art criticism. When Apollinaire called upon artists to 'innovate violently' or Picasso proclaimed his art to be 'a sum of destructions', both artist and poet related Cubism's departure from academic convention to the Nietzschean creation of new social values.2' In his book Les Peintres cubistes (1913), Apollinaire described Picasso as 'new-born', a protean creator who 'orders the universe in accordance with his requirements'.22 Like Lacaze- Duthier and Andre Colomer, he identified artistic novelty with a new way of thinking and a concomitant break from a bourgeois order allied to an imitative and thus 'impotent' academicism. This Nietzschean vocabulary, which wedded the transformation of accepted norms and values with an individualist revolt against bourgeois convention, was also shared by the Cubists Albert Gleizes 104 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group 23. For a thorough study of the Nietzschean precepts of Gleizes' and Metzinger's Cubism, see John Nash, 'The Nature of Cubism: A Study of Conflicting Explanations', Art History, December 1980, pp. 436-47. 24. Albert Gleizes, 'L'Art et ses Representants: Jean Metzinger', Revue Independante (September 1911), pp. 171-2. 25. Gleizes and Metzinger, Du Cubisme (1912), trans. R. L. Herbert, Modern Artists on Art (Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1964), pp. 6-7. 26. Lacaze-Duthier, 'L'Art', p. 4. 27. See 'A Notre librarie', L'Action d'art, no. 9, 25 July 1913, p. 4. We should not, however, assume that the Cubists subscribed to all of the tenets of anarcho-individualism; indeed, as I have shown elsewhere, Gleizes and his Neo- Symbolist circle were affiliated with an organization that drew upon anarcho-syndicalist and radical republican ideology in its advocacy of a theory of Celtic nationalism. See the chapter titled 'The Body of the Nation: Cubism's Celtic Nationalism', in Antliff, Inventing Bergson, pp. 106-34. 28. Colomer, who was incarcerated for his refusal to serve in World War One, openly declared his pacifism in the first edition of the revived journal; subsequently he sought to revive his contacts with the Cubists, whom he still regarded as revolutionary by virtue of their aesthetic innovations and their affiliation with the Unanimist poets, a group that shared Colomer's pacifist principles. Among Colomer's collaborators in the post-war journal was the war veteran Marcel Sauvage, whose poetry conveyed his frontline experiences, and the Unanimist Georges Duhamel. See Andre Colomer, 'L'Action d'art renait', L'Action d'art, 15 October 1919, pp. 1-2. This opening number of L'Action d'art (p. 8) also announced that 'une chronique des Livres et des Revues sera tenue a partir du prochain numero', which would include 'une rubrique: Les expositions d'art avec la collaboration d'Albert Gleizes, Felix Courche, J-P Dubray, et La-vollee'. Although the pacifist Gleizes failed to contribute to the journal, his projected collaboration nevertheless attests to the shared political interests uniting Colomer and this Cubist. In a March 1920 review of the Salon des Independants, long time Artistocrat Rene Dessambre praised the work of the Cubists for 'donnant une vie, une harmonie, une magnificence de synthese'; and the following issue included an article by Georges Duthuit on the Cubist La Section d'or exhibition, held in Paris in March 1920. See Rene Dessambre, 'Aux Independants', L'Action d'art, 12 March 1920, pp. 7-8; and Georges Duthuit, 'La Section d'or', L'Action d'art, 22 May 1920, pp. 6-7. On the pacifism of the Unanimists, as well as poets like Sauvage, see Nancy Sloan Goldberg, 'French Pacifist Poetry of World War and Jean Metzinger, though they were more reticent about the anarchist import of such ideas.23 Gleizes ended a 1911 essay on Metzinger by praising him as one 'who gives us so many new values' that he inspires a 'ferocious opposition' on the part of those artists and critics 'unable to create'.24 In their joint publication, Du Cubisme (1912), Gleizes and Metzinger went one step further by separating themselves from their public on the basis of the latter's lack of creativity. 'Comprehension', state Gleizes and Metzinger in Du Cubisme, cannot 'evolve as rapidly as the creative faculties' with the result that the public 'long remains the slave of the painted image, and persists in seeing the world only through the adopted sign'. An artist's role, therefore, is to impose new perceptual conventions on this public by creating 'a symbol likely to affect others'. To Gleizes' and Metzinger's mind such persuasion can be accomplished if the artistic innovations of previous generations are recast after their own creative responses.25 Lacaze-Duthier professed similar sentiments when he noted that 'original works have against them the rationalist spirit of the public' which 'bursts out laughing before a work it does not understand'.26 Furthermore, since Bergson described all creative acts as heterogeneous and unrepeatable, Gleizes, Metzinger, and the Artistocrat Colomer were quick to declare aesthetic imitation antithetical to the creative impulse and thus untenable as a mode of artistic production. Similarily, Lacaze-Duthier's reference to the 'rationalist spirit' governing the hostile public alludes to Bergson's distinction between the rational and intuitive, which Colomer employed in his separation of the bourgeois and Artistocratic state of mind. For the Artistocrat and the Cubist, any aesthetic identified with the 'rational' is condemned as antithetical to the creative intuition they wish to promote. In short, the Artistocratic correlation of creativity with novelty echoed the vocabulary of artists and critics in the Cubist camp, and it should come as no surprise to learn that Apollinaire's Les Peintres cubistes and Gleizes and Metzinger's Du Cubisme were both sold in the Action d'art bookstore. Indeed, Andre Colomer declared these texts to be amenable to the Artistocrats' 'individualist and anarchically idealist tendancies'.27 Following the revival of L'Action d'art in 1919, Colomer continued to view Cubism in a favorable light, linking his anarchist pacifism to that of the Unanimists and their Cubist allies, publishing articles on Cubist exhibitions, and even winning over the pacifist Albert Gleizes, who was projected to write a regular column on art for the journal.28 That endorsement, however, also came with some serious reservations, indicative of a general schism within Artistocratic ranks over the merits of the modernists. In the criticism of Lacaze-Duthier those doubts took the form of a condemnation of those who embrace a 'pretext of novelty' antithetical to Artistocratic 'originality'. Such pretext was found among the 'independants', those artists exhibiting in the Salon des Indpendants who invariably formed a 'coterie' and presented the public with 'the extravagant and the bizarre' in 'the name of originality'. Since the public lacks 'aesthetic consciousness' it is susceptible to such 'bluff and incoherence'.29 Although Lacaze-Duthier does not name the Cubists, his extension of this critique to encompass all artists associated with the Societe des artistes independants suggests that he regarded the Fauvist, Cubist, and Futurist movements as mere attempts at self-promotion on the part of the modernists. Unlike Colomer, he doubted the sincerity of these artists because he thought their art to be little more than an advertisement, designed to attract attention and thus increase sales. 'Commerce and art preclude each other', states Lacaze-Duthier; 'to make a painting to sell it, this is to be the proletarian of financiers and merchants'. OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 105 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff Those artists who reject Academic methods only to declare themselves part of some new 'bizarre' tendancy 'conceive art as a field for politics . . . for them it is a business deal' promoted through 'advertising and hoax'.30 Since the art of the salon is commercialized, the novelty of Cubist or Futurist form is presumably nothing more than a publicity stunt, lacking the serious intentions of the Artistocrat.31 Rather than follow Colomer in his correlation of Artistocratic and Cubist avant-gardism, Lacaze-Duthier claimed that the commercialism of the latter group made their vanguardism a mere hoax, devoid of any anarchist credibility. Since Colomer's support of the modernists was premised on his Bergsonian aesthetics, Lacaze-Duthier was quick to distance himself from those philosophic assumptions, claiming that Colomer had developed his Bergsonian theory independantly.32 The Politics of Sexual Liberation Perhaps the most important aspect of Lacaze-Duthier's criticism was his attempt to define a social role for the Artistocrat, to distinguish his theory from one that would cast the artist in the role of an elitist esthete. In the process, he surprisingly allied his doctrine to the theories of Oscar Wilde, whose ideas were fundamental to the Action d'art project. Both Wilde and Lacaze-Duthier regarded the artistic point of view as synonymous with an individualism that actively rebels against social norms and is autonomous from all influence outside of one's personal need for self-expression. Although Wilde legendarily exemplifies an apolitical 'art for arts sake' position, his 'Soul of Man under Socialism' (1891) expressly identified the artistic point of view with social revolt. In Wilde's view all individuals have the potential to develop into artists, provided they possess the material means to free themselves from utilitarian concerns. Moreover he claimed that 'the form of government which best suits the artist is the absence of all government' and planned to replace the state with voluntary association, based on a spirit of cooperation rather than competition. 'By converting private property into public wealth, and substituting cooperation for competition [we] will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly happy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community.'33 Like Lacaze-Duthier, Wilde thought that every individual should be able to live like an artist, whose sole purpose in life is to create beauty. However, Wilde differed from Lacaze- Duthier in his description of the means by which such goals could be realized. For Wilde, the creation of a society of artists could be achieved if one did away with private ownership and let all members of society share material goods equally. In this manner each individual would be able to adopt the 'disinterested' attitude of the artist who can afford to ignore life's 'utilitarian' concerns. Lacaze-Duthier too thought that artistic creation should be divorced from material need, but he provided no concrete social program for the realization of this schism. Thus Lacaze-Duthier called upon artists to abandon state patronage or the salon system without suggesting an alternative means of substinence beyond that outlined by Wilde. Wilde thought the redistribution of wealth a prerequisite for the creation of an anarchist society; by contrast the members of the Action d'art collective asserted that each individual simply had first to adopt the psychological attitude of the Artistocrat to realize a social revolution. For Lacaze-Duthier that attitude was synonymous with a state of psychological and physiological 'equilibrium' or 'harmony' that in turn produced a desire to share this experience with others. An Artistocrat's life is One', Journal of European Ideas, December 1991, pp. 239-58. 29. Lacaze-Duthier, 'L'Art', p. 4. 30. Lacaze-Duthier, 'L'Art', p. 4. 31. Although Lacaze-Duthier did profess sympathy for literary members of the Neo- Symbolist movement, he seems to have regarded their Cubist and Futurist confreres with disdain. Lacaze-Duthier endorsed the Neo- Symbolist practise of publicly declaring a 'Prince of Poets' or 'Prince of Story Tellers' as a method of drawing the public's attention to serious art, rather than condemning the practice as a mere publicity stunt. Perhaps he was swayed in this regard by the election of fellow anarcho-individualist and L'Action d'art associate Han Ryner as 'Prince des Conteurs' in 1913. Paul Fort, the official 'Prince of Poets' also participated in L'Action d'art events, as we shall see below. See Lacaze-Duthier, 'Reflections sur la Litterature', L'Action d'art, 15 April 1913, p. 4. 32. See Lacaze-Duthier, Vers l'artistocratie (Editions L'Action d'art: Paris, 1913), pp. 6-7. 33. Oscar Wilde, 'The Soul of Man under Socialism', in Richard Ellmann (ed.) The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1969), p. 257. 106 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group 34. Lacaze-Duthier, 'Mediocratie, Artistocratie', L'Action d'Art, February 1913, p. 4. 35. Lacaze-Duthier, 'L'Individualisme esthetique et L'Artistocratie', L'Action d'Art, 10 Sept 1913, p. 2. 36. Lacaze-Duthier, 'Reflexions sur la Litterature', L'Action d'Art, 25 June 1913, p. 8. 37. Atl, 'Encore un attentat a la Liberte de l'Art', L'Action d'Art, 25 July 1913, p. 2. 38. Atl, 'Notre Protestation en Faveur du Monument Oscar Wilde', L'Action d'Art, 10 May 1913, pp. 3-4. The journal sold texts on free love, abortion and feminism in its book store, including titles such as Madeleine Pelletier's Le droit a l'avortement and Madeleine Vernet's L'Amour libre. L'Action d'Art was not the first anarchist journal to defend Wilde in terms of sexual liberation, for the anarchist sympathizer Edward Carpenter had defended Wilde on similar grounds in the anarchist magazine Freedom in July 1895. For a discussion of the importance of sexual liberation in English anarchist circles, see Hermia Olivier, The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London (St. Martins Press: New York, 1983), pp. 141-6; on the sexual politics of Carpenter see Linda D. Henderson, 'Mysticism as the "Tie That Binds": The case of Edward Carpenter and Modernism', Art Journal, Spring 1987, pp. 29- 37; and Sheila Rowbotham, '"Commanding the Heart": Edward Carpenter and Friends', History Today, September 1987, pp. 41-6. 39. Atl, 'Les edits Delanney', L'Action dArt, 15 March 1913, p. 3. 40. Atl, 'Pour la Liberte de l'Art: Protestation a propos du Monument Oscar Wilde. Notre Petition', L'Action d'Art, 15 April 1913, p. 1. beautiful, because she or he is 'a being free of all dogma, possessing his own law, his own morality, sole master of his destiny, creating his life harmoniously such as he believes it, managing to equilibrate all his passions and all his ideas, and to rejuvenate and renew himself through his incessant action'. In this manner the Artistocrat will not only grasp the 'profound meaning' of life, but through action, reveal this meaning to all: 'such is the task of the writer, of the artist'.34 Elsewhere psychological equilibrium is given its literary correlate in 'lyricism' since it alone 'realizes the equilibrium, the beauty, the justice in the work' as well as 'the equilibrium of the form and the idea'. The life of the Artistocrat therefore is like 'a harmonious poem', motivated by 'love'. As a result aristocratic activity 'does not pass unnoticed', for 'his enthusiasm, his sympathy, gradually modifies his environment'.35 'Contact with poets renews life in us', and 'we become conscious of ourselves' if we 'imitate the poets who only listen to the voice of inspiration'.36 In this manner Lacaze-Duthier separates art-for-art's-sake elitism from his conception of the Artistocrat, noting that the latter does not shun the public, but actively seeks to set an example for others through the beauty and elan of his or her activity. The theory outlined above was applied by L'Action d'art in a protest campaign against government censorship. In 1912, the State condemnation of Jacob Epstein's monumental Oscar Wilde Tomb for its supposed obscenity became a rallying point for the Artistocrats's opposition to the Third Republic (Fig. 1). The Wilde Tomb was the subject of controversy because of the public declaration, on the part of the Prefecture de Police and an official 'Comite d'esthetique', that the winged figure on the tomb was offensive by reason of its highly legible genitals. In a series of articles, L'Action d'art's art critic, Atl, defended the Wilde monument in the name of Artistocratic principles developed by his colleagues. Thus Atl employed Lacaze-Duthier's correlation between the Artistocratic temperament and physiological 'equilibrium' in his defence of the sexual content of the statue, noting that anyone 'in full possession of his sexual equilibrium cannot be offended before the symbol of virility'. Atl related his protest to the work of other artists, taking note that the 'Commission de sculpture du Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts' had suppressed the exhibition of the work of sculptor Geo Duthiel on similar grounds.37 By declaring the government's prohibition against the monument the product of 'pathology' and an insult 'to the simple dignity of the healthy man', the Action d'art compagnons turned the tables on the Comite d'esthetique, calling into question its own sexual and psychological health. This attack must have been all the more satisfying since the committee was composed of important artists of the Ecole des Beaux Arts and members of the Institut, the very defenders of the state-sanctioned art Lacaze-Duthier condemned as morally corrupt and artistically 'impotent'. Atl and his colleagues declared the tomb to be one of those 'free and harmonious manifestations of aesthetic individualism', fully in keeping with the anarchist philosophy of Wilde himself.38 Thus as part of their campaign they published extracts from Wilde's 'Soul of Man under Socialism', noting that they not only sought to defend 'the work of a sculptor threatened by the governmental arbiter', but 'to affirm their admiration for the beautiful poet who died in misery, tracked down by all the social forces ... the most ardent of individualists'.39 The Action d'art collective then brought their case to the public with a petition protesting state censorship and defending 'the principle of liberty itself in art' (Fig. 1).40 By reproducing an image of the sculpture, they hoped to apprise the public of the sculpture's actual appearance and make plain the underlying homophobic and antisexual prejudice that motivated the state's case. OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 107 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff Monument du poete Oscar Wilde Par EPSTEIN -;' :^':b-r z icr. a' i;etiere dx ?ers-Lachxse (a9" Sen.io.. re:s i ?t.: Zirnanvire) Cc bas-relief fut expose a Londres aux regards des plus puritains et ne souleva auicune protestation ; or, depuis, Son arrivc sutir e territoire de la Republique. il est, parait-il, devenu un objet de scandale. E n septembre iqi , ic prefer de police interdit I'inaugutration de ce moniumcnt, considire par lui comme offensant pour la 1morale publique. Derniercment. Ie to fevrier. apres avis du ConiIe d'eslhetique de la prefecture de la Seine. - compose de M,M. Delannev. prefet de la Seine. president: Aubanel. sccr2taire general. vice-president; Lorieux ct Alexandre, inspecteurir geiteriaux des posnt., et chaussecs : Pascal et Nenot, membres de I'lnstitut. inspecteurs des bitiments civils ; Jean-Paul Laiirens ct Gabriel Ferrier. peintrcs. membres de 'lInstitut; Charles Girautt, architecte, membre de 'lns- titit : Dcnvs Piuech, Injalbert et Antonini Mercie. sculptcurs. membres de I'lnstitut ; Selmersheim, inspectcur general des- monmnntcuts historiqucs : Bordais, Denfer. Dumont. ingenieurs des arts et manufactures: Boileau, architecte: Alasseur. afcien eritrcprencur dc travaux publics: Bouvard. directeur honoraire de la prefecture Galli, president du consiel ninicipial : Dausst. president dii omite du budget: Chlrioux, president de la troisimec commission du conseil municipal. entrlepreneuur de travaux publics; Mithouard. vice-president de la commission du Vicux-Paris d'Andignc. ,onseiller municipal: ct Georges Cain. conservatecurd Musee Carnavalet. - Ie prefet avisa c repretscntant londonicn du cornite Oscar Wilde, djavoir a mutiler I'xuvre du statuiaire Epstein - actuellement dans le Sud Africai - fauiitc dc quoi ii la ferait descellcr aux frais. risques et perils des ayants droit. Avcs: Ic mxonument Oscar Wilde. c'cst ie priniupei mdmcade la liberte dans ]'art qui est menace. Pour cectte liheric, Ch.iilcs Biudel.irc. Gustavc Flatibert. Catille Mcnde's, Jean Richepin. Paul Adam, Lucien Descaves, Chiarc- iteu I llunIli, Sticnlc i. Forain, Louin Lcgraind. WVitlette. Poulbot. Grandjouan, Dclannov. etc., n'ont pas craint ,i'aftr.'nic It, rn. euuils dC', oi.. 7.' dn'x,/i.i '1. I' Ij tirf'eIctute sousl un djnger pour Farl. etl une atteintc a iL digsinite de i'bomme saiii. Noits .tvon' , I llcur- L dcnxotirc vsir I'ajition dJi'l dit i mars I 31) qtic es minusecs. Ic places publiques cl Ic .cglise', pEs~illclcu it d t x I c- .xxtrenic nt i ci.littic'. l..cs pen-utrI-. 1- l .it ~-I,'- .i ics- c-t r.,1 nl'.* *'c dotvent dIc slctcfndre le urs roist. ct ai-dessuis dc leurs droits ,'W[d. nit id i. icrtc No,- . " - .,.i':i ,ine hor- tt-ndront .a sgnser notre pctition poutr plte Ic moniinmcit Oscar I. ES COMPAGNcONS D I. ACI' ION D'ART i' I -' , . ' ' ? . -., , ? ,, - ?. t.Sn.. '..t. I',r. Af", ,. : F?g 1 Les Compagnons de L AtindrtBradh d . . W' Fie. 1. Les Compagnons de L'Action d'art, 'Broadsheet defending the Oscar Wilde Tomb', 1913. 108 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group 41. Although Picasso did not sign the petition, he too was aware of the scandal, for he met Epstein on numerous occasions during the latter's sojourns to Paris between June and November 1912. Picasso's reluctance to defend Epstein's monument publically may in part have been due to his desire as a foreigner to keep a low public profile following his involvement, along with Apollinaire, in the scandal of 1911 over two Iberian sculptures stolen from the Louvre by Apollinaire's 'secretary', Gery Pieret, a deserter from the Belgian army: Apollinaire's and Pieret's status as foreigners led to xenophobic condemnations of the avant-garde in the press. On the 1911 scandal and Picasso's familiarity with Epstein see, Peter Read, Picasso et Apolliniare: Les metamorphoses de la memoire (Editions Jean-Michel Place: Paris, 1995), pp. 69-74 and 153-6; and Leighten, Re-Ordering the Universe, pp. 70 and 80. 42. Atl, 'Pour la Liberte de l'Art', p. 1. 43. The London distributor for the journal was an organisation called 'Groupe d'Etudes Sociales', 19 Mannett Street and Charing Cross Road, London; see 'Les Correspondents de l'Action d'Art', L'Action d'Art, 10 May 1913, p. 4. 44. For a summation of the impact of Stirner on these journals and their avant-garde associates among the literary 'Imagists' and 'Vorticists' see Michael J. Levenson, A Geneology of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine, 1908-1922 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1984), pp. 63-79; Bruce Clarke, 'Dora Marsden and Ezra Pound: The New Freewoman and "The Serious Artist"', Contemporary Literature, vol. 33, no. 1, 1992, pp. 91-112; and Lisa Tickner, 'Now and Then: the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound', Oxford Art Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, 1993, pp. 55-61. The New Freewoman was the precursor of The Egoist, and both journals carried advertisements for the sale of Max Stirner's Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (1845), translated as The Ego and Its Own. As Bruce Clarke has convincingly argued, the editor of both journals, Dora Marsden, was an avid anarcho-individualist, who interpreted feminism and Imagist poetry in light of Max Stirner's egoism. Marsden also had a lasting impact of Ezra Pound, who defended Vorticism in egoistic terms 'as a movement of individuals' in The Egoist. See Ezra Pound, 'Edward Wadsworth, Vorticist', The Egoist, 15 August 1914, pp. 306- 7. The Wilde monument was defended in much the same terms by Horace Holly in the pages of The New Freewoman. Holly described the condemnation of Wilde in the name of 'immorality, insanity' as 'the worlds' oldest and handiest weapons' against those who would venture beyond 'the consciousness of the middle class'. Likewise the correlation of homosexuality with a 'healthy pathology' was a position advocated by Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter, two writers who had a profound impact on The New Freewoman and The Egoist. See The success of their campaign can be measured by the list of respondents, contained in the 15 April 1913 issue. Among those who declared themselves 'pour liberte de l'art' was a virtual cross-section of the Parisian modernists, including the writers Apollinaire, Paul Fort, Max Jacob, Olivier-Hourcade, Louis Mandin, Jean Muller, and Alexandre Mercereau. All these figures were associated with the Neo-Symbolist movement; moreover prominent Cubists supported the protest, most notably Alexander Archipenko, Gleizes, Pierre Dumont, Francis Picabia, and Felix-Elie Tobeen.41 The list of signatories even included luminaries from abroad, such as the secretary general of London's Allied Artists Association, and the likes of Wyndham Lewis, William Roberts, Charles Ginner, and Spencer Gore.42 Indeed it is worth noting that L'Action d'art had a London distributer43 and that the correlation between sexual liberation, anarcho-individualism, and the precepts of Max Stirner had simultaneously been forged in England by the modernist journals New Freewoman (1913) and The Egoist (1914).44 The modernist response to the Artistocratic campaign attests to an awareness of the movement, and the manner in which the Artistocrats broadened their audience. By couching their petition in terms of freedom of expression, rather than an attack on the commercialization of art, they were able to win the endorsement of artists and critics who might otherwise have felt compromised by the implications of the Artistocratic protest. Politicising the Artistic Medium The Wilde campaign was initiated by the Mexican Artistocrat Geraldo Murillo (1875-1964), who took the pseudonymn Dr Atl.45 Atl was favourably positioned to rally the Parisian modernists to Epstein's defence, for he was an artist whom Guillaume Apollinaire openly admired as an individual with 'lofty aims' and 'ascetic discipline'.46 Such unqualified admiration, however, was not reciprocated, for Atl endorsed Lacaze-Duthier's critique of Cubist commercialism. Atl's criticism in L'Action d'art focused on two major themes, a condemnation of the commercial motive in art and the development of an alternative aesthetic amenable to the heroic ideals of the Artistocracy. In speaking of mercantilism, Atl followed Lacaze-Duthier in disparaging the salon system as commercially motivated and in attacking the modernists for their complicity in the money economy. Thus in his first essay for L'Action d'art, Atl characterized the artist who would exhibit in the salons as 'a modest employee of a "Company of Art Exploitation" ', before noting that the salon juries also obey 'the commercial spirit of the company'.47 Similarly, though Atl himself had an exhibition at the Galerie Joubert et Richebourg in May 1914, he nevertheless claimed that a gallery's only motive in exhibiting a given artist was to 'fill the cash box of the house' 48 Artists too were to be condemned for their lack of resistance to the market, for artists generally did not exhibit together out of mutual agreement over aesthetic ideals but in response to market demands. He made the Artistocratic basis of this criticism explicit when he condemned the cartoonist Willette for embracing 'mediocratie' by virtue of his desire to achieve commercial success and 'official approval'.49 Similarly, he claimed not only that the Cubists Gleizes and Metzinger were 'the victims of theories that they do not understand thoroughly','5 but that the controversy their art elicited was no more than an 'advertisement . . constructed following the exigencies of the merchant'.51 However, in contrast to Lacaze-Duthier, Atl was prepared to see some merit in the Cubist style and to propose his own aesthetic as an alternative to the pitfalls of commercialized OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 109 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff painting. Thus much of his critical energy was devoted to promoting his painterly technique, known as Atl-colour, as an alternative to oil painting. Echoing the earlier criticism of such conservatives as Charles Blanc, Atl claimed that oil painting on canvas - by virtue of the fragility of the medium and its small-scale format- was designed for individual contemplation in the home, and thus catered to the commercial market.52 Atl-colour on the other hand was modelled after fresco technique and therefore tailor-made for large- scale mural decoration of a civic sort. As Apollinaire reported in his review of Atl's 1914 exhibition, the artist thought his mixture of wax and crayon 'a solid derivative of the methods of the Hellenic painters' and thus amenable 'to all kinds of surfaces - paper, canvas, fibro-cement, plaster, wood, etc'.53 The adaptability of the medium meant that artists could abandon oil painting and work in settings that were divorced from the commercial market. Ideally Atl- colour was designed for mural painting in a public square, not for private consumption in the form of easel painting. In his criticism for L'Action d'art, Atl repeatedly disparaged oil painting and eulogized the decorative, large-scale frescos of Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling. According to Atl it was through the decorative concept alone that an artist could achieve the 'heroic' aspirations of the Artistocrat. The 'plastic elements' of a work should be 'the manifestation of the peculiar consciousness of the artist'; furthermore 'it is necessary to go beyond bourgeois, ecclesiastical or official action - social action to say it all - if one wants to arrive at the concentration of all force of thought, of will and knowledge in a work of beauty'.54 Artistocratic art was beautiful by virtue of its utter individuality and complete separation from anything construed as 'social'. It is 'the integral action of the self that engenders true art, and art of this type will 'harmonize lines, colours, and volumes of a decoration with the structure of an edifice or with the dimensions of a great idea'.55 The epic idea of the Artistocrat thus produces a 'decorative rhythm' that can even give an easel painting the volumetric force of a wall fresco.56 It is this volumetric quality that Atl found admirable in the work of the Cubist Albert Gleizes.57 In his review of the Salon des Independants, Atl singled out Gleizes' Football Players (Fig. 2) for praise because the players 'seem to move in a space simultaneously more ample and more in depth'. 'The opposed planes constituted with the figures' reportedly 'produces a more intense sensation' indicative of spatial magnitude.58 Presumably Atl thought the transparent planes and cubic forms that serve to fuse together the painting's imagery amplified its pictorial impact beyond that usually achievable in the easel painting format. Indeed, paintings such as Metzinger's Harbour (191 1) (Fig. 3) created a sense of amplitude by combining views that defied Euclidean perspective and even captured the curvature of the earth's surface. This 'epic' space had its Artistocratic equivalent in the art of Atl, who, in images such as his Luminous Silence of 1913 (Fig. 4) emulated the curvilinear, Reimannian space created by Metzinger in his earlier Landscape (1911-12).59 Although he did not combine multiple views in a single painting, or structure space through Cezannean passage, Atl did employ mild spatial distortions to augment our sense of spatial recession and volumetric depth. Thus the roadside walls separating two fields in the foreground of Atl's painting diverge dramatically as they approach us, as if we were viewing the landscape through a fish-eye lens. This dramatic curvature has its parallel in the curvilinear lines surrounding the sun, which give the sky a volumetric quality, suitable to the panorama spread out below. Together, earth and sky produce a synesthetic experience of sublime, 'luminous silence'. Although the Cubists failed to realize the 'matte finish', 'gritty' or 'hard surface' achievable through Horace Holly, 'Epstein's Oscar Wilde Monument', The New Freewoman, 1 July 1913, pp. 30-1; for evidence of the impact of Carpenter and Ellis on the politics of The New Freewoman, see Sheila Rowbotham and Jeffry Weeks, Socialism and the New Life: The Personal Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis (Pluto Press: London, 1977), pp. 120-2; and Edward Carpenter, 'The Status of Women in Early Greek Times', The New Freewoman, 1 August 1913, p. 68. For evidence of the impact of such views on Pound and Lewis, see Levenson, A Geneology of Modernism and chapter two of Tom Normand, Wyndham Lewis, The Artist (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1992). In his The Spirit of the Ghetto, the American anarchist Hutchins Hapgood noted that the youthful Epstein in New York had anarchist leanings, an orientation borne out by his later collaboration with the self-professed 'anarcho-communist' architect Charles Holden in the initial design of the Oscar Wilde Tomb. Epstein is known to have been in Paris during the months of May and June 1913, and in his later autobiography he recalled his interest in the L'Action d'art campaign. On Epstein's politics before his arrival in England in 1905, see Hutchins Hapgood, The Spirit of the Ghetto (1902, rpt. Belkap Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967), pp. 254-71; for Holden's relations to Epstein, see Richard Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery in Early 20th Century England (Yale University Press: London, 1985), pp. 9- 60, and Brian Hanson, 'Singing the Body Electric with Charles Holden', Architectural Review, December 1975, pp. 349-65. For Epstein's comments on the L'Action d'art defence of the tomb, see Jacob Epstein, Epstein: An Autobiography (1955, Second Edition, Vista Books: London, 1963), pp. 52-5; 253-4. 45. Atl, whose name derives from the Aztec name for water, has been the subject of numerous studies. See, for example, discussions of Atl in the following texts: Laurence Schmeckebier, Modern Mexican Art (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1939); Jose Clemente Orozco, Jose Clemente Orozco: An Autobiography (University of Texas Press: Austin, 1962); Jean Chariot, The Mexican Mural Renaissance (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1963); Mackinley Helm, Modern Mexican Painters (Books for Libraries Press: Freeport, 1968); Serge Fauchereau, Les Peintres Revolutionnaires Mexicains (Editions Messidor: Paris, 1985); and Museo Nacional de Arte, Dr. Atl, 1875-1964: conciencia y paisaje (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes: Mexico, 1985). 46. Leroy C. Bruenig (ed.) Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews, 1902-1918 (Viking: New York, 1972), p. 371. 47. Atl, 'Une Orientation s'impose', L'Action d'Art, 15 February 1913, p. 2. 48. Atl, 'Forain', L'Action d'Art, I March 1913, p. 2. 49. Atl, 'Forain', p. 2. 110 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group A .. . .. ~ ^^f f :-'' " iw Fig. 2. Albert Gleizes, 'Football Players', 1912-13, oil on canvas, 89 x 72 in. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Alisa Mellon Bruce Fund 1970. (Photograph: National Gallery of Art). OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 111 i I t It _ 1 A ^ 3' -'' ' . 2 #, 3T i k: ii i. 3w_ '2 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff Fig. 3. Jean Metzinger, 'The Harbour', 1911-12, oil on canvas. Location and dimensions unknown. Atl-colour,60 the Mexican Artistocrat thought their spatial innovations adaptable to his own intentions, and thus worthy of praise. Clearly Atl's objection to the Cubists had less to do with their technique than with their intentions, which he allied to market forces rather than Artistocratic aspirations. When he did criticize Cubist technique it was from the standpoint of the commercial implications of their chosen medium. Although both the Artistocrat and the Cubists hoped to transform the consciousness of their audience, Atl felt alone in wanting to revolutionize the artistic medium by abandoning oil on canvas. By creating a new technique adaptable to other contexts, he hoped to reach an audience beyond that which would attend an art exhibition. As an Artistocrat, Atl hoped to divorce art from the commercialized format of oil on canvas, and in so doing arrive at a technique amenable only to self-expression. In short the political aspirations that led Atl to condemn oil on canvas were not unlike those that inspired Picasso to invent collage, for both artists abandoned easel painting's traditional medium as a form of protest against state-sanctioned academicism.61 Les Forgerons: An Anarchist Salon Thus far I have focused on the Artistocrats' critique of the private gallery system for its corrupting effect on the Cubist movement; now I will analyse those exhibition spaces they identified as free from commercialism. As I previously noted Lacaze-Duthier, Atl and their Artistocratic colleagues all concurred that the true artist is one who spurns commercial or state- sanctioned enterprises in order to follow the dictates of self-expression, defined for Colomer in terms of Bergsonian intuition. Artistocrats were instructed to avoid the public salons or art galleries, and seek non-commercial venues in which to exhibit their work. Not surprisingly the compagnons provided a forum for such activity in the guise of various non-profit and strictly voluntary art organizations. As early as March, the journal announced the formation of an art 'guild', 'Les Forgerons', whose stated purpose was 'the elevation of people through art', by making art produced by the guild's 50. Atl, 'Une Orientation s'impose', p. 2. 51. Atl, 'Le Salon des Independants', L'Action d'Art, 15 March 1913, pp. 1-2. 52. For a detailed discussion of the valorisation of the decorative over easel painting in the criticism of Charles Blanc, Ernest Chesneau, and others, see Marc Gotlieb, 'From Genre to Decoration: Studies in the Theory and Criticism of French Salon Painting, 1850-1900', Ph.D diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1990, pp. 16-115. 53. Atl quoted in Apollinaire, 'The Atl Exhibition', Paris-Journal, 4 May 1914, in Breunig, Apollinaire in Art, p. 372. 54. Atl, 'Une Orientation s'impose', p. 2. 55. Atl, 'Une Orientation s'impose', p. 2. 56. Atl, 'Le Salon des Independants', p. 1. 57. Atl's incorporation of Cubist volume into his decorative project violated the precepts of the Cubists Gleizes and Metzinger, who emphatically separated their spatial innovations from any notion of decoration. The critique of the decorative developed by Gleizes and Metzinger in Du Cubisme (1912) may account for Atl's dismissal of that text in his review of the 1913 Salon des Independants. For Cubist attacks on the decorative, see Gleizes and Metzinger, Du Cubisme, pp. 4-5. 58. Atl, 'Le Salon des Independants', p. 2. 59. For a discussion of the Cubists' usage of non-Euclidean space in works such as Metzinger's 'Landscape', see Linda D. Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non- Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1983), pp. 82-9. In later years Atl turned repeatedly to the portrayal of mountainous landscapes in which the curve of the earth's surface was quite prominent. See illustrations in Carlos Pellicer, Dr. Atl: Pinturasy Dibujos (Mexico, 1974). 60. Atl quoted in Apollinaire, 'The Atl Exhibition', p. 372. 61. On this dimension of Picasso's aestheticized politics, see Leighten, 'Cubist Anachronisms: Ahistoricity, Cryptoformalism, and Business-as- Usual in New York', Oxford Art Journal, vol. 17, no. 2, 1994, pp. 91-102 and Francis Frascina, 'Realism, Ideology and the "Discursive" in Cubism', in Charles Harrison, Francis Frascina and Gill Perry, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth-Century (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1993), pp. 163-80. 112 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group 62. 'Un Jeune Foyer d'Action d'Art: La Guilde "Les Forgerons"', L'Action d'Art, 1 March 1913, p. 4. 63. 'Exposition de peinture et sculpture organisee par la Guilde "Les Forgerons"', L'Action d'Art, 28 September 1913, p. 4. The artists exhibiting under the auspices of the Guild included 'Aristide Delannoy, Anicet Leroy, G. Raieter, Raphael Diligent, Jose de Treeft, Vincent, Godeaux, Dupre, Hennion, Deshays, Raymond, etc'. 64. On the Guild, see Paul Desanges, 'Chronique d'une communaute militante: Les Forgerons (1911-1920)', Le Mouvement social, April-June 1975, pp. 35-58 and Matthew Affron, 'Waldemar George: A Parisian Art Critic On Modernism and Fascism', in Affron and Antliff (eds.), Fascist Visions: Art and Ideology in France and Italy (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1997). My thanks go to Matthew Affron for alerting me to the post-war history of the Guild. membership available for public viewing.62 The Artistocrats facilitated those activities by sponsoring a number of 'Forgerons' exhibitions at the Guild's headquarters on rue Edouard Manet, near Place d'Italie; additionally L'Action d'art launched a series of 'Conferences de la guilde "Les Forgerons"' beginning in October of that year.63 Thus the Action d'art collective created a non-commercial space in which artists could exhibit their work, or hold public lectures publicising the Artistocratic cause. To promote their political ideals, and those of the journal, members of Les Forgerons relied on comrades to buy their works. What separated such monetary transactions from those conducted in commercial galleries was the character of those making the exchange: in private galleries both buyer and seller purportedly speculated on the value of a work, whereas the buyer of a Forgeron product was assumed to be fellow comrade, motivated by Artistocratic ideals. In fact the guild was a success, and over the period from 1913 to 1920 the Guilde les Forgerons not only continued to combine lectures with exhibitions, it created a Universite du Peuple, to insure that the movement's anarchist ideals were properly conveyed to the urban proletariat. Under the auspices of the revived Artistocratic journal, La Forge (founded in 1911), post-war critics such as Waldemar George continued to correlate the Cubist innovations of artists like Gleizes with anarchist aims.64 Additionally, the Artistocrats justified their conception of an art guild as something distinct from an anarcho-communist or anarcho-syndicalist collective. They also sought to distinguish their endeavours from those publicity-minded 'coteries' Lacaze-Duthier had admonished as commercially V"m " ti .~)~~j% Fig. 4. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), 'Luminous Silence', 1913, oil on canvas. Location and dimensions unknown. OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 113 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff motivated. It was Andre Colomer who defined the Artistocratic approach to collective action in an essay delivered at a 'Forgerons' conference on 2 November 1913. Since anarcho-individualism is commonly identified with a revolt against collectivity in whatever form, it is important that we understand this dimension of the Action d'art programme.65 In their joint declaration, the Action d'art group called upon anarchists to execute 'individual acts . . . integral and harmonious with their being'.66 This correlation of individualism with an internal harmony of being was also a theme in Colomer's theory, which not only tied intuitive consciousness to 'the individualism of Stirner' ,67 but singled out musical metaphors such as harmony as indicative of the individualist state of mind. According to Colomer, 'individual harmony' should govern one's course of action, because the sensation of 'harmonious unity'68 alone is unfettered by society's strictures. In Time and Free Will Bergson had referred to the soul's rhythmic, harmonic and melodic properties to underscore its qualitative nature; Colomer applied similar terminology to Lacaze-Duthier's description of the anarcho-artistic temperament.69 Moreover, in an article titled 'La Bande', Colomer extended this Bergsonian paradigm to encompass a notion of collectivity distinguishable from that proposed by anarcho-communists, or popular notions of what constitutes 'society'. 'In a society', we are told, 'the individual is taken into a social organism which he was not the author of' and the individual must 'accept it with all its conditions' and become 'the slave of an anonymous group'. While a member of a society 'is only the unconscious cell of an organism without harmony', the Artistocratic band 'can only exist through the conscious will of the individuals who form it'. The individuals who compose a band 'do not seek a common ideal', rather it suffices that they possess 'an intuitive sympathy that attracts one towards the other' for them to achieve a condition of 'harmony'.70 For Colomer, as for Bergson, willed sympathy, or intuition, allows us to enter into harmonic relation with others, and the life force immanent in each of us.71 As Lacaze-Duthier before him, Colomer declares this psychological unity to be antithetical to the communitarian ideal propagated by anarcho-communists. Anarcho-communism calls for the formation of communes to meet the material needs of comrades, and, according to Colomer, it is the commune as an ideal that then takes precedence over the individuals who compose it. Thus individuals in a commune 'are condemned to suffer in the company of individuals whom they do not like for the sole well being of The Cause, for the prosperity of The Colony'. In that respect, allegiance to the commune is no different from allegiance to a class or a country, for in all these cases individual temperament, what Colomer terms 'intuitive sympathy' or Lacaze-Duthier labels personal 'harmony', takes second place to an abstract ideal. By way of contrast a true band should facilitate the 'greatest realization of each individual' not the well being of the group at the expense of the individual. Unconstrained by notions of class, the state, or the material needs that result from communal living, members of an Artistocratic collective can come from all walks of life, and freely leave a given band if they so choose. All that is required is that they are drawn to a particular group out of 'intuitive sympathy', so that harmony between band members is assured. Thus in their declaration announcing the creation of L'Action d'art, the compagnons announced that they were united by virtue of their 'attitude in life' rather than out of respect for some 'Authority' or 'social order' that 'necessarily crushes individuality'.72 65. Thus in his recent book on Neo- Impressionism, John Hutton claims that anarcho- communists 'argued that individual freedom could only exist within a historically evolved social matrix based on cooperation and mutual aid', while 'the other wing - the individualists - rejected social responsibility in favour of absolute personal freedom'. By asserting that individualists rejected 'social responsibility' or 'social solidarity', Hutton implies that anarcho- individualism as a doctrine was incompatible with theories of collectivity. See Hutton, Neo- Impressionism and the Searchfor Solid Ground, pp. 54-5. 66. Les Compagnons de l'Action d'Art, 'Declaration', L'Action d'Art, 1 February 1913, p. 1. 67. Having concluded that Bergsonian intuition was directed towards discernment of the self, Colomer states that 'L'intuitionisme Bergsonien semblait done rejoindre . . . 'individualisme de Stirner. L'intuition serait la soeur de l'Unique'. Andre Colomer, 'Bergson et "Les Jeunes Gens d'aujourd'hui"', L'Action d'Art, 1 March 1913, p. 2. 68. Colomer, 'L'Art, l'anarchie & I'ame chretienne', L'Action d'Art, 15 April 1913, p. 1. 69. For a fuller discussion of this aspect of Colomer's Bergsonian anarchism, see Antliff, Inventing Bergson, pp. 151-5. 70. Colomer, 'La Bande', L'Action d'Art, 10 November 1913, p. 2. 71. See Antliff, Inventing Bergson, pp. 151-4. 72. Les Compagnons de l'Action d'Art, 'Declaration', p.1. 114 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group 73. 'Un Theatre d'Action d'Art', L'Action d'Art, 15 April 1913, p. 2. 74. See Lacaze-Duthier, 'Un Theatre de la laideur', L'Action d'Art, 25 December 1913, p. 2 and Colomer, 'Les Poetes joues par les Poetes', L'Action d'Art, 25 December 1913, p. 2. 75. For a discussion of this schism, see Antliff, Inventing Bergson, pp. 155-66. The division between Severini and the Futurists Carlo Carra and Umberto Boccioni was compounded by Severini's support of Giannattasio's recent conversion to Futurism. Despite the fact that Carra labelled Giannattasio a mediocrity who diluted the quality of the original Futurist group, Severini was unwavering in his support and facilitated the young Futurist's participation in the theatre project. For evidence of Carra's disdain for Giannattasio, see his letter to Severini dated 13 March 1914 in Mario Drudi Gambillo and Teresa Fiori (eds.) Archivi del Futurismo, vol. 1 (De Luca Editore: Rome, 1958), pp. 318-19. 76. Throughout the period of his involvement in the Action d'Art movement Severini was actively courting dealers and seeking exhibition venues in the hope of improving his economic prospects. In his autobiography, La Vita di pittore, Severini details his exhibition plans and dire economic straits during the pre-war period. He also outlines his differences with Marinetti, whom he condemns for having reduced the Futurist movement to a publicity stunt through the profusion of exhibitions, conferences and manifestos. See the chapter titled 'Londra, matrimonio, viaggio in Italia' in Gino Severini, La Vita di pittore (1946, rpt. Edizioni di Communita: Milan, 1965), pp. 135-76. For a detailed account of Severini's involvement in and sympathy for the Action d'Art group, see Antliff, Inventing Bergson, pp. 137-40; for an outline of Severini's correspondance with Marinetti, and his role in Futurist promotional tactics, see Marianne W. Martin, 'Carissimo Marinetti: Letters from Severini to the Futurist Chief, Art Journal, Winter 1981, pp. 305-12. 77. See Ugo Giannattasio, 'Vers une renaissance du decor', L'Action d'Art, 25 December 1913, pp. 1-2 and Giannattasio, 'A la Recherche de l'Absolu', L'Action d'Art, 25 December 1913, p. 3. 78. Giannattasio, 'Vers une renaissance du decor', pp. 1-2. 79. Gino Severini, 'The Plastic Analogies of Dynamism', September-October 1913, in Umbro Apollonio (ed.) Futurist Manifestos, trans. J.C. Higgit (Viking: New York, 1973), p. 121. A Futurist Artistocracy Presumably the Guilde les Forgerons also constituted an Artistocratic band, and the Artistocrats sought to replicate the success of that endeavour by founding a 'Theatre d'Action d'art' in April 1913. The journal's editors described theatre as 'a field of action wherein there can be accomplished beautiful gestures, realized harmonies' all in the service of the 'lyrical', the 'heroic', the 'individualist'.73 To live up to these ideals the theatre had to be a non-profit venture, with the Artistocrats themselves in the role of actors, and the theatre sets and costumes designed by artists willing to lend their services. Thus Lacaze-Duthier labeled commercial theatre 'the theatre of ugliness' while Colomer in another article singled out poets as ideal performers, noting that the poet alone possessed 'the power of imagination in all the harmony of his personality' .74 In the initial statement announcing the new theatre the decor was supposed to be designed by Atl, but by the time the theatre project got seriously underway in December 1913, the Futurists Giannattasio and Severini had replaced Atl as theatre designers. This switch in personnel may have resulted not only from Atl's return to Mexico in late 1913, but from the formation of an organizational committee in the autumn of that year to oversee production plans. The committee membership included Severini's father-in-law, the poet Paul Fort, and Fort's presence probably played a role in Severini's decision to aid the Artistocratic cause. The familial relation was augmented by a theoretical one, for Severini thought the Bergsonian anarchism expounded by Artistocrat Andre Colomer compatible with his own Bergsonist aesthetic, which he found to be somewhat at odds with the belicose nationalism of his Futurist colleagues.75 By restricting his discourse in L'Action d'art to an outline of the Futurists' theories of artistic expression, Severini consciously avoided mention of the Artistocratic critique of the gallery system, and instead outlined that aspect of his praxis most compatible with Artistocratic ideals.76 A similar strategy was developed by Giannattasio, who published two articles in L'Action d'art, one devoted to theatre decor, and the other being a hitherto undocumented manifesto titled 'A la Recherche de l'Absolu'.77 By analysing those two statements we gain some idea of how art, anarchism and Futurism were conjoined. 'It is with the greatest joy that I see borne this theatre of art, and that I am ready to receive my portion of whistles along with my heroic Action d'art comrades': in this manner Giannattasio announced his plans to develop a new theatre decor suitable to Artistocratic ideals. Unlike Lacaze-Duthier, whose condemnation of theatre was part of a broader critique of the commercialization of the arts, Giannattasio restricted his attack on the bourgeoisie to that group's aesthetic preference for 'the conventional and picturesque'. In its place Giannattasio proposed a new theatre allied to the Bergsonian precepts advocated by his fellow Futurist Severini and the poet Andre Colomer.78 At the time Severini had developed a Bergsonian theory of 'plastic analogies', through which he created poetic relations between the form and content of his paintings. Just as a given colour produced its colour complement, Severini reasoned that a given image should produce a representational 'complement' in the artist's intuitive imagination. Thus in a Manifesto of 1913 Severini stated that 'the spiralling shapes and beautiful contrasts of yellow and blue' in a painting like his Sea=Dancer of 1914 were 'intuitively felt one evening while living the movements of a girl dancing'.79 In another text of 1913, Severini adds that 'it is by his intuition' that he 'is OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 115 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff penetrating into the life, the soul, the activity of things', before relating the pictorial imagery resulting from this intuition to a passage from Bergson: '"To perceive", says Bergson, "is after all, nothing more than to remember" '.80 In his Manifesto Severini traces the geneology of that process, clearly operative in his association of the dancer with ocean waves, back to his Memories of a Voyage of 1910-11 (Fig. 5), 'a painting of memory that brought together into a single plastic whole things perceived in Tuscany, in the Alps, in Paris, etc'.81 Severini's Sea=Dancer, painted in tandem with his first exposure to the L'Action d'art group, simply updated a principle initially applied to representational content alone to include the 'qualitative radiations'82 of complementary colours and forms among those 'plastic analogies' intuitive experience invoked in his mind. Giannattasio took up Severini's synesthetic research and applied his terminology to the relation between the poet- performer and theatre decor. 'Why not', he states, 'create a sort of emotive- psychological complementarism for the theatre', since 'every state of the soul has its pictorially representational complementary' and 'every sensation awakens in us a dream of colours and forms?' It is through 'the plastic complementarism of the emotion', that decor will 'leave its exterior and impersonal state in order to become the body and soul of the poem, the poem itself activated under another form, awakening in the spectator a crowd of parallel emotions'. For decor to be the product of poetic intuition it can no longer be 'exterior' and 'impersonal', it must be poetic in its own right, and thus a complement to the emotion the poet-performer wishes to convey. Just as Severini declared the sea to be the poetic complement to a dancer, and blue the plastic analogue to yellow, so Giannattasio thought painted decor should augment a stage performance: 'we call x the emotion that animates the verse pronounced by the actor in the scene', and 'since all emotion up to its plastic complement will appear at this instant', the ever changing 'complementary values [of the decor] will accompany the poem up to the end'. In sum, the 80. Gino Severini, 'Introduction', The Futurist Painter Severini Exhibits His Latest Works, Marlborough Gallery, London, April 1913. 81. Severini, 'The Plastic Analogies of Dynamism', p. 121. 82. Severini, 'The Plastic Analogies of Dynamism', p. 121. '"?,? ??????- *P -:* . 1 I'sr;"": P;? ?;:" .;T*. ?'?.??. Z'? Y f r r ? c' * r .?LL'.. ?r aBrrcP iidE... 'f I :r*. ..fi"t"l - '' '* * - ----L-' Fig. 5. Gino Severini, 'Memories of a Voyage', 1910-11, oil on canvas. 81.2 x 99.8 cm. Private Collection. 116 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group 83. Giannattasio, 'Vers une renaissance du decor', pp. 1-2. 84. Giannattasio,'A la Recherche de l'Absolu', p. 3. 85. See Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity (Duke University Press: Durham, 1987), p. 112. 86. See Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. G. Fitzgerald (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1968), pp. 11-12; Calinescu, in his critique of Poggioli, finds 'Poggioli's idea of an abrupt and complete divorce of the two avant-garde's unacceptable' (Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity, p. 113) but does not back up his claim with historical evidence. In many respects the Artistocrat's anarchist critique bear's comparison to Surrealism, Lettrism, and Situationism in its attack on art-as-commodity and the rationalism of state bureaucracies. On the latter movements, and their interrelation, see Peter Wollen, 'Bitter Victory: The Art and Politics of the Situationist International', Elisabeth Sussman (ed.), on the Passage of afew people through a rather brief moment in time: The Situationist International, 1957-1972 (M.I.T. Press: Cambridge, MA, 1989), pp. 20-61. Andre Breton, who would later claim an anarchist geneology for Surrealism, was an avid reader of L'Action d'art. For documentation of Breton's Artistocratic links and interest in anarchism, see Marguerite Bonnet, Andre Breton: Naissance de I'aventure surrealiste (Corti: Paris, 1975), pp. 36- 51; and Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830- 1930 (Viking: New York, 1986), pp. 370-1 and 384-9. decor and the actor's performance became indivisible, and formed an unbroken, mobile continuity throughout the play.83 In 'A la Recherche de l'Absolu' Giannattasio had called upon artists to capture the 'integral dynamism' of an object by finding a pictorial vocabulary for an object's 'faculty of expansion'. Every object reportedly had a certain weight and molecular density; it was the artist's task to perceive an object's potential for expansion in the guise of pure energy. For Giannattasio, as for Severini, the pictorial analog for pure energy was colour, a qualitative sensation Bergson associated with matter in a state of flux. Thus the fluctuant 'complementary values' uniting the actor with the mise en scene were ideally suited to convey the play's 'intuitive' import to a given audience.84 This Bergsonian vocabulary allowed Giannattasio to align his own precepts with the Bergsonism pervading Artistocratic theory, while simultaneously avoiding any dialogue concerning the commercial aspects of Futurism. Conclusion In sum, the union of modernists and anarchists under the banner of an artistocratie is a testament to what Matei Calinescu describes as the left's ongoing transferral of the 'radical critique of social forms to the domain of artistic forms'.85 This conjoining of political and artistic avant-gardism effectively undermines Renato Poggioli's claim that 'the divorce of the [political and artistici avant-gardes' took place during the 1880s, or Peter Burger's assertion that the wartime rise of Dada alone reinstigated the merger of political and aesthetic radicalism.86 On the contrary, the involvement of Futurists and Cubists in the Artistocratic movement attests to the ongoing politicization of aesthetic avant-gardism throughout the period before the appearance of Zurich Dada in 1916. Giannattasio's alignment of his Futurist aesthetic with Artistocratic theory, Atl's adaptation of Cubist space to his decorative programme, or Colomer's anarchist reading of Cubist innovation points to the ongoing dialogue between anarchists and Parisian modernists over theories of vanguardism and the political import of aestheticism. While the Artistocrats concurred that the vanguardism signalled by stylistic innovation was conducive to their own departure from accepted societal norms, Lacaze-Duthier and Atl felt that aesthetic novelty in and of itself was not sufficient. The attraction of the Action d'art movement for artists such as Severini and Giannattasio resided in the fact that both the Futurists and Artistocrats shared the same epistemological assumptions: what served to separate them were their differing conceptions of how those assumptions related to market forces. For Colomer, an artist's allegiance to Bergsonian individualism alone was enough to determine his anarchist convictions; for Lacaze-Duthier or Atl an artist's involvement in the commercial market determined whether self-professed ideals were sincere or merely self-serving. Artists like Severini or Giannattasio inhabited a middle ground, finding compatibility between their Bergsonism and that of Colomer, while maintaining their commercial ties. Artistocrats like Colomer addressed the attack on commercial-oriented modernists mounted by Atl and Lacaze-Duthier by stressing the Bergsonian assumptions that served to unite his theory of self-expression with that of the Cubists and Futurists. When an attempt was made within Artistocratic circles to include the Cubists and Futurists, Lacaze-Duthier's critique of their commercialism was superceded by Colomer's celebration of the OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 117 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff modernists' freedom of expression, as in the defence of the Wilde monument. The Artistocrats' linkage of artistic freedom with sexual liberation implicated the modernists in a critique of social mores as well as state policy in the arts.87 The merging of aesthetic avant-gardism with a totalizing critique of bourgeois culture culminated in the creation of an anarchist theatre, wherein Futurist stage sets and costumes were utilized to convey Artistocratic ideals to a plebian audience. The Futurist Giannattasio even declared himself to be a 'compagnon' and melded his Futurist theory with Artistocratic praxis. The Artistocratic trumpeting of aesthetic ideals that precluded commercial praxis is of the utmost importance, for among historians of twentieth-century art it is frequently claimed that a critique of this type only occured during the Great War. A major advocate of this position is the Marxist Peter Burger, whose Theory of the Avant-Garde (1984) separates the concept of a post-war 'avant-garde' from a pre-war 'aesthetic modernism' on the basis of the latter's uncritical complicity in the art market.88 According to Burger, pre-1914 modernists withdrew from political engagement out of disgust for bourgeois values, which led them to concentrate on the artistic means of production as an end in itself. Simultaneous with this withdrawal, society embraced the ideals of 'aesthetic modernism' and came to cherish this self-referential art as a realm of cultural production that stood for edifying values superior to base materialism. Paradoxically the notion of artistic autonomy adopted by modernists was precisely what made their art a valuable commodity in capitalist society. In Burger's view, it was only with the rise of Dada during World War One that a true avant-garde emerged which sought to address the conflict between modernism's aestheticist ideals and its role in the market place. By divorcing art from any form adaptable to the commercial market, Dada reportedly rejected the nonengaged formalism of aesthetic modernism so that art could reenter the political arena.89 Biurger's assumption that aestheticism and political engagement constitute two separate realms has been adopted by others, even though some would question his division between 'aesthetic modernism' and 'avant-gardism'. Martha Ward, for instance, endorses Bfirger's claim that 'aestheticism made apparent the separateness of art in society', adding that the appearance of notions of aesthetic 'autonomy' in the 1880's were a function of the Impressionist turn to private galleries for the marketing of their art. In her view the Neo-Impressionist committment to public exhibitions constituted 'an implicit rejection of the thorough privatization (aestheticization) of Impressionism and the apparent reduction of painting's content to market expectations'. For Ward, notions of aestheticism were allied to an embrace of the gallery system rather than anarchist ideology.90 Robert Jensen in turn could claim that the construction of the very idea of an avant-garde was the product of the gallery system, which heightened the competition between artists vying for an audience. The proliferation of art movements after 1900, each with its own art historical geneology, was no more than a marketing ploy 'to gain access to the public'. 'The criterion for this commercial avant- garde,' Jensen states, 'became not political or social relevance [but rather] an abstract aestheticism, supported by historicist discourses and rising prices.'91 For Jensen the modernist's self-proclaimed 'moral purpose' was only so much window-dressing for an avant-gardism whose true aim was to secure sales. In similar fashion, David Cottington has argued that the break-up of collaboration 'between sections of the French liberal bourgeoisie and the urban 87. Indeed the issue of artistic freedom was a compelling one, for the Cubists were just then recovering from attempts in the Chamber of Deputies to prevent them from exhibiting in public buildings. Some members of the Chamber raised the spectre of racial nationalism by noting that many Cubists were either foreigners or of foreign descent, and they condemned the movement as harmful to the French tradition. In the midst of such threats, the Artistocrats' defence of the foreigners Epstein and Wilde must have been appealing, as was Atl's Artistocratic declaration that 'the beauty of Paris' resided 'in the liberty that permits the development of the individual and which makes this radiant city a melting pot'. See Atl, 'La beaute de Paris', L'Action d'Art, 1 March 1913, p. 4. On the Chamber of Deputies debate, see Leighten, Re-Ordering the Universe, pp. 98-101. 88. Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1984). 89. As an example of this shift Biirger contrasts the motives that led Picasso to create collage in 1912 with those that resulted in John Heartfield's anti-Nazi photomontages. Though the cheap materials employed in the creation of collage were an affront to pre-1914 conventions of artistic production, the fragments 'remain largely subordinate to the aesthetic composition' whereas Dada photo-montages were not just aesthetic objects, 'but images for reading' (Biirger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, pp. 73-6). On this basis Burger concludes that Picasso's collages were still confined within the discourse of art production rather than political praxis. What Biirger's theory precludes is the possibly that the paper fragments in a work like Picasso's Bottle of Suze (1912) were chosen in order to be read and that the artist's aesthetic decisions were part and parcel of his political ideals and aspirations. Yet it is precisely the readability of these collage fragments that inspired Patricia Leighten to uncover the political dimension of Picasso's art, for in works like the Bottle of Suze Picasso combined reports of war atrocities in the Balkans with those documenting pacifist protest in Paris. By expressing these themes through the medium of cheap newsprint, Picasso may have signalled his anarchist protest not only against nationalist war-mongering, but against the aesthetic corollary of such policies, exemplified by the oil on canvas and moralising themes of the Academic art of the official salons. Thus Biirger's tidy distinction between 'aesthetic composition' and 'images for reading' is effectively undermined. See Leighten, Re- Ordering the Universe, pp. 121-42. 90. Ward, Pissarro, Neo-lmpressionism, and the Spaces of the Avant-Garde, p. 264. 91. 'None of the pre-war avant-gardes, not even the Futurists, saw the contradiction between their anti-commercial stance [and] their own allegiance to the commercial galleries' 118 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The 'Aestheticism'of the Action d'art Group because they actively suppressed their commercial ties in the name of 'high modernism', the 'moral purpose of art'. See Robert Jensen, 'The Avant-garde and the Trade in Art', Art ournal, Winter 1988, pp. 360-7. 92. See David Cottington, 'Cubism, Aestheticism, Modernism', in Picasso and Braque: A Symposium (Museum of Modern Art: New York, 1992), pp. 58-72 and 'What the Papers Say: Politics and Ideology in Picasso's Collages of 1912', ArtJournal, Winter 1988, pp. 350-9. For a critique of Cottington's reading of the interrelation of Cubism and Neo-Symbolism see Frascina, 'Realism, Ideology and the "Discursive" in Cubism', pp. 163-80. Cottington has mounted a similar argument with reference to the Puteaux Cubists, declaring that Henri-Martin Barzun and his Cubist allies moved 'away from any attempt at working with the organisations of the left' after 1905 ('What the Papers Say', p. 352). As I have demonstrated elsewhere, after 1911 Barzun, Gleizes and their Neo-Symbolist allies endorsed a left-wing nationalist discourse that pitted the 'Celtic' and 'Gothic' geneology of French culture against the nationalism of the extreme Right in France. Drawing on a discourse with roots in the socialist and syndicalist movements, they continued to signal their leftist political allegiances in the realm of cultural criticism. See Antliff, Inventing Bergson, pp. 106-34. 93. Cottington, 'Cubism, Aestheticism, Modernism', pp. 63-4. 94. Cottington, 'What the Papers Say', pp. 352-4. 95. Cottington, 'Cubism, Aestheticism, Modernism', pp. 69-70. working class' - signalled by the demise of the Bloc des Gauches and the Universite Populaires movement - led to the rejection of 'fellow travelling literary and artistic anarchists' on the part of 'the organized working class', who reportedly withdrew into 'syndicalist autonomism'.92 With the rise of nationalism after 1905 and its permeation of political discourse on both the right and the left, 'there were few lines of resistance remaining by about 1912'. One such line 'was offered by the syndicalist movement, but given the widening gulf after 1905 between sections of the literary and artistic avant- garde, few among the latter were in a position to find it, let alone disposed to follow it'.93 As 'fellow travellers' this avant-garde had no real committment to the left; and Cottington's orthodox Marxism leads him to disparage anarchists in a similar manner- they can only be 'literary' or 'artistic', but never 'working class'. According to Cottington 'the more attractive alternative' for avant-garde circles that included the Neo-Symbolists, Apollinaire, Salmon, and Cubists such as Picasso 'was that of aestheticism', an aestheticism defined by Cottington in terms of the supposed autonomy of works of art devoid of political punch. Dealers and collectors such as Kahnweiler or Gertrude Stein shared the Cubists' 'profound attachment' to an 'aestheticism' the 'principal features' of which 'were a belief in the social autonomy and superior truth of art and a committment to traditional aesthetic values'.94 Refering to Picasso's collages, Cottington concludes that 'the subversive potential of their pictorial materials', and the anarchist and pacifist events Picasso highlighted through his choice of newsprint, are secondary to 'the laws of beauty' governing the pictorial structure and an 'asthetic game' into which the Neo-Symbolist avant- garde had reportedly retreated. Since the Neo-Symbolists and their Cubist allies were 'lacking any route through to alternative, popular spaces of resistance to dominant culture, their putative subversion of high art could only circle back on itself' in the guise of an aestheticism divorced from 'a critique of capitalist culture'.95 Burger, Cottington and Jensen are relunctant to acknowledge that 'aesthetic modernism' or 'avant-gardism' could be pitted against the commercial market the gallery system epitomized. In associating aestheticism with a depoliticized form of avant-gardism, they, along with Ward, effectively deny that aestheticism could serve political ends contrary to mercantilism. It is my contention that the Action d'art collective constituted an example of such resistance and that the group's aesthetic avant-gardism was meant to galvanize Parisian modernists like the Neo-Symbolists and their Cubist allies as well as the Parisian working class. The concepts of 'aestheticism' and 'avant-gardism' utilized by the Artistocrats clearly served ends at odds with those that would strip these terms of any radical valences. In Artistocratic theory concepts of aesthetic beauty and harmony were part and parcel of a social transformation that would sweep away capitalism to make way for an anarchist social order. Far from embracing an 'abstract aestheticism' to avoid political concerns, participants in the Artistocratic project, such as Severini, tried to adapt their theories to an ideology that rejected the market place altogether in the name of what I can only call anarchist aestheticism. Far from 'lacking any route through to alternative, popular spaces of resistance to dominant culture' the shared aestheticism and avant-gardism uniting the Artistocrats with the Neo- Symbolists, Cubists and Futurists served to ally these subcultural groups in their protest against the political, cultural and capitalist status quo. Moreover the existence of the Theatre d'action d'art and Guilde les Forgerons points to the fact that syndicalism was not the only route to a working class audience after 1905. Such avant-guerre realities undermine the reading of modernist stategies OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 119 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Mark Antliff sketched out above, and the role of anarchism in this regard is crucial, since anarchist aestheticism is used here to critique capitalism. It is by attending to such complex choices, rather than denying their existence,96 that we gain a clearer understanding of the function of aestheticism within modernist and anarchist discourse during the pre-war period. 96. The most blatant example of such thinking occurs in Poggioli's Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 95, where he proclaims that 'the hypothesis (really only an analogy or symbol) that aesthetic radicalism and social radicalism, revolutionaries in art and revolutionaries in politics, are allied, which empirically seems valid, is theoretically and historically erroneous'. 120 OXFORD ART JOURNAL 21.2 1998 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.96 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 13:52:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions