Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism - The 'Aestheticism' of The "Action D'art" Group, 1906-1920

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
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
4.
30.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
151-5.
70.
Colomer,
'La
Bande',
L'Action d'Art,
10
November
1913,
p.
2.
71. See Antliff,
151-4.
72. Les
Compagnons
de l'Action
d'Art,
'Declaration',
p.1.
114 OXFORD ART
JOURNAL
21.2 1998
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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

Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism - The 'Aestheticism' of The "Action D'art" Group, 1906-1920

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Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The 'Aestheticism' of the "Action d'art" Group, 1906-1920

Author(s): Mark Antliff

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