POT DE MERDE
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In 1870, Paris was filled with painters transporting their pictures to the Barracks adjacent the the Palais d'Industrie, where they would register and submit the work to the judgement of the Jury of the Salon. There was the usual talk about the attitude of the Hanging Committee: whether it was going to be liberal or strict in following academic guidelines, and a good deal of speculation about the possibility of another Salon de Refuses if a contretemps developed between the dissidents and the Academie. I didn't worry this time because I knew from past experience that rejection for my work was almost a certainty, that it was a waste of time even to think about it. Curiously, with rejection staring me in the face, I was in a complacent mood, and when paintings were returned to me as expected, I was unemotional, loading the work on a small wheelbarrow I had borrowed from my landlord. It was a game now: they understood me; and I understood them. We both accepted the fact that as long as the academics held all the cards, there wasn't the slightest chance that one of my canvasses would be hung in the Salon d'Automne. I had become, at least in my own thinking, a central point in the dispute between the radical and conservative factions. I represented the extreme the Academie feared most; I was the disoriented provincial, the eccentric, the epitome of what the system considered unacceptable. They expressed their contempt for me by cool formality, making it obvious that they considered my work outside consideration. I doubt very much that my entries: "Nature Morte," a canvas that showed my mother's old compotier with apples set up on a folded tablecloth, with a background of period wallpaper, and "Emperaire," the portrait painted during the summer at the Jas de Bouffan, ever reached the eyes of the Hanging Committee.
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Rejected along with me were: Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir, Guillemet, and Monet, who was furious over the hard line the academics had taken toward the dissidents. The shocking reversal after the compromises of the previous Salon d'Automne, was apparently geared for a showdown aimed at putting the radical group out of business permanently. It had the opposite result, making us more resolved than ever to fight back, and intensify our demands for justice. There were the usual frenzied meetings, angry denunciations of the system, threats, and a renewed request to the Emperor Louis Napoleon for a repeat of the Salon des Refuses. Aside from this, the ambitious plans to resist the conservatives in their efforts to destroy dissident art, were not followed through, there were no funds, and the determination, so strong at the outset, gradually lost steam, collapsing after a few demonstrations in front of the Palais d'Industrie. In the press, the critics, looking for good copy, singled me out for ridicule in their reviews. My work, which they had seen at the Barracks, when I submitted them for the judgement of the Hanging Committee, was chosen as an ideal target to emphasize the superiority of the academic painting. The crudity of my technique, my ordinary subject-matter, pushed them to extremes of criticism using words like putrid, disgusting, incompetent, amateurish, and they suggested that I was deranged, vulgar, a monstrous fraud who was trying to upset a smoothly running machine of official art which was recognized as the envy of the world. Duranty, one of Zola's colleagues from the Cafe Guerbois, described the level of my work as being unfit for hanging in the Salon d'Automne: "Is M. Cezanne serious?" He wrote. "Truly what I see before my eyes is pure gall, an example of egotistical madness which cannot be explained, an act that defies everything we have known about art; looking at such work, to perform the task assigned to me, is more than I can stomach!" Ballu, another establishment reviewer, followed the same line of criticism: "Cezanne," he wrote, "will never achieve respectibility with the quality of the pictures he submits to the Jury of the Salon. I am generous when I say that his painting suffers from distortion of vision, technical ineptitude, and chromatic myopia ...." The cartoonist Stock, in the March 20, 1870, issue of Le Journal, caricatured me, titling the cartoon, "Le Pot de Merde." It developed from an interview which took place following the rejection of my canvasses at the Barracks, when I had loaded them on a wheelbarrow parked outside the entrance. The cartoon consisted of a large portrait of my head, a drawing of a nude hanging from my ear, and the painting I had done of Emperaire sitting in a crouched position. The caption at the bottom read: "Incident du 20 Mars au Palais de l'Industrie ou succes d'antichambre avant l'ouverture du Salon." In the cartoon I am asked about my artistic credo: "It is very simple, My Dear Stock," I answer, "I paint as I see and feel and my feelings are very strong: Courbet, Manet, Monet, paint for the Hanging Committee; I, however, dare, and in the end, it is I who will laugh loudest and best!" Zola came to the defense of the radicals again repeating past arguments, pounding the drums for the principle of creative freedom as a basic right for all artists who wished to show their work in exhibitions sponsored by the government. The articles were published in pamphlet form, simple in language and format, in an effort to get the dissident viewpoint out to the general public. The Academie, which never took anti-academic propaganda lying down, replied with material printed for them in L'Evenement, La Cravache, and Le Journal. In these pieces, they levelled an attack on Zola, stressing his lack of experience in dealing with the subject, his arrogant assumptions, and they criticized the radical group for not speaking out for themselves. They depicted Zola as an intruder: deficient in knowledge of the issues; and a writer with a minimal understanding of art. "Who is this person," they asked, "this charlatan, this notoriety seeker, who tells us we are wrong in our exercise of the authority granted to us? We coerce no one, we do not demand that our theoretical base become universal, and contrary to what our opponents say, we do not exclude artists of merit from our national galleries." Like other debates which had preceded it, the new contretemps had no effect whatsoever on the positions of the opposing factions: just as in the past, it was a lot of bombast, invective, the pounding of chests, which led to nothing. Zola, I think, did have a point though when he accused his fellow-critics of using artists to solidify their financial position within the system, which rewarded writers who maintained staunchly conservative attitudes. "Appeasing," as he expressed it, "the cruel intentions of an insensitive bureaucracy which meets all new innovative ideas with hostility." Then, in a broad attack on all reponsible reviewers, he asked: "Is it too much to ask why the Academie is afraid of new ideas? Is it too much to ask why they are afraid to view their work beside that of the dissiddents? Is it too much to ask that they change their narrow assumption of the truth to embrace all artists no matter what their viewpoint might be? I see nothing extravagant in these things because if they came to pass we would see the truth, and it is my belief that when you expose people to the truth, it will, over time, benefit all of us, not just a chosen few who reject any concept at variance with their own." Despite the publicity, much of it adverse, Zola was feeling the pressures of championing unpopular causes. The publishing community was hostile to action which risked rocking the boat and destabilizing their economic prosperity. Zola was aware of this and while he was ready to crusade for a just cause, he was not going to accept setbacks or situations which might seriously affect his career as a writer. The controversy with the establishment, from his point of view, had been through the wringer with no important changes taking place, and a lot of people thought that his flamboyant defense of the dissidents had actually strengthened the position of the Academie. Anyway, it had beome clear to Zola that publicity was now negative, hardly to his advantage, the subject had been beaten to death, and the public was bored by the dialogue which circled endlessly around without a sensible conclusion. Zola's friends at the Cafe Guerbois were not slow in reminding him of this, warning that his habit of offending people could have serious consequences if he carried it too far; there were already rumblings from government, from conservative sources, and from Villemessant at L'Evenement, that he would be better off if he concentrated on writing alone and avoided controversial issues. Actually he was not as self-assured as he appeared to be; his pockets were empty most of the time even though he was doing well with the salary he got from Villemessant and the successful writing of novels and short articles he did on a free-lance basis. The reason for this was Zola's enormous capacity for spending; each additional franc, as far as he was concerned, was spent eating out with Gabrielle, suitable expenditures to back up the front he presented to the world, and he had an insatiable thirst for buying porcelains, oriental rugs, expensive furniture, literally anything which caught his eye. He had tightened the economic screws even further by moving from his old quarters in the Square d'Anvers to an impressive apartment in the Batignolles not far from Manet's home. Gabrielle and his mother shared the apartment making it extremely difficult for Zola to concentrate on his writing. "Talk, talk, talk," he complained to me, "endless talk. I cannot think, I cannot work, I cannot go on like this! I dream of a large study where I can seclude myself surrounded by books, where I can create undisturbed, and remain as long as I wish." What he really wanted, he said, was a house with sufficient space to accomodate his needs, including the entertainment of his literary friends, which he considered critical to his progress. It irritated him to scribble in a small room, to be exposed to female chatter, to have his extensive notes, his research material, in disorder. "I feel out of things, unable to adjust, unable to write; I am desperately unhappy," he complained. But in spite of these handicaps, Zola did hump very hard to keep pace with the cash outflow: "The goddam treadmill is getting me down," he said, "and there is no end in sight, either. If something doesn't happen to bring some money in there will be hell to pay! |
Ludovic Halevy put in a word for me at Le Figaro, hoping his influence would help me out, but the editor there, Monnset-Gruille, felt my backing of the radical painters was not compatible with the current editorial policy. As others have warned me, the chickens will eventually come home to roost, and that is exactly what has happened. I have to admit, at this point, that this aspect of defending my dissident friends doesn't sit very well with me. Gabrielle and I scratch along on a lot of crap I pick up here and there although the money involved is hardly worth the effort. I send letters to publishers, even obscure ones, who struggle to survive in the suburbs of Paris, lots of them, without the the courtesy of a reply. There are simply no encouraging projects to look forward to: I work on the Rougon-Macquart scripts, writing halfheartedly because of the bad mood I am in. I view this as therapy to block out the constant influx of bad news although it doesn't help very much as the cash runs short and I face the very serious problem of meeting my obligations .... if I can survive until one or the other of the novels I am developing gets into print, I'll weather the storm. It was only six months ago, Paul, when 'Contes a Ninon' was reviewed so favorably, when the future looked so promising, when things were going my way. That, now, is only a memory; and you can't live on memories; my only,recourse is to keep pushing ahead; to avoid retreats, to follow the course I have chosen. The faith I have in doing this, is unshaken; I will not accept it as wrong; and I will continue to write along similar guidelines. Ludovic Halevy, says he warned me about the moral angle, obviously pleased, in a perverse way, by the bad image I have created. I do not hold it against him, because, with his colleagues, he sides with the traditional concept of literature, seeing the 'new realism' as objectionable. It is this aspect of my writing, combined with my articles criticizing the Academie Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which has caused the trouble, antagonizing the publishing community. What I hope for, is that it will all blow over in time; that things will return to the way they were last year. I don't think this is possible very soon; people are in no hurry to change their minds these days; but will do so, I am convinced, if I am able to repeat some of my past successes...."