The Nabis. Albert Kostenevitch
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nor Roussel were featured. It is true that some traces of Symbolism may be found in the works of the last three painters, but they are so rare and so faint that these artists cannot possibly be regarded as Symbolists. However, Bonnard, Vuillard and Roussel always paid considerable attention to the painterly aspects of their work and so they had certain points of contact with the Fauves. That explains why their works are now and again shown at the same exhibitions. The exhibition of the Nabis and Fauves held in the Zurich Kunsthaus in 1983[4] may serve as an example. It is noteworthy that paintings by Denis and Sérusier were not included in this exhibition.
26. Paul Ranson, Women in White, c. 1895.
Wool on canvas, needlepoint tapestry, 150 × 98 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
27. Paul Ranson, The Tiger, 1893.
Colour lithograph.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
28. Maurice Denis, Bacchanalia, 1920.
Oil on canvas, 99.2 × 139.5 cm.
Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo.
29. Henri-Gabriel Ibels, At the Circus, 1893.
Colour lithograph.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
30. Paul Sérusier, Bretons Wrestlers, 1890–1891.
Oil on canvas, 92 × 73 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
The Nabis were not simply a group of artists using similar painterly devices and the same strategy in the struggle to exhibit their works, as was the case with the Neo-Impressionists or the Fauves. They were a kind of fraternity, hence their desire to be tolerant of each other despite the many differences between them. It is difficult for such a fraternity, based not on discipline but on shared aesthetic conceptions, to survive for long. All the more surprising, then, is the fact that the group continued to exist until 1900. Personal relationships and in certain cases family ties held the group together, though the activities of the group, or at least of some of its members, soon might well have appeared naive and even anachronistic.
In fact, the activities of the group were for most of the Nabis to some extent a kind of game, one that with time lost its attraction. Differences in temperament, in personal inclination and outlook were sooner or later bound to affect the relationship between the Nabis. True, they all worshipped Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Verlaine, they loved Gauguin, sincerely admired such disparate artists as Cézanne and Van Gogh; they delighted in old stained-glass windows, Breton crucifixes and popular prints from Epinal (images d’Epinal); they were all interested in folk legends, traditional country festivals and ancient rituals. Yet, though they shared these interests, each had his own preferences. A certain coolness was a required buffer between Sérusier, an ardent Catholic, and Roussel, a confirmed atheist. Neither was it easy for Sérusier, with his inclination to doctrinairism, to find a common language with Bonnard, who would never thrust his opinions upon others. Perhaps of no lesser importance was that whereas the former was almost devoid of a sense of humour, the latter was endowed with a very strong one.
31. Georges Lacombe, Death and Love, 1894–1896.
Bas-relief in walnut, 48.7 × 195.5 × 6 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
32. Henri Matisse, The Dance, 1909–1910.
Oil on canvas, 260 × 391 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
While admiring Gauguin and medieval art, Degas and Japanese woodcut prints, each member of the Nabis group saw them in a different way. Here, preference was dictated by personal conviction and taste. These differences from the very beginning divided the group into two parties: Sérusier, Denis and Verkade wished to follow Gauguin and drew on the art of the Middle Ages, whereas Bonnard, Vuillard and Vallotton felt an affinity with Degas and Japanese artists. Thus the nicknames given to Bonnard and Denis, names which they readily accepted, reflected their aesthetic inclinations. The names in each case defined the source of their art and, ultimately, that of the two Nabis parties, one of which gravitated towards a vivid, dynamic representation of life, the other towards a more religious, stylized and symbolic representation. Both wings agreed that art should not aim to copy nature. They saw it above all as “a means of expression”[5] and recognized that there was “a close connection between form and emotion”.[6] The theory of equivalences was the foundation of Nabis aesthetics. This may well provide the explanation for the respect which each member of the fraternity felt for the work of the others.
33. Paul Ranson, Lustral or The Blue Bather, 1891.
Oil on canvas.
Alain Lesieutre Gallery, Paris.
34. Maurice Denis, Shepherds (The Green Seashore), 1909.
Oil on canvas, 97 × 180 cm.
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
35. Maurice Denis, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1907.
Oil on canvas, 81 × 116 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
The fact that the Nabis regarded very different artists with equal esteem – Gauguin and Cézanne, Redon and Puvis de Chavannes – may be explained by their genuine respect for individuality. It is easy to see what attracted them to Odilon Redon, with his air of mystery and subtle colour nuances, or to Puvis de Chavannes, with his profound understanding of the essence of monumental painting. The works of the young Nabis from time to time betrayed a hint of the influence of these two artists. With Cézanne, whom they discovered very early, when his works could be found only in a small shop kept by Le Père Tanguy, the question becomes more difficult. Did he influence them? Neither Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis nor any other representative of the group can be considered followers of Cézanne; they moved in an entirely different direction from that taken by the vanguard Impressionist. Cézanne’s work served them as an example of great skill. To be able to appreciate his art in the early 1890s, when, with the exception of a few close friends, art lovers saw his canvases as nothing but daubs, not only proved independent judgement, but also revealed an uncommonly high degree of painterly culture. It is thus not surprising that the writer Sâr Péladan, for example, an idol of Symbolism who was in great vogue about 1890, at least among a considerable section of the public, failed to impress the Nabis, although they themselves were by no means indifferent to Symbolism. They also remained unmoved by the English painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, who were much talked about in artistic circles throughout Europe.
The Nabis, particularly those who sided with Sérusier, doubtlessly shared some of the important ideas inherent in Symbolism. Since they discussed among themselves all notable artistic events in Paris, they were well acquainted not only with the work of Puvis de Chavannes, Redon and Gustave Moreau (whom they rated less highly, evidently because of his approach to colour), but also with the work of foreign Symbolists belonging to various trends. At the Exposition Universelle of 1889 they would naturally have seen the work of the British artists Burne-Jones, Millais, Watts and Crane, and of the Italian Previati. Moreover, Burne-Jones was a regular exhibitor at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts from the time
B. Dorival,