Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993

  If he is living according to his normal routine, and not unloading vegetables at the market, he gets up at about eight, makes himself a black coffee on his gas burner, dresses and goes out to the Atelier de la Grande Chaumière, where at the beginning of the season he has paid a small sum for the privilege of coming daily and working, using the models provided by the studio. On the way there he makes a point of passing by the Dôme. He scans the terrasse in the hope of finding a friend who may be sitting there – a foreigner preferably, for a foreigner may ask him to sit down and have a drink. It is out of the question, naturally, for Marc to sit down on the terrasse of any café and order himself a drink. Friends are extremely important to him not only because they perform the mundane function of helping him keep within his budget but because life without them would be unthinkable. The three or four really close friends he has are all art students like himself, although they prefer to think of themselves as painters. For each one of them the little group they form is the social core of his life. Each can count on the other to provide moral, intellectual and even temporary material support. More important than actual cash loans are introductions to influential or wealthy persons. Such little brotherhoods of reciprocal aid are almost a sine qua non of any young artist’s life.

  The Atelier de la Grande Chaumière, smelling of cigarette smoke and turpentine, is a refuge from the chill and damp which seem always to be in the streets. There Marc exchanges a few brief words of greeting with his colleagues, and resumes the work he left the previous day. His concentration is intense, and it is only after he has been acutely hungry for some time that he becomes aware of his hunger. Still he continues to work: one can never get back into the feeling of a thing after a meal. When he can bear the strain no longer he goes out. If he has a little money in his pocket, he walks perhaps to the Restaurant Wadja, which has been a landmark in the Quarter for many years, and where the art-loving Polish proprietress gives her clientele of artists and models a nourishing meals for a minimum of francs. The place is pleasant, and conducive to slow eating and sitting over coffee afterward, but Marc has not the time for that. His afternoon is all planned: there are at least three exhibitions he wants to see before he goes home to spend an hour or so painting a still life on which he is working.

  He gets a friend to go along to the exhibits with him. They walk in leisurely fashion through the streets, talking, discussing, arguing ceaselessly. He arrives back in his room in the Rue Boissonade at about half past five and sits down to work. At quarter to seven he goes out to buy food for dinner: two friends are coming to eat with him. He buys a half kilo of tomatoes, several loaves of bread and a liter of wine. It has been agreed that the other two will bring a good-sized steak. When they arrive, the steak proves to be not quite so large as he had expected, but in any case, there is enough. Over the meal they talk interminably about art and literature, as usual. If the weather permits, they may walk very slowly up toward the Seine, continuing their talk as though they were scarcely conscious of having left the room.

  But suddenly Marc Raimbault says a hurried good night and dashes precipitately down a side street. He has a date with Nicole. He has known her almost a year now. One magnificent day last spring he had gone to the Jardin du Luxembourg to sit a while in the sun after lunch, changing chairs every so often, whenever the guardian approached, so as not to have to pay, and there she had been, playing the same game. So far he has not met her family: for one thing, they live way out by the Porte Maillot. Now Marc goes rapidly toward the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Nicole is standing on the curb in front of a café on the corner of the Rue Soufflot. He takes her arm and they walk toward the Luxembourg. For once Marc does not talk – only a word now and then. There is no need for many words. When they come to the Rue Auguste-Comte their pace slackens. In the shadows, touching the iron grill-work of the fence, they stand quietly. Passers-by pay them no attention: not even a stray agent de police arrives to bother them. A few times during the year, when he knew his landlady was going to be absent, Marc has dared to take Nicole home to his little room, but it is very risky: the old lady has already expressed her views only too clearly on that subject. Marc’s predecessor was put out for just such behavior, and losing a cheap room is a major tragedy. So Marc and Nicole remain standing in the shadows of the Rue Auguste-Comte.

  Eventually they start to walk again, more slowly now, toward the Metro station of Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The last train leaves at 12:45, and it is imperative that Nicole catch it. At the guichet he buys two tickets. They go down into the tunnel, and there on the end of the platform, while the sweeper cries: “Balai! Balai!” they make their adieux. The rumble of the arriving train covers their final words. They run along the platform after the train, Nicole gets into the last car alone, Marc stands a moment looking after her, and then goes back up the stairs into the street, to return to the Rue Boissonade and sleep.

  APART FROM THE ACTUAL PHYSICAL HARDSHIPS involved in becoming or being an artist in Paris, the city provides some very definite advantages. As might be expected, these are primarily psychological, which is precisely why they are of such great importance to artists. For one thing, in Paris any kind of artist is a respected citizen, not a social exception. His civil status is on a par with that of any professional man. And this sensible attitude on the part of the populace has its practical concomitants as well. For instance, when I was a composer in Paris and wanted to send manuscript music through the mail, I was allowed to mark it papiers d’affaires, which meant that it received first-class handling without costing anything like the first-class rate. A music manuscript is extremely heavy, and the difference was enormous.

  Then, too, the French are so accustomed to the extravagant behavior of artists and their friends that it takes something fairly excessive to call forth their disapproval. Whether this is true tolerance or merely indifference is not important to the artist. He is left alone to live, dress and love as he likes. It is taken for granted by the French that everyone is an individual and that the artist is likely to express an individuality somewhat different from the norm, and that is that.

  THERE IS ANOTHER PHENOMENON which serves to keep the affections of artists turned upon Paris, and that is the fact that if one succeeds, the returns are well worth the investment. It is extraordinary how much money the so-called modern masters of Paris manage to earn. Well-known painters in America consider themselves fortunate if they take in $10,000 a year. In Paris it is not unusual for them to make several times that amount. A certain Latin-American painter, not yet what one would call a “modern master,” and not particularly well-known either in America or in Europe, earned over $75,000 in Paris last year. And that despite the fact that it is a distinct disadvantage for a painter not to be French, since the French are surprisingly nationalistic when it comes to buying pictures. Thus one can imagine the incomes of French painters like Braque, Rouault, Matisse or Dufy. All of which is a way of saying that once a painting career gets going in Paris it really goes. The buying of pictures by the French is done largely on a speculative basis. It is big business, and it’s the signature that counts.

  Speaking of signatures, I am reminded of an amusing incident which recently occurred. There is always a group of Spanish painters living in Paris, and they usually form a little nucleus of their own, apart from the others, with whom they do not get on too well. Recently they have been gathering at the Dôme, headed by the ex-surrealist Dominguez. One of their number, a young man named Ortiz, one day found himself a little more broke than usual. In fact, he had nothing – nothing but a lump of gold which he had been saving for a long time against just such an emergency. The obvious person to sell it to, they all agreed, was Picasso; he was a fellow Spaniard, a fellow painter and fortunately a very rich man. But when Ortiz took the gold to the master, Picasso told him that he had no use for it. “However,” he added, seeing the expression on Ortiz’ face, “leave it with me for a few days and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Ortiz went away jus
t about as unhappy as when he had come, sat down despondently once again on the terrasse of the Dôme, and waited. In the meantime, Picasso was feverishly studying the essentials of the goldsmith’s craft, one of the few which he had until then neglected. He smelted the gold, made it into a small, rather Aztec-looking mask, with features in relief, and engraved his signature on the back. When Ortiz called at his studio to see whether the master had found a buyer for his gold, Picasso handed him the mask, saying: “I think you can get exactly three times as much for this as you would have gotten for your gold.” The estimate proved to be quite accurate.

  The fierce competition among painters in Paris is somewhat offset by the great consumption of artistic by-products. Such things as show windows, posters, packaging and even stage sets are done not by specialists in these lines but by professional painters. Then there is the fact that many more people in France are interested in painting, to the point of investing in it, than in most other countries. There is a great, long list of French painters whose names are unknown outside France, but whose canvases bring good prices in Paris because people like to have them hanging on their walls. You are likely to find these adorning the offices of your doctor, dentist or lawyer. And the buyer is also an amateur collector, keenly aware of the value of his acquisitions, and has a sharp eye out for fluctuations in the market price of the works of those who interest him. This sort of purchaser seldom buys the work of the very young: if the beginner sells at all, it will usually be to foreigners visiting Paris, and not to the French.

  As to the American painters living in Paris, one can safely say that they sell exclusively to Americans. The French are almost wholly ignorant of, and uninterested in, American painting: it has no value on the Paris exchange. This, of course, is not of any great interest to the many American painters who live in Paris: it is not why they are there in any case. Nor are they there to study. Of the 3000 students at the Beaux Arts, only about two dozen are Americans. Generally they have chosen La Ville Lumière as a home for one of two reasons: they like the life there (they live more pleasantly than they could at home on the same amount of money) or they want an exhibit in a Paris gallery.

  It means a great deal for an American painter or sculptor, once he has got back home, to have had a one-man show in Paris at a reputable gallery. Having shown in Paris is like having had an official seal of approval placed on one’s product, because it would seem to mean that the work has passed muster in the halls of the highest artistic criteria. In reality it means no such thing. It means primarily that the artist has been able to raise the cash for such an exhibit. If there are reviews at all they will be good, and that means that he has been able to afford them as well. There is probably no other metropolis where criticism is quite so venal as in Paris. (The reverse of the medal is that the public has a healthy distrust of all criticism, so that it is pretty much without effect in any case.) But to the American artist it is all-important. The reviews of such a show are an open-sesame to exhibits of his own in American galleries, and they also help tremendously in selling his work in the States.

  A FRIEND OF MINE, a partner in one of the more important galleries on the Right Bank, told me an absurd story the other day. A newspaper critic they were expecting had failed to put in an appearance at a certain exhibition, either before, during or after the vernissage, and the gallery was perplexed. Then a favorable review was published in the critic’s paper, and the gallery was still further perplexed. A few days later, the critic came into the gallery, picked up an expensive art book, and putting it under his arm, was about to go out again. An attendant asked if there was not some mistake. “Oh, no,” he said airily. “There’s no mistake. I gave this show a good review last week. Remember?” And he walked off with the book, which he probably took around the corner and sold.

  If you want your work exhibited in Paris you must be prepared to pay through the nose for the privilege. The critics must be entertained, wined and dined, and the show itself will cost anywhere from 50,000 to 300,000 francs at an average gallery, and more than that at certain particularly elegant places. If you happen to be an American, a pretext will very likely be found for increasing the price. The French feel that it is a distinct injustice for an American to get anything for the same price as a Frenchman.

  To avoid this sort of exploitation – indeed, to make it possible to show their works in Paris at all – a group of American painters banded together and rented a small shop not far from Notre-Dame, in the Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. They made it into a gallery and named it Galerie 8. I don’t know how many were involved in the venture at the beginning, but at present there are more than twenty. There they show not only their own things but those of artists outside the co-operative as well. (So far they have shown only Americans.) In this way they have cut down the cost of a show to about 18,000 francs, and the saving makes a great difference to the artist, you may be sure. And, being in a neighborhood that American tourists are likely to visit because it is written up in the guidebooks and has night clubs like Le Caveau de la Bolée, the place has been successful.

  PARIS IS ALMOST constantly the scene of some artistic scandal or other, in which everyone gets very much excited and nothing happens. Last year there was another theft of famous pictures, this time not from the Louvre but from the Musée d’Art Moderne. The two young men who engineered the thing had chosen well: their loot included the famous Woman Ironing of Picasso and a 40,000,000-franc Renoir (which even with the franc where it is today is still over $100,000). Nevertheless, when questioned by the police they stoutly maintained that their project had been motivated solely by affection for the pictures and not by desire for gain. (In America they would probably have claimed they had done it for kicks.) There is supposed to be a diabolically clever forger loose in Paris, painting and selling long-lost masterpieces right and left. Everyone says he is a well-known figure, but cannot be brought to justice because of his high connections. If you try to discover just what the pictures are and whose work they purport to be, the trail becomes vague and leads into the dark. However, it goes far enough to show in what direction the Parisian imagination goes when it decides to create a legend.

  Recently the Place de la Concorde was the scene of a short scandal that would have been worthy of an early René Clair film. A bearded and distinguished elderly gentleman carrying a brief case appeared one morning at the foot of the obelisk in the middle of the vast square and began to make preparations for a climb to the top. Immediately the police came up and informed him that such a thing was not only expressly forbidden but unheard of. The gentleman took from his pocket a bundle of official-looking papers. He had been, he said, to the proper authorities to ask permission to study the hieroglyphs on the top of the obelisk, and after some surprise at hearing that there were such marks (since everyone had always thought that all the hieroglyphs were on the sides of the obelisk and had been deciphered long ago), they had decided in the interests of science and art to grant his unusual request.

  There was no mistaking the authenticity of the papers, so somewhat reluctantly the police let him continue with his scholarly preparations. Still, remarked one of the dubious agents de police, in all the years the monument had been standing there, no one had ever attempted such a thing.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” said the old gentleman, giving order to his subordinates for the proper placing of the ladder.

  By the time everything was set, and the bearded savant was ready to climb, it was noon and there was a good crowd watching. The old gentleman, still carrying his brief case, scaled to the top of the needle with astonishing alacrity and proceeded, piece by piece, to divest himself of his articles of clothing, throwing them to the four winds. In the meantime his subordinates had removed the ladder and disappeared into the rapidly growing crowd. The policemen said to each other that they had known all along he was a maniac, and they waved their arms and shouted up at him. When all the clothing was gone except for a pair of underdrawers, the old Egyptologist reac
hed into his brief case, withdrawing a folding umbrella and a larger banner. When he had opened the umbrella he held it over his head. Then he let the banner unroll down the side of the obelisk, and the populace read: When you buy a Fountain Pen insist on an Obelisk.

  The gentleman was finally brought to earth by means of fire hoses, but not before several thousand delighted Parisians had enjoyed their lunch hour more than usually. And while I am on the subject, that lunch hour, which lasts not one hour but two or even three, is a very important feature of French culture. It gives the poorer employee time to go home and have a leisurely meal; it provides the more affluent with the opportunity to stop at a café for apéritifs, go on to a restaurant and eat slowly (to the accompaniment of conversation, not a program of canned music), and to proceed afterward to another café for coffee; or perhaps, weather permitting, even to stroll in a park. For Paris is a city whose customs have evolved from a serious application of the theory that life is meant above all to be lived, and not dedicated to some ulterior abstract concept. It is a city designed to be lived in, not to be used as a market or workshop. And since living, no matter on how much or how little money, is always an art, it is not surprising that the artists should appear to have mastered it more successfully than any other group.