CHAPTER XVIII

INDEPENDENCE IN ART AND THE "SALON DES INDÉPENDANTS"

IN PARIS AND NEW YORK

Appeared in the May, 1917, issue of "The Art World"

WHEN Mme. Roland at the foot of the guillotine cried "Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" she uttered a profound truth applicable both to the political and artistic worlds.

When, at the birth of Modern art, through the rebellion in 1804 of Baron Gros, Géricault and others, against the "tyranny" of David and the classic school, certain artists launched the cry "Liberty in Art!" which became the slogan of the romantic movement, little did they dream that the "stream of tendency" which they started would widen out and end in that mad-house barracks called "Le Salon des Indépendants," a quarter of a mile long, built of cheap slats, canvas and sawdust, winding its way like a fakir's fair along the banks of the Seine and filled with now senile, now weird, now monstrous art creations. Thither the common-sense Frenchmen go only to laugh, as they do at their annual "Foire aux Jambons" or "Ham-Fair," where one munches and laughs at all sorts of sausages made from all sorts of meats, from goat's to mule's meat!

The origin of the Salon of the Independents goes back to the "Salon of the Refused" of 1863, when the Jury of that year unceremoniously kicked out the works of a number of artists who had ceased to be simply Modern and had become "modernistic," which means-romantic art run to seed. True, their modernisticness-ness-ness was only slight compared with the joyous modernistism of today. But still they were not "independents" then, they were rejected beggars for medals and honors, who had raised such a row because their

works has been thrown out as unfit for even exhibition—and more unfit for ribbons and medals which they so yearned for. Napoleon III, then feeling his throne shaky, to placate these rioters, ordered the Fine Arts Department to give them at least a place in which they could exhibit their works, and in the same building which housed the official Salon. This has been known since as the "Salon of the Refused." It was the last one of these independent Salons until a certain number of other disgruntled artists rebelled against the official Salon, seceded and organized a new one, and abolished the system of giving medals; but they raised a no less effective barrier against incompetent or insane art by electing to their number only such artists as agreed with them; they allowed only such to exhibit. They called this the "National Salon," and this is now as much despised by the license-loving "modernists" as was the old official Salon. These two Salons were housed in the magnificent Fine Arts Palace, on the Champs Elysées.

Shortly after this, a gnawing hunger "to get into the limelight" took possession of thousands who, by virtue of incompetence could go only so far in art, but yearned nevertheless to exhibit their more-or-less childish or over-radical creations, somewhere, somehow. This effervescence of egotism, finally crystallized in the opening of the "Salon of the Independents" -with no jury, no medals and free for all and welcome!

It was really a joke, played on the whole world, by the jocose and delightful Parisian leaders of French commerce, bent on keeping Paris the center of the world of art at all hazards, because Germany was making herculean efforts to transfer this center to Berlin. If successful, that would have been injurious to French commerce, and these Parisians are past masters in the application of the philosophy of our own Barnum-that every man loves to be humbugged at least once in his life-if only to know how it feels-and each one in his turn! Did not Emerson say:

The finished man of the world should have tasted of every apple at least once.

It is safe to say the world never saw such a ham-fair of æsthetic monstrosities. And all Paris shed tears of laughter, for weeks, and all the world came to see this new cuttle-fish in

FIG. 145.

En mon étude et par devant moi Paul Henri Brione, huissier prés le tribunal civil de la Seine, siaut à Paris, y demeurant, 33, rue du fau$50 bourg Montmartre, a comparu

présence des peintures de couleur bleue, rexte, faune ité delayées et un

rouge, ont pinceau fut attaché à l'extrémité caudate d'un are appartenant au proprié faire du cabaret du Lapin agile et prêté pour la circons tance par ce dernier.

L'âne fut ensuite amené et tourne devant la toile at M., maintenant le pinceau et la queue de l'animal, le laissa par ses montements bar bouiller la toile en tous sens, prenant seulement le soin. de changer la couleur du pinceau et de le consolider.

FROM "FANTASIO," PARIS. AFFIDAVIT THAT THE ASS "BORONALI" PAINTED ON THE PICTURE SIGNED WITH HIS NAME (See Fig. 143).

This proves conclusively that the Paris world of art never was united on modernistic art; that, on the contrary it was execrated by a large number of Frenchmen.