The Abstract Reaction

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Shorthly after the affirmation of Fautrier and Dubuffet, heralds of "a different art," from 1945 on, shortly before that, in 1948, of Lorjou, his friends of the L'HommeTémoin and co-laureate, Bernard Buffet, it was the year 1946 at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles that affirmed the other form of the reaction directed against the art of the Bazaines, Estèves, Gischias, Manessiers, the reaction of abstract painters.

At that time abstract painting was almost forty years old, if it is true that its oldest manifestations first appeared in 1909 in the work of Picabia. But after a dazzling infancy, it spent a discreet youth during the two World Wars--at least in Paris, where, as we have seen, the activity of a man like Herbin was more or less shoved to one side. The arrival of Kandinsky fleeing Germany and Nazism did not bring forth any great glory ( 1933), but the departure of Mondrian, who left Paris in 1938 for England, then for the United States, did not sound its death note either. For a period of twenty years, abstract painting led a modest existence (which does not mean unfruitful) relegated to a secondary level by the more noisy movements around it. But suddenly it was going to have its revenge and pass immediately into the front ranks of actuality.

Premonitory signs had announced the explosion, but they were heeded only by those who were warned and already aware of what was happening. A modest gallery, L'Esquisse, had with rare courage exhibited on the Ile de la Cité abstract works before the Liberation and, in 1945, René Drouin had presented under the charming title of "Art concret" a manifestation grouping the first champions of this art, from Kandinsky to Mondrian, passing by Delaunay and his wife, Arp, Herbin, etc. At that time there were no young painters even though their number was legion-and here is the important fact--a year later at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.

Taking up a name which was due to Robert Delaunay who already in 1936 had spoken of "nouvelles réalités," an antique dealer, Fredo Sidès who, in 1939 under this name had organized a manifestation at the Galerie Charpentier, founded in 1946 this new salon which, not content with paying homage to Delaunay, Kandinsky, Mondrian, van Doesburg, Kupka, Picabia, Gleizes and Villon, opened its doors to several hundred young painters of all countries. Immediately abstract painting appeared as the sure sign of a world fact and which, even more than in France, had already been developed in the United States where the Association of American Abstract Artists was created in 1936, and the inauguration of the Guggenheim Museum of Non-Objective Painting the following year. Abstract schools of very diverse inspiration flourished more or less everywhere, the most interesting being that in California known as the "Pacific School." The fear of being behind the Americans-who arrogantly noised their advancement--aroused the School of Paris, resulting in a rush of young painters towards abstract art and, soon afterwards, of a host of collectors towards their production. Galleries suddenly increased devoting themselves exclusively to their champions or making a fine place for them beside their other painters. The Galerie Colette Allendy, ever courageous and in search of talent, offered a chance to many young painters of avant-garde art, the Galerie Denise René became the sanctuary of geometric abstract painters, the Galerie Lydia Conti revealed Hartung and Schneider to the public before they weretaken on by the Galerie Louis Carré, where they were joined by Lanskoy, Nicholas de Staël and Soulages. The Galerie Drouin revealed Wols. In 1947 the Galerie Maeght organized an exhibition of Atlan's work, followed in 1949 by two manifestations: Les Premiers maîtres de l'art abstrait, patronised rather paradoxically by the director of the Grenoble Museum, Andry-Farcy, who had not yet admitted them to his collection. In the same year the Salon de Mai opened its doors to the young painters recruited to abstract art, after having accepted Schneider as a member of its committee. Finally, an international exhibition of abstract art was held during the summer of the same year at Aix-les-Bains.

New names were revealed defended by new critics such as Charles Estienne, Léon Degrand, Michel Ragon, etc. A review, Art d'Aujourd'hui, was launched directed by an Algerian architect, André Bloc, who worked also in abstract sculpture without any happy results. He was not content merely to prone certain abstract painters of the School of Paris, but took pleasure in revealing to the French the abstract artists of abroad, and especially in those countries where his review would attract the greatest audience: Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, North and South America. Finally several books reminded or taught the public the past of this art and of its principal masters. And so in 1948 the Association des Amis de l'Art, animated by Gaston Diehl, the founder of the Salon de Mai, published a small book Pour ou contre l'abstrait (For or Against Abstract), which greatly contributed to diffuse its ideas among the painters and the youth; and in 1950 Michel Seuphor, the hagiographer of the movement, gave Maeght his work L'Art abstrait, ses origines et ses premiers maîtres. In four short years abstract painting had achieved the right to establish itself in Parisian pictorial life.

Not much time was needed before abstract art affirmed its youthful imperialism: henceforth the principal galleries of Paris counted among "their" painters a more or less important contingent of abstract. Exhibitions of this tendency in art increased to such a point that it is hardly necessary to mention all of them. We would like to cite only the exhibition organized by Charles Estienne at the Théâtre de Babylone in 1952; the entry of diverse abstract artists--Atlan, Hartung, Poliakoff, Schneider, Soulages, etc.--in October, 1955 in the rather pompous Galerie Charpentier in favor of the exhibition of the School of Paris; the rather monotonous affirmation of international character of this painting in the exhibition organized in 1956 at the Musée National d'Art Moderne by James John Sweeney, the director of the Guggenheim Museum, etc. The succession to Art d'Aujourd'hui which ceased publication in 1954 was continued even before its disappearance by Cimaise published by the Galerie Arnaud beginning in November 1953. Critics favorable to abstract art grew in number and made themselves increasingly heard--among them were foreigners, like Roger van Gindertael and Mme Herta Wescher. One after another several books were published with this art as their object which they studied with an understanding often rather partial: L'Aventure de l'Art abstrait ( 1956) by Michel Ragon , Art abstrait by Marcel Brion ( 1956), the Dictionnaire de l'Art abstrait ( 1957) by Michel Seuphor, the extoller of Mondrian to whom during the same year he devoted a monument of fervent admiration.

Did abstract painting win a final victory? Far from it: a resistance grew up against it in proportion to its success and which, far from disarming, became greater each day. Despite a few exceptions, official milieux turned a wary face to it. For the most part, the critics of the big daily newspapers and those of the weekly remained irreducibly hostile: we can cite, among twenty others, Claude Roger-Marx in the Figaro Littéraire, Maximilien Gauthier in the Nouvelles Littéraires, Raymond Charmet in Arts, which was no doubt the most relentless publication to attack with perseverance avant-garde painting and to announce, periodically, its death. Those writers who obeyed Communist dictates cut it to pieces beginning in 1948 and saw in it the art of "reaction" which "was not based on popular forces" and "serves nothing of value in social progress." They set up the art of L'Homme-Témoin against this abstract art and the Salon des Moins de Trente Ans against that of Réalités Nouvelles; while the advancement of Lorjou, as well as the creation of the Salon des Peintres Témoins de Leur Temps, is the ripost of those who, if they did not share the opinions of the Extreme Left, were not far from rallying to its aesthetic--and to an aesthetic which was esentially bourgeois. Books increased in which abstract art was attacked, more or less openly, more or less cleverly: La Peinture Contemporaine by Robert Genaille ( 1953), La Peinture moderne en délire by Watelin ( 1957) and especially the pamphlet, Contre l'Art abstrait by Robert Rey who, pursuing his hostility to avant-garde painting, which had already been felt during the Occupation in his opuscule La Peintare Moderne ou l'Art sans métier ( 1941), assures with brio the continuation of Camille Mauclair. A new avatar of the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns, between the classical powdered wigs and the long-haired Romantics, between Impressionism and Salon art, the battle of abstract art against its diverse enemies shows quite clearly that the war is far from won, despite such unexpected conversions as that of Jean Bouret in his book L'Art abstrait, ses origines, ses luttes, sa présence, published in 1957.

But affirming itself--and merely from continuing--abstract painting could not help breaking into different styles and, from this very fact, we can easily distinguish three tendencies: one geometrical and architectural, another "informal" and still another which is rather difficult to define because it is not distinguishable by such recognizable features and is not, fortunately, a "happy medium" between the two others, but one that seems to follow both the rigor of plastic form and the effusion of poetry.

Born out of the Neo-Plasticism of Mondrian, as well as the paintings of Herbin --the first who is equally indebted to Magnelli and Kandinsky in his last phase--the last tendency is the oldest of the three. Already in 1945 at the Galerie Denise René it made itself felt having found Art d'Aujourd'hui as its tribune. Its principal champions were Dewasne, Vasarely and the Dane Mortensen, along with, though in a lesser degree, Deyrolle, the least orthodox of the group, the only one, moreover, who allowed himself certain escapades in the realm of fantasy and poetry. "What I'm looking for," he wrote, "is by the multiplicity and the combination of forms to achieve multiple significations... During the work reasoning constantly does not interfere, everything seems intuitive. There is no reason to get excited beyond a theory, almost all painters cheat more or less consciously at it... This cheating is a phenomenon of permanent invention and it nourishes the artist's evolution and prevents art from hardening." All seem to claim for their drawing the impassible rigor of an architect's purity. Colored with a knowing equality the surfaces are heightened by these applied lines made pleasing to the eye by their strong tones, often quite frank and happy, which are disposed by flat areas made up of small parts without smudges or intrusions beyond the lines of the precise, dry edges. Deyrolle avoids bringing in the slightest intimate vitiation through the use of light and shade; there is no light, nor is there the slightest desire to suggest space of any kind. In fact, there is nothing but flat forms, perhaps through fear of falling into the proscribed allusions of reality. In these surface forms, where he is reminded of the most traditional designs of classical Euclidean geometry, he enjoys combing, without any charge of imagination, a series of forms closed in on themselves, which with a telling exactness fit marvelously into the restricted area. In sum, the painting is an ensemble, an entirety complete in two dimensions, made up of a flat architectural style. To this exclusively plastic ambition which, for want of complete novelty (it merely marks a continuation of NeoPlasticism), lacks neither logic nor grandeur, the artist deliberately sacrifices sensuality, which goes without saying, but also sensibility, imagination, lyricism. It is in the light of cold reason, of an implacable method and of a puritan will that this painting is situated. The result is an unapproachable pride which is not without beauty, but its form borders on stiffness and its qualities recall that of the legendary sword of Charlemagne: Deyrolle's art, like the emperor's sword, is hard, flat and mortal. Going so far in his search for purity he ends up by no longer recognizing it, while at the same time he gives in to the temptation of disincarnation, of angelicism, forgetting--which is an astonishing omission in the land of Pascal--he who wants to be an angel.