Exhibitions
Degas (Grand Palais, Paris, till 16 May) Van Gogh in Paris (Musee d'Orsay, Paris, till 15 May)
Paris remembered
Giles Auty
This is a time of year when I often find myself in Paris. When the seamen are not on strike, the journey from London by train provides a pleasant enough option and most travel agents fall over themselves in February to offer attractive bargains. In Paris it is currently light for an hour longer in the evening than in London, so that spring feels commensurately closer. From the top floor of a small hotel near Mont- parnasse, I looked out on three one-time artists' studios across a quiet side-street. Were it not for the incredible din of refuse lorries in the early hours, one might have dreamt happily that the year was still 1888, with Degas in residence not so far away.
All who can should make every effort to see the current massive exhibition of the works of Degas, comprising nearly 400 items; it is the first such since 1936. After Paris the show travels to Ottawa, whence the idea for it originated, and New York only. United Technologies once again pro- vide the generous sponsorship. The sheer scale of the show is an impressive enough attraction yet, more than this, Degas, like Rodin, enjoys a special place in British art lovers' affections. It would take a most de- termined Francophobe not to succumb to the fluent charms of Degas.
If further excuse were needed for a brief truancy in Paris, there is also a most interesting exhibition of the works of Van Gogh and his contemporaries at the Musee d'Orsay. This, like the Degas show, is refreshing for the number of unfamiliar works it contains. To gild the Parisian lily, there is also a huge showing of Zurbaran's paintings and an informative little exhibi- tion based on les Demoiselles d'Avignon' at the Musee Picasso.
Only in its desire to give credibility to various brain-numbing schemes by the contemporary avant-garde does the Pari- sian government art establishment reveal an all too human fallibility. Those who have not yet witnessed the desecration wrought at astronomic expense last year by the Minimalist sculptor Daniel Buren with- in the central courtyard of the Palais Royal should not omit to lay wreaths at this graveyard of contemporary cultural crime. Such a modernistic folie de grandeur needs to be seen to be believed. Yet one dreads that any mention of the tombs in which the great architects of the Paris of yesteryear must be turning may suggest suitable sites for further acts of vandalism.
The Degas show is drawn from 72 public and 30 private collections spread across the world. Among private lenders, it was ironic to see the name of Mr Bob Guc- cione, whose lucrative exploitations of the unclothed female form are in such marked contrast to those of Degas.
Degas was born in 1834 at the premises of the Banque de Naples, which his father had founded. Throughout his life, Degas adhered to the strict code of behaviour of the well-bred middle class, so amply chronicled by Proust. When the family's fortunes collapsed in 1874, Degas behaved impeccably, selling personal possessions to `La voiture aux courses', by Edgar Degas, from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston repay family creditors. Later, he fell out with a friend who called attention to this honourable action: like grief and worries, such matters were of a private nature, never to be revealed. Degas's fellow artist Andre Lhote once described him as a `disastrously incorruptible accountant'. Correctness, reticence and dislike of bohe- mian manners characterised Degas's social dealings. The current notion that art — or conversation — should be looked on as an outlet simply for the expression of feelings would have been as unthinkable to Degas as it was also to Renoir. From his upbring- ing and intelligence Degas understood that feelings, especially negative ones, head a list of topics, which also includes dreams, operations and possessions, unsuitable for polite discourse. It is significant that in most art schools of today students are encouraged actively to dredge both their feelings and subconscious minds to find the material for their art.
One of the great pleasures of Degas's art is a lack of any such self-conscious, person- al intrusiveness. We may think that De- gas's physical presentations of the world he inhabited are of greater historic interest than merely his subjective reactions to it. Yet, in spite of the intended objectivity of his studies of dancers, laundresses, jock- eys, bathers and so forth, we can learn much of genuine interest about the artist from them. While 'Petite danseuse de 14 ans' is an outstanding example of sculptu- ral perception, it also involves vital areas of human choice in such matters as pose, expression or choice of models. Unlike certain of his contemporaries, Degas was not concerned with shocking the class to which he belonged, anyway: similarly the tetchiness he developed later in life was simply the protection devised by a shy and dedicated artist against those many who would waste his time. Those who now believe that the greater looseness and brio of Degas's later pastels represent a grow- ing, modernistic expressiveness reckon without the serious deterioration in the artist's eyesight after 1880.
To find an example of a painter whose so-called development really did proceed along such lines we would do better to look to Van Gogh. Growing, idiosyncratic ex- pressionism can be traced both in the mounting emphasis of his brush strokes and the increasing incandescence of his palette. The first lightening and brighten- ing of the latter, following his arrival in Paris in 1886, and his close artistic relation to his Parisian contemporaries is beautiful- ly chronicled in a stimulating show at the Musee d'Orsay. It was from this stage that Vincent accelerated towards an apocalyp- tic end. For the moment the little windmills of Montmartre were still gently spinning away, no more unaware than most of the fate that was shortly to overtake their area. It is easy to forget how heavily our nostal- gia for fin de siecle Paris depends on the conceptions of its magnificent artists.
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