Emigres and others: a sweeping exhibition documented the contribution of non-French artists who were drawn to the City of Lights in the early decades of the 20th century - Report From Paris - L'Ecole de Paris 1904-1929

The "School of Paris" is a phenomenon we once assumed we understood: a legendary group of artists working in a magical European capital. Its pictorial and plastic experiments were deemed crucial to the construction of modernism and the history of 20th-century art. Yet, despite renewed interest and research during the last 15 years, many issues surrounding this school remain unclear. Which artists belong to such a seemingly exclusive club? What years are under discussion? How might we begin to conjure its esthetic range? At once kaleidoscopic and cosmopolitan, the recent exhibition "L'Ecole de Paris 1904-1929, la part de l'Autre" (The School of Paris 1904-1929, the role of the Other) at the Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris offered one historically focused and politically freighted assessment.

Among multiple and ambiguous meanings, "School of Paris" can denote the Parisian school of postwar abstraction that vied with the New York School for supremacy during the 1950s. "School of Paris" suggests challenging formal experimentation as well as finely groomed, well-presented, domestic-scale art. However, the definition used by the curators of "L'Ecole de Paris 1904-1929" was a very particular one, derived from critical debates that thrived in France during the 1920s and `30s (past the 1929 terminus of the exhibition). Often heated, these debates centered on whether stylistic coherence was necessary to define a school and, if so, what such a school's characteristics might be. Even more important to the discourse was whether only homegrown French artists or the battery of recently settled immigrants should be included.

Under the direction of Suzanne Page, curators Jean-Louis Andral and Sophie Krebs organized their show exclusively around foreign artists who settled and remained in Paris for extended periods between 1904 and 1929. They looked to a definition of School of Paris art generated by critic Andre Warnod in a series of articles published in the journal Comoedia. Warnod's landmark contributions express a French version of what Americans at that time might have called progressive politics. On Jan. 27, 1925, Warnod made a simple but specific case that would become highly controversial:

The School of Paris exists. Later, art historians can define better its character and study the elements which shape it; but we must certainly affirm its existence and the attraction that makes the artists from the world over flock here. We know the role played in the art of today from the [example] of Picasso, from that of Pascin, from that of Foujita. (1)

Insisting on the separation of Art and State, Warnod exposed the rift between dated official art and the livelier, often experimental art independant. He also confirmed the legitimacy of foreign-born artists whose ideas and styles had been shaped in Paris. (2) Players on Warnod's international roster included Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Jacques Lipchitz, Kees van Dongen, Amedeo Modigliani, Juan Gris and Ossip Zadkine. Many under consideration, like Chagall and Man Ray, moved back and forth between Paris and their native countries. Others settled in Paris permanently. Some obtained citizenship, and a considerable number, Soutine among them, never cared to become naturalized. Viewers aiming to see certain classic French artists whom some might consider central to a School of Paris--Henri Matisse, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Leger, Andre Derain and Georges Braque, to cite obvious examples--had to look beyond the Andral and Krebs exhibition.

By championing these foreign-born artists, Warnod engendered nationalistic and xenophobic reactions that split the so-called French School from the School of Paris. Firmly grounded in this period critique, Andral and Krebs's exhibition followed Warnod's "separate but equal" vision. The curators expanded upon the pioneering work of Kenneth E. Silver and Romy Golan, who in their 1985 exhibition, "The Circle of Montparnasse: Jewish Artists in Paris, 1905-1945" [see A.i.A., May `86], reexamined a vast range of artistic production in the French capital. Their investigation explored the contradictory critical discourse around Jewish and foreign artists. (3) In the "L'Ecole de Paris 1904-1929" exhibition catalogue, Eric Michaud observes that "[the] Jew [became] the incarnation of all figures of the other ... the absolute Stranger." (4) In fact, based on a close reading of the period critique in both exhibition and catalogue, "Jew" emerged as the paradigm for "Other," and the critical reactions to Jewish participation in the French mainstream became central to the debate.

In her catalogue contribution, Gladys Fabre outlines at least three conflicting historical definitions of this school, all initiated by Warnod's thesis. The first of them grouped all then-living independent artists, whether native or foreign, under the School of Paris rubric, no matter where in France they worked. The second, derived from the nationalistic cant of the late 1920s and 1930s, simply splintered the School of Paris into various national groups, such as Italian, Polish or "Jewish." The third erupted against Warnod's inclusive and heterogeneous vision. This reactionary critique, pursued by writers such as Fritz Vanderpyl, Adolphe Basler and Waldemar George, saw the foreign-born artists working in a "stylistic esperanto" that was the result of their own greed and their dealers' lack of discrimination. (5) Ugly, muddy, scatological, obscene--in a word, anti-French--were among the many expletives leveled against them. (6) Both Basler and George were of Jewish origin, and the nationalistic zeal of their criticism may reflect, paradoxically, the tenuousness of their assimilation into French culture. Critic Camille Mauclair's writings exponentially raised the stakes of the debate; his articles plunged into xenophobic and anti-Semitic rant.