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We are not your enemy: Apollinaire, Picasso and other French Migrants

Zayas Georges de (1898-1967) (attribué à), Portrait de Picasso dans l’atelier de la rue Schoelcher. Paris, vers 1915-1916. Photographie, épreuve gélation-argentique. Paris, Musée national Picasso – Paris. Don succession Picasso, 1992, archives personnelles de Pablo Picasso. © Georges de Zayas. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean. © Succession Picasso 2021.

Introduction by Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2021 Paul Ben-Itzak

Apollinaire original French text copyright 1960 Gallimard

On Sunday November 14, while Belarus was using thousands of migrants as weapons by luring them to the country with tourist visas then pushing them off to the Polish border (and thus European Union frontier), as putative revenge for E.U. sanctions, and the government of Poland (putatively a member of the E.U.) was responding by regarding the migrants as weapons in sending 10,000 soldiers to track them down in the forest shared by the two countries so that it could push them back to Belarus, often with water cannons, blocking media and human rights organizations from witnessing and aiding the migrants (and even blocking the deployment of the Warsaw-based European frontier guard Frontex, which would have insisted on a more humane and open handling of the situation. in conformation with E.U. regulations), at least eight of which migrants had already died from the freezing cold and/or lack of water and food (some local Poles did their best to seek them out and offer nourishment and refuge; at least 11 migrants, mostly from Iraqi Kurdistan, including one 1-year-old, eventually died); at the same time the Climate conference was closing with a lack of concrete mandates (or concrete aid to the countries contributing the least and suffering the most from the Climate emergency), which will only increase the flight of migrants from Climate-ravaged countries, the French Republican party was responding with a debate in which each of the five candidates tried to top each other in effectively stoking fear of migrants (they wouldn’t call it this, but rather responsible immigration policies) — of the Other — thus falling into the hands of the Belarusians. The situation reached its nadir when Poland announced plans to build a border wall which in its 50-meter height dwarfs Donald Trump’s, with the Danish government offering to sell them the barbed wire and the E.U. president saying the idea was worth discussing, prompting French European Parliament deputy and Green presidential candidate Yannick Jadot to sadly observe: “We are now doing the same thing that four years ago we were criticizing Donald Trump for doing.” (Meanwhile, the Transnational Institute recently reported that seven of the world’s richest, most polluting countries are spending twice as much on reinforcing border control as on aiding less wealthy, more vulnerable countries.)

As for the Republican debate, it reached its nadir when one of the candidates warned about the threat posed to the national French character if the alleged (alleged because the real numbers show there is no crisis, quantity-wise at least) flow of migrants isn’t stemmed.

Exactly which French national character was she talking about?

The one in which the most famous French detective of the 20th century, Commissaire Maigret, was invented by a Belgian, Georges Simenon?

The one in which the century’s most emblematic male French singer on an international scale was born in Italy, a certain Yvo Montand? (The only serious pretenders to the title — outside Charles Trenet, who is less known internationally –being Belgian Jacques Brel and a certain Shahnourh Varhinag Aznavourian, a first-generation Frenchman born in Paris to a Turkish-born mother and a Georgian-born father, and who you might know better as Charles Aznavour.)

Perhaps the one in which the most famous French comic book character, Tintin, was also invented by a Belgian, Hergé?

Or maybe she meant the national French character being degraded by the country’s most celebrated cabaret entertainer — also a hero of the French Resistance, who risked her life spying for General de Gaulle — being born in East St. Louis: Josephine Baker, who, grace of President Emmanuel Macron, who gets it, on November 30 enters the Pantheon in Paris, where her neighbors will include Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and Emile Zola?

En fin, perhaps the would-be French Republican party presidential candidate (currently the president of the Ile de France region which includes Paris and its multi-culti suburbs) was referring, national identity threat-wise, to the most influential painter, voir artist, of the 20th century, a certain Spanish-born Pablo Picasso who, a new book and exhibition highlights (if not reveals) was surveilled by French police from the moment he entered the country, whose naturalization request in 1940 was refused, and who demonstrated in irreproachable love and investment in his adopted country for 70 years. (Initiated by the French police, pilfered by the German Occupants, appropriated by the Russians and finally recuperated in 2001 by the French police in whose archives it now resides, an intense analysis of Picasso’s ‘fiche’ by the internationally renowned scholar and curator Annie-Cohen Solal is at the intellectual marrow of the exhibition. The exhibition was no doubt greatly inspired by the museum’s founding president, Benjamin Stora.)

Full-page ad in the Official Guide to the 1931 “Exposition Coloniale Internationale” in Paris. The Palais de la Porte Dorée which now houses the Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration was constructed for the 1931 Colonial Exposition .

Rather than comment further on the art of that artist ourselves, we’ve chosen to illustrate the following images from that exhibition, Picasso: l’Etranger, which runs through February 13 at the Musée National de l’Histoire de l’Immigration (the only such institution in Europe, the museum is housed, fittingly, in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, constructed for the 1931 Colonial Exposition), with the reception he inspired by another foreign-born exponent of the French national character, a certain Guillaume Apollinaire, born in Rome and the most influential French poet of the 20th century (nationalized after volunteering for World War I at the age of 34, a head wound in which contributed to his death in 1918 from the Spanish flu, at the age of 38). Because, and contrary to what the French Republican party presidential postulates would have you believe, France, and its storied capitol, has always been a magnet to ‘etrangers’ like Apollinaire and Picasso, its culture enriched by their presence and its national character broadened not restricted, and it is in no small part this cross-fertilization of international genius with French accommodation of international genius which has helped French culture to shine internationally for more than a hundred years.

Published on May 15, 1905 in Le Plume and only the second piece the poet and burgeoning critic wrote on Picasso, the following piece is collected in “Chroniques d’Art,” published by and copyright Gallimard in 1960, collected and annotated by L.-C. Breunig. And translated by PB-I. — PB-I

Pablo Picasso et Carlos Casagemas, Lettres aux Reventos. 25 octobre 1900 Dr Jacint Reventos i Conti Collection / ou Fondacio Picasso-Reventos (Barcelone). En dépôt au Musée Picasso Barcelone. © Succession Picasso 2021.

The young generation: Picasso, Painter

Text by Guillaume Apollinaire & Copyright Gallimard
Translated by Paul Ben-Itzak
Images from the exhibition Picasso l’Etranger (see captions for copyrights)

For those who know, all the gods come to life.

Born of the profound understanding that Humanity retains of itself, the coddled pantheisms which resemble this humanity have become more supple. But despite the eternal slumbering, there are eyes in which are reflected humanities similar to divine and joyous ghosts.

These eyes are attentive like flowers which always want to contemplate the Sun. Oh fecund joy! There are men who see with these eyes.

Pablo Picasso, Un Homme à la mandoline. Automne 1911. Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean. © Succession Picasso 2021.

Picasso has contemplated the human images floating in the azure of our memories and which partake of the divinity to produce metaphysicians. How pious they are, these heavens awhirl in flight, these lights heavy and low like those of caves!

There are the children who roam about without learning the catechism. They stop moving and the rain stops with them: “Regard! There are people who live before these buildings and their garments are poor.” These children who no one embraces understand so much. Mama, love me dearly! They know how to leap and the turns they execute are like mental evolutions.

Pablo Picasso, La Lecture de la Lettre, 1921. Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau © Succession Picasso 2021.

These woman no longer loved remember. They’ve dwelled too much on their brittle thoughts. They don’t pray; they are devoted to memories. They huddle in the twilight like an old church. These women have given up and their fingers twist braiding crowns of straw. With the day they disappear, finding consolation in the silence. They’ve passed through many doorways: the mothers guard the cradles so that the new-born don’t fall prey to maledictions; when they lean over them the little children smile in the knowledge that they are so good.

They are often thanked and the gestures of their forearms tremble like their eyelids.

Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme, 1929-1930. Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau © Succession Picasso 2021.

Enveloped in bracing fog, the old people wait without meditating, because only the children meditate. Animated by distant lands, by the squabbles of animals, by fatigued hair, these old people can beg without shame.

Pablo Picasso, Empreinte (au sucre) de la main de Picasso. Début juin 1936. Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris)/ Mathieu Rabeau © Succession Picasso 2021.

Then there are the mendicants worn out by life. These are the crippled, the hobbled, the scoundrels. They’re surprised to have reached the goal-line which is still blue but is no longer horizon. Ageing, they’ve turned into madman, like kings who have too many troops of elephants bearing tiny citadels. There are travelers who confound the flowers with the stars.

Récépissé de demande de carte d’identité datant de 1935. © Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris. © Succession Picasso 2021.

Prematurely aged like cows who die at 25, they take the breastfed babies to the moon.

In a new day, women stop talking, their bodies are angelic and their regards trembling.

Anonyme. Service des étrangers de la préfecture de Police de Paris. Années 1930 © Archives de la Préfecture de Police de Paris. © Succession Picasso 2021.

Conscious of danger, their smiles are internalized. They await the terror to confess to innocent sins.

In just a year, Picasso has lived this moist painting, blue like the humid depths of the abyss and pitiful.

Pablo Picasso et Marie Cuttoli, Le Minotaure (tapisserie), 1935. Musée Picasso, Antibes. © Succession Picasso 2021.

The pity made Picasso harsher. The town squares with a hanged man stretched out against the houses above oblique passersby. These torture victims await a redeemer. The cord hanging over, miraculous; in the attics the panes are inflamed with flowers in the windows.

In their rooms, artist-painters sketch golden nudes under kerosene lamps. The abandoned woman’s boots at the foot of the bed signify a tender haste.

Picasso Pablo, Minotaure aveugle devant la mer, conduit par une petite fille, (1881-1973). Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Béatrice Hatala. © Succession Picasso 2021.

Calm follows this frenzy.

The harlequins live under rags when the painter gathers, heats, or lightens his pigments to express the force and the duration of passions, when the lines limited by the tank-top curve, cut, or shoot out.

Paternity transfigures the harlequin in a square room, while his wife douses herself in cold water and admires herself, svelte and as lanky as her puppet-husband. A neighboring household warms its covered wagon. Beautiful songs are interlaced, and the soldiers move on, cursing the day.

Pablo Picasso, Femme qui pleure, 18 octobre 1937. Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean. © Succession Picasso 2021.

Love is good when one adorns it and the habit of living in one’s own home is doubled by paternal sentiment. The child gets closer to the father of the woman, who Picasso wants to be glorious and immaculate.

The mothers, primping and preening, no longer await the child, perhaps because of certain chattering crows who bode ill tidings. Christmas! They give birth to future acrobats among familiar apes, white horses, and dogs like bears.

Pablo Picasso, Chat saisissant un oiseau, 22 avril 1939. Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau. © Succession Picasso 2021.

The teenage sisters, balancing in equilibrium on the large balls of saltimbanques, command over these spheres the radiant movement of worlds. These pre-pubescent adolescents harbor the worries of innocence, the animals teach them the religious mystery. Harlequins accompanying the glory of the women, they resemble them, neither male nor female.

The color has the flatness of fresques, the lines are firm. But placed at the limit of life, the animals are human and the penises imprecise.

Hybrid beasts have the conscience of Egyptian demi-gods; taciturn harlequins sport cheeks and foreheads withered by morbid sensitivities.

Pablo Picasso, Coq tricolore à la croix de Lorraine, 1945. Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / image RMN-GP © Succession Picasso 2021.

One cannot confuse saltimbanques with hammy actors. Their spectators must be pious, because they celebrate silent rites with a difficult agility. This is what distinguishes this painter from the Greek potters which his drawing at times resembles. On their painted earthenware, bearded and loquacious priests offer up in sacrifice resigned animals sans destiny. Here, the virility is beardless, but manifests itself in the nerves of emaciated arms, the planes of visages, and the animals are mysterious.

Picasso’s taste for a line which flees change and penetrates and produces practically unique examples of linear dry points in which the general aspects of the world are barely altered by the lights which modify the forms by changing the colors.

Pablo Picasso, L’Homme au mouton (don à la ville de Vallauris), 1943. Paris, musée national Picasso – Paris. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean. © Succession Picasso 2021.

More than all the poets, the sculptors, and the other painters, this Spaniard jolts us like a sudden frost. He comes to us from faraway, the compositional richness and brutal decoration of the Spaniards of the 17th century.

Those who have known him will remember the rapid vividness which was already surpassed test-runs.

His insistence in the pursuit of beauty steered him towards his paths. He sees himself as more Latin morally, more Arab rhythmically.

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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.)

danceblogger Anarchist History, Art, Art and Society, Art as Resistance, Art exhibitions in Paris, Art openings in Paris, Expo Fénéon Musée de l'Orangerie et Museum of Modern Art, Expo Fénéon Musée Orsay et MoMA, Felix Fénéon, France, French intellectual life, French life, Henri Matisse, Paris, Paris art galleries, Paris art magazine in French and English, Paris Arts Guide in English and French translation, Paris History, Paul Ben-Itzak, The Paris Tribune, Uncategorized

Rentrée scolaire / Back to school in Paris et New York avec Matisse et Fénéon

matisse young girl reading moma and orsay smallWhen an Anarchist meets the Avant-Garde in Paris et NY: From the exhibition Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde — From Signac to Matisse and Beyond, running October 16 through January 27 at the Orangerie in Paris (in a slightly neutered title:  Les temps nouveaux, de Seurat à Matisse) and March 22 through July 25, 2020 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: Henri Matisse, “Interior with a Young Girl (Girl Reading),” Paris 1905–06. Oil on canvas, 28 5/8 x 23 1/2″ (72.7 x 59.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller, 1991. Photo by Paige Knight. © 2019 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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Vivre Villeglé! (And his lacerated sirens)

villegle breasty hottieIt’s fitting that Jacques Villeglé — like the pioneer in the art of the lacerated street poster (and the modern French detective novel) Léo Malet in the 1930s, an inveterate street-walker — realized his final work in removing and re-constituting the posters for erotic “message boxes” on the Mintel (the French ancestor of the Internet) that began plastering the rues of Paris between 1989 and 1992, when posters became largely supplanted by billboards. “There’s a certain affinity between the artist and these modern Lorettes,” Harry Bellet writes for the catalog of the works’ exhibition, running through April 12 at the gallery Vallois in Paris. “Like (the subjects of the posters), he walked the streets…. He also has an admirable respect for them: They display themselves — or rather they’re plastered up. He unglues them, liberates them…. Sometimes he tears them up, certainly, but as he confided to Nicolas Bourriaud…, ‘A wounded visage is still beautiful.’ In fact, Villeglé hasn’t lacerated these women; he’s softly, tenderly, langorously but always lovingly blown the leaves away.” Above: Jacques Villeglé, “Route de Vaugirard, Bas-Meudon, April 1991,” 1991. Lacerated poster mounted on canvas, 152 x 300 cm. Copyright Jacques Villeglé and courtesy Galerie Vallois.

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Sunflower power à la David Hockney

hockney sunflowerFor Flowers for Valentine’s, running through March 16 at the Galerie Catherine Putnam at 40, rue Quincampoix in Paris, Frédéric Poincelet has curated a group show including work by Marc Desgrandchamps, Blutch, Ugo Bienvenu, and, above, David Hockney, “Sunflower I” (347), 1995. Engraving, 80 ex./ Arches 69 x 57 cm. Copyright David Hockneystudio. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

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The Lutèce Diaries, 16: Love on the run, heart lies bleeding (unedited and uncensored version)

First sent out by e-mail, and posted today for the first time. After getting more than half-way through with a re-edit seven months later, I’ve decided to leave this piece in its initial, raw, somewhat over-detailed initial state for the sake of authenticity… and for the record. — PB-I, October 23, 2019

PARIS — So there  I was at dusk, heart broken and gums bleeding, teeth throbbing, staggering up the rue des Martyrs towards the Montmartre cemetery and the grave of the man I blamed it all on: Francois Truffaut.

In the late French director’s five-film, 20-year saga that began with the 1959 “The 400 Blows” and climaxed with “Love on the Run,” Antoine Doinel, played throughout the cycle by Truffaut’s alter-ego Jean-Pierre Leaud, is always on the run, often from the women in his life: His mother, his wife (the effervescent Claude Jade, whom Antoine, in the 1968 “Stolen Kisses,” rightly calls “Peggy Proper” for her prim manners), his girlfriend (Dorothee, who made her debut in “Love on the Run” and would go on to become the French equivalent of Romper Room’s Miss Nancy), his older married mistress (Delphine Seyrig at her glamorous apex), and various intermittent mistresses. The only one he seems to chase, apart from Dorthee’s “Sabine,” whom he loves but whose love seems to scare him (he found her after patching up and tracing a photo of the girl a supposed lover had torn up in a restaurant basement phone booth during an angry break-up call he overheard), is Marie-France Pisier’s “Colette,” who we first meet in Truffaut’s 30-minute contribution to the 1963 multi-director film “Love at 20.”  (They encounter each other at a classical music concert; Antoine is working at the time in a Phillips record factory, with Truffaut letting us see the hot wax being spun into discs. In “Love on the Run,” Antoine finally tracks Dorothee’s Sabine to her work-place. A record shop where couples make-out in listening rooms.) You may remember Pisier as the vengeful sexpot in the movie adaptation of Sidney Sheldon’s “The Other Side of Midnight,” in which she introduces an inventive way of hardening an older man’s penis which might have come in handy in my own recent saga if I’d only have remembered it before now.

The first hint that I was starring in a sort of Bizarro universe re-make of, specifically, “Love on the Run” came when the woman in question — you know her as “Vanessa,” whom I described picking up on (although I’ve since learned that she may have been picking up on me) at a vernissage a few blocks from the Pere Lachaise cemetery (cemeteries also figure in the Antoine Doinel cycle; the Montmartre one where Truffaut was eventually buried turns up in three of the five films, notably as the burial place of Antoine’s mother, revealed to him by her former lover as being next to the real tomb of the model for “Camille.”) and right after having three teeth extracted, e-mailed me from the Lyon train station before boarding a train to that city to visit her grandkids (like Antoine, I seem to have unresolved mother issues) to tell me that the night, our first together which had concluded the previous morning, and which we’d both exuded at the time was extraordinary and unique (she’d e-mailed me afterwards that she didn’t understand why we weren’t still together) felt “incomplete” (later she’d call it “inaccomplished”) because I couldn’t or wouldn’t get it up.  (My wording; she didn’t put it so vulgarly.) In the Truffaut film, after Colette calls him from a window on a Lyon-bound train at the Gare de Lyon, where Antoine has just dropped of his son for camp, Antoine jumps on the moving train without a ticket, surprises Colette in her sleeper car right after a fat middle-aged businessman, assuming she’s a prostitute, has rubbed up against her in the aisle (a lawyer, she’d spotted Antoine earlier in the day at the court-house, where with Jade he’d just completed France’s first no-fault divorce, an echo of my parents’ some years earlier). After they catch up, she upbraids him on the revisionist way he recounted their courtship as 20-year-olds in a fictionalized memoir he’s just published — “My family didn’t move in across the street from you, you followed us!” (At the time, Antoine is working as a proofreader at a – literally – underground publisher on a book detailing the 18 minutes when De Gaulle disappeared during the 1968 student-worker uprising. Letters requesting love assignations sent by underground pneumatics also figure in the 1968 “Stolen Kisses,” in this case from Antoine’s older, married lover – his employer’s wife — played by the glamorous Seyrig.) He tries to kiss her, she light-heartedly repels the attempt scolding him, “Antoine, you haven’t changed.” The conductor comes around for tickets, Antoine pulls the emergency chord and jumps off the still moving train. We see the now 34-year-old Antoine running across a field, an echo of the last, poignant, liberating moment in “The 400 Blows,” when a 14-year-old Antoine, having escaped from a youth home/prison, is frozen on screen and in our memories, a broad smile on his face as he runs on a beach, discovering the ocean (the antipathe of Chris Marker’s ocean in “La jete”)  for the first time.

In my own Bizarro universe re-make of the Antoine-Colette train scene, it was Colette who, after having joined me in a mutually agreed upon and extraordinary kiss was jumping from our train.

I was devastated, as I thought we’d also both agreed that what made our first night together magical is that the things other couples often view as preliminary — hand-holding, snuggling, French kissing, hand-kissing — had for us been electric. (I’m purposely avoiding citing the many words and motions we exchanged which confirm this because this piece is not intended as an indictment – “If you don’t love me, what was this?”) After writing her an e-mail to ask why she chose to bring this up in an e-mail as opposed to face to face, and explaining that if you want your partner to get it up, the worse thing you can possibly do is tell him it bothers you that he couldn’t get it up, and that a 57-year-old man can’t just get hard on command, I said she should ask herself, “If he was impotent, would I continue with him?” and if the answer was no, get out. She misinterpreted this in a more dire manner, we made up Friday, but only for her to send me another e-mail Saturday — 20 minutes before she knew I was receiving guests, my artist friends K. & R. for the famous Palestinian and Jamaican chicken twins, breaking up. And adding if I wouldn’t mind returning the scarlet scarf her Islamophobic friend  had left at my home after I asked her and her husband to leave a dinner part I’d hosted for them all when they started going at French Muslims. So it was with misty eyes that I opened the door to K. & R., and found myself confiding my troubles of the heart with friends with whom I’d not yet reached that level of intimacy. Thanks to their and particularly K.’s good humor — leading the conversation to other subjects but ready to go back to consoling me, even suggesting, “We need to find you a woman!” — I did pretty well, considering a germinating girlfriend had just broken up with me by e-mail. But I guess I must have sounded worse than I felt, because when I asked what I should do if she contacted me again, K. said “Drop it! Do you want to end up jumping out a window?!”

After more e-mail exchanges last week, the tenor of which from Vanessa remained mostly consistent — she was still running from the love express our train had become — I finally ceded, agreeing it was better to cut it off as I couldn’t return to the just-friends thing, she sent me an e-mail where she said that she too (as I’d expressed I was) was in tears, that her life had changed since “1/24” — the evening we met at the vernissage — that she’d never be the same again, that she knew she had a problem with loving, that she hoped I’d find someone but that it was probably too late for us.

This of course — the tears — brought me running, and I wrote her to say that I’d been blind, that she maybe thought she had a problem with love but that everything she’d done in my regard — particularly being ready to lose me — was done out of love.

On Friday we had another magical evening, organizing an impromptu, wintry pique-nique on the banks of the Ourcq canal. I assured her I wouldn’t go all out but just bring what was already in the house; as it happened this also included a vintage wooden unfoldable pique-nique table in a valise that came with the apartment. I’d promised her to go no further than a chaste kiss goodnight at the Metro station. “Vanessa and Paul, round two!” she’d blithely announced over the hummus, and the rest of the evening kept to this light tenor, with lots of laughter. At one point I stopped the converation to note: “This is important.  You see? When we’re face to face, we understand each other. E-mail communication is really sinister.” The night concluded with a chaste kiss at the Metro.

Ghosts in the machine

Wanting to diversify my world — I’d be making my famous Palestinian chicken for friends of Vanessa and bringing it to the house they were moving to that day, looking out over (I’m not making this up) the Pere Lachaise cemetery — on Saturday morning I decided to check out the vernissage for a group exhibition in my suburban Paris village of the pre Saint-Gervais. Life is more than women! Life is more than the women in my life over the past few years who seem to be Bizarro Universe interpreting the scripts for Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films!

After sensing that in lieu of the usual joy of discovery I still feel around art I was feeling incredibly wary after entering the art space, in the same room below the covered market where I’d scored my old aborted professor Jerome Charyn’s “The Catfish Man” — I was increasingly regretting that I lacked the coping skills Charyn’s hero (himself) had been inculpated with by being forced to tangle with the urban catfish in the mudflats of the Bronx of his come-uppance — when someone I didn’t recognize at first, a woman in her ’50s with a boyish hair-cut, rose up like one of Charyn’s catfish and announced in wonder, “Paul.” It was another V, the last girlfriend and who, in contrast to the current V., who never stopped blaming herself for being unable to love, had taken the opposite tactic with me when we last tango’d/tangle’d nearly three years ago, blaming it all on me, even though in this case the opposite was true; this was one sick puppy. I know this sounds like the usual break-up sour grapes, but I’m short-handing because she doesn’t merit more time than this. I simply mention the encounter because it may have been an omen….

… And to introduce what I conveyed to “Vanessa” as we marched from the ill-advisedly chosen Pere Lachaise rdv to the dinner at the home overlooking the cemetery. I know it’s not advised to mention an ex to a current, but for me this was a means of delivering a series of compliments:

“Where she doesn’t assume any responsibility, you unfairly blame everything on yourself…. And even though she’s 14 years younger than you, on looks there’s no contest.” Vanessa smiled widely at this. “She’s skinny-ass where you have the body of a woman, uninteresting to look at where you are.”

I was annoyed when …. No, I find I can’t go into what annoyed me, nor any other details of the party related to my interactions with “Vanessa” because it sounds like evidence gathering, and this piece is not intended to be an indictment nor a reckoning, but a first step on the path out — out of heartbreak and out of “Vanessa” — for myself. I also believe that, like an American black-belt I once knew in Antwerp once explained to me in saying why the very fact that his hands are deadly weapons means he has a reponsibility *not* to fight, a writer doesn’t have the right to use his considerable gifts in romantic reckoning.

So suffice to say that the evening seemed to end sublimely, with Vanessa and I getting lost in perpetual circling of a Paris roundabout, this one the Place Gambetta. We held hands from the moment we left the hosue; there was some warm French kissing. When I said I wanted her to come home with me, she responded that she “wasn’t against” this, but reminded me that she had to get up early to go meet her grand-daughter at the train station.

We seemed to part in joy hands taking an extra clutch before separating…

…but..not before, unprompted, she asked out loud again why she was unable to jump into my arms, then answered her own question with “Is it because you couldn’t get it up?,” though not putting it that way, again sorting the demon.

Once home, in a letter I sent on getting home at 1:30 a.m., I felt compelled to repeat my earlier answers, both the defensive and proactive ones: If you want a man to get it up, the worse thing you can do is tell him it bothers you when he can’t; and then detailing, explicitly, all the other ways I’d like to please her, and ending with, “Let’s have fun with it!”

In the last e-mail I sent her Sunday before she let the hatchet fall again (and once again by e-mail), I wrote, rather poetically (she completed the beauty and humor before lowering the ax), regarding our lost midnight turnabout, “I’d rather be lost with you than found with anyone else.”

Oh and I left out one important detail: After one embrace, I finally said the words in person for the first time: “Je t’aime,” with a big smile on my face. “What am I supposed to say?” “You’re not supposed to say anything, just accept it.”

I mention this because since she broke with me after the late Saturday night letters, I’ve been torturing myself with: Did the letters, particularly the lasciciousness, scare her away? What if I’d backed off – after the happy Metro separating – and allowed her the space to come to me. So to counter this self-torturing (I even mentioned this possiblity in my last letter to her – if I’d backed off, I  might not have lost you) I’m trying to tell myself that it was more this first face-to-face declaration of love that did it.

Ultimately I think this is the problem, the reason that Sunday and Monday morning she pulled out, saying she was arresting the histoire d’amour with me because she wasn’t “at the hauteur” of my emotions and compliments to her, to a degree that it was making her sick: I don’t think she has a problem with loving (at one point she told me she’s never been able to love, that she ended her two marriages because of this); I saw this manifest from her towards me in copious ways over the past two plus weeks. I think she has a problem with accepting being loved.

Before starting this piece this overcast Tuesday morning, I’d determined not to read any new mails from V. because I knew if I read them I’d have to respond. (And that I shouldn’t have given her the power to confirm or deny that my letters, sentimental and lascivious, of late Satruday had scared her off.) The one I did receive from her this morning, sent last night, confirmed this urge but so far I’m resisting. Not so much because I’ve convinced myself that it’s unhealthy to continue on her  roller coaster (I’ve left out the numerous things she’s said or acts she’s done which indicate a profound love because this is not intended to be a requisatory, but a first step towards my own healing .. and advancement / continuation in the search for the vrais amour) but because I’ve told the part of myself unable yet to fall out of love with her, unable to let go even though my brain and a large part of my heart realizes that this is unhealthy, to let myself be swallowed up by a heart that is really broken, that this is my last hope, I’ve decided to follow two precious pieces of advice dispensed to me by my New Zealand-bred horse chief on a pony farm along the Texas – Oklahoma border more than six years ago:

 

  1. You can’t blame yourself for the things you can’t predict. All signs — all the signals she sent me — indicated that this woman was crazy about me from the moment she encountered me. I but responded to that with the joy in my heart this provoked.

 

  1. If you want a horse/filly to do what you want, the worse thing you can do is keep barking at him. You need to give him/her time to digest what you just said, so that he ultimately makes the decision him/herself.

 

I don’t know if she’ll write me again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep from opening any mails she might send, or from responding if I do. But this is what I’m going to attempt, at least for a week. What I do know in my heart of hearts is that she’s hurt me so much with the ups and downs that it will take more than an e-mail to convince me of any change of heart that she might have, or rather return to the previous obsession she announced with me.  I need her to do what she’d refer to as a “Woddy Allen,” running to me breathlessly along Fifth Avenue Woody at the end of “Manhattan,” arriving panting and breathless at my door before I move on.

But to get back to the French director towards whose whose grave I found myself staggering up the rue des Martyrs as the sun set over the Sacre Coeur church which slowly emerged above it, gums bleeding from the just-extracted tooth, heart still raw. Once at the grave, after filling my green plastic up from a nearby fountain with water and popping a dissolvable 1000 gram Paracetemol into the water, posing it on Truffaut’s grave (decorated with an unravelling 35 MM film spool and a worn photo of Truffaut, Leaud, and a woman who might have been Claude Jade on the set)and watching it fizz away like this love affair, I lifted the glass and, echoing the Charles Trenet song which provides the theme for the 1968  “Stolen Kisses” – in which Leaud’s Antoine and Jade’s Christine fall in love – toasted Francoise Truffaut with “A nos amours,” to our loves. I might have added “This is all your fault,” for setting a model of Antoines and his women I was continuingly trying to counter-act. I wanted to be the anti-Antoine, proposing a definite “OUI!” to all these French women I was encountering. Why did they keep behaving like Truffaut’s Antoine, falling in love only to deny it and jump off the train, fleeing into the great French wilderness, fleeing love – mine and theirs – on the run?

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Le feuilleton: “Trompe-l’œil,” by Michel Ragon (Extract; translation followed by original French version)

“If Ragon’s erudition is immense, it has always been irrigated by the blood and misery of real life.”

— François Nourissier

By and copyright Michel Ragon
Translation copyright Paul Ben-Itzak

Reflecting the author’s popular roots, Michel Ragon’s 1956 “Trompe-l’oeil” is less an easy parody of the nascent contemporary art market than an introduction to the complex Abstract Art universe disguised as tragi-comic spoof, with contemporary swipes at corrupt art critics and mercenary art revues à la Balzac’s “Lost Illusions.” (It also offers a trenchant commentary on anti-Semitism.)  Ragon’s colorful fictional personnages interact with some of the real-life artists of the era that he, as a critic and curator, championed (à la Zola). To read an excerpt of Michel Ragon’s “La Mémoire des vaincus” (The Book of the Vanquished), click here.

In the très chic Parisian salon of Monsieur Mumfy — the very same Mumfy of the celebrated underwear ads — “with Mumfy, you’re always comfy” — a Family Conference was underway. The plethora of Plexiglas and the multitude of apertures in the porous Oscar furniture eliminated any idea of intimacy in the vast square room, whose walls were ornamented with a collection of Klees. The quality of these paintings had earned their proprietor the high regard and hosannas, frequently expressed, of the leading art critics of Paris as well as art aficionados.

Ensconced in a tubular arm-chair held together with cream-colored cords which leant it the vague allure of a warped harp, Monsieur Mumfy was in the process of interrogating his son, standing before him. Slightly separated from them, but still participating in the conversation, Madame Mumfy was busy at a black ceramic table creating a more or less Cubist collage. It was not that Madame Mumfy was an artist, or even trying to pass as one, but that she liked to distract herself with cutting up colored paper and re-assembling it, sometimes à la Picasso, sometimes à la Matisse, just as 50 years earlier she might have devoted herself to needlework.

“My dear Charles,” Monsieur Mumfy declared, “it’s time to decide. You’ve now graduated from high school; it’s time to pick a career. We’re here to help….”

Charles, clad from head to toe in black, his stiff hair combed over his forehead à la Bourvil (or à la Marlon Brando), pulverizing his handkerchief between his nervous fingers, tentatively stepped forward before retreating, with a certain dandy-ness that might have lead one to suspect an inclination towards sexual inversion, but it was nothing like that. Charles’s effeminate affectations, like his bird-like hopping back and forth, his juvenile gestures, and the weaving of his hips when he walked, were à la mode.

“Respond, Cheri!” chimed in Madame Mumfy. “Don’t let your father just languish there. Otherwise we’re in for another 24 hours of stress!”

“Okay Pops, Moms,” Charles finally decided, accentuating his dandy-ness. “My dream is to become… a notary public.”

Madame Mumfy precipitously dropped her scissors and glue to rush to the side of her husband, who had begun to hyperventilate. Striking him on the back and tapping him on the cheeks, she tried to reassure him:

“It’s nothing, darling, nothing! Charles is obviously kidding….”

When Monsieur Mumfy had recovered his wits, his son, worried by the turn of events, repeated, all the same:

“I don’t want to make you mad Pops, Moms, but I’m not joking: I really want to be a notary public.”

Monsieur and Madame Mumfy glanced at each other with a complicit air tempered by indulgence. Then Monsieur Mumfy responded with a firm voice:

“My dear Charles, don’t be ridiculous. No one becomes a notary public these days. How could such an idea ever have sprouted up in the head of a MUMFY?! Choosing to be a notary public. The very idea! Does one choose to be a cuckold? Haven’t you read Balzac? Flaubert? For more than a hundred years notary publics have been looked at as grotesque characters, the butt of jokes — and your “dream” would be to sport a black skull-cap and bifocals with a pocket-watch hanging on a chain over a protuberant stomach that — thank God — you’re not even close to acquiring. Becoming a notary public might be fitting for the son of a country school-teacher, but you, Charles — do you want to be the shame of your family?

“Come, come now — it’s just the silly fancy of an adolescent. I’m going to help you…. I’ve got it! What if you became an artist…? A painter, for example?”

“But Pops, I don’t know how to paint.”

Monsieur Mumfy clutched his head between his hands in a sign of total exasperation in the face of such naïveté.

“Look at this blockhead! You’ll learn, Charles, you’ll learn! Does someone refuse to become a doctor because he’s never applied a bandage? One learns to paint, my boy, as with anything. And consider the future in painting. Picasso is a millionaire, as is Matisse…. Have you ever heard of a notary public who, starting out from scratch, has carved out such a shining success? Picasso lost so much time, in his youth, because he was poor, and couldn’t afford paints or canvasses, and didn’t know any dealers or critics. But you, Charles, won’t lack for anything. I’ll give you a monthly allowance so you won’t have anything to worry about. You can take advantage of my connections as a collector. With a little effort from you, my boy, we’ll make a famous artist out of you, who will be the pride and joy of the family. Look at Ancelin. He also wouldn’t have heard of becoming a painter. He wanted to be an officer, on the pretext that his father is a general. But General Ancelin talked him out of pursuing a career in a field compromised by the pacifism that’s more and more in vogue these days. He also, our old friend Ancelin, was able to see the opportunities available these days in the art world. And Ancelin now has a contract with Laivit-Canne’s gallery and will soon be exposed in New York.

Rising heavily, Monsieur Mumfy bumped his head against one of the blades of a Calder mobile rotating from the ceiling. He scooted it away distractedly with the back of his hand, as if it were a fly. The mobile started to undulate, with all its branches revolving in silence. It was as if a giant insect had suddenly come to life above the father and son, oblivious to its awakening. A soubrette entered, after knocking, apparently in the throes of panic.

“Madame, the pottery set that Monsieur gave Madame….”

“Yes…?

“I don’t know how it happened, but it’s… bleeding.”

“Now now, explain yourself clearly and don’t get upset,” sighed Madame Mumfy, delicately snipping a strip of embossed paper.

“Yes, Madame. I went to serve the consommé
in the pottery bowls and the consommé turned completely blue.”

“WHAT?!” erupted Monsieur Mumfy. “Who told you to touch that pottery?! You couldn’t tell that those plates were not made to be eaten from?!”

“Then what are they made for, Monsieur?” asked the maid, flustered.

“They’re not ‘made’ for anything!” roared Monsieur Mumfy even louder, so loud that the Calder began to hiccup. “Those plates are works of art. One does not eat from works of art. One beholds them!”

The maid tried to defend herself by babbling, “I wouldn’t have thought of pouring consommé on Monsieur’s paintings. I just thought that bowls are bowls….”

Monsieur and Madame Mumfy broke into simultaneous laughter, bursting out, “She believed that bowls were bowls…!” “Incredible!” “We must tell Paulhan about this!”

The maid departed, clearly vexed. By the immense bay window looking out over the Luxembourg Gardens, Charles, indifferent to the fit of laughter which had seized his parents, gazed nostalgically at the Law School.

***

Monsieur Mumfy was not a born art collector. Before the war, consumed as he was with his underwear factory, he didn’t even know that painters existed. It took an accident. One of his debtors brought him a batch of watercolors, gouaches, and paintings by an unknown German artist, pleading with him to accept the paintings as collateral. Monsieur Mumfy initially refused this singular arrangement. Since when did one trade underwear for paintings?! But the debtor had been driven to ruin. Ahead of taking him to court, Monsieur Mumfy had the paintings stored in one of his warehouses, without taking the trouble to even look at them. Some months later, the debtor committed suicide. Monsieur Mumfy had the paintings brought up so he could study them to see if by chance they might actually be worth something. Stupefied, he discovered that they were replete with child-like doodles — all sorts of rivers, of birds, of funny figures. He’d been had. He began to choke with rage. The bastard had conned him before offing himself! Just in case, though, he asked an art dealer to take a look; the dealer refused to buy anything, smiling snidely.

paul klee, untitled, 1939From the Arts Voyager archives: Paul Klee, Untitled, 1939. Image copyright and courtesy Artcurial.

“So I can throw them in the garbage,” Monsieur Mumfy fumed.

“Oh,” the dealer answered, with an evasive gesture, “hang on to them all the same. You never know. If you have the space….”

Immediately after the war, the very same dealer came back to see Monsieur Mumfy, who’d completely forgotten the painting fiasco. He offered him $5,000 for the whole lot of Klee works that he recalled seeing earlier.

Faced with the enormity of the amount (the debtor owed him, before the war, a little over $500), Monsieur Mumfy became suspicious, asked other dealers to come look at the paintings, and got offers of $7,500, $10,000, and $12,500 for the Klees…. He decided to read a few books about contemporary art, discovered that the market for paintings was the most speculative around, and that Klee was considered in America to be a major painter. He bought ornate frames for his paintings and had them hung in his salon. Before long, there were requests to photograph ‘his’ oeuvres, and to reproduce them in color in luxury magazines and art books. The name Mumfy was evoked wherever there was talk of Klee’s oeuvre. Thus he was catapulted, almost unconsciously, into the midst of the world of arts and letters and readily let himself be converted to all things avant-garde. He allowed himself to indulge in the luxury of philanthropy, underwriting several art revues and sponsoring young artists whose paintings resembled Klee’s. He was even recognized as one of the premiere Klee specialists in France. Far from making him lose money, the arts earned him notoriety he’d never even dreamed of as a simple garmento. He was decorated for services rendered to the arts. Famous artists cultivated his friendship. Even his fellow industrialists now showed him a deference that they’d never have dreamed of according him before he earned a reputation as an “influential collector.” Monsieur et Madame Michaud wanted to be up-to-date. They bought an apartment that they hired Le Corbusier to transform. Nothing, absolutely nothing in their home pre-dated the 20th century (with the possible exception of its proprietors).

Brought up amongst this architecture of pure lines, blasé about being surrounded by furniture which constantly reminded him of a dentist’s office, exhausted by this daily frequenting of chefs-d’oeuvre, Charles began to fantasize about living in a dusty bureau, with large old straight-legged  wooden arm-chairs, an oak desk and an ink-well with a feather plume. This was his own form of poetry. To every teenager his folly.

*In English in the original.

Original French language text of excerpt, by Michel Ragon:

Dans le salon très moderne de Monsieur Michaud, le fameux Michaud des sous-vêtements du même nom (« avec Michaud, toujours chaud »), se tenait une réunion de famille. L’abondance du plexiglas et les multiples ouvertures des meubles Oscar enlevaient toute intimité à cette vaste salle cubique dont les murs s’ornaient d’une collection de peintures de Klee. Leur qualité valait à son propriétaire l’estime et la considération, très souvent exprimée, des meilleurs écrivains et amateurs d’art.

Assis dans un fauteuil tubulaire tendu de cordes blanches qui lui donnaient une vague allure de harpe faussée, Monsieur Michaud interrogeait son fils, debout devant lui. Un peu à l’écart, mais participant toutefois à la conversation, Madame Michaud s’occupait à un collage relativement cubiste sur une table de céramique noire. Non pas que Madame Michaud fût artiste, ni même qu’elle tentât de passer pour telle, mais elle se distrayait en découpant des morceaux de papiers de couleurs et en les assemblant, tantôt à la manière de Picasso, tantôt à la manière de Matisse, comme elle se fût donnée, cinquante ans plus tôt, aux points de canevas.

— Voyons, Charles, disait Monsieur Michaud à son fils, décide-toi. Tu viens d’être reçu a ton bac, il te faut t’orienter vers une carrière. Nous sommes là pour t’aider…

Charles, tout de noir vêtu, les cheveux raides ramenés sur le front à la Bourvil (ou à la Marlon Brando), triturait son mouchoir, avançait une jambe, la reculait, avec un dandinement pouvant faire supposer qu’il tendait à l’inversion sexuelle, mais il n’en était rien. L’allure efféminée de Charles, comme ses sautillements, ses gestes gamins, sa démarche déhanchée, appartenait au style de l’époque.

— Réponds, Amour, s’exclama Madame Michaud, ne laisse pas languir ton père ; sinon il va encore nous faire vingt-quatre de tension!

— Voila, pap’, mam’, se décida enfin Charles, en accentuant son dandinement, moi j’aimerais bien devenir notaire.

Madame Michaud abandonna précipitamment ses ciseaux et sa colle pour courir à son mari qui suffoquait. Elle le frappais dans le dos avec énergie, lui tapotait les joues :

— Ce n’est rien, darling*, ce n’est rien ! Charles plaisante, tu le vois bien…

Lorsque Monsieur Michaud reprit « ses esprits », Charles très ennuyé par la tournure des événements, redit quand même :

— Je ne voudrais pas vous fâcher, pap’, mam’, mais c’est vrai : j’aimerais bien être notaire.

Monsieur et Madame Michaud se regardèrent d’un air entendu et indulgent. Puis Monsieur Michaud dit d’une voix ferme :

— Mon petit Charles, tu es ridicule. On n’est plus notaire, de nos jours. Comment une pareille idée a-t-elle pu se nicher dans la tête du fils Michaud ! Choisir d’être notaire… Est-ce que l’on choisit d’être cocu ? Enfin, quoi, n’as-tu pas lu Balzac ? Flaubert ? Depuis cent ans les notaires sont des personnages de farce et ton idéal serait de coiffer la calotte noire, de porter des bésicles et une chaîne de montre en or sur un ventre que, Dieu merci, tu n’es pas encore près d’acquérir. Le métier de notaire peut, à la rigueur, convenir à un fils d’instituteur de campagne ; mais toi, Charles, veux-tu faire honte à ta famille ?

« Allons, allons, c’est une bêtise de jeune homme. Je vais t’aider, moi. Tiens… si tu faisais une carrière d’artiste… Peintre, par exemple ?

— Mais, pap’, je ne sais pas peindre…

Monsieur Michaud se prit le crâne à pleines mains, en signe de découragement total devant une telle innocence.

— Regardez-moi ce grand sot ! Mais tu apprendras, Charles ! Est-ce qu’on refuse d’envisager la médecine parce qu’on n’a jamais fait un pansement ! La peinture s’apprend, mon petit, comme toute chose. Et regarde l’avenir qui est offert à un peintre. Picasso est milliardaire, Matisse aussi… Connais-tu un notaire qui, parti de rien, soit arrivé à une aussi brillante situation ? Picasso a perdu beaucoup de temps, dans sa jeunesse, parce qu’il était pauvre, qu’il ne pouvait pas s’acheter de couleurs ni de toiles, qu’il n’avait aucune relation parmi les marchands et les critiques. Mais toi, tu ne manqueras de rien. Je te donnerai une mensualité qui te laissera la tête libre. Tu profiteras de mes relations de collectionneur. Allez, fiston, avec un pu de bonne volonté de ta part, nous ferons de toi un artiste célèbre, qui sera la joie de la famille. Regarde Ancelin, il ne voulais rien savoir pour être peintre, lui non plus. Il voulait devenir officier, sous prétexte que son père est général. Mais le général Ancelin a bien su le dissuader de suivre une carrière aussi compromise par ce pacifisme de plus en plus en vogue. Lui aussi, ce vieil ami Ancelin, avait su voir quels débouchés offrait maintenant le monde des arts. Ancelin a son contrat chez Laivit-Canne et il va bientôt exposer a New York.

En se relevant lourdement, Monsieur Michaud heurta du front une pale d’un mobile de Calder qui se balançait dans la pièce. Il la chassa distraitement du revers de la main, comme une mouche. Le mobile se mit à onduler, toutes les branches évoluèrent en silence. On eût dit qu’un gigantesque insecte se fût tout à coup éveillé au-dessus du père et du fils qui n’y prenaient garde. Une soubrette entre, après avoir frappé. Elle paraissait affolée :

— Madame, le service de céramique que Monsieur avait offert à Madame…

— Et bien ?

— Je ne sais pas comment cela a pu se produire, mais il déteint.

— Expliquez-vous clairement et ne vous énervez pas, soupira Madame Michaud en coupant délicatement une languette de papier gaufré.

— Oui, Madame, j’ai voulu servir le consommé dans le service en céramique et le consommé est devenu tout bleu.

— C’est insensé, hurla Monsieur Michaud. Qui vous a dit de toucher à ce service ! Vous n’avez donc pas vu que ces assiettes n’étaient pas faites pour manger dedans !

— Alors elle sont faites pour quoi, Monsieur, demanda la bonne, ahurie.

— Mais pour rien, hurla encore plus fort Monsieur Michaud, si fort que le Calder en eut des hoquets. Ces assiettes sont des œuvres d’art. On ne mange pas dans des œuvres d’art. On les regarde !

La bonne essaya de se justifier en bougonnant :

— Je n’aurais jamais pensé verser du consommé dans les tableaux de Monsieur. Mais je croyais que des assiettes étaient des assiettes…

Monsieur et Madame Michaud éclatèrent de rire en même temps. Ils pouffaient : « Elle croyait que les assiettes étaient des assiettes… C’est à ne pas croire ! Il faudra raconter ça a Paulhan. »

La bonne repartit, vexée. Par l’immense baie vitrée qui donnait sur le Jardin du Luxembourg, Charles, indifférent a la crise de fou rire de ses parents, regardait avec nostalgie vers la Faculté de Droit.

***

Monsieur Michaud n’était pas né collectionneur. Avant la guerre, tout occupé à son industrie de sous-vêtements, il ignorait même qu’il existait encore des peintres. Il avait fallu un hasard. Un de ses débiteurs lui apporta un lot d’aquarelles, de gouaches et de peintures d’un artiste allemand inconnu, en le suppliant de les conserver comme gage. Monsieur Michaud refusa d’abord ce singulier marché. Depuis quand échange-t-on des sous-vêtements contre de la peinture ! Mais le débiteur était acculé à la ruine. En attendant d’entamer des poursuites, Monsieur Michaud fit porter dans une de ses remises toutes ces peintures qu’il ne prit même pas la peine de regarder. Quelques mois plus tard, son débiteur se suicida. Monsieur Michaud se fit apporter les peintures afin d’examiner s’il pourrait en tirer quelque argent. Stupéfait, il vit qu’il s’agissait de choses enfantines, des sortes de fleuves, d’oiseaux, de bonshommes. Il s’était fait bien avoir. La fureur l’étranglait. Ce salaud de machin s’était payé sa tête avant de se suicider. A tout hasard, il fit quand même venir un marchand qui refusa d’acheter en souriant d’un air supérieur.

— Alors, je peux les foutre à la poubelle, suffoqua-t-il.

— Oh, dit le marchand, avec un geste évasif, gardez-les toujours. On ne sait jamais. Si vous avez de la place…

Peu après la guerre, ce même marchand revint voir Monsieur Michaud qui avait complètement oublié cette histoire de peintures. Il lui offrit deux millions pour ce lot d’œuvres de Klee qu’il se souvenait avoir vu autrefois.

Devant l’énormité de la somme (le débiteur ne lui devait, avant la guerre, que quelques centaines de mille francs), il se méfia, fit venir d’autres marchands de tableaux qui lui offrirent trois, quatre, cinq millions… Il se mit alors à lire quelques livres sur l’art contemporain, découvrit que la peinture était la marchandise la plus spéculative qui soit et que l’on considérait Klee, en Amérique, comme un grand peintre. Il fit encadrer luxueusement ses peintures et les accrocha dans son salon. Bientôt, on lui demanda l’autorisation de photographier « ses » œuvres, de les reproduire en couleurs dans des revues luxueuses et des livres d’art. Son nom fut mentionné à chaque fois que l’on parlait de l’œuvre de Klee. Il pénétra ainsi, à son insu, dans le monde des arts et des lettres et se laissa aisément convertir à toutes les avant-gardes. Il se paya le luxe d’être parfois philanthrope, de subventionner quelques revues, d’encourager quelques jeunes artistes dont la peinture ressemblait à celle de Klee. Il arriva même à passer pour l’un des premiers spécialistes de Klee en France. Loin de lui faire perdre de l’argent, les arts lui apportaient une considération qu’il n’avait jamais obtenue en tant qu’industriel. On le décora pour services rendus aux arts. Des artistes célèbres recherchèrent son amitié. Même les autres industriels lui témoignaient maintenant une déférence qu’ils n’auraient jamais eu l’idée de lui accorder avant qu’il devînt un « grand collectionneur ». Monsieur et Madame Michaud voulurent être à la page. Ils achetèrent un appartement qu’ils firent transformer par Le Corbusier. Rien, absolument rien chez eux, ne fut antérieur à ce siècle, si ce n’étaient eux-mêmes.

Elevé dans cette architecture aux lignes pures, blasé du mobilier qui lui rappelait fâcheusement le cabinet du dentiste, abruti par la fréquentation journalière des chefs-d’œuvre, Charles se prit à souhaiter vivre dans une étude poussiéreuse, avec de grandes vielles chaises aux pieds droits, en bois, avec un bureau en bois et un porte-plume avec une plume. C’était sa poésie, à lui. A chaque adolescent sa folie.

Excerpted from “Trompe-l’œil,” by Michel Ragon, published in 1956 by Éditions Albin Michel, Paris, and copyright Michel Ragon.

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Innocents afoot: Frédéric Poincelet at the Galerie Catherine Putman

poincelet woman small

From the exhibition “Convocation,” on view at the Galerie Catherine Putnam on the rue Quincampoix (one of the most Old School Marais ruelles in Paris) through March 16: Frédéric Poincelet, “Karin Mamma Andersson,” 2018. Fountain pin and color ink on paper, 104 x 65 cm. Courtesy Galerie Catherine Putman.