Reinvesting the Idol: J.-K.

Huysmans and Sculpture Author(s): Philip Ward-Jackson Reviewed work(s): Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 138, No. 1125 (Dec., 1996), pp. 801-808 Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/887178 . Accessed: 21/02/2013 14:09
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PHILIPWARD-JACKSON

Reinvesting

the

idol:

J.-K.

Huysmans

and

sculpture

FEWofJ.-K. Huysmans's statements on sculpture have been assimilated by art history. This may be because he strove to project a negative attitude to the plastic arts as constituted in his time. One brief moment of enthusiasm on his part has furnished authoritative and favourable quotations to evoke the shock effect of Degas's Littledancer (Fig.25), when she finally reached the exhibition stand in 1881. The Dancerand two sculptures by Gauguin (Fig.24), almost alone among contemporary three-dimensional works, overcame a deeply entrenched resistance. Huysmans, it must be said, opened his arms to Degas's creation rather as a long-awaited encapsulation of the Naturalist principle than as an example for future performances. The same applies to his early laudatory references to the work ofJ.-B. Carpeaux and a brief, fevered and erotomanic description of the studies for the Gates of Hell which Auguste Rodin exhibited in 1887 at the Georges Petit Gallery.' These acknowledgements of an exceptional vitality in sculpture were without sequel in Huysmans's writings. When in the essay Des Prix of 1889, he lined up the contents of his ideal museum of modern art, he included no sculpture at all. Give or take one or two wayward choices, his selection conforms to a remarkable extent to the twentieth century's evaluation of the art of his time. The major impressionist painters are all included. There were to be Cezanne still lifes. Moreau, Redon and Bresdin represent the tendency, as Huysmans would have put it, to throw oneself out of one's time. Drawings and graphics have their space allocated, but not sculpture.2 Among the modern-life subjects present in this imaginary museum are two paintings by Albert Bartholom&,who is better known at the present time as the author of the Monument aux morts, inaugurated in 1899 as the centrepiece of the Cimetiearedu Pere Lachaise. Ten years earlier, in the same year that Huysmans wrote his essay Des Prix, Bartholom6's debut as a sculptor was marked by the erection in the cemetery of Crepy-en-Valois of his monument to his young wife. Between these two dates, Huysmans was introduced to Bartholomi by Degas, but the amicable feelings entertained by the sculptor for the author appear to have met with a lukewarm response. Bartholom6 did his best to court Huysmans. In 1895, after reading the novel En Route,in which he detected a sympathetic note of introspection, he wrote: 'Pendant que les icrivains dansla vieavecla clairvoyance de aujourd'hui sepromenent vousites rentrichez vouset vousregardez dans l'ombre photographes . . puisquedansmonmitierde marbrierj'ai sans doutesuivi unpeu d votre vous lire . . un de ces matins, prit .Voudriez-vous, routej'itais seraissi heureux d'avoir votre Le monument venir?Je impression. auquel dans monatelier. je travaille depuistantd'anniesest achevi,construit Dans sixjourson le dimolit au Champ deMars. Qui pourle transporter

19. Luxure, detailfromLaDilivrance, by PierreRoche. 1905-11. Lead, plasterand

wood, 195 by 195 by 18 cm. (whole) (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Industries

Textiles,Roubaix).

tant vousmontrer'.3 l'Nditera? Mais c'estle manuscrit queje voudrais Huysmans was content to be photographed at home with a mourning female figure by Bartholom6,4 but he never aux divulged to the world his feelings about the Monument In these same years he enjoyed a more genuine friendmorts. ship with the symbolist sculptor, Pierre Roche, whose work clearly reflects the novelist's influence (Fig.19). Roche executed a low-relief cover for the de luxecopies of Huysmans's La in 'parchemin Cathidrale iglomise',and after the writer's death designed a monument to him, which was never realised.5 Though Huysmans's career as an art critic ended with his conversion to Catholicism, there were other forms in which he could have offered his advocacy of these friends' work. That advocacy was not forthcoming. In his post-conversion writing, Huysmans resolutely returned sculpture to a primitive and popular function. He took a back seat to observe with an embarrassed irony the response of the catholic faithful to devotional images whose power was entirely at odds with their artistic quality. This was taking to a logical conclusion the belief of Baudelaire that sculpture was 'unartde Caraibes'.6Huysmans in the end would accept sculpture only as a focus for prayer and exhortation. In the process he tells us a lot about the despised bondieuserie, which constitutes such a large part of nineteenth-century

HUYs'Forthe referenceto Carpeaux,see note 13 below;for that on Rodin, see J.K. no.8 MANS: 'L'Expositioninternationalede la rue de Seze', La Revue indipendante, [June1887], p.355. in J.K. HUYSMANS: EFuvres 'Certains, Completes (hereafter cited as (E.C.), Paris [1928-34], X, pp.109-13. 'Paris,Bibliothequede l'Arsenale,Fonds Lambert,EL. MS28 folder 65, letter of

11thMarch 1895. chez-eux',takenby the photographer Dornac; 4From the series'LesContemporains Paris,Bibliothiquenationale,Cabinet des estampes,EO 88 b I, DL 1896, no.9. 5'Rencontre par PierreRoche',introduced ~ Ligug6- pagesd'un carnetd'artiste, by PierreLambert,Bulletin dela SociitiJ.-K. no.37, [1959], pp.388-89. Huysmans, 'Salon de 1846', in (Euvres Paris[1961], p.943. complites, 'c. BAUDELAIRE:

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~Ip
Aeilii~~il

XVIandMarie toSaint-Denis 20. Thetranslation Antoinette, by oftheremains ofLouis G6rard.1815-26. Stone. (ChapelleExpiatoire,Paris). Antoine-Francois

sculptural production. In taking this course he was also perhaps re-examining an aspect of his paternal heritage. His father, an artist who had trained under Henri Scheffer, had devoted his skills to the industry of bondieuserie. Jan Godfried him an secured which had most Huysmans's publicised work, a neo-medieval chromolithowas Imperial commendation, graphic missal entitled LaJourneedu chritien.7 Biographers have taken their cue from Huysmans himself in attributing his artistic and spiritual development to atavism, to his loyalty to one half of his family and his rejection of the other. Despite the element of posturing in this fanciful construction, his identification with his father's ancestry to some extent explains his negative view of modern sculpture. For Huysmans it was largely fortuitous that his race, milieu and moment were French, Parisian and late nineteenth-century, and far more relevant that he was descended from a dynasty of distinguished Dutch painters. He began his career as an art-critic in 1867 with an assertion of the superide ority of the Dutch school of landscape painters: 'lespeintres me sont bien dernizrement, disait-on, depuis que digineres paysage, a sa perfection'.8 His a portkce genrede peinture l'Ecolehollandaise the aim a Naturalist novelist to become required adopearly tion of the stance of detached observer of modern Parisian life, and his claim to a very specific art-historical paternity, which he re-enforced by changing his christian names to the almost Dutch equivalents, Joris and Karl, provided Huysmans with a birthright to the Naturalist identity. His mother's family, by contrast, saw itself cast in the r61e of the objectionable other. The life style of the Gerards and Badins was treacherously served up by Huysmans to his literary master, Emile Zola, as raw ingredients for his unflattering portrayal of the Parisian bourgeoisie, Pot bouille.In the brief autobiographical note which Huysmans contributed under the name his of his mistress, Anna Meunier, to LesHommes d'aujourd'hui, mother's family is categorised as a breeding ground for functionaries. His maternal great-grandfather, Antoine Gerard, who happened to have pursued the avocation of sculptor, was, in his opinion, little more than a bureaucrat of art: 'II ni mieuxniplus mal quelesgensdeson?poque; sculptait aufondjen'ai The Huysmans scholar ni estimeni mesestime pour ses wuvres'.9

Henri Lefai has attempted to restore some credit to Gerard. The sale-catalogue of his effects proves that the sculptor had been an interesting and erudite collector, but few would disagree with Huysmans's assessment of his work.'0Gerard's two immense and staid allegories still flank the Arc de triomphe du Carrousel. Only slightly more inventive in its juxtaposition of the antique and the modern is his tympanum relief in the Chapelle Expiatoire, depicting the transferral to their new burial place of the remains of Louis XVI and Marie Antoniette (Fig.20). The main distinction of this relief now appears to have been that it inspired a more lively counterpoint in David d'Angers's contemporary depiction of the funeral of General Foy, a leader of the liberal opposition, for his funerary monument in Pare Lachaise." More questionable than Huysmans's assessment of Gerard's sculpture is his identification of the maligned forbear with a sculptor of the romantic school. The more than respectable Neo-classicist, Gerard, is written off by his greatun vague pldtrierconsciengrandson as 'un Maindronquelconque, cieux'.2 Maindron was a sculptor of a younger generation, who died only in 1884, one year before these words were written. Of this fact Huysmans would have been the more aware in that the sculptor's demise had been marked by the placing in a much frequented part of the Jardins du Luxembourg of his smouldering statue of Chafteaubriand'sdruidess, Furthermore he had a personal contact with the Vellhda. world of romantic sculpture in his friend and collaborator in art criticism, Maurice Duseigneur. Maurice was the son of Jehan Duseigneur, author of the quintessentially romantic now in the Louvre. Huysmans's casualness with Rolandfurieux historical fact must have been a deliberate ploy, implying that all modern sculptors, whatever their allegiances, were likely to end up as servile decorators. A reference in one of his earliest reviews to Carpeaux's group Le Danse shows that Huysmans still, at this point, held out some hope for a sculptural regeneration through the more conventional channels. In this review of 1876, devoted to some mural paintings in Saint-Sulpice, the vitality of Delacroix's contribution is contrasted with the dullness of the other murals in the church. Delacroix's work, he claimed, stood out from its neighbours as, by comparison with its companion allegories on the facade of the Paris Opera, did the group of Carpeaux, 'qui bondit,tournoie, s''lance du piddestal, tandis la les sur demeurent rue, autres, calmes, empiete que impassibles, if sansmouvement, sansviesurleursocle As to depierre'.'3 emphasise that sculpture, in this instance, had successfully aspired to the condition of painting, he was again to recall La Danse when discussing the work of the painter Alfred Roll in his review of the 1879 Salon, where, once again, it is the excitable sensuality of the group which is the point of the comparison. Evocation of this kind of mad energy in sculpture recurred in Huysmans's description of Rodin's exhibits of 1887; but in 1876, he clearly felt that Carpeaux's challenge had not been taken up by the younger generation of sculptors. Reviewing the envoisof the Prix de Rome sculpture students, he took a

misselmoderne, Paris [1852]. This missal HUYSMANS: 7JANGODFRIED LaJourniedu chrdtien, was announced in L'Illustration [4th December 1852]: 'Aujourd'hui saJourn6e du chr&leplus repandu, car l'industrie, tien est leplus artistique des livresd'iglise:il serabientdt qui d'ordinaire L'art,cevrai porte la mortdans l'art, lui est venueici en aide,par sesprociddsiconomiques. a iti place'par M. Huysmansa la porte de toutesles bourses'. luxe de l'intelligence, 'Des Paysagistes contemporains', Revue mensuelle[25th November ~J.-K. HUYSMANS: in Bulletin de la Sociti J.-K. Huysmans,no.27 [1954], 1867]; reprinted by P. LAMBERT pp.95-96. MEUNIER J.-K. Huysmans', in Les Hommesd'au9'ANNA (pseudonym ofj.-K. HUYSMANS):

Paris[n.d. (1885)]. jourd'hui, LEFAI: 'Un Ancetre oublie de J.-K. Huysmans:le sculpteurparisienAntoine"'H. de la Socidtd Francois G6rard, 1760-1843', Bulletin no.24 [1952], J.-K. Huysmans, pp.234-39. David dela mimoire, Paris[1988], pp.120-21. l'avenir "J.DE CASO: d'Angers: cit.at note 9 above. '2Loc. 'Les Nouvelles peinturesde Saint Sulpice par CharlesLandelle', '-J.-K.HUYSMANS: illustrie dela Chronique [8thJanuary1876];reprintedin Bulletin Huysmans, SociteJ.-K. no.49 [1965], pp.285-90.

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'II H;

dim view of works sent back by Marqueste, Injalbert and deRome,maisd'origide travail danstouscesenvois Idrac: 'beaucoup nalitipoint'.4 If for Huysmans the desired renewal was not taking place, for many it had already been accomplished. The generation of sculptors to which these Prix de Rome students belonged was entering on a scene in which the art of sculpture was thought to 'have achieved a new public credibility. Their immediate predecessors, the sculptors who had matured towards the end of the Second Empire - Chapu, Falguiere, Dubois and Mercid - brought new flavours to academe. Florentine Quattrocento and French renaissance references were combined in their work with a fluidity of modelling, even, on occasion, with those impressionistic touches which the public found so remarkable in the Salon exhibits of the Italian realists, forming a synthesis which imposed itself as a novelty, despite these sculptors' refusal to acknowledge, in any but allegorical terms, the facts of contemporary existence. There was compensation for this refusal in the topical emotions tapped in elegiac commemorations of the FrancoPrussian War. In consequence of this, a number of critics were to be heard boasting of the superior accomplishments of the new French school of sculptors, by comparison with the poverty of contemporary Salon painting. By the end of the decade, this euphoria was beginning to wear off, and nowhere was there a more extreme instance of this reversal of opinion than in Huysmans's reviews of the Salons between 1879 and 1881, which, together with reviews of the exhibitions of the Independants, he anthologised in 1883 in the volume L'Artmoderne.'5 The reviews in L'Artmoderne present an account simplified for the purpose of promoting a visual art akin to literary Naturalism. The comprehensiveness of the Salon reviews is particularly prejudiced by Huysmans's partisan views and his animosity towards sculptors in general. Salon sculptors' refusal of modernity provoked him in 1880 to ignore them altogether. Works of 'national significance', which a more conscientious reviewer would have felt compelled to mention, do not figure in these reviews. For example, in 1881, a la Barrias exhibited the plaster model for his Monument in de Paris en 1870 chose that year Dejfense (Fig.21). Huysmans to confine his attention to only one piece of sculpture, Ringel et misere (Fig.22), a work which pred'Illzach's zany Splendeur sented an almost parodic reflection of Barrias's allegorical composition. No other sculptures are mentioned, and, to compound the offence, approximately one third of the review is devoted to the work of English childrens'-book illustrators. The justification for this extreme selectivity, not to say neglect, had been put forward in the review of the 1879 Salon, in which Huysmans presented his well-known ultimaavecla vie tum. If the 'pldtriers oficiels'felt unable to 's'acclimater moderne', they should quit the stage, become ornamentalists, de merveilles and leave the public free to enjoy the 'incomparables l'exposition florale'. Patriotism as exhibited in Barrias's group had been declared, in the discussion of military paintings in that earlier Salon, to be a negative quality in art. The claim could be of the critics that sculpture was 'la gloirede la France', of the same order. 6 discounted as a clich%

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21. La Defensede Paris en 1870, by E. Barrias. 1881. (Rond-Point de la Defense, Paris).

.ri?;?

Compared with the stony silence on the subject of sculpture of 1880, the ultimatum of the previous year is accompanied by an almost generous acknowledgement of contributions by Saint Marceaux and Carrier-Belleuse. Two pieces of anecdotal and ornamental trivia inspire some light journalistic taunting.17 Like Baudelaire, Huysmans finds sculpture a good butt for humour, even though it may in general be boring and backward. The following year, as if preparing for the great breakthrough into modernity repre- and the likelihood is that he knew sented by Degas's Dancer her to be waiting in the wings - Huysmans sought his sculptural pleasures outside art exhibitions, official or unofficial. The display which caught his attention was in the window of a shop in rue Legendre, in the Batignolles, which specialised in couturiers' dummies. His Hoffmannesque caprice on these in the collection of creations appeared under the title L'Etiage, and The display of sketches parisiens. poems-in-prose, Croquis excited his armless torsos erotic, misogynistic and headless, he would have us believe, a interest. They represent, pitying of of all ages and collection female breasts comprehensive social conditions. He ascribes to them more physical specificity than they could possibly have possessed. In the process they lose the ambivalent neutrality of surrealist mannequins and assume the character of specimens in a didactic display. In fact he refers to the collection as 'ce mus&e desseins', Curtius to kind of waxwork cabinets which had been the referring in Paris before the Revolution the so-called by pioneered Curtius, whose real name had probably been Curtz or Kurz. The actuality of the torsos is presented as a confutation of the classical standard of female beauty, as represented by the auxmornes statsuperieur antique statues of the Louvre: 'Combien si vivants descouturiers'.'8 uesde Venus, cesmannequins This tactic of subversion is the equivalent of his oft-repeated assertion that the posters of Jules Cheret contained more of art than the

des lettres[9thJuly 1876], p.26. "J.-K. HUYSMANS: 'Les Envois de Rome', La Ripublique "Fora survey of sculpture exhibits at the Salons of the 1870s and critical responses 'Rodin and the Paris Salon', to them, including those of Huysmans, see R. BUTLER: in Rodin Rediscovered, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington [1981-82],

pp.19-49. moderne: "L'Art (E.C. VI, pp.96-100. "7Ibid. '1'L'Etiage', in Croquisparisiens: (E.C. VIII, pp.137-40.

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etmisere, 22. Splendeur soft-groundetchingby Desir6 Ringel d'Illzachafter his own sculpturein colouredterracotta,from L'Artiste [June1881], p.810.

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23. UneJeuneparisienne, by Chatrousse. Emile-Frangois 1877. Marble, 147 cm. high (Sold Sotheby's,London, 22nd May 1996, lot 105).

canvases of the Salon.'9 Huysmans would find such art-substitutes in worlds increasingly remote from the studio. Though the mannequins were functional objects, their creators may conceivably have intended them to act as loci for a flaneur's fantasies. This is less likely to have been the case with the designers of the railway engines, which excite the lubricious imaginings of Des Esseintes in A Rebours.20 are made of percaline, a calThe dummy torsos of L'Etiage ico-like material. Evidently the colour varied according to the age of the subject, and the colouring of the nipples is vividly described. Here, as in his responses to Degas's Dancer,it is their colour, as well as the life-like quality of the material, of the matidre' which gives them their advantage over the 'froide Louvre antiquities, even though Huysmans was well aware that the ancient Greeks had coloured their statues. Already then, before seeing Degas's figure, the need for the modern sculptor to break with established notions of noble materials had occurred to him. This, in 1881, was the keynote to his responses. In all the new sculpture exhibits he discussed, some form of colourism was attempted, usually in combination with an exploratory approach to materials. On modernity of technique and subject matter, Huysmans assumed a tone as prescriptive as that of the academic opposition, but the personal nature of his responses to the mannequins foreshadows the discovery in the Degas Dancer of His reveries before the and 'terrible'. qualities of the 'maladive'
mieuxtoutesles chambres de l'Exposition moderne: '"L'Art (E.C. VI, p.14: 'Pourmoi,j'aimerais de Chiretou de cesmerveilleusesfeuilles deJapon qui valentunfranclapiece, tapissiesdeschromos ainsipar un amas de chosestristes'. plut6t quede les voirtacheties

mannequins progress from the libertine to what he describes as the charitable, the latter being thoughts on the ineluctable predicament of women whose livelihood depended on their remaining sexually attractive, but whose way of life was unconducive to this. Such observations from the pen of a male writer experienced in the description of 'la crisejuponniere',were hardly likely to be charitable. On the contrary, Huysmans' writings on female bodies in life and art as often as not express disdain and repulsion. The 'medieval' attitude to the body which he would detect in Degas's nudes in 1886, was already implicit in the treatment of the mannequins, and in the artistic antecedents which he proposed for the Dancer in 1881.21 Though mannequins are not specifically mentioned in his discussion of the Dancer,Huysmans's street-wise view of modern fashion led him to claim in that context that polychromy was indispensable to convey such peculiarities of the Parisitoutd'uncoti enne's accoutrement as 'cespetitestoques qu'allume une aile de lophophore'.22 The possession of such exclusive insights, perhaps acquired in conversation with his seamstress mistress, Anna Meunier, led him to adopt a superior attitude a wayward concoction in to Ringel, whose Splendeur et misere, coloured terracotta, incorporating a real straw hat and blue sunglasses(Fig.22),he despatched with a combination of puzzlement and faint praise in his 1881 Salon review. Huysmans sans declared the female figure to be 'unmannequin malgracieux,
20ARebours: VII, pp.36-37. " Certains:(E.C. (E.C. X, pp.20-25. "L'Art moderne: (E.C. VI, p.251.

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24. La Petite parisienne, by PaulGauguin. 1880. Wood, 25 cm. high (Graphische Kabinett,Munich).

25. Petite danseuse dequatorze ans,by EdgarDegas. 1878-81 (hereas photographedin 1919).Wax, cotton and satin,99 cm. high (Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon, Upperville,VA).

The question being more genvie,attifid'unemanizre ridicule'.2" asked how had this was, erally strange thing got by the jury? In the review of the Independent artists, Ringel's work is included in the historically illuminating round-up of attempts at modernity, preceding, but in no way explaining Degas's Dancer,who arises, in this account, like a phoenix from the ashes of other artists' failures. Some of the figures included in this summary have received attention from the revisionist historians of nineteenth-century sculpture. Chatrousse, author of a Parisienne in marble, whose colourlessness was her undofar has so ing, escaped attention (Fig.23). The inclusion in the of this round-up piece and of other examples of the phenomenon to which in painting Huysmans had applied Fromentin's term modes-nits, shows that his inattention to sculpture had been to some degree feigned, and that he had been watching and waiting for the arrival of 'the real thing'. When she came, Huysmans welcomed the Dancerwith respectful restraint (Fig.25). The public might be dismayed, but he felt only the admiration which for some time he had known Degas deserved. By showing her alongside a series of sketches ofjuvenile offenders in the dock, rather than as originally intended with the Young Spartans,Degas provided his critics with the occasion for sensationalist observations on the depravity of his subjects and the cruelty of his observation. Huysmans writes about the drawings, but makes no connexion between them and the sculpture. His account of the Dancer's physiognomy is exclusively 'charitable', drawing attention only to the premature ageing brought on by her
la fin 'RWalisme p.235. See also. c. CHEVILLOT: optiqueet progris esth6tique: :"Ibid., d'un reve', Revue del'art,CIV [1994], pp.22-29. She writesof Splendeur et misire that it shocks'par sa verdure lesmendiants Dix' (p.23). d'Otto prefigurant 2'L'Art moderne: (E.C. VI, pp.248-54. For a discussionof some of the other critical

exertions. Also, whereas some critics likened her to a naturalhistory or medical exhibit, he considers her only as a refined work of art, to be judged in relation to other works of art and as a prodigious feat of realism. He had viewed the manas an illustrational factual display. In their nequins of L'Etiage it be assumed that he himself took some credit for case, may to life. Dancerwas already real enough in them The bringing her own right to give the impression that she might at any moment leave her plinth.2" At one point Huysmans had implied that there might be a natural-historical angle on Degas's dancers. A description of pictures of dancers practising, which were shown in the exhibition of the Indcpendants of 1880, implies that the subjects were the products of an artificially accelerated evolutionary s'est process. He wrote of them bizarrely: 'la metamorphose Les ne se les dont les accomplie. girafesqui pouvaient rompre, l~phantes de sont maintenant et charnieres refusaient plier, assouplies brisees'.25 This apparently perverse passage only makes sense if one takes into account that 'mitamorphose' was a word frequently used in the nineteenth century to mean evolutionary change. This vision of nature transformed by human cultivation was to be carried to an extreme in A Rebours, where the sculptural impulse is represented producing not works of art, but
'La Petite Danseuse et les criminels: responsesto the Dancer,see D.DRUICK: Degas 18-21 avril1988), du Colloque moraliste?',in Degasinidit(Actes Degas,musied'Orsay, Paris [1989], pp.225-50. moderne: (E.C. VI, p. 133. "2L'Art

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machines which improve on nature, and hybrid plants monstrously imitating rampant or diseased human organs. 'II ny enquelques annees apas a dire',muses Des Esseintes, 'l'hommepeut, amener unesilectionque la paresseuse naturene peutjamaisproduire dessi&cles; didiment, par le temps qu'apres qui court,les horticulteurs sontles seulset les vraisartistes'."2 Degas's Dancer,in Huysmans's account, is mercifully unencumbered by such speculations. She is simply there in all her shocking reality. Only the use of adjectives such as 'barbare', 'terrible' colour the description of the work 'maladive', 'raffinde', itself. On the other hand, one of the historical examples called up by Huysmans to show how artists in the past had incorporated real materials in their work, helps to flesh out his concept of the barbarous. Where or how he came across the Crucified Christ from Burgos Cathedral (Fig.26), with its real hair, real material and real thorns, remains a mystery.27 He certainly could not have seen the thing itself, never having travelled in Spain. Its presence in the passage on the Dancer confronts us rather unexpectedly in this Naturalist context, with the proto-expressionist depiction of suffering, which Huysmans was later to discover in the paintings of Mathias Griinewald. Either Degas's use of actual materials, combined with the long-suffering expression of the Dancer, led Huysmans to start making the assumption that the painter's vision of the world was a 'medieval' one, as he would claim a proposof the series of pastel nudes in 1886, or else, as is more probable, he was already actively seeking confirmation for his own increasingly despondent view of modern life. The likelihood that the second explanation is the real one is borne out by the sparse but revealing comments on two sculptures by Gauguin in the same review. These pieces, the Petite and the Titedechanteuse Parisienne are generally held to be a homage to Degas from Gauguin. Huysmans claimed of the Parisienne that she was 'gothiquement a phrase justified moderne', the wood and use of a brutal by simplification of form which even in the progressive context of this exhibition must have been hard to accept (Fig.24). In the Chanteuse, he found a resemblance to the type of woman favoured by F6licien Rops, which, in view of his later interpretation of Rops, we know also meant for Huysmans that she was a reincarnation in modern guise of the medieval personification of lechery.28 As far as Gauguin's own artistic destiny is concerned, the passage preceding that on sculpture, where Huysmans expatiates on the modernity of the Etudedu nu, and arrives at the conclusion that there is no eternal standard of physical beaudeMilo... n'est ty, might be read as more prophetic. 'Le Venus belle maintenant ces anciennes statues du que niplus intiressante, niplus Nouveau de et ... les unes deplumes Mlonde, bigarries tatouages coiffies et lesautres sontsimplement lesmanifestations diverses d'unememe iddal debeauteipoursuivipar desraces While Gauguin subquidiffrent'.29 sequently set out to prove this point, by identifying with the artistic ideals of other races, Huysmans's discovery of the gothic spirit in his early modern subjects was remembered significantly by the German art critic and historian Julius Meier Graefe, in his Entwicklungsgeschichte derModernen Kunst, which appeared in print in 1904, the year of the foundation of Die Briicke.30 By then, Huysmans had long lost all interest in any sculpture which could be classed as avant-garde. After
Rebours: '"A (E.C. VII, p.143. moderne: 7L'Art (E.C. VI, p.249. 28Ibid., p.265. 2"Ibid., p.264. der Modernen Kunst, 'J. MEIER-GRAEFE: Entwicklungsgeschichte Stuttgart[1904] I, p.372.

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26. Detail of a Spanish, Crucifix. ?15th-century. wood, Polychromed fabric,thornsand human hair,dimensions unknown. (Cathedral,Burgos).

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1891 his main inspiration was derivedfromcontemplation of real medievalreligiousart,but his immersionin the Catholic cult, and his study of pilgrimage sites, introducedhim to images which freed him to mock at modern sculptureonce again, while raisingthe questionwhetherit was his own aesthetic delectationwhich was at issue. One area of sculptureproduction,in which polychromy had been a common feature since the 1860s, was notably absentfromHuysmans'ssummaryof precedentsfor Degas's use of colour in the Dancer. This was industrially produced in his writing it appearswith Elsewhere religious imagery. greatcomic effect,as partof the modernurbanscene. By the late 1890s,alreadya convert,but no more respectful for that, he showed, in La Cathidrale, that practice in mockery had made perfect. The fictional abbe Plomb is the involuntary His flat recipientof preposterous giftsfrom his parishioners. is clutteredwith two and three dimensionalbondieuserie of all descriptions: avecle vert desangdliques et lesroses . desMaries peintes glace" bon des bons Madones des d'un anglais; acidulis considirant ail beat eticartant desmains enlames des d'dventail leurspieds d'oipartaient une telle surson d'Arc rayonsjaunes; Jeanne accroupie poule qu'une au ciellesbilles blanches desesyeux, contre sa pressant euf,levant unitendard, desSaints dePadoue, Antoine cuirass e depldtre et gorge ' desSaints tiras quatre frais et liches, ?pingles; pas assez Joseph et trop dessaintes des Madeleine charpentiers peusaints; pleurant tout une cohue dedeicoles, dequalitlfine, pilules d'argent; appartenant a cette dite'article deMunich' danslesmagasins dela rue categorie
Madame.31

The likelihood that devotionalimages might be entirely devoid of artisticmerit had become a commonplacein discussions of sculpture by the end of the century. David
See also P. WARD-JACKSON: 'Les Peintres expressionistesallemands devant le dela dicadence de Colloque (Actes duBdle, Grtinewaldde Huysmans',in UneEsthetique et Colmar, Novembre Mulhouse 1984), Paris[1987], pp.293-99. "La Cathldrale: (E.C. XIV, p.205.

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d'Angers had meditated at length on this subject, his thoughts directing him towards what Jaques de Caso has recently defined as an art signalitique."Statues in country churches might sometimes appear ridiculous, he wrote in his but 'ellessontla representation Carnets, plutdtd'unnomqued'unedinme; c'estunsigne les d&votes pour dinmes qui,plus ellessontcroyantes plus elles In his les voient beaux ont en elles-memes'."5 parcequ'elles l'apothiose Grammaire desartsdu dessinof 1867, Charles Blanc proposed to the sculptors of his own time a relentlessly Apollonian ideal, at the same time as revealing a streak of curiosity about murkier areas of production: 'On diraitque l'absence de l'artest et ce rend ces du justement qui images culte, quemoins vendrables vieilles plus la divinity sy manifeste'.35 l'artsy montre, In his explorations of historical sacred art, Huysmans was sometimes drawn to images which lacked all visual appeal or were downright ugly. Among the sculptures falling into this in the crypt of the Damede Sous-Terre category, there was MJtre cathedral of Chartres. This 'vierge noire,rugueuse, trapue'had immense and continued to do so, despite devotion, inspired the fact that she was now only a copy of an original which had been destroyed by revolutionaries in 1793.3 More equivocal were the various images of the bearded, crucified female saint Wilgefortis. Huysmans first came across her in a sixteenthcentury image in St Etienne in Beauvais (Fig.27), and wrote of her ugliness and of her reputed power to dispose of unwanted husbands. Hence her pet name of 'Sainte Debarras'. No sooner had he done so than he was deluged with correspondence revealing that elsewhere she was credited with different powers, sometimes wore no beard, and that she had even usurped the place of Mary under the corrupted version of her name, 'Vierge Forte'.36 During the 1870s the catalogues of the renowned sainterie of Leon Moynet at Vendeuvre-sur-Barse apprised the purchasing public, alongside variations in the size and colour of the images it offered, of the miraculous and intercessionary powers of the figures represented. This so appalled Viollet-leDuc that he demanded government action to suppress the entire industry. The manufacturers seemed determined to capitalise on the ignorant and fetishistic instincts of country people.37With that side of things Huysmans seemingly had no problem. What disturbed him was that, far from possessing the 'gothically modern' qualities of Gauguin's Parisienne, or the indifference to appearances of NdtreDamedeSous-Terre, these products were often as ingratiating as chimney ornaments. At the same time that progressive artists were, as he put it, 'aping the primitives', religious art had become a mealticket for the academically trained and third-rate aspirants to artistic respectability. In the early years of his life as a convert, Huysmans seems to have felt that there was a lesson in humility for the aesthete in these phenomena. In front of the serial representations of the miraculous apparition of the Virgin to two country children at La Salette (Figs.28 and 29), he was visited by self These groups, constituting a plastic re-enactment reproach."38 of the miracle in all its stages on the mountainside where it had occurred, were the work of, Henri Barrime, a creole
2DECASO, op.cit.at note 11 above. deDavid d'Angers, ed. 33P.-J. DAVID:Les Carnets

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27. St Wilgefortis French, 16th-century. Polychromed wood. crucified. (Saint-Etienne, Beauvais).

sculptor from Martinique, who had trained in Nantes and had set up a workshop producing pious imagery, which was later taken over by the more successful Henri Bourich."39 His La Salette figures were cast, as Huysmans observes, in the foundries of Le Creusot, better known for the production of railway engines and armaments. Shamefully ugly though Huysmans felt these things to be, they nevertheless adhered in their insipid way to the facts as described by the visionary children, Maximin and Melanie. As he was still convinced at this point that the Virgin of the Grotto at Lourdes (Fig.30) had been carried out following the dictates of Bernadette Soubirous herself, he did not hesitate to claim in La Cathidrale of the Virgin as seen in both apparitions that 'Il n) a pas d'exen somme, l'aientautrement d&crite emples queles bergires qui la virent "Belle autrement sous les traits sous d'une Dame", que l'apparence que de village, Madoneduquartier SaintSulpice, d'uneVierge d'autel d'une
dela SocieteJ.-K. no.32 Huysmans, 'Huysmanset SainteD6barrasABeauvais',Bulletin [1956], pp.33-40. Bien chrbtien', 37E.-E.VIOLLET-LE-DUC:'L'Art public [18th December 1876]. "3La E.C. XIV,pp.21-22. Cathidrale: Henri 3'On Barramesee M.VAISSIER: sculpteur angevin, Angers [1981]. BarBourichi, They were cast by the firm of Baud r5me'sgroupswere the gift of Count Penalver. and were placed at the site of the apparitionon 8thJuly 1864. et Lanfrey,

of 1838).

Paris [1958], II p.24 (an entry A. BRUNEL,

Paris[1867] p.460. desartsdudessin, Grammaire 3"c.BLANC:

E.C. XIV, pp.119-44. La Cathidrale: "'Theoriginalarticle appearedin EchodeParis[20th September 1898], and in La del'Oise[21st September 1898]. ForHuysmans'sfurtherthoughtson the Ripublique CE.C.XVI, pp.317-19. See also P. LAMBERT: saint, see 'SainteD6barras'in De Tout:

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HUYSMANS

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28. The Virgin with Maximin andMilanie, by Henri Barreme.1864. (NotreDame, La Salette).

29. The Virgin ascending, by

Henri Barrame.1864. (NotreDame, La Salette).

30. TheVirgin ofLourdes, byJoseph Fabisch.1863-64. Paintedmarble, 188 cm high. (Grottede Massabielle,Lourdes).

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d'unereinede coinde rue'.The conclusion he reached was that this was a divine strategy, adapted to the modern world. God was deliberately targetting the poor of the earth with customised apparitions.", Eight years later, with Les foules de Lourdes,Huysmans entirely back-tracked on this disingenuous and patronising thesis. He had discovered convincing evidence contradicting the assertion of Henri Lasserre, the propagandist of Lourdes, that the Lyonnais sculptor Fabisch had scrupulously followed the instructions of Bernadette in representing the Virgin of her vision.4' He came across the report of an eye-witness, Dr Dozous, to the effect that Bernadette, on seeing the completed statue and on being asked if it resembled her Virgin, had replied 'Pasdu tout',and declined to set eyes on it again.42 This was the confirmation that he needed of his view that the art of Lourdes, and in particular its sculpture, was infernal in inspiration. So he ended his literary career reaffirming his abundantly negative view of modern sculpture. In the course of it, he had somehow, at the same time, contrived to wreak considerable, and probably healthy damage to the dogmas governing the profession. Courtauld Institute, Conway University ofLondon Library,

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"'LaCath&drale: (E.C., XIV, p.32. 4H. LASSERRE: Paris [1869]. 'Cettestatue,en beaumarbre de Carrare, NotreDame de Lourdes, degrandeur a la Grottede Lourdes du diocese offerte naturelle,fut par deuxnoblesetpieusessawurs de Lyon,Mesdamesde Lacour. indications de Bernadette, Ellefut exicutiesur les minutieuses par M. Fabish [sic], I'iminent La Vierge est reprisentie tellequel'a dkcrite la Voylyonnais. sculpteur des moindres ante,avecun scrupuleux respect (cited from the ditails et un raretalentd'exicution'

126thed., Parisand Limoges [1892], I, p.444).

Les Foulesde Lourdes, Paris [1906], p. 120. For further information on "J.-K.HUYSMANS: Fabisch and the statue, see L.-J.-M. les CROS, S.J.:HistoiredeNotreDame de Lourdes d'apres

documents Paris[1925-26], III, chapter5. The statuewas inaugurated on etlestimoins, 4th April 1864. Bernadettewas unableto attenddue to illness.

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