History of Art Literature Anthologies
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Florent Fels,
Propos d'Artistes
[The Propositions of the Artists]
Paris, Le Renaissance du livre, 1925, 215 pages
Paris, Le Renaissance du livre, 1925, 215 pages
Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part One
[Original Version: May 2017 - New Version: April 2019]
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| Fig. 1) Florens Fels' "The Propositions of the Artists", published in Paris in 1925 |
The anthologies of Art Literature and the Franco-German
reconciliation in 1925
The anthology Propos d’Artistes [1] (i.e. The
Propositions of the Artists) by Florent Fels [2] (1891-1977) was published in
Paris in 1925. The same year, Paul Westheim (1886-1963) released his anthology Künstlerbekentnisse (Confessions of
artists, already reviewed in this blog) in Berlin. In both cases,
these volumes were anthologies of art writings, ranging from the Impressionist
period to the art of the 1920s. In short, they were the two first anthologies
of art literature devoted to contemporary art. I do not think they were
published in the same year, in Paris and Berlin, by simple coincidence. Fels
and Westheim not only knew each other, but worked in those years at common
projects [3].
In fact, thanks to
Westheim, Fels published his short essay Les
Vieilles tapisseries françaises both in French and German in 1924 [4].
Also their two art journals,
respectively entitled Action. Cahiers individualistes de philosophie et
d’art and
Das Kunstblatt cooperated: for
example, two articles by Westheim were included in the French magazine in
1921. Important intellectuals of that time, such as the art and literature
critic Carl Einstein (1885-1940), wrote for both. The French magazine also
published the publicity of the magazine Das
Kunstblatt and of the Westheim’s essays under the title "Voix de l'Allemagne affranchie" (The
voice of liberated Germany), i.e. a Germany which was considered acceptable to
French public, because it was no longer featuring hegemonic instincts. The
advertising also made clear that all copyrights in France were reserved for Fels.
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| Fig. 2) The first issue of the journal Das Kunstblatt of January 1917 |
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| Fig. 3) Paul Westheim, Letter from Berlin, published in Action (Occasional issue, January-April 1921) |
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| Fig. 4) The publicity of the journal Das Kunstblatt and of the writings by Paul Westheim, published in the journal Action (issue 6 of December 1920) |
More generally,
the French magazine made the spreading of German culture in France one of its
distinctive aims, distancing itself from the generally anti-Germanic climate of
the Parisian world, which until then had only insisted on the exclusion of the German
culture from the rest of Europe. Action
also regularly hosted a column entitled Lettres allemandes (German letters) dedicated to contemporary
German literature, signed by various literary critics who presented the latest
novelties in the field of novel and poetry. Also in Germany, the year 1925 marked
an attempt of dialogue between the two cultures, with the publication of two issues
of the Europa Almanach (Almanac of Europe), a clearly European-minded initiative by
Einstein and Westheim. It was an attempt to recreate the relations of close
cultural integration that had existed between Paris and Berlin before the Great
War. In the short years of economic stabilization of the first half of the
1920s (therefore, before the 1927 financial crisis), the dialogue between the two cultures
seemed to be reopened. It is no coincidence that the foreign ministers of the
two countries, Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann, received the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1926 for the reconciliation between their governments. The Second
World War seemed still far away. The hope of peace would soon turn out to be an
illusion.
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| Fig. 5) The cover page of Europe's Almanac (Europa Almanac), designed by Fernand Léger in 1925 |
Parallel visions on modern art
Despite the
differences in philosophical opinions (Fels was a so-called 'individualist
anarchist' even though in those years his revolutionary fervour was quietening,
while Westheim was a schopenauerian idealist and an internationalist liberal),
their ideas on contemporary art were not fundamentally different. They both supported
a contemporary figurative and classical art; they were both opposed to the radical
avant-garde movements which, even for political reasons of closeness to communism,
were used to justify the dismantling of social structures from the point of
view of art (Fels particularly disliked André Breton's theses, the great dadaist
and surrealistic intellectual, and his magazine Surréalisme; Westheim conflicted with those of Berlin's gallerist
Herwarth Walden, one of the great advocates of expressionism, and his magazine Der Sturm). Both Fels and Westheim wanted
to create a reference system of 'new classics', i.e. contemporary painters on
which future art evolution could be solidly based, creating a new tradition. In
short, both felt the need to propose a new codification of contemporary art
that would not be incomprehensible to the public for its excesses. In those
years, art became an important safe haven for the investments of the
bourgeoisie in the great cities. It was vital to propose, as new reference
points to the public, painters who would not want to destroy the social order. It is no
coincidence that the so-called 'return to order' or 'return to classicism' took
place between the two wars, i.e. in the years when the middle-high bourgeoisie had
become the new protagonist of the market. It must be moreover said - with the benefit
of hindsight - that both Fels and Westheim were exponents of an intellectual
Judaism, which was so well integrated in the mechanisms of European society not
to perceive the acute risks of antisemitism that were plaguing the horizon. An excess of optimism.
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| Fig. 6) Paul Westheim's "Artists' Confessions", published in Berlin in 1925 |
The anthology of an individualist anarchist
The two
anthologies were however very different in terms of structure. The one of Westheim
was wider (he collected 88 texts written by 64 artists) and quite traditional in
terms of its format (the artists were listed in chronological order and their
writings were immediately recognizable and clearly differentiated from the
views of the author of the collection). Perfectly in line with his habitus as
an 'individualistic anarchist', Fels compiled an anthology which was really surprising
for its rejection of traditional criteria. The selection criteria chosen by
Fels to identify the 16 artists and the one art critic (Théodore Duret)
included in the volume were sketched in the postscript in these terms: "This book is about all: painters I admire,
others who are fashionable, others who are important for the spirit of research"
[5]. Let us therefore try to interpret this text.
After Claude
Monet (the father of Impressionists) and Théodore Duret (who - as it was just
said - was not an artist, but a great art dealer, collector and - as art critic
- the "father of new aesthetics",
according to Fels), fifteen artists were presented in alphabetical order (and
not in chronological order, or even by style). They were Chagall, Derain,
Ensor, Friesz, Grosz, Kisling, Léger, Lhote, Matisse, Pascin, Picasso, Rouault,
(Dunoyer de) Segonzac, Utrillo and Vlaminck. The chapter devoted to each of them (the
term 'propos' is used to indicate
that the texts encapsulated the propositions and intentions of the artists) was
introduced by (really beautiful) art photographic portraits: in the case of
Derain, Friesz, Léger, Matisse, Picasso, Rouault and Vlaminck they were
original photo portraits by Man Ray.
But, above all,
it is the way in which the texts were exposed to be really special: each
chapter presented, in fact (without any interruption and only with the use of
different fonts to indicate their paternity) texts and statements of the artists
(in italics) and by Fels himself (in normal fonts). The reader was then
confronted with a patchwork of direct and indirect sources. The public, in
short, did not read a monograph by an art critic, but also not just the
interviews to, nor the writings by, the artists themselves: it was confronted instead with a
mixed genre. Each section contrasted and partly superimposed two personalities,
that of Fels and that of the artist in question. This surprising technique was
adopted by Fels also in his subsequent monographs on Matisse and Vlaminck.
Catherine Bock-Weiss described it, referring to the essay on Matisse (but her
observations are also valid here): "Roughly
one-third of his book is a rambling 'impressionistic' rumination on esthetic
matters with Matisse as the focus; about another third is straight
biographical information on the artist, laced with anecdotes; the last third
presents direct citations of the painter’s words, randomly as though culled
from various interviews” [6].
In the postscript
to his anthology, Fels explained: "I
wanted to produce a document dated 1925. It's not a piece of criticism, but
simple journalism. The true authors are the artists, quoted strictly in the
language they themselves used. (...) I
think that, since life and work are inseparable, there is little to risk when
expressing views publicly” [7]. Is this really a simple journalistic
documentation of the artists’ communication strategies? Or does the anthology
offer a more 'unitary' critical message, despite the declaration in the
postscript? We will try to respond in the second part of the post. What is
obvious is that the author refrained from every systematic effort, and that his
interest was for individual personalities. The style also attested to a
willingness to combine art criticism and poetic language, making art criticism
a page of literature: it was a characteristic of much of French art criticism
in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. As an example, we are displaying, at the end of
the second part of the post, the translation of the chapter on Maurice de
Vlaminck, a great friend and companion of ideas for Fels (not by chance the
book was dedicated to him). We chose the chapter on de Vlaminck because it is
probably one of the most representative texts of the ideas of the authors in the
anthology, and it permits us to study his use of language.
The journalistic origin of the Propos d'Artistes
It was indeed
with Maurice de Vlaminck that, on May 26, 1923, opened the series of articles
"Propos d'artistes" in Les Nouvelles littéraires, artistiques et
scientifiques (now referred to simply as Les Nouvelles Littéraires), a weekly journal published between 1921 and 1936. Fels
collaborated in those years as art critic for this publication. The short editorial preceding the first
article announced: "Under this
title, our collaborator will give a series of interviews to the most representative
artists of the young French plastic. Far less than being a real survey, this is
rather a documentary intended for the public, which makes it possible to
clearly state what our contemporaries think of classicism, modernism, pictorial
art, literature, costumes, and so on. Vlaminck, Derain, Picasso, Matisse,
Jacques-Emile Blanche, Signac, Friesz, Segonzac, Van Donges, Braque, etc. will
be invited one after another to this consultation that has only one goal: to
put our readers in touch with the thought of the most eminent modern artists" [8]. It was therefore a project that deliberately included only
living artists (as opposed to many other anthologies, which often included only
already dead artists).
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| Fig. 7) The article by Florent Fels "Propos d'artistes. Maurice de Vlaminck" in Les Nouvelles Littéraires on May 26, 1923 Ssource: gallica.bnf.fr |
One after the
other - at a pace of about one article per month in 1923 and more frequently in
1924 – Les Nouvelles Littéraires
hosted Fels’ articles on Maurice de Vlaminck (May 26, 1923), Othon Friesz (June
2), Fernand Léger (June 30), André Lhote (July 31), Picasso (August 4), André
Derain (October 20), Dunoyer de Segonzac (December 1), Matisse (January 5,
1924), Théodore Duret (January 12), Claude Monet (February 2), Rouault (March 15), Utrillo (March 22), Kisling
(April 5), George Grosz (April 12), Simon Lévy (June 7), Utrillo (May 22), Marc Chagall (June 14), James Ensor (July 19), Pascin (26 July),
Coubine (30 August), and Robert Delaunay (25 October). The article on Delaunay was
the last in the series. A year later, on October 17, 1925, always in Les Nouvelles Littéraires, one could
find the book's advert and read its review by Edmond Jaloux (1878-1949), a senior
art critic of the magazine. The anthology Propos d'artistes, therefore, was born as a homonymous collection of articles that had appeared in the two previous years in Les Nouvelles littéraires. There were
three exceptions: the Propos d’artistes of Lévy,
Coubine and Delaunay (published in the journal) were not reprinted in the
volume of 1925 for unknown reasons. It should be noted, finally,
that at the time of publication of the series in the journal, the editorial had
announced texts on Blanche, Signac, Van Donges and Braque, which were published neither in the journal nor in the book.
The journalistic
origin of the chapters of the book is, in some cases, obvious. Thus, for
example, the Propos d'artistes on
Monet of February 2, 1924 was called
"In Givergny chez Claude Monet",
and in this case it was the story of a car journey from Paris to Givergny, made
with the friend de Vlaminck, to meet the eighty-four-years old father of
Impressionism, still active, though severely ill in his eyes [9]. In the
chapter devoted to Théodore Duret, Fels instead referred to a jointly celebrated
New Year's Eve [10].
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| Fig. 8) The title of the Propos d'Artistes dedicated to Théodore Duret: The First of the Year with Théodore Duret. Published in Les Nouvelles littéraires on January 12, 1924 |
At least in two
cases (Picasso and Derain) the article was not the simple summary of a
conversation. Consider Picasso's case. The text dedicated to him, published in
the journal on August 4, 1923 and then reproduced intact in the volume, included
almost the full Declaration on Cubism issued in Spanish by Picasso
to the Mexican art critic Marius de Zayas [11], and published later on in New York in The Arts magazine in May 1923. True,
there was no reference to the original Spanish text or its English translation,
and those who do not know the text can be led today to believe that it was the
fruit of a private conversation between Picasso and Fels. Did Picasso himself perhaps
deceive Fels, giving him a French text that he had been already used elsewhere before? Or
did Fels not care to mention thar the same text had been already published in other languages? Whatever the
case, interestingly the same text (in this case quoting the sources) was
included in Paul Westheim's anthology [12]. This was indeed an important
statement, in which Picasso claimed that Cubism shared the same principles of naturalistic
painting of classical style, and strongly denied its belonging to abstract art.
Based on his own words, Picasso was therefore brought back to the pictorial
tradition, which was considered more convincing by both Fels and Westheim.
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| Fig. 9) The article by Florent Fels Propos d'artistes. Picasso in Les Nouvelles Littéraires on August 4, 1923 Source: gallica.bnf.fr |
In the postscript
to the book, it is explained that Fels's first goal was to produce an "object". One would immediately think
of the ‘artist books’ and the programmatic manifestos that in those decades were
tremendously successful in the avant-garde world, to which Fels belonged, even if
with many distinctions, as we shall see. Stating the aim to produce a book as
an object, Fels, however, most likely merely pointed out that he wanted to
bring together in a single 'object', a book, the collection of the Propos d’Artistes published over two
years in Les Nouvelles Littéraires.
In any case, his anthology was not simply an object book, because the author
really wanted to contrast the ideas of 17 artists, as he himself explained:
"In this book I have tried to create
an object, a tangible, useful and accurate instrument” [13].
Fels as an art critic before 1925
I now feel the need to make a step back on Fels. Born in 1891, he was recruited
as a soldier-interpreter in the First World War thanks to his knowledge of
English, and here became an anti-militaristic minded person. His experience at
the front was quite parallel to that of Georg Grosz, the only German artist in
his anthology, whose sad pages on the role of artists and critics during World
War I corresponded largely to the thoughts of the French author. The experience
of war convinced the young Fels of the need to overcome the traditional
aesthetic models, linked to symbolism, but also of the emptiness of
contemporary art, which had propagated or somehow supported the war effort. It
is no coincidence that his friend de Vlaminck - in the Propos dedicated to him - used disdainful words on the role of
Cubism in the years leading up to the war. According to Fels, the only art
that, after the slaughter at the front, could still be trusted was the Dada
movement, born in Zurich in 1916 and spread rapidly in Europe (it is also what can
be read in the pages of Grosz, an artist about whom Fels published - in
addition to the pages in the anthology - several other articles in the French world
[14]).
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| Fig. 10) An article in the issue 3 (April 1920) of Action, which the English feminist Dora Marsden (1882-1860) wrote on Art and Philosophy, with a woodcut by the Greek artist Demetrios Galanis. |
Returning from
the war front, in 1919, the twenty-eighty year old Fels launched with Robert
Mortier (painter and poet) and Marcel Sauvage (poet) the journal Action. Cahiers individualistes de
philosophie et d'art (Action. Individualist Notebooks on Philosophy and
Art), which would have a short life (the last issue was 1922). The editors were
young ex-soldiers who invested the money they had got from the state at the
time they left the army, to launch the new journal. The founders of Action attempted to both awake and open
the French culture. In the field of literature, Action hosted a series of poets, writers and literary critics such
as Andre Malraux, Max Jacob, Jean Cocteau and Antonin Artaud; in the area of
art, the journal liaised with all contemporary avant-garde movements (dada,
fauves, cubists), discussed and exalted the production of the greatest artists
(Claude Monet, Picasso, Matisse, Henri Rousseau Le Douanier) and gave great
emphasis to African art. Looking at the journal's issues, all available on the
Internet [15], it is also easy to find that Action also housed reproductions of
paintings and prints by many of the painters who later on were included in Propos d’Artistes: Derain, Kisling,
Léger, Lhote, Pascin, Utrillo, Vlaminck. There were also art criticism articles
of Duret and poems by Vlaminck.
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| Fig. 11) Maurice de Vlaminck, The poem Hésitation (Hesitation), in Action, Issue 7, May 1921, page 36 |
Within Dadaism, Action preached a 'subjectivist', or
individualist, version of vanguard aesthetics. It did not propagate revolutions, but
proclaimed the need for the absolute freedom of the artists. Fels' points of
reference were in fact the individualistic anarchist movements inspired by
Rousseau and Proudhon; in March 1920, he held a conference on "Les Classiques de l'Esprit nouveau"
and published the text in the journal L’un [16]: he rejected the
traditional Dadaist attitude of total destruction of the past and identified
the new classics (Monet, Cézanne, Renoir, Van Gogh) that were due to be the
basis of the new art. Fels took distance from the anti-social attitudes typical of Dadaism, and animated a controversy over the direction of new art movements: for him, everyone should make his personal revolution, without
destroying any social foundations. At the root of Fels's aesthetic theory there
was "the enhancement of individual
psychologies, the free but orderly expression of the heart, the sense of art, inspiration, and individuality"
[17].
In 1922, Action's experience ended: money was
over and the attempt to counter the revolutionary drift within Dadaism had
failed. Starting with 1924, André Breton imposed surrealism, inspired by a much
more corrosive aesthetic and social criticism. Fels condemned it.
Florent Fels between 1923 and 1925
Once the
experience of Action was concluded in
1922, Fels joined in 1923 the editorial staff of Les Nouvelles Littéraires. There he dealt not only with
contemporary art, but with reviews of exhibitions of all kinds (from Renaissance
to Art of Polynesia). Often, his articles updated the public on the
developments of decorative arts (in those years, he published his already
mentioned essay on French tapestries and carpets).
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| Fig. 12) An article by Florent Fels on the art of Melanesia, October 27, 1923 |
I already mentioned
that Fels stated in the postscript of the anthology: "I wanted to produce a document dated 1925” [18]. The idea was
therefore to offer the reader almost an instant
book. In fact, as we have already said, the book gave readers a real-time
image of the art discussion in 1923-1924. 1925 was however a very important year for
Fels. In addition to the anthology, he published a monograph on Claude Monet
with Gallimard and became chief editor of the
new art journal "L'Art Vivant",
founded by Jacques Guenne (1896-1945) and Maurice Martin du Gard (1896-1970),
i.e. the two directors of "Les
Nouvelles Littéraires". The new publication was in fact presented as the
artistic attachment (complément
artistique) to the literary weekly. Art
Vivant. It was published by the house Larousse since January 1925.
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| Fig. 13) The issue 57 of L'art Vivant, published on May 1, 1927 |
As previously
mentioned, Fels's aesthetic taste (think again that only a few years before he had been forced to finance his own publication
with the liquidation of the time spent in war as a simple soldier) was becoming
closer to those of the great French progressive publishing companies
(Gallimard, Larousse). In other words, he was taking on more and more classic
aesthetic orientations. The Art Vivant
magazine (which will have long life: Fels was his chief editor until 1939, when
the magazine closed its doors in the wake of the war) became therefore one of
the favourite targets of the communist intellectual and surrealist leader Louis
Aragon (1897-1982), who called Fels "Paysan de
Paris", the peasant of Paris. From Aragon’s perspective, the only veritable surrealist anthology of art literature with a Marxist orientation will be
published twenty years later by Paul Éluard.
End of Part One
NOTES
[1] Fels, Florent - Propos d'artistes, Paris, La Renaissance du livre, 1925, 215 pages.
[2] Some writings were signed with the true name Florent-Ferdinand Felsenberg.
[3] See the recent publications on the interaction between France and Germany in the field of art history between 1870 and 1945, first published in German and then in French. (1) Deutsche Kunst - Französische Perspektiven: Kommentierter Quellenband zur Rezeption deutscher Kunst in Frankreich 1870-1945, edited by Friederike Kitschen and Julia Drost, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 2007, 506 pages. (2) Perspectives croisées. La critique d’art franco-allemande 1870–1945, edited by Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Mathilde Arnoux and Friederike Kitschen, Paris, Éditions of the Maison des Sciences of the Homme, 2009, 620 pages.
[4] The publication of the short essay was made both in German and French, with the introduction of Westheim and in a series of publications of world art history (Orbis Pictus) directed by him. (1) In German: Die Altfranzösischen Bildteppiche. Edited by Florent Fels and Paul Westheim, Orbis Pictus / Weltkunst-Bücherei, Volume 18, Verlag Ernst Wasmuth. (2) Florent Fels, Les Vieilles tapisseries françaises, with the introduction of Paul Westheim, "Orbis Pictus" series, Ernst Wasmuth, 1924, 13 pages.
[5] Fels, Florent - Propos d'artistes, … (quoted), p.210
[6] Bock-Weiss, Catherine - Henri Matisse. Modernist Against the Grain, Penn State University Press, 2009, 260 pages. Quotation at page 125.
[7] Fels, Florent - Propos d'artistes, … (quoted), p. 210
[8] Please see: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k64423888.item
[11] On Picasso’s declaration to Marius de Zaya, please see
[12] Westheim, Paul - Künstlerbekenntnisse: Briefe, Tagebücher, Betrachtungen heutiger Künstler, Berlin, Propyläen, 1923, 359 pages.
[13] Fels, Florent - Propos d'artistes, … (quoted), p. 210
[14] Fels, Florent - En Georges Grosz, l'Allemagne trouve son Daumier, in: Les Nouvelles littéraires, 11. April 1924
[15] All issues are available on the Internet at http://bluemountain.princeton.edu.
[18] Fels, Florent - Propos d'artistes, … (quoted), p. 210.
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