Page 24 - Studio International - May 1972

sensibility, that subjective experience which the Emotion is not merely the outcome of a expressing moral and ethical standpoints.22
artist was supposed to externalise, but which semi-abstract aesthetic, of colour and pictorial Gauguin appreciated the social model without
the symbolists declared to be atrophied or non- design: it is also a function of a powerfully swallowing the implication that continuity
existent among the naturalists, this was transmitted sense of gesture and bodily equals identity."
something they recognized in Puvis de disposition.19 Puvis's large decorative works are the heart of
Chavannes. His Sorbonne hemicycle is a case Apart from the obvious aesthetic and his oeuvre, and for this reason no exhibition,
in point. This complex Allegorie des Lettres, des figurative expressiveness of Puvis's work, even including some of the reductions which he
Sciences et des Arts's, where the various however, there is in many of his murals another made of the murals, can really do him justice.
academic disciplines are personified in way in which his état d'âme reveals itself Nevertheless his independent easel pictures
appropriate postures and activities, was Without being, in the pejorative sense so feared share some qualities with the larger works. The
accompanied by an elaborate crib,14 but what by the symbolists, 'literary', and usually in a most representative of them, like Hope,24 The
the painting says, on this level, is not the same way only tangentially related to the ostensible Prodigal Son,25 and The Poor Fisherman,26
thing as what it is. Despite the grime which now theme of his work, Puvis's pictures often seem although they focus on a single figure through
covers the work, it is still possible to agree with to embody a sense of what one might call the their obvious allegorical function, still reach
the least pretentious of the symbolists, Maurice `ideal community'. In the Ludos Pro Patria at deliberately towards the collective. The most
Denis, when he writes 'is it literary ? indeed Amiens," where Picard youths, living in an typical mural paintings present a kind of ideal
not....the depth of our response comes from unspecified, perhaps pre-Roman age, norm for the community. The best
the self-sufficiency of these lines and colours. patriotically exercise themselves at easel-pictures focus on the individual, but only
They explain themselves.'15 javelin-throwing, flanked by two beautifully in so far as he is the symbol of an emotion which
Yet the antithesis between Puvis's manner and composed groups of figures where community is communicable. These paintings are not about
Naturalism, though striking, is not absolute. In life is summarised in terms of the representative particular events; they are about particular
the Panthéon, where his two series of murals1 6 activities of childhood, maternity, manhood and emotions. The phrase état d'âme is again
are far better preserved, it can more easily be old age, the implications are, in the best and perfectly apt to these works, with their
seen that while the landscape element, which most literal sense, conservative. This is not characteristic melancholy, so long as it is taken
plays an important part in most of his major history-painting; it is rather an imaginative, in a straightforward manner. 'What I would
works, is simplified, generalised, and laid out undogmatic social allegory which implies (by prefer to paint above all else', wrote Puvis in
panoramically in a way which discourages the virtue of the work's date and destination) 1888, 'is some beautiful, natural, timeless scene
eye from exploring depth, and while the colour, continuity and reformism, not revolution." Not expressive of human feeling'.27 In the case of
finely nuanced, lyrical but unemphatic, also that this implies any political partipris. It is easy Hope, (a picture which obsessed Gauguin, and
helps assimilate the work to Souffiot's to imagine how appropriate the Ludus Pro Patria acted as a catalyst to his thoughts on the problem
architecture-in short while these paintings are could have appeared as decoration for the public of the 'literary' in painting),28 the girl is the
obviously the work of an artist who considered meeting hall of a Fourierist Phalanstère, for simple personification of a France risen from the
that decorative painting had its own synthetic instance. In this painting primitive society is ashes of the débâcle of i 870-71. With the
modality, necessarily distinct from naturalism, seen as a pattern for civilised society. Every Prodigal Son what is striking is the sense that
the figures themselves are quite unlike the limp, member of this society visibly has duties and the narrative element is a mere pretext for
pusillanimous characters who inhabit Maurice responsibilities for which he is respected. As in the presentation of a generalised symbol of
Denis's17 or Paul Sérusier's pictures. They are, the Doux Pays, there is a sense of an elementary, misery and melancholy." This withdrawal from
on the contrary, conceived with a sturdy realism. symbiotic relationship between man and nature, the illustrative and anecdotal certainly has
Despite the technical simplifications developed which excludes hedonism but makes for affinities with symbolist ideas, but has no
in the interests of a radically conceived happiness. Both works are triumphs of painting pretentions to The Vague as an end in itself, nor
decorative style-reduction of modelling, as a skilled professional activity capable of to the mystical. On the contrary, both the 'idea'
simultaneous simplification of an emphasis on
boundaries of form-each figure reveals an artist
whose starting point may have been in
imagination the 'idea', but was in practice the
human figure, posed in the studio. That is to
say, Puvis worked according to traditional
artistic procedures, as can be seen from his
drawings, which fall into two main groups. There
are composition studies (the symbolists' 'idea',
but seeking lucidity rather than making a virtue
of the 'suggestive' and the vague), and studies
for-and of-individual figures. In the paintings,
these figures are related rhythmically and
decoratively, and of course, in narrative terms
meaningfully. They often fall into classical,
architecture groupings. 'C'est une belle forme, 2 Puvis de Chavannes
esthetes, n'est-ce pas' ?18 But taken individually L'Espérance 1899
these figures make it easy to see how Gauguin 7o x 79
Oil on canvas
could, without eclecticism, combine his Coll: Louvre
admiration for Puvis with his respect for Degas. 3 Puvis de Chavannes
Consider the figure standing to the right of L'Enfant Prodigue 2879
centre in the Doux Pays: that sense of the body's 51 1/4 x 37 3/4 in.
weight, of a moment's respite from physical Oil on canvas
Exhib : Marlborough Gallery 1953
activity; is this not the expressiveness of a Degas
repasseuse ? Puvis's best work always preserves 4 Puvis de Chavannes
The Poor Fisherman
this sense of a plausible physical existence. Coll: National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo