Lust For Life, page 36
“What?”
“Francs. Thousands upon thousands of them. Will you join me in a drink?”
The discussion around the Lautrec table became animated. Everyone turned his attention that way.
“How is ‘ma methode,’ Seurat?” asked Lautrec, cracking his knuckles one by one.
Seurat ignored the gibe. His exquisitely perfect features and calm, mask-like expression suggested, not the face of one man, but the essence of masculine beauty.
“There is a new book on colour refraction by an American, Ogden Rood. I think it is an advance on Helmholtz and Chevral, though not quite so stimulating as de Superville’s work. You could all read it with profit.”
“I don’t read books about painting,” said Lautrec. “I leave that to the layman.”
Seurat unbuttoned the black and white checked coat and straightened out the large blue tie sprinkled with polka dots.
“You yourself are a layman,” he said, “so long as you guess at the colours you use.”
“I don’t guess. I know by instinct.”
“Science is a method, Georges,” put in Gauguin. “We have become scientific in our application of colour by years of hard work and experimentation.”
“That’s not enough, my friend. The trend of our age is toward objective production. The days of inspiration, of trial and error, are gone forever.”
“I can’t read those books,” said Rousseau. “They give me a headache. Then I have to go paint all day to get rid of it.”
Everyone laughed. Anquetin turned to Zola and said, “Did you see the attack on ‘Germinal’ in this evening’s paper?”
“No. What did it say?”
“The critic called you the most immoral writer of the nineteenth century.”
“Their old cry. Can’t they find anything else to say against me?”
“They’re right, Zola,” said Lautrec. “I find your books carnal and obscene.”
“You certainly ought to recognize obscenity when you see it!”
“Had you that time, Lautrec!”
“Garçon,” called Zola. “A round of drinks.”
“We’re in for it now,” murmured Cezanne to Anquetin. “When Emile buys the drinks, it means you have to listen to an hour’s lecture.”
The waiter served the drinks. The painters lit their pipes and gathered into a close, intimate circle. The gas lamps illuminated the room in spirals of light. The hum of conversation from the other tables was low and chordal.
“They call my books immoral,” said Zola, “for the same reason that they attribute immorality to your paintings, Henri. The public cannot understand that there is no room for moral judgements in art. Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones. A whore by Toulouse-Lautrec is moral because he brings out the beauty that lies beneath her external appearance; a pure country girl by Bouguereau is immoral because she is sentimentalized and so cloyingly sweet that just to look at her is enough to make you vomit!”
“Yes, that’s so,” nodded Theo.
Vincent saw that the painters respected Zola, not because he was successful—they despised the ordinary connotations of success—but because he worked in a medium which seemed mysterious and difficult to them. They listened closely to his words.
“The ordinary human brain thinks in terms of duality; light and shade, sweet and sour, good and evil. That duality does not exist in nature. There is neither good nor evil in the world, but only being and doing. When we describe an action, we describe life; when we call that action names—like depravity or obscenity—we go into the realm of subjective prejudice.”
“But, Emile,” said Theo. “What would the mass of people do without its standard of morality?”
“Morality is like religion,” continued Toulouse-Lautrec; “a soporific to close people’s eyes to the tawdriness of their life.”
“Your amorality is nothing but anarchism, Zola,” said Seurat, “and nihilistic anarchism, at that. It’s been tried before, and it doesn’t work.”
“Of course we have to have certain codes,” agreed Zola. “The public weal demands sacrifices from the individual. I don’t object to morality, but only to the pudency that spits upon Olympia, and wants Maupassant suppressed. I tell you, morality in France today is entirely confined to the erogenous zone. Let people sleep with whom they like; I know a higher morality than that.”
“That reminds me of a dinner I gave a few years ago,” said Gauguin. “One of the men I invited said, ‘You understand, my friend, that I can’t take my wife to these dinners of yours when your mistress is present.’ ‘Very well,’ I replied, ‘I’ll send her out for the evening.’ When the dinner was over and they all went home, our honest Madame, who had yawned the whole evening, stopped yawning and said to her husband, ‘Let’s have some nice piggy talk before we do it.’ And her husband said, ‘Let’s not do anything but talk. I have eaten too much this evening.’”
“That tells the whole story!” shouted Zola, above the laughter.
“Put aside the ethics for a moment and get back to immorality in art,” said Vincent. “No one ever calls my pictures obscene, But I am invariably accused of an even greater immorality, ugliness.”
“You hit it that time, Vincent,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.
“Yes, that’s the essence of the new immorality for the public,” agreed Gauguin. “Did you see what the Mercure de France called us this month? The cult of ugliness.”
“The same criticism is levied against me,” said Zola. “A countess said to me the other day, ‘My dear Monsieur Zola, why does a man of your extraordinary talent go about turning up stones just to see what sort of filthy insects are crawling underneath them?’”
Lautrec took an old newspaper clipping out of his pocket.
“Listen to what the critic said about my canvases at the last Salon des Independents. ‘Toulouse-Lautrec may be reproached for taking delight in representing trivial gaiety, coarse amusements and “low subjects”. He appears to be insensible to beauty of feature, elegance of form and grace of movement. It is true that he paints with a loving brush beings ill-formed, stumpy and repulsive in their ugliness, but of what good is such perversion?’”
“Shades of Frans Hals,” murmured Vincent.
“Well, he’s right,” said Seurat. “If you men are not perverted, you’re at least misguided. Art has to do with abstract things, like colour, design, and tone. It should not be used to improve social conditions or search for ugliness. Painting should be like music, divorced from the everyday world.”
“Victor Hugo died last year,” said Zola, “and with him a whole civilization died. A civilization of pretty gestures, romance, artful lies and subtle evasions, my books stand for the new civilization; the unmoral civilization of the twentieth century. So do your paintings. Bouguereau is still dragging his carcass around Paris, but he took ill the day that Edouard Manet exhibited Picnic on the Grass, and he died the day Mane finished Olympia. Well, Manet is gone now, and so is Daumier, but we still have Degas, Lautrec and Gauguin to carry on their work.”
“Put the name of Vincent Van Gogh on that list,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.
“Put it at the head of the list,” said Rousseau.
“Very well, Vincent,” said Zola with a smile, “you have been nominated for the cult of ugliness. Do you accept the nomination?”
“Alas,” said Vincent, “I’m afraid I was born into it.”
“Let’s formulate our manifesto, gentlemen,” said Zola. “First, we think all truth beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain good, because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex beautiful, even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness, and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety, without making moral judgements. We think the prostitute as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature, and are woven into the design of life!”
“Glasses up, gentlemen,” cried Toulouse-Lautrec. “We drink to amorality and the cult of ugliness. May it beautify and recreate the world.”
“Tosh!” said Cezanne.
“And ‘Tosh!’ again,” said Georges Seurat.
9
AT THE BEGINNING of June, Theo and Vincent moved to their new apartment at 54, Rue Lepic, Montmartre. The house was just a short way from the Rue Laval; they had only to go up the Rue Montmartre a few blocks to the Boulevard Clichy, and then take the winding Rue Lepic up past the Moulin de la Galette, almost into the countrified part of the Butte.
Their apartment was on the third floor. It had three rooms, a cabinet and a kitchen. The living room was comfortable with Theo’s beautiful old cabinet, Louis Philippes, and a big stove to protect them against the Paris cold. Theo had a talent for home-making. He loved to have everything just right. His bedroom was next to the living room. Vincent slept in the cabinet, behind which was his studio, an ordinary sized room with one window.
“You won’t have to work at Corman’s any longer, Vincent,” said Theo. They were arranging and rearranging the furniture in the living room.
“No, thank heavens. Still, I needed to do a few female nudes.”
Theo placed the sofa across the room from the cabinet and surveyed the room critically. “You haven’t done a complete canvas in colour for some time, have you?” he asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“What would be the use? Until I can mix the right colours . . . where do you want this armchair, Theo? Under the lamp or next to the window? But now that I’ve got a studio of my own . . .”
The following morning Vincent got up with the sun, arranged the easel in his new studio, put a piece of canvas on a frame, laid out the shining new palette that Theo had bought him, and softened up his brushes. When it was time for Theo to rise, he put on the coffee and went down to the pâtisserie for crisp, fresh croissants.
Theo could feel Vincent’s turbulent excitement across the breakfast table.
“Well, Vincent,” he said, “you’ve been to school for three months. Oh, I don’t mean Corman’s, I mean the school of Paris! You’ve seen the most important painting that has been done in Europe in three hundred years. And now you’re ready to . . .”
Vincent pushed aside his half-eaten breakfast and jumped to his feet. “I think I’ll begin . . .”
“Sit down. Finish your breakfast. You have plenty of time. There’s nothing for you to worry about. I’ll buy your paints and canvas wholesale, so you’ll always have plenty on hand. You’d better have your teeth operated on, too; I want to get you into perfect health. But for goodness sake, go about your work slowly and carefully!”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Theo. Have I ever gone about anything slowly and carefully?”
When Theo came home that night he found that Vincent had lashed himself into a fury. He had been working progressively at his craft for six years under the most heartbreaking conditions; now that everything was made easy for him, he was faced with a humiliating impotence.
It was ten o’clock before Theo could get him quieted down. When they went out to dinner, some of Vincent’s confidence had returned. Theo looked pale and worn.
The weeks that followed were torture for both of them. When Theo returned from the gallery he would find Vincent in any one of his hundred different kinds of tempests. The strong lock on his door did him absolutely no good. Vincent sat on his bed until the early hours of the morning, arguing with him. When Theo fell asleep, Vincent shook him by the shoulder and woke him up.
“Stop pacing the floor and sit still for a moment,” begged Theo one night. “And stop drinking that damned absinthe. That’s not how Gauguin developed his palette. Now listen to me, you infernal idiot, you must give yourself at least a year before you even begin to look at your work with a critical eye. What good is it going to do to make yourself sick? You’re getting thin and nervous. You know you can’t do your best work in that condition.”
The hotness of a Parisian summer came on. The sun burned up the streets. Paris sat in front of its favourite cafe until one and two in the morning, sipping cold drinks. The flowers on the Butte Montmartre burst into a riot of colour. The Seine wound its glistening way through the city, through banks of trees and cool patches of green grass.
Every morning Vincent strapped his easel to his back and went looking for a picture. He had never known such hot, constant sun in Holland, nor had he ever seen such deep, elemental colour. Nearly every evening he returned from his painting in time to join the heated discussions on the entresol of Goupils.
One day Gauguin came in to help him mix some pigments.
“From whom do you buy these colours?” he asked.
“Theo gets them wholesale.”
“You should patronize Pére Tanguy. His prices are the lowest in Paris, and he trusts a man when he’s broke.”
“Who is this Pére Tanguy? I’ve heard you mention him before.”
“Haven’t you met him yet? Good Lord, you mustn’t hesitate another moment. You and Pére are the only two men I’ve ever met whose communism really comes from the heart. Put on that beautiful rabbit-fur bonnet of yours. We’re going down to the Rue Clauzel.”
As they wound down the Rue Lepic, Gauguin told Pére Tanguy’s story. “He used to be a plasterer before he came to Paris. He worked as a colour-grinder in the house of Edouard, then took the job of concierge somewhere on the Butte. His wife looked after the house and Pére began peddling colours through the quarter. He met Pissarro, Monet, and Cezanne, and since they liked him, we all started buying our colours from him. He joined the communists during the last uprising; one day while he was dreaming on sentry duty, a band from Versailles descended on his post. The poor fellow just couldn’t fire on another human being. He threw away his musket. He was sentenced to serve two years in the galleys at Brest for this treachery, but we got him out.
“He saved a few francs and opened this little shop in the Rue Clauzel. Lautrec painted the front of it blue for him. He was the first man in Paris to exhibit a Cezanne canvas. Since then we’ve all had our stuff there. Not that he ever sells a canvas. Ah, no! You see, Pére is a great lover of art, but since he is poor, he can’t afford to buy pictures. So he exhibits them in his little shop, where he can live among them all day.”
“You mean he wouldn’t sell a painting even if he got a good offer?”
“Decidedly not. He takes only pictures that he loves, and once he gets attached to a canvas, you can’t get it out of the shop. I was there one day when a well-dressed man came in, admired a Cezanne and asked how much it was. Any other dealer in Paris would have been delighted to sell it for sixty francs. Pére Tanguy looked at the canvas for a long time and then said, ‘Ah, yes, this one. It is a particularly good Cezanne. I cannot let it go under six hundred francs.’ When the man ran out, Pére took the painting off the wall and held it before him with tears in his eyes.”
“Then what good does it do to have him exhibit your work?”
“Well, Pére Tanguy Is a strange fellow. All he knows about art is how to grind colours. And yet he has an infallible sense of the authentic. If he asks for one of your canvases, give it to him. It will be your formal initiation into Parisian art. Here’s the Rue Clauzel; let’s turn in.”
The Rue Clauzel was a one block street connecting the Rue des Martyres and the Rue Henri Monnier. It was filled with small shops, on top of which were two of three storeys of white-shuttered dwellings. Pére Tanguy’s shop was just across the street from an école primaire de filles.
Pére Tanguy was looking over some Japanese prints that were just becoming fashionable in Paris.
“Pére, I’ve brought a friend, Vincent Van Gogh. He’s an ardent communist.”
“I am happy to welcome you to my shop,” said Pére Tanguy in a soft, almost feminine voice.
Tanguy was a little man with a pudgy face and the wistful eyes of a friendly dog. He wore a wide brimmed straw hat which he pulled down to the level of his brows. He had short arms, stumpy hands, and a rough beard. His right eye opened half again as far as the left one.
“You are really a communist, Monsieur Van Gogh?” he asked shyly.
“I don’t know what you mean by communism, Pére Tanguy. I think everyone should work as much as he can, at the job he likes best, and in return get everything he needs.”
“Just as simply as that,” laughed Gauguin.
“Ah, Paul,” said Pére Tanguy, “you worked on the Stock Exchange. It is money that makes men animals, is it not?”
“Yes, that, and lack of money.”
“No, never lack of money, only lack of food and the necessities of life.”
“Quite so, Pére Tanguy,” said Vincent.
“Our friend, Paul,” said Tanguy, “despises the men who make money, and he despises us because we can’t make any. But I would rather belong to the latter class. Any man who lives on more than fifty centimes a day is a scoundrel.”
“Then virtue,” said Gauguin, “has descended upon me by force of necessity. Pére Tanguy, will you trust me for a little more colour? I know I owe you a large bill, but I am unable to work unless . . .”
“Yes, Paul, I will give you credit. If I had a little less trust in people, and you had a little more, we would both be better off. Where is the new picture you promised me? Perhaps I can sell it and get back the money for my colours.”
