Page 69 - Studio International - July August 1972

conté crayon and coarse-grained Michellet money and soon abandoned his leftish ways.
paper. Their range is vast enough: little During the First World War he produced quite
domestic scenes that announce the Intimism of a gripping set of woodcuts about the fighting.
a decade later, transient figures and shadows Beckmann must have had a good look at them.
glimpsed in the street suggesting Steinlen and NORBERT LYNTON
and Blue Period Picasso, peasants in the fields,
town and landscapes. Some drawings have the
nobility and clarity of Ingres's but through very
different means; others observe suffering and
labouring humanity with the eyes of Millet
and of Daumier. Some seem the acme of Never quite expert
Impressionism: the objective observation of Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews
light irrespective of subject. Some suggest 1902-1918 edited by Leroy C. Breunig,
photographs in their use of graded tones and translated by Susan Suleiman. 546 pp. with
looming off-cut shapes as valid information. 19 monochrome illustrations. Thames and
Some herald the Futurist modernism of urban Hudson. £2.95 paperback, £6 hardback.
life : drawings of factory, railroad tracks,
builders amid scaffolding. Others are timeless Guillaume Apollinaire, as he persisted in
acts of possession: a magnificent, handleable telling those who suspected he understood
nude born out of a sea of conté. nothing about painting, knew how to pick a
These are the 'drawings without line'. In winner. He was one of the first to write about
fact, although some of them are indeed truly Picasso, he did the catalogue introduction to
lineless smudges, many are constructed of Braque's one-man show in 1908, he interviewed
swirling lines, thickets of line and sometimes Matisse in 1907, he was the first public
more individual calligraphic marks that are champion of the cubists. It is perfectly easy to
as beautiful as Tobey's white writing and a good snipe at his art criticism: when someone called
deal more purposeful. Seurat drew with and Gaston Thiesson did so in Apollinaire's own
about light and you have to remind yourself lifetime, the poet's reply was thoroughly
forcibly that the medium in his hand dealt only unconvincing. Apollinaire wrote art criticism
darkness; it is the vehicle, the passive paper, for a living, and he wrote too much, too
that is the light. Drawing like this is a negative indiscriminately; he rarely argued, almost never
process, like carving. described, he had a boundless respect for
There are also drawings done with black-lead artistic 'personalities'. (The jottings he made
or black pencil and with varying quantities of in his catalogue for the 1906 Salon des
coloured pencil. They are the more sketchy, Indépendants are very revealing, even if
information-gathering ones and those in which written tongue in cheek: Othon Friesz : 'His
he tries out arrangements for his paintings. mistress is the sister of Fernande Bellevallée,
They include also his studies of individual the mistress of Picasso.' Henri Matisse: 'At the
figures in which a few firm lines make a sharp, moment Stein swears by only two painters,
angular outline within which he then places Matisse and Picasso.' Georges Rouault:
separate patches of shading to mark the major `Apparently he is a Catholic.' Henri Rousseau:
planes of the subject. No hint of media used will `A friend of Jarry.' Kees van Dongen: 'I must
be found in this book. rent his apartment on the Rue Girardon.')
The Vallotton book has all the information Nonetheless Apollinaire is a good critic,
one could want. Vallotton was associated with occasionally an excellent one. It is worthwhile
the Nabis and produced, during the 189os, an having his essays and reviews in one volume, so
interesting lot of prints : drypoints, etchings, that we can see the man at work, and watch the
lithographs and woodcuts. The last two bits and pieces which eventually made up Les
categories contain the more remarkable work. Peintres Cubistes jostling with articles on 'Lady
Their subjects are often socially progressive Painters' in 1911, 'Forgeries at the Bagatelle,'
ones : accidents, crimes, police brutality in the `Chinnery's Beautiful Irishwoman' —all of them,
streets of Paris. One series of lithographs, so Apollinaire gallantly assures us, 'endowed
Crimes and Punishments, was published as a with an elegant and gracious life.' A strange
special issue of the left-wing journal L'Assiette time, this, when a great poet could be so openly,
au beurre and shows great narrative skills. Even so ostentatiously, a hack—as if inviting us to
better are the woodcuts. The headlong, suggest better ways of earning a living.
Japanese-inspired eliding of forms and (Incidentally, the brigade of Chinnery's
information, the confronting of lush black Beautiful Irishwoman presents a problem for
imprint (very well recreated by the Swiss any edition of Apollinaire's work. Is it worth
printers here) and white paper, the 189os way telling the reader who Chinnery was ? And if
of expression through sinuous or agitated not, is it worth printing Apollinaire's verdict at
ornament, combine stirringly with subject all ? The present edition hasn't solved the
matter that is sometimes decorative and problem: its notes are selective, but the
sometimes quite sharp—as in the Intimacies principle of selection is a mystery.)
series, published by La Revue blanche, taking The question must be, Why translate
us through the several stages of connubial Apollinaire's writing on art ? To make him
dishonesty. Vallotton married art-dealing available to that solid confection, the
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