In 1930, the visitors to the Salon des Artistes Francais discovered Le Serpent painted by Robert Pougheon (1886-1955). Winner of the Prix de Rome, this painter, with several of his former colleagues at the Villa Medici, belonged to the "Groupe de Rome". Among them were Jean Dupas, Alfred Janniot, Jean Despujols and several others, who all followed a career in the French "official" institutions in the period between the two wars. How can we explain the use of esthetic processes of modernist inspiration (collage, anti-naturalist stylizations) in the work of Pougheon and in that of his colleagues? Can it be qualified as a mere opportunistic strategy, consisting of adapting history painting and Salon painting to a modernism in the process of becoming institutionalized? Through the examination of Le Serpent, its genesis and its reception, this artide proposes the examination of the esthetic and ideologic project of the so-called "academic" artists of the period between the two wars.
In June 1897, the Catalan artists and arts impresarios Rarfion Casas (1866-1932), Santiago Rusifiol (1861-1931), Pere Romeu (1862-1908), and Miguel Utrillo (1862-1934) opened a tavern, gallery, and theater in Barcelona. They called this establishment Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats), a Catalan expression meaning "poc i poc importants" ("not many and not important"). The name, however, was misleading. Casas, Rusifiol, Romeu, and Utrillo were exponents of Catalan modernisme, a cultural movement that transformed art, literature, architecture, and design in and around Barcelona in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. By 1897, the modernistes were neither "poc" ("not many") nor "poc importants" ("not important"). To the contrary, their movement included many important artists, writers, architects, and designers. This article examines the conflicting impulses toward concealment and revelation, and exclusion and inclusion, that defined Els Quatre Gats and Catalan modernisme at large.
Georges Lallemant (c. 1575-1636) was one of the most important Parisian painters of the early 17th century. His abundant production of altar paintings for Parisian churches can now be enriched by two new canvases. The first is a Presentation of the Keys to Saint Pierre (Marguerittes, Church of Saint Pierre) that probably corresponds to the work painted around 1625 for one of the altars of the rood screen for the abbey church of Sainte Genevieve, as part of the important commission from Cardinal Francois de La Rochefoucauld. The second is an Assumption of the Virgin (Carcassonne, Saint Michel Cathedral), in which the painter proposes a variation on a subject that he has often treated. In Paris Lallemant ran one of the most important studios before that of Vouet in the 1630s. The place of the painter's students and compagizons can also be addressed through several unpublished works, where certain details differ from his style and may be the sign of a collaboration.
The opening of the Andre Chastel archives at the INHA has made it possible to discover not only his unpublished correspondence, but also previously unknown centers of interest. This is the case for cinema of the 1930s, when Chaste!, a young student at the Institut d'Art et d'Archeologie, discovered recent (talkie) films from the United States and from the USSR. He practiced writing commentaries. Seventeen have been found, some published, others unpublished. His first article concerned James Whale's The Invisible Man, which he sent to a literary revue in Marseilles Cahiers du Sud, and which was published, not without discussion in 1932. Beginning in 1934, he participated in the film review in La Bete Noire, founded by Leon PierreQuint, who came from Surrealism but who was hostile to the orthodox Surrealism of Andre Breton. His collaboration ended in 1936. Chastel mainly went to see recent films: the American ones starring Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich, or Russian films such as Chapaev directed by the Vasilyev brothers. For Chastel the overestimation of technology in Russian film making was incompatible with the true innovation that cinema was bringing. For him, as for Elie Faure, cinema created a new mythology, totally different from theater and from literature. The novelty of its means and its special effects carried a new vision. The film critic was supposed to render an account of these innovations by teaching the public to see in an equally new way.
For his last Salon, in 1875, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux exhibited the bronze bust of his friend the painter Bruno Cherier (1817-1880) that he had given to him. The latter bequeathed it to the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Valenciennes in 1880. However, in the 1927 edition of this museum's catalogue, a strange note indicated "Bruno Cherier bequeathed to the Musee de Saint-Quentin the bronze that was exhibited in the Salon of 1875." As part of the preparation of the catalogue raisonne of the sculptures in the Musee des Beaux-Arts Antoine-Ucuyer in Saint-Quentin (Aisne), an investigation led to the explication of this note by correcting and completing our knowledge of both the conditions of the execution in Paris of this famous sculpture, unanimously praised at its presentation, but poorly documented, as well as the friendship that linked Carpeaux with Cherier's three sons, who were symbolically united by the bust as each of them possessed a copy. This case study demonstrates the necessity for systematic provenance research of any work related to a museum work whose disappearance is unexplained.
The recent discovery of the act of constitution of the Societe des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, et Lithographes in the Archives de Paris opens the way for a clarification of the narrative of the genesis of the Premiere Exposition known as "Impressionist." Knowledge of this act makes it possible to distinguish two moments: on the one hand, the event of the first twenty-two members of the Society, created on December 27, 1873, and, on the other hand, the period of the thirty-one participants at its exhibition organized in the former studios of the photographer, Nadar from April 15 to May 15, 1874. More generally, it would invite us to take another look at the common motivations of the members of this famous association that have too often been understood through the prism of Impressionism. Among the reasons invoked, the refusal of the Salon juries, the post-war context and Paul Durand-Ruel's difficulties are the most often cited. However, little consideration has been given in these accounts to the cooperative ideal supported by the founders of the Society, an ideal openly opposed to the elitist politics pursued by the directors of the fine arts during the time of a conservative Republic. It is indeed not insignificant that the utopic idea of a federation of artists, administered in a democratic way appeared during this period and the Societe des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, et Lithographes is perhaps one of the most representative concretizations. It is in this perspective that this article looks back at its history, which is that of a disparate regrouping of artists who were in favor of cooperative functioning, and who minimized aesthetic questions in favor of a collective dynamic bearer of freedom and of solidarity.
