The Nabis. Albert Kostenevitch
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wonderful freshness of their perception of the world. The 1880s were marked by more developments. Proceeding from the discoveries of Monet and his fellow Impressionists, Seurat and Signac on the one hand, and Gauguin on the other, all mapped out entirely new directions in painting. The views of these artists were completely different. The “scholarly” approach of the first two Neo-Impressionists ran counter to the views of Gauguin and the Pont-Avon group of which he was the leader. These artists owed a great deal to medieval art. Meanwhile Vincent van Gogh, who had by that time moved from Holland to France, led the way in another direction: his main concern was to express his inner feelings. All these artists had moved a good distance away from Impressionism, yet each owed a great deal to the revolution that Manet had fomented. When Seurat and Gauguin exhibited their pictures at the last exhibition of the Impressionists held in 1886, their divergence was already clearly marked. Naturally, among the “apostates” one ought to name the two contemporaries of the Impressionists – Redon, and, above all, Cézanne, who from the start recognized not only the enormous merits of Impressionist painting, but also saw traits in it which threatened to lead to shallowness and to the rejection of the eternal truths of art.
Soon a new term – Post-Impressionism – made its appearance. It was not a very eloquent label, but it came to be widely used. The vagueness of the label was not accidental. Some of the French artists who were initially inspired by the Impressionistic view of the world later left Impressionism behind, each pursuing his own path. This gave rise to an unprecedented stylistic diversity which reached its peak between the late 1880s and the beginning of the twentieth century. No one name could possibly be adequate in this situation.
Even from anti-academic points of view, Impressionism could seem narrow and insufficient as a means of artistic expression, yet it still remained a force which no artist of talent, at least in France, could ignore. It was not only Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec who came to be regarded as Post-Impressionists, but also Redon and Cézanne, and even Matisse and Picasso. For example, in 1912 the last two artists displayed their work at the second exhibition of Post-Impressionists at the Grafton Gallery in London. More recently, however, art historians have tended to limit Post-Impressionism to the nineteenth century. The revolution caused by the Impressionists, and its aftermath, Post-Impressionism, became the most important forces in the development of art from the 1860s through to the 1890s, and it would probably be no exaggeration to say that they influenced artistic evolution throughout the twentieth century.
Any really creative artist living in Paris who embarked on his career in the late 1880s, when Impressionism was drawing to its close, was almost inevitably “doomed” to become a Post-Impressionist. So it is hardly surprising that a small group of artists, calling themselves the Nabis – Bonnard, Vuillard and Denis among them – readily joined this broad new movement which speedily gained authority among painters outside the academic circle. With the advent of the twentieth century, when the age of Post-Impressionism was approaching its end, these artists would be faced with the necessity of making a new choice: either to follow the style of their youth or to rally to the banners of new, more radical movements. But for the Nabis, the question never seriously arose. All their background and artistic experience made them little disposed towards Fauvism and even less towards Cubism or any other modern style. Bonnard was a little more than two years older than Matisse, Vuillard was even closer in age, and though they sincerely respected Matisse as an artist, they could not share his ideas. This does not mean that their intention was to adhere assiduously to their earlier manner. They realized that by acting that way they would be doing no more than marking time and consequently condemning themselves to failure. The real alternative lay in each member of the group developing his own artistic personality. This was bound to conflict with the aspirations of the group as a whole and disrupt its joint efforts. The growing individuality in each artist’s work undermined the group’s unity. At the same time, this process clarified the position of these artists in the art world. It showed that some of them had become figures of European standing, while others were no more than members of a transient group.
Of course, the Nabis artists had never followed one particular style. Each member of the group pursued his own course, regardless of the stylistic, ideological and religious ideas of the others. In this respect the group was unique. This is not to say that the Nabis did not have a common artistic platform, as without one the group could hardly have formed and existed as long as it did.
The group came into being in 1888. The event was connected with the Académie Julian in Paris. The reader should not be misled by this high-sounding name: the word “Académie” was used in the French capital with reference to all sorts of private studios. Among them, the Académie Julian, founded in 1860, probably enjoyed the best reputation. Artists attended this studio because they could find a model there, and many prepared there for entrance examinations to the École des Beaux-Arts. The atmosphere in the studio was less formal than at the École, but the professors as authoritative; in fact, often enough the same academic celebrities taught at the Académie and the École. The students at the studio were a very mixed bag. Shared backgrounds, artistic temperament and talent very quickly drew them together into groups that came apart just as easily as they were formed. The centre of attraction was Paul Sérusier. He was, at 25, older than his fellow-students, the head of the class and better educated than the rest. The painting exhibited at the 1888 Salon had gained him an honourable mention. With his inclination to discuss matters and his ability to express his ideas clearly and eloquently, he easily won listeners. The main subject of Sérusier’s discourses was the experience he gained in Brittany from where he had returned in October 1888 deeply influenced by the ideas of Synthetism. He assumed the role of champion of “the last word” in painting, passed on to him by Gauguin at Pont-Avon.
16. Ker Xavier Roussel, In the Snow, 1893.
Colour lithograph.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
17. Georges Lacombe, Red Pines, 1894–1895.
Egg tempera paint, 59 × 46 cm.
Josefowitz Collection, Lausanne.
18. Paul Sérusier, Breton Women, the Meeting in the Sacred Grove, c. 1891–1893.
Oil on canvas, 72 × 92 cm.
Private collection.
Sérusier was completely under the spell of his encounter with Gauguin. But the most important thing was that he brought back with him The Talisman (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). This small landscape study hurriedly painted on a piece of board was to become a true talisman for a small group of students at the Académie Julian. With a sacramental air, Sérusier showed the panel to Bonnard, Denis, Ibels and Ranson. Later Vuillard and Roussel joined “the initiated”. The study, painted in the Bois d’Amour outside Pont-Avon, depicts autumnal trees reflected in a pond. Each area of colour in this work is given in such a generalized fashion that the object depicted is not easily recognized, and, turned upside down, the picture becomes an abstract. The study was made under the guidance of Gauguin, who demanded: “How do you see that tree? Is it green? Then choose the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow? Is it more like blue? Then don’t hesitate to paint it with the purest blue possible.”[1] The words are cited differently in different sources, but all versions contain the same main idea: an exhortation to simplify the methods of painting, beginning with the simplification of the artist’s palette and an increase in its dynamism. “This is how we learned,” recollected Denis, “that all works of art are a kind of transposition, a certain caricature, the passionate equivalent of an experienced sensation. This was the starting point of an evolution in which we at once became engaged.”[2]
19. Georges Lacombe, Breton and Breton Women, 1894–1895.
Sculpted polychromic wood, 33 × 14.5 cm.
Private collection.
The
M. Denis,