danceblogger Algeria, Algeria / Algiere, Algerian Independence War, Americans in Paris, anti-Semitism in France, Art, Art and Society, France, France during the Occupation, French intellectual life, French life, French politics, French society, Jews in France, Le Deportation, Uncategorized

The Chevalier de la barre, 19 octobre, 2021: l’Intolerance

Affiche, mai ’68.

by Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2021 Paul Ben-Itzak

On était vendredi. C’était l’heure du crépuscule. J’étais en train a causer avec mon voisin Ferdinand (pas son vrais nom), a qui je viens de demander de me raconter son expérience pendant la guerre à Algérie. Conscrit entre 1955 et 1958 — “C’est Mitterrand qui m’avais envoyé !” — il a vu des copains mourir à ses cotes et il a du tué. “Quand vous tombe dans un embuscade,” vous ne pouvez pas faire autrement.

— Macron n’avais pas du demandé pardon de l’Algérie !, Ferdinand a déclaré.

— Mais Ferdinand, le présidente n’a pas demandé pardon. (Du fait, à mon connaissance il a fait presque le contraire, en effet expliquant qu’en ce concerne l’histoire entre nos deux payes, on devrait aller au-delà des questions de pardon.)

— Macron, c’est un juif ! Comme Sarkozy.

Et voila, nous y sommes, j’avais pensé, frappé tout de la même. (Ca fait sept ans qu’on se connait, le Ferdinand et moi, et nos rapports ont toujours était des plus amicales.) Parce que bien évidement, c’est les juifs qui sont à blâmer pour et qui sont a l’origine de tout les maux du monde – car cette ‘pardon’ (pardon fictif !), s’était aux yeux de Ferdinand une mauvaise idée.

— Ferdinand, je suis juif.

— T’es juif? Juif américaine !

Comme si ce n’était pas pareil. (Ou, comme un ami m’avais dechiffré âpres — avec ironie — “Parce que bien sur les juifs américaines, ils sont forte dans les affaires.”)

En suite, bien sur que Ferdinand a essayé de revenir sur ses mots, de faire marche arriere, dans la façon d’usage, genre: Je n’ai rien contre les juifs, le monde est fait de tout, il y a même des policiers algériens a Marseille….

Mais ce rétréci ne m’a pas empêché de réfléchi: C’est de cette optique la, cette état d’esprit – cette ressentiment ‘latent’ envers les juifs, ce tendance de les blâmer pour tout les maux dans le société — qui était née la complaisance des certains françaises (et pas que des françaises, on a vu le même chose dans l’Italie, par exemple) face à la déportation, face a la collaboration de Vichy dans (comme Jacques Chirac a reconnu a le Vel d’Hiv en 1995) le nom de la France. C’est-à-dire que s’ils n’ont pas collaboré activement avec Vichy et les Occupants, ils n’ont rien dit ou fait pour les contre.

Et Ferdinand, a ton “Macron, c’est un juif !” j’ai envie de répondre:

Et Max Jacob, compagnon de route de Cocteau, Picasso, et Apollinaire, chrétienne converti depuis plus de 30  ans, morte à Drancy avant qu’on aurait pu le déporté, était (vu comme) juif.

Et Irène Nemirovsky, grande conteuse de l’exile de 1940, déjà romancier connu et edité par Albin Michel, arrête en ’42, deporté, et en suite morte dans les camps, était juif.

Et Robert Desnos, grand poète, arrêté et en suite morte dans les camps, était juif.

Et  Anne Frank était juif.

Et le Capitaine Dreyfus (dont la nièce Julie a était arrêté et qui était morte dans les camps), était juif.

Et Léon Blum, emprisonné malgré le fait que c’était un ancien président du conseil, était juif.

Et John Franklin, mon prof de civisme au lycée, survivant d’Auschwitz et qui nous a dit qu’il croit dans le statue des limitations (le proscription), même pour les allemands qui lui ont fait ca a lui et ses parents, et qui en suite est devenu prof d’Allemande, était juif.


Et Paul Cenac, qui a tant travaillé pour restorer la langue allemande du mal que les Nazis l’a fait dans sa poésie avant de se suicidé en 1970, était juif.


Et Romain Gary, vrais auteur de “La vie devant soi” et Compagnon de la Liberation, était juif.

Et Chantal Akerman, elle aussi suicidé (chez les enfants des survivants de la Shoah, c’est connu comme phénomène), était juif.

Et mon dentiste, qui a perdu sa cousine — donné par un bon français a Paris et dont la mère a essayé de se suicider en sautant de la fenêtre de sa chambre, depuis devenu le cabinet de mon dentiste, ou il a si bien soigné mes dents et, en passant, mon âme — est juif.

Et Ofra Haza, était juif.

Et Joe Mazo, un de mes mentors journalistique.

Et Sammy Davis Jr.

Et Serge Gainsbourg (qui a essayé de draguer la petite-amie de Sammy Davis Jr.).


Et mon grand oncle Sammy, qui a entre dans le légende familiaque âpres avoir fouetté un chauffeur a Miami qui l’a salué comme “sale Juif.”

Et Morris Hertzon, mon grand-père, si fière quand j’ai eu mon bar-mitzvah tardif a 16 ans a Miami Beach, grâce a lui.

Et Allan Sherman, l’auteur de “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” chanson comique mythique des camps des loisirs juifs américains.


Et Edward G. Robinson.

Et Leonard Cohen.

Et Bob Dylan.

Et Camille Pissarro.

Et Edward Winer, mon père.

Et Eva Wise, ma mère.

Et Shirley Hertzon, sa mère a elle.

Et Max Winer et Shirley Winer (juif, il semble, d’origine Iranien ou Turque), mes grand-parentes cote père.

Et Donna Berman, ma rabbin mode Joni Mitchell a Princeton.

Et Art Spiegelman.

Et Rebecca Stenn.

Et Annette Clark, ma parraine.


Et sa cousine Gloria Lyon, qui m’a raconté, quand je lui a interviewé pour le New York Times, comment, en route pour un campe de la morte, elle s’était sauvé en sautant d’un chemin a fer tout nu, et qui a prise comme devoir de partage ses expériences avec les écoliers.

Et tout ces enfants poètes – artistes au Campe « modèle » de Terezin – auteurs du livre illustre post-hume « J’ai jamais vu une autre papillion. »

Et Humphrey Bogart.

Et Benjamin Stora, grand chercheur français – et enfant de Constantine, grande ville cosmopolite algerien —  qui a fait tant des travaux pour éclairir les rapports entre la France et l’Algerie depuis des années.

Et mon amie, grande artiste-militant a Belleville, KM. (Je don que ses initiales car, figurez-vous, Ferdinand, même si j’ignore si c’est son cas, les juifs et juives françaises ont tendance de se cache, même trois-quarts d’un siècle âpres le Shoah. Au cause des gens comme vous qui sont prête a les faire porter tout les maux du monde, de les juger envers leur identitie ethnique et pas leurs actes.)

Et il  y avait Kolya, lui aussi était juif, avant que on l’a lâchement assassiné.

Kolya, ado doué et douce, d’origine (comme mes ancêtres et comme La Nemirovsky) Ukrainien qui avais l’habitude de jouer avec ses camarades autour de la fontaine bleue mosaïque au milieu de le Square Albin Cachot en 13eme, ou j’ai eu ma première ‘crèche’ a Paname. Apres qu’on — j’ignore si c’était le Gestapo ou les gendarmes françaises – l’a arrêté, le Kolya, ses camarades l’a maintenu en vie dans leur façon dans leurs journaux a carnet. (Mode: “J’ai vu Kolya aujourd’hui blvd Arago.” “Kolya avais un drôle d’expression cette aprèm quand je l’ai rattrapé rue Glacière.”)

Et finalement, Ferdinand, il y avait le roi de Danemark, qui a manifesté son solidarité avec les citoyens juifs de son paye pendant l’occupation (et j’en suis certain qu’il y en a beaucoup qui ont fait pareil en France) en portant un étoile jaune sur son épaule.

Et il y a mezig, Paul Ivan Winer Ben-Itzak, ton voisin, qui suis juif (même si je préfère m’identifier comme citoyen du monde ou, si on insiste a me donner un etiquette, San Franciscan… et Périgourdin comme toi.)

Et pour Emmanuel Macron, j’ignore s’il est juif ou non, et je m’en fou. Mais je l’aime. Je l’aime car il a du courage.

Et toi, Ferdinand, qui êtes vous?

danceblogger Art, Art and Society, French life, French Media, French Media, Covid,, French politics, French society, Henry James, Paris, Uncategorized

The Chevalier de la Barre: The bull who broke free (updated 9h37 EST Thursday)

Break on through to the other side: A certain drawbridge in Arles.

by Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2021 Paul Ben-Itzak

In case you don’t have the pleasure of waking up to or dining with the French public radio news, here’s what it’s typically sounded like for the past year:

“Covid covid covid vaccine vaccine vaccine Macron covid covid vaccine vaccine Islamism covid covid covid confinement confinement confinement vaccine vaccine climate covid covid incest vaccine vaccine.”

So invested are they in this constrained universe, that when the government announced last week (in very frank terms with absolutely no attempt at dissimulation) what sounded a lot like a quarantine of 16 of the country’s 100 departments or counties where you-know-what cases have been rising alarmingly the past two months (we had more than 65,000 new cases in the 24 hours ending yesterday at 8 a.m. EST, with 10 percent of the public having received at least one shot), the public radio journalists still insisted on calling it a confinement (or lockdown). Never mind the number of times they’ve cited Albert Camus’s “La Peste” (The Plague) over the past year or the number of times they’ve referenced the novelist-journalist-philosopher’s warning about the danger of ‘mal-nomming’ things, these journalists still can’t recognize a quarantine when they see one. (If it walks like a quarantine, talks like a quarantine, and unlike a duck can’t fly beyond a 10K radius, it’s probably a quarantine.)

What a breath of fresh air it was last night, then, when a freedom-loving bull broke through the covid covid vaccine vaccine confinement confinement school of journalism that has constituted much of French public radio reporting for the past year with an adventure worthy of inspiring anyone in need of a break from the reigning and anxiety-fueling media ambiance. And not just any bull. A black bull from the magical, eccentric, quaintly quirky, and very southern city of Arles.

If you’re not familiar with Arles, this is the city where the brutal meridional Sun burnt a hole through Vincent Van Gogh’s scalp as he was hauling around and stationing his easel in the unshielded surrounding fields, frying his brain to the point where he succumbed to an urge to cut his ear off and was promptly hounded out of town by the locals, their progeny hurling stones at his heels all the way to the asylum.

It’s also the city to which that famous bull-fighting fanatic Pablo Picasso repaired whenever he felt the need to indulge his passion for and sketch scenes of “Tauromaquia,” many of them originating in or on the narrow alleys surrounding the same 2,000-year-old arena from whose periphery the bull in question and two cohorts escaped Tuesday from an ill-advised photo-op. It’s also a city that’s part of a region, the Camargue, where the animals, no doubt taking after the artists, the gitans, and even the rural guards (as described by Alphonse Daudet in “Letters from my Windmill”) tend to have their own ornery characters. (They — the animals — even have their own gallery.)

Town, Gallo-Roman remnants, and irrascible Arlesien.n.e characters were enough to inspire Henry James to make the city part of his itinerary for the 1883 travelogue “French voyages,” in which he described the arena as follows (I’m back-translating from Robert Laffont’s French edition of “Voyage en France”):

“For all its grandiose scale, the Arles Arena is less complete than its sister in Nimes; it’s suffered more from the assaults of time and its children, and has been less thoroughly restored. Practically all the seats are gone, but the outside walls, with the exception of the top floor of the arcades, form a rough and complete mass; as for the arched hallways, they seem as solid as the day they were built. As a whole its proportions are superbly ample and of a monumental character as far as a place of diversion (what we call today ‘entertainment’) goes, as only the Roman spirit was able to bestow on this type of establishment. The podium is much more elevated than that of Nimes and a good number of the large slabs facing it have been found and put back in place. The proconsular lodge has more or less been reconstructed, and the grandiose access points which lead to it are still clearly visible and produce a majestic effect; so much so that sitting there, in the magical immobility of the moon, my elbows leaning against the dilapidated parapet of the arena, I could practically hear the murmurs and shudders and the hardy voices of the circus of which the last echoes stretch back 1,500 years.”

That circus was apparently nothing compared to the diversion provided by the black bull which succeeded in breaking away from the outskirts of this very same arena on Tuesday, an escapade which no doubt produced its own shudders (and at least one casualty) among the onlookers privileged to witness the jailbreak.

To fully appreciate the taureau’s accomplishment — specifically, his bold escape from an ill-advised group photo and subsequent navigation of the narrow and labyrinthine cobblestone streets of the old city down to the Rhone river — here’s how James described his own painful attempts to negotiate the same terrain vers 1883:

“I recall with tenderness the torturous alleys… which evoked those of a village, paved with treacherous acierated little stones that transformed all exercise into a penitence. This reminded me of an excruciating promenade that I’d made the night I arrived, with the intention of retrieving a particular view of the Rhone. I’d already been to Arles years before, and I remembered discovering on the quays a sort of tableau. It seemed to me that, on the evening I’m thinking of, a drenched moon gave the impression of trying to illuminate the past as much as the present. But I found no painting and I almost didn’t find the Rhone at all. I got lost, without a creature in sight from whom to ask directions. Nothing could be more provincial than Arles at 10 at night. I ended up by arriving at a type of quay, where I saw the great muddy mass of water gliding in the dark silence. It started to rain, the moon had vanished to who knows where, and the spot was hardly gay. It wasn’t what I’d come looking for; I’d been searching for a past that was impossible to retrieve.”

Animals being more inclined towards living in the present than humans, the search of the black bull who escaped a selfie-op outside the Arles arena (along with the two co-conspirators who were quickly apprehended) Tuesday was a lot more basic, his goal perhaps to ‘retrieve’ his brethren in the marshes of the nearby Camargue, where they can often be seen gamboling among flamingos and white horses.

After making his way a lot more successfully than James down those same cobblestone streets (and without losing nary an ear) to the quays of the Rhone and finding himself surrounded by the gendarmes, the bull took the only course any freedom-loving bovine (or other of God’s creatures) could take and dived horns-long into the river, swimming across the glittering blue water to the other side, where he promptly accosted (or so the radio news alleges) an unfortunate 70-year-old woman out for her own promenade (since hospitalized, with no mortal wounds) before he was finally subdued.

Ferdinand, meanwhile, is no doubt still grazing somewhere in the neighboring wheat-fields so lyrically depicted by another free spirit.

Born free: Bulls in the Camargue department or county that includes Arles.

danceblogger "Trompe-l'oeil" par/by Michel Ragon, anti-Semitism in France, Art, Art abstract des annees '50, Art and Society, Art as Resistance, French intellectual life, French life, French Literature in Translation, French society, Life in Paris, Michel Ragon, Paris, Paris art magazine in French and English, Paris Arts Guide in English and French translation, Paris History, Paris under Occupation, Paul Ben-Itzak, Post-war art, The Paris Tribune, The Paris Tribune, Le feuilleton: “Trompe-l’œil,” by Michel Ragon, Uncategorized

Le Feuilleton (the Serial), 6: Exclusive! “Trompe-l’Oeil,” Michel Ragon’s saga of art, artists, dealers, anti-Semitism, and critics in Post-war Paris, Part 6

by and copyright Michel Ragon
Translation copyright Paul Ben-Itzak
From “Trompe-l’oeil,” published in 1956 by Éditions Albin Michel

Part six in the Paris Tribune’s exclusive English-language translation of Michel Ragon’s seminal 1956 novel taking on the world of abstract art, artists, art collectors, art dealers, and art critics in Paris, as well as post-War anti-Semitism in France. For the first five parts, click here. Translator Paul Ben-Itzak is looking to rent digs in Paris this Spring and for the Fall. Paul Ben-Itzak cherche un sous-loc à Paris pour le printemps. Got a tip? Tuyau? E-mail him at artsvoyager@gmail.com .

Summer had scattered the artists. The poorest remained in a Paris deserted and torrid. The better off found themselves on the Cote d’Azur, where they automatically took up the rhythm of their Parisian lives: gallery visits, squabbles between critics, internecine rivalries between dealers, interminable palaver in the cafés which supplanted le Select or le Dôme, the dazzling vista of the Mediterranean replacing the buzzing of the boulevard Montparnasse.

At the end of September, they all returned to the nest, excited by the prospect of an exhibition to prepare, an article to write, a sale practically assured. Optimism was the order of the day. Would this be the great decisive year? Everyone had the right to hope so.

Returning first, Fontenoy frequently passed by Manhès’s atelier before finally finding him at home. He was impatient to reunite with his friend; he’d saved up so many things he wanted to share with him!

He knew the majority of the habitants of the cité, a kind of housing project allocated to artists.* From the moment he entered the narrow street, a tremor of robust howling indicated that Corato was reciting the aria from “Pagliati.” Corato was one of the poorest of the abstract painters. His somewhat obscure style, extremely nuanced, attracted few fans. No dealer was interested in him. An Italian, he took advantage of the pristine tenor’s voice with which nature had bestowed him by earning his living singing operatic airs in a café-concert. But this double-life took its toll. For that matter, his tenor’s day job made it hard for his fellow painters and the critics to take him seriously. One of them had even quipped, “Corato is a professional tenor. Painting is to him like the violin is to Ingres.” Certain barbs launched for the pleasure of coming up with a witty turn of phrase can also poison the victim’s existence. This particular one really wounded Corato. When Fontenoy knocked on the door of his atelier, the tenor-painter was discomfited to see him. “You know of course that I only sing because…”

“What new paintings do you have to show me?” Fontenoy cut him off.

If he wasn’t very enthusiastic about Corato’s art, he recognized the quality of his painting, the sincerity underlying it. At times the colors revealed a contained vibration which enabled Fontenoy to get a hint of what Corato’s painting might be if it was allowed to ripen. But Corato was 50 years old. Would fatigue finish him off before he’d be able to complete his experiments and find his style?

Fontenoy carefully studied Corato’s paintings in this atelier whose walls were plastered with travel posters. He told himself that these paintings were by far superior to so many others which made a mint. How was it possible that nobody had remarked their importance? He promised himself to write about Corato for L’Artiste.

Leaving Corato’s atelier, Fontenoy hailed the aged sculptor Morini, perched on his porch in a white blouse.

After a life of misery, Morini had suddenly achieved celebrity at the age of 80. Unexpectedly very rich, he continued living in his Spartan studio, alone as he’d been all his life, altering absolute nothing in his daily routine.

“Bonjour, Monsieur Morini,” Fontenoy greeted him. “You didn’t go away on vacation?”

“Bou… bou…,” grumbled the old man. “Vacation…? I’m quite happy chez moi.”

As he seemed notably sad, Fontenoy tried to flatter him.

“It’s formidable, Monsieur Morini! Life magazine devoted three pages, in color, to you.”

“Harrumph! That would have made my poor mother happy. If she hadn’t been dead for many years now. Like all of those who would have been happy to see such an article.”

“Well,” replied Fontenoy, embarrassed, “it might have taken a while, but now that you’ve been recognized, the recognition has been hundredfold.”

The old sculptor began furiously gesticulating. He yelled: “What the hell do I care, for all their greenbacks? I can’t even eat cake. All my teeth are gone.”

This eruption brought Manhès out of his atelier.

“You’re here!”

Isabel emerged in her turn, little Moussia clinging to her dress.

Fontenoy dashed into his friend’s atelier.

“And Blanche?”

“She’s getting ready for her exhibition. We spent our vacation together on the banks of the Loire.”

“So… it’s working out then?” Manhès asked, smiling broadly.

“Yes. We get along well. She’s a quite a chic girl. There’s no reason that it shouldn’t last.”

“For me, it’s never been so good. I sold well on the Cote d’Azur and since coming back I already have enough orders to last me until the Spring. Oh, that old fart Lévy-Kahn is sure going to be sorry for his little temper-tantrum.”

“Is Ancelin back in Paris?”

“No. He’s once again let himself be shanghaied by an old widow who swept him away to New York. You know him, he never loses an opportunity to cultivate his image. Meanwhile, Mumfy’s son has enrolled in the Academy of Abstract Art. Voila a new colleague on the horizon. His old man must have calculated that it would be cheaper to have abstract tableaux fabricated by his own offspring than to keep on buying them from actual artists. I saw the family the other day, to talk to them about Blanche’s water-colors. I think she might be able to sell them a few. But Mama Mumfy told me, in plugging her son: ‘I’m not going to show you what he’s done yet. It’s not quite at a fully developed level. But he’s so sincere!’

“I responded to her with Degas’s famous quip: ‘So young, and already sincere. Madame, I’m afraid your son is already a lost cause.’ She didn’t seem very happy with this summary verdict.”

Someone knocked on the door. Isabelle went to open it. A 40ish man, elegant with slicked-back hair, entered the room and began inspecting it.

“What do you want, Monsieur Androclès?” asked Manhès, without any finesse.

“I’ve come to offer you a deal.”

“I don’t cultivate vegetables here,” Manhès exclaimed, suddenly seized with a rage that Fontenoy could not understand.

“Oh, Manhès!” shot back the man, aggrieved, “you’ll rue the day you made that bad joke.”

He departed, taking his time.

A profound silence descended on the atelier. Isabelle finally broke it.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have snubbed him like that. You’ve just made another enemy.”

“The only ones who don’t have any enemies are the mediocrities!”

Androclès was one of the most important art dealers in Paris. He’d made his fortune during the Occupation, by selling fresh fruit and vegetables. A shrewd broker had convinced him that the most fructuous way to invest his money was to buy paintings. He’d resisted such a patently idiotic idea for a long time. But the broker found an argument with weight: “If you buy a boat,” he explained, “you’ll need to hire a crew to take care of it, and there will always be repairs that need to be made. The more you take to sea, the more it will deteriorate. Same thing for a building. You’ll need a super, a concierge. One day the roof will cave in. Then the basement will flood. A car wears down every time you drive it. Everything deteriorates, everything has personnel and maintenance costs — except painting. You can still buy a Cezanne for the price of a building. You won’t have to do anything to maintain it, and its price can only go up.”

Like Mumfy, Androclès investigated and before long he too had contracted the virus. He had the flair to acquire second-tier Impressionists at low prices and third-tier Cubists that no one wanted. Today, these Impressionists and these Cubists had finally attained their petite glory in the retrospectives and they constituted the Androclès gallery’s capital. Then this genius stumbled upon an aged Cubist painter of the variety one just doesn’t see anymore. The painter in question, simultaneously naive and sage, had been living in retirement in the country, getting by on a small income furnished by a group of loyal American collectors. During the war, he lost this clientele and plunged into such misery, such oblivion, that his wife did not survive. How on Earth Androclès, this vegetable hawker who was completely ignorant of painting, had managed to learn of his existence was a complete mystery. It’s said that even drunks have a guardian angel. It’s quite possible. But what is certain is that there must be one for philistines. This guardian angel conducted Androclès to the home of the old abandoned Cubist. He arrived with his arms loaded with vittles and departed with them loaded with canvasses. Then he bided his time. When the vegetable hawker calculated that the old man must be out of provisions, he arrived like the man from Providence with a baked ham, swept up every scrap of art which still lingered in the atelier, at 50 francs the yard, and saw himself once more hailed as a benefactor. On these raids, the old painter would scout around for a gift to offer to the dealer. He’d then give him the original edition of a book by Apollinaire which he’d illustrated in his youth, or an old drawing.

After the Liberation, the old Cubist painter died just as he was being rehabilitated. The first successful exhibition at the Androclès gallery was constituted by some of these canvasses bartered for vittles. They were bought up at fantastic prices. Today, any museum which didn’t own at least one of these masterpieces was one embarrassed museum.

Androclès no longer hawked fruits and vegetables, but his wife, a fat babushka with a vulgar voice, regaled painting collectors with her ignorance.

Fontenoy recounted to Manhès: “One day, I found myself in the gallery. A visitor asked the price of a Picasso ‘collage.’ Mama Androclès was manning the boutique. ‘Ah, that one, Mister, it’s worth the big bucks. But it’s old. Look at the paper, it’s already yellowing.'”

“You know the one,” Manhès countered, “about the guy who came to ask Androclès for Van Gogh’s address, don’t you? He didn’t bat an eye. He simply declared, in a dignified tone, ‘That gentleman is not one of my painters.'”

Moussia ran over and grasped her father’s knees. Manhès swept the child up and dangled her from his hands. The little girl giggled.

“This makes up for all of it, Fontenoy. When you have the time, you should fabricate one of these little marvels of your own with Blanche!”

Fontenoy protested: “Lay off! You used to marry me off to every single girl we met. Now that I’m with Blanche, you want us to have a kid. But what can we do? I’d tell you that an artist isn’t made to have kids, but it would only piss you off.”

“What, you don’t like our little Moussia?”

“Sure I do, she’s a darling. But just because I like something I see chez les autres doesn’t mean I want to have it chez moi.

“Ah! And now,” announced Manhès in affectionately nudging the tot away, “now go play. Papa needs to work….(and he added, emphatically) I tell you, Fontenoy, between the wife and the kid…!”

 

*Originally applied to housing complexes constructed for workers, today the term ‘cité’ most often refers to housing projects in the poorer neighborhoods or border suburbs of French cities. Before the expansion of the Montparnasse train station in the 1950s which leveled them, the 13th, 14th, and 15th arrondissements of Paris housed many of the cités reserved for artists. (When the translator lived in the Cité Falguière in the 15th in 2000, the former atelier of Chaim Soutine was still visible at the entrance.) Michel Ragon notably wrote about a visit to the sculptor Brancusi’s atelier before it in turn was re-located, intact, to another part of the city… to make way for progress. (Translator’s note.)

danceblogger "Trompe-l'oeil" par/by Michel Ragon, Abstract art movement in the 1950s, Art, Art abstract des annees '50, Art and Society, Art as Resistance, Art exhibitions in Paris, Art figuratif des annees '50, art openings and expos in Paris, Art openings in Paris, Cherche logement Paris., France, French intellectual life, French life, French Literature in Translation, French society, Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Michel Ragon, Paris, Paris art galleries, Paris art magazine in French and English, Paris Arts Guide in English and French translation, Paris History, Paul Ben-Itzak, Personal Announcement, Post-war art, The Paris Tribune, The Paris Tribune, Le feuilleton: “Trompe-l’œil,” by Michel Ragon, Uncategorized

LE FEUILLETON (THE SERIAL), 5: EXCLUSIVE! “TROMPE-L’OEIL,” MICHEL RAGON’S SAGA OF ART, ARTISTS, DEALERS, MARKETS, ANTI-SEMITISM, & CRITICS IN PARIS IN THE ’50S, Part 5

Jean-Michel Atlan, Sans Titre, 1949, pastel sur papier, 65 x 50,5 cm, smallOften lost among the quarrel between the Abstracts and the Figuratives of the 1950s (and the critical partisans of their schools) was the achievement of work which — sometimes depending on the eye of the viewer — traversed both terrains. Thus it is no surprise that for an exhibition which by its name alone, Animal Totem, promises a degree of concreteness, the Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger has rolled out some of the Abstract movement’s most accomplished exponents, including Paul Reybeyrolle , André Masson, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and — in his Bucher Jaeger debut — Jean-Marie Atlan. To read more about Atlan from his leading critical advocate Michel Ragon, in exclusive English translation, click here. And about his epoch, see the latest episode of the Paris Tribune’s exclusive serialized English translation of Ragon’s 1956 novel “Trompe-l’oeil,” below. Animal Totem continues through March 14 at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger’s Saint-Germain-des-Près space. Image courtesy Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Paris. Translator Paul Ben-Itzak is looking to rent digs in Paris this Spring and for the Fall. Paul Ben-Itzak cherche un sous-loc à Paris pour le printemps. Got a tip? Tuyau? E-mail him at artsvoyager@gmail.com .

by and copyright Michel Ragon
Translation copyright Paul Ben-Itzak
From “Trompe-l’oeil,” published in 1956 by Éditions Albin Michel

Part five in the Paris Tribune’s exclusive English-language translation of Michel Ragon’s seminal 1956 novel taking on the world of abstract art, artists, art collectors, art dealers, and art critics in Paris, as well as post-War anti-Semitism in France. For the first four parts, click here.

The following Sunday, Fontenoy dropped in at Mustafa’s for an afternoon that began with stupor and concluded with a sickening feeling which owed less to the abundance of the patisseries than to the ambiance of this particular reception.

To start with, wandering around the various rooms of this estate surrounded by a sumptuous park in the well-to-do Paris suburb of Enghien, Fontenoy was very embarrassed to run into colleagues from the mainstream press whom he’d often described, in his articles for the avant-garde revues, as “trend-chasers.” Then there was the high-society crowd that he was so unfamiliar with. He knew everyone in the small world which gravitated around abstract painters, but here he was entering the world of those who had definitely arrived.

What also disconcerted him was that this villa bore no resemblance to Mustafa, who’d christened it “My Dear Beatrice.” It seemed, on the contrary, to have more to do with Beatrice Morose, the painter’s wife and a painter herself. The woman in question, a veritable queen for a day, promenaded five poodles yapping like canine chatterboxes among the guests. Voluminous and draped in velvet like an empress, Beatrice Morose showed off with a flippant gesture her own paintings, nudged in between admirable Mustafas.

She played the role of the guardian angel of this sorry drunkard who used to be Mustafa, and whom she’d now resurrected.

Everyone raved about the Master, his genius, the perennial legends of canvasses purchased for 300 francs which now sold for a million. But where was Mustafa? Fontenoy slunk from one room to another, hoping to run into him. Finally he ended up in a small deserted salon where he observed, from behind, an old man in a dinner-jacket trying to pry open a shuttered piano lid with a paper-cutter. At that very instant, a servant in full livery, built like an athlete, burst into the room, tore the instrument from the old man’s hands and dragged him away by force by gripping his fists.

The servant did not notice Fontenoy, who had scotched himself against a tapestry, but the old man looked at him as they strode by with an expression of such anguish, such desperation, that Fontenoy would remain shaken up for weeks. He’d recognized the man as Mustafa. The painter, for his part, appeared neither more nor less surprised to see a stranger hidden in his salon than if he’d just found the Count of Monte Cristo installed at his dining table.

Fontenoy trailed the servant, who dragged Mustafa along like a prisoner. They arrived in the main room, where the reception was being held. Only then did the servant let go of his master, respectfully guiding him among the guests, lightly hanging on to him by the arm.

“And now,” announced Beatrice Morose, “the Master will receive in his atelier.”

A satisfied murmur ran through the assembly. There was just one discordant rattling: Mustafa, begging for a drink. His bodyguard brought him a glass of water tinted with a splash of red wine. Amongst this crowd in the process of elegantly liquidating hundreds of bottles of champagne, Mustafa was the only one who did not have the right to drink.

The bodyguard-servant hauled the artist to the atelier, situated in the middle of the park. He placed a long, fine paint-brush in one hand, and a palette in the other. Then he gently nudged him towards the virgin canvas attached to an easel, crushed some colors on the palette, and retreated.

“Behold,” announced Beatrice Morose to her guests, “the Master is now going to paint. Let us leave him. And let us not intrude on this moment of inspired genius.”

Fontenoy had seen enough. He fled rather than left “My Dear Beatrice.”

****

Fontenoy might well tell himself that Mustafa’s case was a bad example, he nonetheless remained bitter contemplating the vanity of these “great successes.” Mustafa, lavished with honors and money, grown into a respectable and respected personage — and living in constant terror of his bodyguard. Forced to keep up the facade of naiveté, of health. Fontenoy shivered when he flashed back to that look of a hunted animal.

Granted, Mustafa was a sick man whom Beatrice Morose took care of, protecting as best she could, but Matisse…. Fontenoy recalled his first reportage at the great Fauve master’s studio. He still had trouble getting it into his head that an authentic artist could also be a bourgeoisie, and that a bourgeoisie could also be an artist. He still cleaved to a Montparnasian romanticism of which Manhès, along with Atlan and a rare handful of others, was among the last remaining examples. He loved this ambiance of the Montparnasse artist cafés, but the fact was that the true creators were rare among all the regulars of le Sélect or le Dôme. The vast majority of the habitués consisted of expatriates who were more or less painters, more or less poets, more or less failures or unknowns. If Modigliani had only eluded Death, Fontenoy thought, maybe he too would today be a bourgeoisie like Matisse, who numbered the most insignificant of his drawings and had his secretary classify them, who locked his paintings up in a bank vault after having them photographed. Or perhaps, to ensure that every day he produced his painting already paid for in advance, and that he stopped drinking, they might have made him into a decorated and glorious recluse, like they’d done to Mustafa. Soutine himself, during his final years, had turned into a fearful petite bourgeoisie, who, rumor had it, locked his mistress in every time he went to see his dealer out of fear that someone would steal her.

Would the same thing happen to Manhès? At the very thought of this, Fontenoy was ready to chuck it all and just write poems. But he couldn’t help himself. Painting was like a virus implanted in his blood.

Fontenoy saw no sign of Manhès at le Select. Isabelle and Moussia must have returned from the country. On the other hand, Blanche Favard was there, sitting alone at a table. He went to sit down next to her.

Fontenoy was happy to find someone to whom he could unburden himself about his visit to Mustafa’s. All it took was a little event like this to set off a moral crisis which would keep him from writing a single word for several days. Then he’d wander along the boulevard Montparnasse to the boulevard Saint-Germain, desperately seeking someone to talk to. Inevitably, it was at these very moments that his closest friends were nowhere to be found, not because they were trying to avoid him, but because a sort of curse made sure that the individual was left alone to confront his suffering. One of his poet friends, Ilarie Voronca, undergoing a similar crisis one evening, went knocking from door to door, hoping to find someone to save him from his somber ideas. No one was available and Ilarie Voronca was found several days later at home, where he’d turned the gas on and killed himself. He always thought about Ilarie Voronca whenever someone confided, “I’m really not doing well today. Can we spend the evening together? I just need a presence….” Sometimes he had an article to finish and wasn’t thrilled to play the role of confidant. But then he’d tell himself: “If Ilarie Voronca had been able to find one of us that night, he’d still be alive.”

Talking with Blanche Favard, an anguish which became stronger and stronger seized Fontenoy by the throat. He told himself: “I can’t go home alone tonight. It’s not possible. Too bad, if Blanche wants me, I’ll go home with her.” Then the leering face of Arlov loomed before him: “Why did Blanche have to ask me to organize an exhibition for her? People will say that I’m no better than Arlov.”

They left le Select in the wee hours, weaving along the boulevard Montparnasse. Blanche looped her elbow into the crook of Fontenoy’s arm. They headed towards the Cité Falguière*.

*Where Soutine himself once had an atelier. And where the translator once lived. (Translator’s Note.)