From Symbolism to Cubism: The Abbaye of Créteil

From Symbolism to Cubism: The Abbaye of CréteilAuthor(s): Daniel RobbinsSource: Art Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter, 1963-1964), pp. 111-116Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/774506 .

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found it, the Symbolists, after a short rebellion, drifted on the tide of mysticism, but clung to the rock of the Ideal, even of Authority. Whether drawn to Catholicism, social democ- racy or the mystique of art, their dichotomy between matter and spirit led them to an over-rigid stylization. They were encouraged in this path by their elevated image of a public art, monumental and sublime, and trapped in it by the offices, commissions and honors they finally won, against which de Stijl appeared as an outcast, a threat to the deeper values of art and life.

Where their idealism got the upper hand, it stilted what was most creative in them: their intense subjectivity, their concrete human sympathies, their free and inventive my- thopoesis, the direct expression of what they felt and saw, the palpitating line of their youth. The vitality of the Sym- bolists' non-programmatic work confirms this view: Too- rop's dour and energetic social realism, or his luminist landscapes in broad retangular strokes at a time when his style and Mondrian's converged (1908) ;25 or again Thorn Prik- ker's wonderfully live drawings of trees and banks shortly after 1900, which bring the style of the nineties almost to the verge of abstract art (fig. 16).26

Mondrian, seeking to bridge the gap between the ideal and the empirical, welcomed the age of technology: the world could be controlled with the aid of science for the benefit of all. He did not regard pain and seriousness as more enno- bling than joy, preferred boogie-woogie to plain chant, the glit- ter of bottles behind the bar to candles at an altar.27 Op-

25 Cf. A. B. Loosjes-Terpstra, Moderne Kunst in Nederland 1900-1914, Utrecht, 1959, pp. 7-13 and pl. 6, 7, 73.

26 Cf. Loosjes-Terpstra, op. cit., pp. 13-15 and pl. 8, 9. 27 Mondrian, "De Jazz en de Neo-Plastiek," i 10-Internationale

Revue, I, 12, Amsterdam 1927, p. 426.

found it, the Symbolists, after a short rebellion, drifted on the tide of mysticism, but clung to the rock of the Ideal, even of Authority. Whether drawn to Catholicism, social democ- racy or the mystique of art, their dichotomy between matter and spirit led them to an over-rigid stylization. They were encouraged in this path by their elevated image of a public art, monumental and sublime, and trapped in it by the offices, commissions and honors they finally won, against which de Stijl appeared as an outcast, a threat to the deeper values of art and life.

Where their idealism got the upper hand, it stilted what was most creative in them: their intense subjectivity, their concrete human sympathies, their free and inventive my- thopoesis, the direct expression of what they felt and saw, the palpitating line of their youth. The vitality of the Sym- bolists' non-programmatic work confirms this view: Too- rop's dour and energetic social realism, or his luminist landscapes in broad retangular strokes at a time when his style and Mondrian's converged (1908) ;25 or again Thorn Prik- ker's wonderfully live drawings of trees and banks shortly after 1900, which bring the style of the nineties almost to the verge of abstract art (fig. 16).26

Mondrian, seeking to bridge the gap between the ideal and the empirical, welcomed the age of technology: the world could be controlled with the aid of science for the benefit of all. He did not regard pain and seriousness as more enno- bling than joy, preferred boogie-woogie to plain chant, the glit- ter of bottles behind the bar to candles at an altar.27 Op-

25 Cf. A. B. Loosjes-Terpstra, Moderne Kunst in Nederland 1900-1914, Utrecht, 1959, pp. 7-13 and pl. 6, 7, 73.

26 Cf. Loosjes-Terpstra, op. cit., pp. 13-15 and pl. 8, 9. 27 Mondrian, "De Jazz en de Neo-Plastiek," i 10-Internationale

Revue, I, 12, Amsterdam 1927, p. 426.

posed to the monumental, the symbolic, the religious in the older sense, he nevertheless sought these qualities in a more universal form, hoping that art would merge with architec- ture and that both would become absorbed in the totality of life.

These truly "contemplative" Dutch artists who were able to find deep truths in things so close and simple and scrut- able as a flower, a tree, a pair of old shoes are the heirs of the early Netherlandish realists who found spiritual values, such as purity, in a transparent glass or a white towel, and of the painters of Holland's Golden Age, who read moral truths in the simple presentation of a watch, some coins, some shriv- elled flowers. "By concentrating on the objects themselves, and therefore in their universal aspect," says Mondrian, "realism was the immediate basis and beginning of the new art."28

Thus it was given to Mondrian as to van Gogh to see truth and beauty in things small, humble and transitory, as well as to create equivalents-or if we follow Peladan, find them-for dimensions that in turn dwarf us. The Starry Night and Pier and Ocean are sister works in this light. "To love things in reality is to love them profoundly," Mondrian wrote towards the end of his life, "it is to see them as a micro- cosmos in the macrocosmos."'9

28 Cf. Ingvar Bergstrom, Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seven- teenth Century, New York, 1956. Ch. IV, "The Masters of the Vanitas Still-Life"; ch. V, "Jan Davidsz. de Heem."

29Mondrian, The New Art, The New Life, typewritten ms., p. 13 (Harry Holtzman Coll.); cf. H. L. C. Jaffe, De Stiji, 1917-1931, Amsterdam, 1956, p. 218.

posed to the monumental, the symbolic, the religious in the older sense, he nevertheless sought these qualities in a more universal form, hoping that art would merge with architec- ture and that both would become absorbed in the totality of life.

These truly "contemplative" Dutch artists who were able to find deep truths in things so close and simple and scrut- able as a flower, a tree, a pair of old shoes are the heirs of the early Netherlandish realists who found spiritual values, such as purity, in a transparent glass or a white towel, and of the painters of Holland's Golden Age, who read moral truths in the simple presentation of a watch, some coins, some shriv- elled flowers. "By concentrating on the objects themselves, and therefore in their universal aspect," says Mondrian, "realism was the immediate basis and beginning of the new art."28

Thus it was given to Mondrian as to van Gogh to see truth and beauty in things small, humble and transitory, as well as to create equivalents-or if we follow Peladan, find them-for dimensions that in turn dwarf us. The Starry Night and Pier and Ocean are sister works in this light. "To love things in reality is to love them profoundly," Mondrian wrote towards the end of his life, "it is to see them as a micro- cosmos in the macrocosmos."'9

28 Cf. Ingvar Bergstrom, Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seven- teenth Century, New York, 1956. Ch. IV, "The Masters of the Vanitas Still-Life"; ch. V, "Jan Davidsz. de Heem."

29Mondrian, The New Art, The New Life, typewritten ms., p. 13 (Harry Holtzman Coll.); cf. H. L. C. Jaffe, De Stiji, 1917-1931, Amsterdam, 1956, p. 218.

Daniel Robbins

FROM SYMBOLISM TO CUBISM: THE ABBAYE OF CRETEIL

Daniel Robbins

FROM SYMBOLISM TO CUBISM: THE ABBAYE OF CRETEIL

Relationships between Cubism and those late nineteenth- century artistic movements generally called Symbolist have been pointed out before, but usually on the level of aesthet- ics. Thus, for example, Professor Gray,1 examining the theoret- ical writings of Gleizes and Metzinger, the criticism of Sal- mon and Apollinaire, has been able to demonstrate that the essentially idealist outlook of Cubism, the belief that pure form, true reality, exists beneath shifting appearances, is clearly allied to the Symbolists' search for preexistent ideas or an ideal reality in the structure of the arts. Of course, the theory of correspondences developed by Baudelaire, prac- tised by the neo-Impressionists, refined by Mallarme and his followers, is of great importance to the Cubists and, in turn,

1Christopher Gray, Cubist Aesthetic Theories. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1953.

Relationships between Cubism and those late nineteenth- century artistic movements generally called Symbolist have been pointed out before, but usually on the level of aesthet- ics. Thus, for example, Professor Gray,1 examining the theoret- ical writings of Gleizes and Metzinger, the criticism of Sal- mon and Apollinaire, has been able to demonstrate that the essentially idealist outlook of Cubism, the belief that pure form, true reality, exists beneath shifting appearances, is clearly allied to the Symbolists' search for preexistent ideas or an ideal reality in the structure of the arts. Of course, the theory of correspondences developed by Baudelaire, prac- tised by the neo-Impressionists, refined by Mallarme and his followers, is of great importance to the Cubists and, in turn,

1Christopher Gray, Cubist Aesthetic Theories. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1953.

its indebtedness to the German philosophers has been jus- tifiably emphasized. When Cubist aesthetic ideas are examined in the light of Kahnweiler's writings, we see that the Ger- man philosophers Kant and Schopenhauer were fundamental to the formation of Kahnweiler's mind and, thus, to his-and our-understanding of Cubism.

There are, however, other connections linking the generations associated with Cubism and Symbolism, connections that are primarily historical and personal rather than aesthetic. Personalities and ideas of one group were known and under- stood by the other; fruitful contacts were made in a situa- tion that was not only personal and direct, but which was also governed by a fundamentally social program. The young intellectuals who came to maturity in the decade before World War I necessarily were formed during-if not under

its indebtedness to the German philosophers has been jus- tifiably emphasized. When Cubist aesthetic ideas are examined in the light of Kahnweiler's writings, we see that the Ger- man philosophers Kant and Schopenhauer were fundamental to the formation of Kahnweiler's mind and, thus, to his-and our-understanding of Cubism.

There are, however, other connections linking the generations associated with Cubism and Symbolism, connections that are primarily historical and personal rather than aesthetic. Personalities and ideas of one group were known and under- stood by the other; fruitful contacts were made in a situa- tion that was not only personal and direct, but which was also governed by a fundamentally social program. The young intellectuals who came to maturity in the decade before World War I necessarily were formed during-if not under

111 Robbins: From Symbolism to Cubism: The Abbaye of Creteil 111 Robbins: From Symbolism to Cubism: The Abbaye of Creteil



-the most influential period of the so-called generation of 1885. Indeed, many of their thoughts and earliest activities stemmed from what had been learned from the Symbolist poets, the neo-Impressionist painters, and even the School of Pont- Aven.

Many of the most influential writers and artists of the

Symbolist generation supported the most radical social philosophy of their epoch with the result that, as Eugenia Her- bert has clearly shown,2 there was a strong identification between the Symbolist artists and literati on the one hand and the Socialist and Anarchist intellectuals on the other. That artists often led the battle for social reform, and not simply on the level of sympathy, is strikingly exemplified by their involvement in the Dreyfus Affair.

Despite-or perhaps because of-the identity between artist and social reformer, the Symbolist artist was confronted with a significant problem: the difficulty of adapting his artistic vocabulary to his new role. This problem belonged to all, whether poets or painters, for the forms of art involved

symbol and allegory. By and large, these forms were remote from reality and the artists of the last fifteen years of the

century knew it. Believing ardently in the cause of social jus- tice, feeling that their task was to regenerate society, they were unable to forge the necessary new identity between the means of their art and the function they conceived for it in modern industrial society. For the most part they were un-

willing to stoop to a mere propagandistic art, a sort of social realism of the day; but, with few exceptions, such an art was out of the question given the Symbolist vocabulary of forms.

For the generation of 1885, there was somewhat more

hope for poets than for painters to achieve an artistic expression consonant with the belief in the necessity of readjust- ing-or better, revolutionizing-society to the conditions of an overwhelmingly new world. Poets could describe, could explicitly state their views in the scores of little periodicals that dotted the intellectual scene. How much clearer are the ex-

pressions of radical social sentiment in Pissarro's letters than in his paintings! or, for that matter, in the writings as op- posed to the paintings of Gauguin! Thus, although the Art Nouveau could place itself at the service of the Belgian workers Party (as, for example, in the Maison du Peuple), although Van de Velde could passionately devote his life to the inte- gration of art with life, the nature of forms still failed to

express either radical social philosophy or the appearance of modern life. Van de Velde's art, although generated from radical conviction, did not break with the notion of symbolic form. Was it because it was too abstract? No, it was because its forms-even its abstract quality-sprang from a remote sense, or concept, of beauty, an aesthetic unrelated- even antithetical-to the explicit requirements of industrial society.

Nevertheless, the generation of 1885, including men like Rene Ghil, Laurent Tailhade,3 Paul Adam, Felix Fe-

2 Eugenia W. Herbert, The Artist and Social Reform, France and

Belgium, 1885-i898. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1961. Gleizes illustrated Laurent Tailhade's Au Pays du Mufle (1st

edition, Paris, 1891) with woodcuts. This edition, in Poemes aristo- phanesques, appeared in Paris, Edouard Joseph, 1920.

neon, Stuart Merrill, Jean Moreas, Gustave Kahn and, above all, Emile Verhaeren, strove to function as artists rather than as propagandists toward their goal of a new society inte-

grating art with life. Their efforts were the most telling influence and positive inspiration for the group of younger men who first came together around 1904 and who, two years later, were to establish the Abbaye de Creteil. The Abbaye was an attempt to resolve these very challenges which, since their

youth, the new generation had constantly seen confronted but not overcome.

The more immediate origins of the Abbaye grew out of collaborations begun on the short-lived Parisian review, La Vie, when the youthful staffwriters Alexandre Mercereau and Charles Vildrac met a young painter-poet named Rene Arcos. Arcos supported himself by working as a textile designer and beside him worked Albert Gleizes, the son of the proprietor, both chafing under the old problem of not being able to gain a livelihood by means of their art. These four were joined by the young writer, Georges Duhamel, Vildrac's brother-in- law, who was then a student of medicine. Mercereau records that the idea of forming a commune of artists was conceived that year, 1904, by Vildrac and, in addition to the various ideal sites that appealed to their imaginations, he even speaks concretely of having examined property in the Forest of Fontainebleau.4

Because they had no money at all, for some time this dream remained only a dream but, according to Mercereau, communal life was almost a reality since they frequently lived in each others' lodgings, sharing food and clothing as well as ideas, books, and friendships. The project took root, however, and circumstances-all but financial-aided its devel-

opment. After La Vie collapsed, Gleizes, Mercereau, and Ar- cos, inspired by the efforts of the older generation (especially Gustave Kahn's Samedis Popularies), established the Asso- ciation Ernest Renan, a kind of popular University whose

purposes were to educate the working man and to prove that

society could be regenerated through art.5 Together with their artistic friends, its members were to act as instructors of the masses. A basic assumption of the Association, and of its

predecessors as well, was that the masses would appreciate the life of the spirit without their mentors having to water down the content of art, to simplify it, or to use it as propa- ganda. The alliance of artists with the masses was for the

purpose of achieving a single unified goal: to free the prod- ucts of both from the stifling control of the bourgeoisie. The alliance was total because the artist was, in fact, a worker. In

4.Gleizes, in an unpublished part of his Souvenirs, wrote that the initial idea was to escape form their corrupted civilization to a South Sea paradise, as he believed Gauguin had done. Georges Duhamel, in his memoirs, Lumieres sur ma Vie, Vol. 3, Le Temps de la Recherche, Paris, 1947, records that Gleizes favored establishing their commune in Provence. Ultimately he did, founding Moly-Sabata, a second Ab- baye, in 1927 at Sablons, Isere.

5Gustave Kahn organized Les Samedis Populaires de Poesie Ancienne et Moderne, in 1897. More than the Brussels Section d'Art, whose efforts it paralleled (see Herbert, op. cit., p. 132) it was the prototype for L'Association Ernest Renan, which took its name from the author of L'Avenir de la Science. This book had declared that science would eventually displace art, making it unnecessary by absorb- ing it into true science.

ART JOURNAL XXIII 2 112



the new society, neither artist nor worker would be an outcast. By 1906, this nucleus had acquired yet another fellow-

dreamer, Henri-Martin Barzun, who made it possible for the dream to come true. With the small amount of money brought by him, they purchased a printing press which, owned in common, would be the Abbaye's hoped-for source of self- sufficiency and would provide its communal craft. Barzun had been as deeply involved with politics and sociology as with letters, for he had served as secretary to Paul Boncour, witnessing from within the ranks the struggle and response to social forces that led to the establishment of the French Ministry of Labor. In the fall of that same year, 1906, these seven men-Mercereau,6 Arcos, Vildrac, Gleizes, Duhamel, Barzun and Lucien Linard, a printer whom Gleizes and Arcos had met in 1901 while doing their military service-signed the Abbaye charter and found a site for their community. Souteast of Paris, on the Lyons highway near the village of Creteil, they rented property on the banks of the Marne: two groups of buildings, assorted terraces and balustrades, and about three acres of park. Owned by an industrialist named Barriquand, it had been deserted for eight years. "In a word" says Mercereau, "it was a Romantic decor, complete with ruins." Credit for naming the Abbaye goes to Vildrac and over the entrance hung the following fragment from Rabe- lais' Abbaye de Thbleme (1548), that city of peace and har- monious labors:

Here come in! all of you, and most welcome be! Herein you will have refuge and bastille Against hostile error that much prevails Through its false style poisoning the world; Come in, and let's found here the true faith.

Basic to the Abbaye, "groupe fraternal des artistes," was the desire to remain apart from the commercialism, the corruption and intrigues in the arts controlled by a bourgeois society. Personal ambition was to be non-existent and compro- mise with the reigning tastes of the State, the ignoble class of art patrons, was a banished possibility. Intending to support the Abbaye community through art, they had to be workers, artisans, thereby fulfilling the goal of art integrated with life. For their communal metier, they chose to print books, and one might reasonably ask: what better craft to unite the arts? Because the six "artist" members of the group knew nothing about printing books, the sole "worker" brother, the printer Lucien Linard, was in effect the master-craftsman and instruc- tor. Each member had pledged four or five hours a day to this communal enterprise. The rest of their time, after repairs had been finished (and they never were) was to have been for for the pursuit of art, whether in practice, discussions, or con- versations. The obvious sources for the idea of a metier were Tolstoy and William Morris, while the commune itself was

Mercereau, who often wrote under the name of Eshmer Valdor, was not present at Creteil for the opening of the Abbaye. He had ac- companied Nicholas Riabouchinsky to Russia where he served briefly as French editor for La Toison d'Or, and also collaborated on La Balance. He published a rather too hopeful account of the Abbaye, Une Cite d'art en France (Toison d'Or, 1906, no. 10), and was party to the controversy then taking place on the role of the artist in the renovation of life. (Toison d'Or, 1906, no. 7).

related to Kropotkin's small, self-sufficient organizations. Some twenty kilometers removed from Paris, however, the Abbaye was no less a paradoxical solution than its predessors to the most salient and characteristic feature of modern life: the city, or Les Villes Tentaculaires, as it had been recognized by Verhaeren. The Abbaye's attempt to come to grips with modern life, although varied and selective in its inspirations, was not completely free of naturism and, perhaps, even a suggestion of escapism.

It is difficult to assess and completely appreciate the social revolutionary spirit which permeated these young intellectuals. Duhamel's memoirs,7 written in 1947 long after the Abbaye's dissolution, consistently minimize the radical social orientation of the group. He prefers to remember their commune as dedicated to social harmony of the most general, Whitmanesque kind. Possibly, this interpretation stems from the fact that he discovered, in the course of communal life, a persistent individualism-even personal ambition-a quality which we can now recognize as one of the causes of the Abbaye's failure. Be that as it may, contemporary documents acquaint us with the Manifesto of the League of Inde- pendent Artists, undated but probably originating in 1905 (certainly before 1906), signed by Duhamel as well as by other subsequent Abbaye members and their close associates. This manifesto was an aggressive and bitter attack on the State, especially on its official protection of Bourgeois art. "To the inertia of conventionality," it said, "we oppose our combativeness. . . . We proclaim our desire to benefit from effective solidarity." Mercereau, in his small book of the early twenties, titled L'Abbaye et le Bolchevisme,8 despite his growing disillusionment with the course of events in the So- viet Union, indicates that social revolutionaries were as much an inspiration to the Abbaye's originators as were advocates of a more mystical unity. "In connection with the Abbaye," he wrote, "one ought, independently of Communism to speak more of pacifism and humanitarianism, of which Christ was the instinctive and inspired apostle, the Christian communes the best example, Karl Marx the theoretician most cited, Tolstoy the most powerful pioneer, Lenin the most mystical realizer, and Trotsky the most realistic organizer." Gleizes, however, writing in 1918 an article "The Abbaye of Creteil, A Communistic Experiment,"9 at the very moment of the Russian Revolution, was not yet disillusioned. He was en- chanted to have participated in "one attempt at an awaken- ing of the collectivist conscience" and he even spoke of cap- italistic exploitation by the owner of the Creteil property: exploitation of the worker-artists in the improvement of his property.

Much as the social and productive scheme of the Abbaye was to be an example for the society envisioned, so the art of the Abbaye, integrated with communal life, was to be a

7 Duhamel, op. cit. see note 4. 8Alexandre Mercereau, L'Abbaye et le Bolchevisme. Paris,

Eugene Figuiere, n.d. (1922?). 9 Albert Gleizes, "The Abbey of Creteil, A Communistic Ex- periment," in The Modern School, edited by Carl Zigrosser. Stelton, N.J., October, 1918.

113 Robbins: From Symbolism to Cubism: The Abbaye of Creteil



new art. This was their self-conscious intention and they even anticipated a break with their Symbolist masters. They pro- posed to solve the same problem (namely, how to create a truly modern art based on the conditions of modern life), but they were determined not to escape into aestheticism, not to rely on symbolism and allegory.

What did they produce there, in that Abbaye, toward fulfillment of the task so clearly stated? The first book published under their seals (one designed by Gleizes and another by Berthold Mahn, a frequent but not a permanent associate) was a work by Paul Adam entitled L'Art et la Na- tion. Originally delivered as an address at a testimonial din- ner to Rodin on his 66th birthday, it attacked the regime for officially encouraging the wrong kind of art and it emphasized the responsibility of the nation to encourage its true artists. Adam, together with Kahn, had done much to promul- gate the integral relationship of all the arts-Wagnerism as it was most frequently called-and, twenty years earlier, had made some brilliant observations on the relationship of neo- Impressionist painting to Symbolist poetry. It was Barzun who asked Adam for the manuscript, thus appropriately inaugurating the Abbaye with a project that was a direct link between the younger men and their mentors. Consciously attempting some- thing new, the men of the Abbaye were also realizing older ideas.

For the most part, the Abbaye printed books by men with whose work it felt an identity, although when it soon became apparent that it would be no easy task to support the Abbaye they became somewhat less fussy. They printed Me- cislas Golberg, Montesquiou-Fezenzac, and Valentine de Saint-Point; but most of all they printed themselves and the circle that Duhamel characterized as the "Thelemites of the Short Robe," sort of lay members, frequent visitors and guests like Roger Allard, Jules Romains, and Pierre-Jean Jouve. It is mainly by examining these works that we can get some idea of the extent to which their purposes and ideals cor- responded with their activities.10

In 1907, the Abbaye printed Henri-Martin Barzun's La Terrestre Tragedie, an epic in verse dealing explicitly with modern themes: the city, crowds, men laboring with ma- chines. Barzun described the scope of this work as a synthetic vision "of all men simultaneously voicing their sorrows, hopes, ideals, in a vast multiple chorus, encircling the planet." Perhaps these lines will help us focus on the significance of the Abbaye's preoccupation with new art forms, for these forms and the images they involve are particularly relevant to one of the most important aspects of Cubism to come:

"In a single glance, I wrap up the earth: Occident, Orient, both hemispheres-all the Globe! Bathed in daylight and Night."

A year later, in 1908, the Abbaye press printed a volume of poems written by Jules Romains between 1904 and 1907 under the title of La Vie Unanime. This phrase, which prob-

10French historians of literature indicate that the poets of the Abbaye developed important technical innovations, breaking defini- tively with symbols, allegory, and adornments. See especially Henri Clouard, Histoire de la Litterature Franfaise, du Symbolisme a nos Jours, 1885-1914, Paris, 1947, Chapter V "Offensive Moderniste, L'Abbaye," pp. 542 if.

Fig. 1. Albert Gleizes, illustration for La Conque Mercereau, woodcut, 1907-1910.

ably had its source in Verhaeren,1l later gave rise to the movement known as Unanimism. The central idea of Unanimism was that collective sentiment, the most salient feature of contemporary life, could be neither focused in one point of view nor established in any single representative type. The artist's task was to emphasize the dispersive elements of life, to show how individual personality is merged in the multiple life of the group. The emotions of this greater, all-encompassing life are more powerful and less circumscribed than those of the elements composing it, for it is simultaneously sum and es- sence; it stems from all of them, and they are animated by it.

I must also mention that among its collective efforts, the Abbaye included music and, for a time, had Albert Doyen as its composer-in-residence. Doyen was then at work on monumentlal choral work, The Fourteenth of July12 and was later to organize massive choral chants known, significantly, as Les Fetes du Peuple. The Abbaye held dramatic readings of literary works scored for many voices and performed by visiting actors and actresses. During its brief life, it produced little that was revolutionary in the way of painting, for Glei- zes' canvases of the period are few and only begin to depart from the late-impressionist style. His graphic art, how-

" In Les Aubes, Brussels, 1898 (cover illustration by Van Rysselberghe), Verhaeren characterized the pressures of modern life as "les Forces Unanimes."

12 Subsequently to be the subject of a painting by Gleizes.




Fig. 2. Henri Le Fauconnier, Abundance, 1910. Gemeentemuseum, The IHague.

ever, was more advanced and the illustrations created from 1907 to 1910 for Mercereau's La Conque Miraculeuse show him well on the way toward Cubism.13 Exhibitions of painting and sculpture were held which displayed the works not only of Gleizes, but also of Henri Doucet, Berthold Mahn, Jacques D'Otemar, Pinta, and Brancusi, as well as those of the Italian Umberto Brunelleschi-doubtless brought into the circle by another guest often mentioned by Mercereau, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. It is not surprising that the father of Futurism, two years before publishing his manifesto in Fig- aro, was attracted to this center where the problems of creat- ing an art suited to the life of the new age were of paramount interest.

The phalanstery, that physical Abbaye de Creteil, was

13Between 1907 and 1910 Gleizes completed illustrations for Mercereau's La Conque Miraculeuse, but although the book was announced for publication by Figuiere soon afterward, it did not appear until 1922 (Paris, Povolozky) when the wood blocks were cut by Antoine-Pierre Gallien.

not able to endure very long. I have already indicated that it was difficult for its members to support themselves through the publication of books and it is not surprising that by the fall of 1907 they were already in hopeless financial straits. Furthermore, some of the members had discovered that their collective sentiment was not strong enough to stand the very real strain of living together. Bitter rivalries developed, roughly dividing them into two factions, with the result that Romains (who was a lay member), Duhamel, and Vildrac (whose wife, Duhamel's sister, had also been living at the Abbaye), left in the late summer and early fall of 1907.14 Barzun, who now had the responsibilities of marriage, was still sympathetic but unable to help, either financially or with sustained activity. Arcos, Gleizes, Mercereau, and Linard were left substantially alone to face the coming winter. Let Mercereau speak:

"We struggled, we were hungry, cold . . . we did not know how to content our stomachs on food little enough for one person. When Anatole France gave us a manuscript to print, we had no means to print it. The park was black, glacial."15

Early in 1908, they finally left Creteil, unable to pay the rent. Moving the press to Paris, Rue de Blainville, they tried to carry on and for a short time succeeded until one day, after having put the key under the door, their master-craftsman, Lucien Linard, the one true worker among them, dis- appeared, never to be seen again.

In greater or lesser degrees, the authors of the Abbaye manifested what technically and intellectually can only be characterized as a preoccupation with the simultaneity of modern life. In addition to Romains' La Vie Unaime and Bar- zun's Le Terrestre Tragedie, other Abbaye publications like Arcos' La Tragedie des Espaces and Mercereau's Gens de La et d'Ailleurs, reveal it, especially in their simultaneous concern for the here and the there. It grew out of their concep- tion of contemporary life, of its speed, its techniques, its vast physical scope, its science and industry.

While the concept of simultaneity as a fully formulated statement was not published until July, 1912, in Henri-Mar- tin Barzun's manifesto L'Ere du Drame (supported, inci- dentally, by Apollinaire),l6 there is ample evidence that the conscious effort to achieve an aesthetic synthesis expressive of the psychological, social, and structural changes taking place was the primary object of the men at the Abbaye. It is also especially striking in the work of Pierre-Jean Jouve and Roger Allard, lay members of the group whose early books were also printed under the Abbaye seal.

In connection with these men, we are able to trace a chain of circumstances and friendships important for the de- velopment of Cubism. Jouve was the co-editor of the review Les Bandeaux d'Or, which was made available for the work

14Vildrac and Duhamel, although remaining close to Henri Doucet, became involved with a more exclusively literary circle which included Luc Durtain, Georges Chenneviere, and Romains.

15 Mercereau, op. cit., L'Abbaye. "The manuscript of L'Ere du Drame was submitted to Mer-

cereau in the spring of 1911, and subsequently was signed by Mer- cereau, Sebastien Voirol, Pierre Joudon, Tancrede de Visan, Georges Polti, Apollinaire, Gleizes, Albert Doyen, c.f. H. M. Barzun, Orpheus, New Rochelle, 1960, p. 29.

115 Robbins: From Symbolism to Cubism: The Abbaye of Creteil



of Abbaye members after the Abbaye had collapsed. Les Bandeaux d'Or, furthermore, was an organ in which articles on the 1912 Section d'Or appeared and it seems a very likely prototype for a review that was to be called La Section d'Or, a fact which might well cause students of that curiously titled exhibition to take another tack in their research. Jouve himself was the subject of a 1909 portrait by Le Fauconnier, a painting which Gleizes cited as basic to his realization of how to reform his style. Le Fauconnier was introduced to the circle through Jouve, and his subsequently intimate association with the group indicates sympathy with the synthetic and social ideas of the Abbaye. The probable influence of these ideas goes a long way to explain his 1910 painting Abundance, which was painted-as Golding points out (cf. footnote 17)-under the scrutiny of Delaunay, Gleizes, Metzinger, and Leger, all of whom had first met through Mercereau, whom Marinetti once described as "the Central Electric of modern letters." These painters all regarded Abundance as a revolutionary work.

If we remember that the expression of social ideas through a synthetic art of new and unsymbolic forms-and in the absence of allegory-was basic to the thinking of these "post-Abbaye" painters, we can understand the excitement generated by Le Fauconnier's canvas. For Abundance, which two generations of art historians have dismissed as anecdotal, was just such a picture, a picture not only demonstrating formal concerns but also expressing radical social ideas on an epic scale.

Two important critical milestones in the history of the evolution of the Cubist movement, Allard's "Au Salon d'Au- tomne de Paris," in L'Art Libre, and Metzinger's "Note sur la Peinture" in Pan, were published in November, 1910.17 Allard, an associate of the Abbaye since the beginning, writing about the canvases of Gleizes, Metzinger, and Le Fau- connier, proclaimed that finally a plastic art had been born "that was no longer content to copy the occasional episode, but which offered . .. all of the essential elements of a SYN- THETIC experience taking place in time." Familiar with the search for the synthetic modern art consciously begun at the Abbaye, Allard at last was able to note the beginnings of its plastic realization. If he showed absolutely no awareness of what Picasso and Braque were doing, it was simply because, like the painters he associated with, he had not yet seen their work.

It is equally significant that the first critic to note the similarity between the efforts of Picasso and Braque and those of the 1910 Salon d'Automne artists was Metzinger, who was the first-and at that time the only-painter of the group to have seen Picassos and Braques. Unfortunately, there is no documentation of the precise date when Metzinger first met Picasso and Braque, possibly earlier than 1909 or 1910; we do know, however, that Gleizes and Le Fauconnier did not become acquainted with Picasso until late in 1911. Metzing- er's 1910 Pan article was the first attempt to transform the

17 Roger Allard, "Au Salon d'Automne de Paris," L'Art Libre, Lyons, Nov. 1910. Jean Metzinger, "Note sur la Peinture," Pan, Oct.- Nov. 1910. Metzinger's article is partially reprinted in John Golding, Cubism, A History and Analysis, 1907-14, London, 1959, p. 23, p. 28.

synthetic concept which had figured in the Abbaye's intentions and literature to specifically apply to the treatment of visual forms in painting. In his discussion of all these Cub- ists, he pointed out that they had dismissed traditional per- spective and moved around their subjects to examine them from various points of view. Whether the dissection of form then taking place was the implied result of the viewer moving, as in the case of Picasso and Braque, or the implied result of the subject moving, as was growing to be the case with Delaunay and Gleizes, is a matter of less significance. Both ideas are related to the broadly synthetic intentions proclaimed at the Abbaye. But it is important to note that the first verbal application of the principle called simultaneity to their art-or any art-appeared only after Metzinger had become a member of the Mercereau circle emanating from the Abbaye.

Nevertheless, although the created forms of Picasso and Braque had numerous similarities to those created by a second group-linked to the Abbaye ideals-and although in ac- cordance with Abbaye principles of collectivity, distinct efforts were made to unite all their activities, notably in Du Cubisme, and in Apollinaire's Les Peintres Cubistes, there

always remained one fundamental difference: the plastic art of the circle growing out of the Abbaye dealt with epic subjects. We find but few classical Still Lifes among their works; we do not find a shallow space necessitated by physical lim- its, such as the Picasso or Braque table tops limited by a bureau or close wall. Instead, we find landscapes with huge, surging rhythms; we find concern for the here and the there which is apt to be many miles away; we find city-scapes, like Delaunay's Windows, or Gleizes' City and River.

The Abbaye group eventually developed into the circle that called itself the Artists of Passy, a circle which also included the Duchamp-Villon clan, and the Perret brothers.s1 They organized the Rue Tronchet Exhibition, at which Vil- lon exhibited frankly utilitarian objects, a tea service. They organized the Section d'Or, in contact with the group around Apollinaire, one further attempt to unify all the movements in the feverish spirit of an avant-garde that was akin to a Popular Front trying to sweep away all that was bad in art and society. They took over the Salon d'Automne of 1912, where Duchamp-Villon created the architectural set- ting and where, to quote Walter Pach, "the galleries were decorated by painters and sculptors who turned their hands to the crafts of iron, wood, wallpaper, glass. This was the fraternal guild envisioned by Van Gogh, and had its continuance not been broken by the war, it would unquestionably have affected the course of modern art."l9

Thus, a dream which had been dear to the older Symbol- ist generation teetered on the brink of achievement: the equation of the social conscience with the plastic conscience.

1SMercereau with Paul Fort was co-director of the review Vers et Prose, and together they presided over its Tuesday night meetings at the Closerie de Lilas, where the older Symbolist generation mixed with the Cubist nucleus of the Artists of Passy group. Other meetings were held in Barzun's house or in the nearby Perret apartment, Rue Franklin.

9 Walter Pach, "Jacques Villon," Art News, vol. 58, May, 1949, p. 23.




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From Symbolism to Cubism: The Abbaye of Créteil

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