The Crimes of Paris
Page 20
It was not long before Apollinaire visited Picasso’s studio, and he later recalled that it was “cluttered with canvases representing mystical harlequins and drawings on which people walked and which everyone was allowed to carry off.” 10 Viewing the Blue Period work, Apollinaire recognized the younger man’s genius and promptly took it upon himself to interpret and publicize it. Picasso’s paintings had previously been of interest to a limited circle, but now Apollinaire began to give life in print to the somber figures in Picasso’s canvases: “These children, who have no one to caress them, understand everything. These women, whom no one loves now, are remembering. They shrink back into the shadows as if into some ancient church. They disappear at daybreak, having attained consolation through silence. Old men stand about, wrapped in icy fog. These old men have the right to beg without humility.” 11 Descriptions such as these made others curious about Picasso’s art and led them to the Bateau-Lavoir to see it.
And because Picasso habitually worked late at night and slept mornings, the studio became a meeting place for many of the artists and writers who lived in the building or nearby. Picasso, encouraging them, painted a slogan on his door: “Au rendezvous des poètes” (“Meeting place of poets”). 12 Apollinaire frequently brought people who had new ideas that he thought Picasso should know about. Roger Shattuck, in his influential book The Banquet Years, called him “a ringmaster of the arts.” 13
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One of Apollinaire’s great gifts was the ability to rapidly absorb the intellectual currents that swarmed around him. Paris at the turn of the twentieth century was a ferment of ideas and theories — not merely artistic, but scientific, and often the two worlds overlapped. Shattuck called Montmartre at this time a “central laboratory,” 14 where collaboration gave birth to radically new kinds of art. Experimentation was the order of the day, part of a shift in thinking that heralded the true beginning of the twentieth century. The dominant intellectual spirit of the nineteenth century had been positivism, the philosophy that posited that the only knowable reality was what could be observed. Yet even before the old century wound to a close, an increasing number of people were rebelling against that notion. The poet Paul Claudel wrote, “At last we are leaving that hideous world… of the nineteenth century, that prison camp, that hideous mechanism governed by laws that were completely inflexible and, worst of all, knowable and teachable.” 15
In science the new trend manifested itself through the work of such men as Max Planck, who in 1900 formulated the quantum theory, and Albert Einstein, who in 1905 extended Planck’s insight in a series of groundbreaking papers, one of which (his doctoral thesis) offered a proof for the reality of atoms and molecules. 16 These and other discoveries revolutionized the science of physics, establishing the fact that there was a whole world of unseen particles beneath the level of ordinary vision. Awareness of such theories was not confined to a narrow circle. Henri Poincaré, France’s leading scientist, gave public lectures and wrote pamphlets that were intended to make high-level mathematics and science accessible to the average person. These ideas, even if not fully understood, made their way to the cafés where Picasso and his friends met. Poincaré wrote, “A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature.” 17
That held true in reverse for many of the avant-garde artists living in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century. The great achievement of Renaissance art had been the discovery of perspective, which allowed artists to portray three-dimensional scenes and objects realistically. However, the invention of photography by two Frenchmen, Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre, around 1840, made it possible for anyone to accomplish that perfectly. Though academic artists continued to work in the old tradition, others began the quest for a new kind of art that would reveal more than photography could. Manuel “Manolo” Hugué, a sculptor and fellow Spaniard who had known Picasso for years, said, “Picasso used to talk a lot then about the fourth dimension and he carried around the mathematics books of Henri Poincaré.” 18 (These were not textbooks, but books that Poincaré had written at a popular level for ordinary people to read.)
Picasso was not alone in his fascination with the fourth dimension. Inventions such as the telephone, wireless communication, and the airplane had revolutionized people’s experience of time and space. One could be there without being there. (In Paris, people with telephones sometimes connected them to a line that allowed them to listen to performances at the opera without leaving home.) Now, people speculated on the possibility of traveling through time as easily as one moved through space. If time was merely a dimension, as some scientists were already claiming, then it could be traveled. The publication of H. G. Wells’s popular novel The Time Machine in 1895 further brought the idea into the public consciousness.
As originally proposed, the fourth dimension was not merely identified with time; it was part of a new, non-Euclidean geometry and actually occupied some higher, unseen realm of space. Poincaré, among others, argued that “the characteristic property of space, that of having three dimensions, is only a property of our table of distribution, an internal property of human intelligence, so to speak. It would suffice to destroy certain of these connections, that is to say of the association of ideas, to give a different table of distribution, and that might be enough for space to acquire a fourth dimension.” 19
It was this more technical meaning of the term fourth dimension that most interested writers such as Apollinaire, who sought to find literary forms to express it. He began to abandon the traditional method of printing poems on the page in horizontal lines — instead creating arrangements of words that were intended to express as much as the words themselves. One of these so-called calligrammes was about time, and the words formed the shape of a pocket watch. Another formed the shape of the Eiffel Tower, which had a radio antenna at the top to transmit messages.
In some of Apollinaire’s prose works, he invented characters who moved across time and space simultaneously (a concept later termed simultanism). Apollinaire advised others to read the Fantômas novels as rapidly as possible, to heighten the impression of simultanism. In Apollinaire’s story “Le roi-lune” (“The Moon-King”), the hero wears a belt that enables him to make love to all the women of all times. A story in another work, L’hérésiarque et Cie., has as its central character the Baron d’Ormesan, whose toucher à distance enables him to appear simultaneously in many places around the world. 20 Not by coincidence, the baron was a movie director, for Apollinaire, like Picasso, was a great admirer of this new art form. (Apollinaire once wrote that typography itself was “brilliantly finishing its career, at the dawn of an age of new modes of reproduction, which are the cinema and the phonograph.” 21 ) French filmmakers had already discovered special effects, and Paris audiences had seen time speeded up and people disappear from one place only to reappear in another an instant later, exactly as Apollinaire’s characters did. One reason Apollinaire admired the Fantômas detective novels was that the antihero was able to create endless new identities for himself, changing with his surroundings.
Playing the role of “ringmaster of the arts,” Apollinaire introduced Picasso to Alfred Jarry, the playwright who had shocked and enraged Paris in 1896 with his play Ubu roi — not so much for its scatalogical dialogue as for its ferocious ridicule of bourgeois life and values. Jarry was known for his personal eccentricities — even in Montmartre, a milieu where eccentricity was commonplace. He would sometimes sit in a café and in a monotone utter endless strings of nonsensical phrases. He liked to carry two pistols, displaying them openly and occasionally firing them into the air. People enjoyed recalling the occasion when a stranger asked Jarry for a light, and he fired his pistol at the end of the man’s cigarette.
Jarry’s personal style as well as his artistic vision was rooted in his passionate anarchism. He saw society as corrupt and took every opportunity to mock it. Picasso t
oo had been associated with anarchists in both Spain and France, and in fact the French police kept an eye on him, probably for this reason. (The police dossier on him is sealed until the year 2033.) The poet André Salmon, another member of what people called La Bande à Picasso (“the Picasso Gang”), traveled in anarchist circles and had even met Jules Bonnot, who was to achieve fame as the head of a gang that carried out spectacular crimes in the name of anarchy. When Picasso and Salmon first met, Picasso had recommended a book of anarchist poetry, which included calls to violence such as
But our mission is big.
If we kill, if we die,
It’s for the wealthy pig
Asleep in his money-sty!22
Apollinaire embraced anarchy too, but his was of a more literary type, best expressed in poetry and essays. He promoted Picasso and other avant-garde painters partly because they attacked the established order, which — as an outsider himself — he opposed. It was, he believed, necessary to break down not merely the political order but the artistic establishment as well. A friend recalled that Apollinaire “took… me to the Louvre, to the gallery of antiquities. He spoke with great verve against the Antinoüs; it wasn’t that he was trying to destroy classical sculpture but rather that, in his love for a new art, for the need to surpass all that was known in art, he was attacking the foundations, impeccable in themselves, but the consequences of which lead to the academic style.” 23
Jarry, seeing Picasso as a kindred spirit, gave him a Browning automatic pistol (the same kind that the Bonnot Gang later used). Max Jacob saw this gift as the transference of a sacred symbol to encourage Picasso to break through to new artistic territory, the recognition by one anarchist of his successor. (Picasso is said to have fired the pistol whenever someone asked him what the meaning of his paintings was.)
Jarry also helped point Picasso in the direction that the new art might take. Numerous European countries were still using their military might to colonize and control nations in Africa and Asia. In the case of France, this was justified as a “civilizing mission.” Jarry satirized this claim by telling the story of an African who had left a Paris bar without paying. Actually, Jarry said, he was an explorer from Africa investigating the culture of France and had simply neglected to provide himself with “native” currency. 24
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In the summer of 1905, Clovis Sagot, a former circus clown, opened an art gallery at 46, rue Laffitte, in the ninth arrondissement, and Picasso provided some works to put on the walls. While visiting Sagot’s establishment, Picasso was struck by the appearance of a woman who had come to view the art. His mistress Fernande later described the visitor as “masculine, in her voice, in all her walk. Fat, short, massive, beautiful head, strong, with noble features, accentuated regular, intelligent eyes.” 25 It was a thirty-two-year-old expatriate from the United States named Gertrude Stein. She and her brother Leo lived off an inheritance and collected art in their apartment at 27, rue de Fleurus. As it happened, Leo liked one of Picasso’s paintings, Young Girl with a Basket of Flowers, but Gertrude did not. It was the girl’s feet that she detested, to the point where she asked if they could be cut out of the painting. Her more amenable brother purchased it for 150 francs — feet intact.
Picasso painted his address on the work he was doing, and the Steins came to visit his studio. In turn, they invited Picasso and Fernande to attend the soirées at their apartment. At one of these, Picasso met Henri Matisse, who was outgoing and charming in contrast to Picasso’s customary demeanor of moody silence (which may have been due to the fact that French was not his native language). Matisse was the leading figure of a group of painters who were called fauves (“wild beasts”) because of their extravagant use of color — again in contrast to Picasso’s almost monochromatic styles. That spring of 1906, Matisse displayed at the Steins’ apartment a large canvas titled Le bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life), which represented a step forward not only in his own artistic development but in solving the problem modern artists were preoccupied with: of finding a new way to represent reality on canvas. Matisse had actually begun to discard perspective, the great achievement of Renaissance art, instead utilizing color and form to suggest the movement of human figures. Picasso, whose ambition was boundless, certainly saw the painting as a challenge — and Matisse as a rival. (Picasso’s friend Salmon loyally wrote on the walls of Montmartre slogans like “Matisse is mad!” “Matisse is more dangerous than alcohol!” and “Matisse has done worse than war.” These annoyed Matisse, who in spite of his revolutionary art sought respectability in his private life.)
Among the first of those searching for an artistic style that would reveal more than photographs were the impressionists, beginning around 1880. Much of their work is concerned with light, especially in landscapes, creating effects that earlier artists would have regarded as distortions. One of the impressionists’ artistic successors was Paul Cézanne. (He originally exhibited with them.) Not well known until later in his life, his work received major exhibitions in Paris from 1905 through 1907, the year after his death. Cézanne believed that all objects could be expressed as spheres, cubes, or cylinders, and this can be seen in his later work, though the objects are still represented in a recognizable way. Cézanne also took the first steps toward painting objects from different perspectives in the same picture. All of these techniques made their impression on Picasso, who was still searching for a new path of his own.
Picasso offered, or was asked, to paint the portraits of Leo and Gertrude Stein. The one of Leo was quickly completed, but Gertrude’s seemed more of a problem. She must have been unusually patient, for after she had come to his studio for eighty sittings, he still pronounced it unfinished. Usually a fast worker, he painted the head out entirely, leaving a blank space. “I can’t see you any longer when I look,” he told Gertrude. 26
Perhaps feeling for the first time that Paris did not provide enough inspiration, perhaps unhappy that Matisse seemed more successful, Picasso thought about going away. Apollinaire suddenly came to the rescue, bringing the prominent art dealer Ambroise Vollard to the Bateau-Lavoir studio. Vollard had previously rejected one of Picasso’s works when Max Jacob tried to sell it to him, and had even called Picasso mad. Now, however, he seemed eager to purchase almost everything he saw. He went off in a taxi with thirty paintings stuffed into the backseat, for which he gave Picasso two thousand francs. Though this was actually one of the great art bargains of all time, it was a windfall to Picasso, who had been scraping by on far less than one thousand francs a year.
To celebrate, Picasso took Fernande to Barcelona to meet his parents, showing off not only the beautiful woman he had acquired but some of his sudden wealth as well. He decided to spend the summer in Gosol, a tiny village in the Pyrenees that could be reached only on the back of a mule. It was a wild place, nestled between Spain and France, yet seeming to belong to neither. Fernande recalled, “In that vast, empty, magnificent countryside… he no longer seemed, as he did in Paris, to be outside society.” 27
There, that summer, he found the inspiration he had been seeking: the Iberian heads he recalled from the Louvre came to life in this desolate, ageless locale. When he returned to Paris, Picasso took out the unfinished portrait of Gertrude Stein and painted in a masklike face with almond-shaped eyes and a stern mouth. With the hands of the sitter in the foreground the only other visible parts of the body, it is Picasso’s Mona Lisa. When he showed the painting to Gertrude, she was delighted and put it on her wall. When others complained that she didn’t look like that, Picasso replied calmly, “She will.” 28
Later that same year, he made a self-portrait with a face clearly inspired by the same source. “I did not use models again after Gosol,” he explained. “Because just then I was working apart from any model. What I was looking for was something else.” 29
Picasso became interested not just in the Iberian heads that had inspired Gertrude Stein’s portrait, but in African art as well, particularly angular masks. The
Bande à Picasso, perhaps inspired by their leader, began to look for and even purchase examples of “primitive” masks and statuettes in small shops. André Derain, a painter who frequently visited the Bateau-Lavoir studio, recalled, “On the rue de Rennes, I often passed the shop of Père Sauvage. There were Negro statuettes in his window. I was struck by their character, their purity of line.… So I bought one and showed it to Gertrude Stein, whom I was visiting that day. And then Picasso arrived. He took to it immediately.” 30
Years later, on one of the few occasions Picasso talked about his influences, he recalled those days. He had gone to the Trocadéro Palace, where an exhibition of African masks was on view. “I understood that it was very important: something was happening to me, right? The masks weren’t just like any other pieces of sculpture. Not at all. They were magic things.… The Negro pieces were intercesseurs, mediators; ever since then I’ve known the word in French. They were against everything — against unknown, threatening spirits.… I understood; I too am against every-thing. I too believe that everything is unknown, that everything is an enemy! Everything!… I understood what the Negroes used their sculpture for.… They were weapons. To help people avoid coming under the influence of spirits again, to help them become independent.… If we give spirits a form, we become independent.… I understood why I was a painter.” 31