Spiritual crisis and the ‘call to order’: the early aesthetic writings of Gino Severini and Jacques Maritain

Abstract ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my advisor at Duke University, Mark Antliff, the chief curator of the historical archives at MART, Paolo Pettenella, and Signora Romana Severini, Gino Severini's youngest daughter, for their help and guidance with this project. All images courtesy of © 2009 Artists' Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Notes 1 – Corrado Pavolini, ‘Ritrattino di Maritain,’ Il Frontispizio, n. 2 (1937). Original Italian (all translations are my own unless otherwise stated): ‘Non s'indovinerebbe il filosofo; fa pensare piuttosto a un pittore: che so, l'ultimo superstite degli impressionisti: invisibile il cavalletto pieghevole, la cassetta dei colori a tracolla, la pipa nell'angolo della bocca’; ‘Fa pensare così a un dipinto incominciato da Cézanne e finito da Renoir’. 2 – Romy Golan, Christopher Green, and Kenneth E. Silver, in their otherwise exemplary analyses of the ‘return to order’ during and after the First World War, do not discuss the role of Catholicism in Severini's later aesthetics, his impact on Maritain, or Maritain's influence on avant-garde circles in the 1920s and 1930s. See Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Christopher Green, Cubism and Its Enemies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit De Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–1925 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). Christopher Green briefly references Maritain in his discussion of Surrealist anti-clericalism in his important overview of French modernism, Art in France, 1900–1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 162–164. 3 – Notable exceptions in this regard include Bruce Adams and Romy Golan's discussions of the Bergsonism and neo-Catholicism of Albert Gleizes and his followers, Jane Lee's concise analysis of Maritain's impact on the former Cubist André Lhote and writers for the La Nouvelle Revue Française in the 1920s, and Aiden Nichols recent book on sacral aesthetics. See Bruce Adams, Rustic Cubism: Anne Dangar and the Art Colony at Moly-Sabata (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia; Jane Lee, ‘André Lhote, art critic for La Nouvelle Revue Française,’ in Art Criticism After 1900, ed. Malcolm Gee (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 85–96; Aidan Nichols, Redeeming Beauty: Soundings in Sacral Aesthetics (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2007). 4 – For a brief overview of Couturier's interaction with major modernists, see Jean Lacambre, ‘Le Père Marie-Alain Couturier’, in L'Art sacré au XXe Siècle en France, ed. Paul André (Musée Municipal de Boulogne-Billancourt, 1993), pp. 153–157. For Couturier's own writings on modern art and religion, see Marie-Alain Couturier, Sacred Art (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1989). 5 – Gabriel Sarraute, ‘Ricordi su Severini e Maritain’, in Piero Pacini, ‘Una testimonianza inedita di Gabriel Sarraute su Severini e Maritain,’ Otto/Novecento: Rivista bimestrale di critica letteraria, n. 3 (1985), 164. 6 – Gino Severini, The Life of a Painter: The Autobiography of Gino Severini (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 262. Severini speaks of this rediscovery of Catholicism not as “conversion,” as he had been born and baptized into the religion, but as a decision to embrace and return to his roots. 7 – Piero Pacini, ‘Severini e Maritain. storia di una conversazione’, Nuova Antologia, (June 1973), p. 272. 8 – Sarraute, ‘Una testimonianza inedita di Gabriel Sarraute su Severini e Maritain’, p. 161. 9 – Jeanne Fort Severini, ‘Qualche ricordo fra le due guerre,’ in Gino Severini ‘Entre Les Deux Guerres’, ed. Maurizio Fagiolo, Ester Coen, and Gina Severini (Roma: Straderini editore, 1980), p. 43. Sarraute also recalls that he had heard of Severini at least 10 years before he met him, through an article on the 1912 Futurist exhibition at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in the weekly art journal La France Illustrée. Sarraute, impressed by a quote from the Futurists that stated that “our work is drunk with spontaneity and power,” had clipped this article out of the journal and saved it (Sarraute, p. 151). 10 – Jeanne Fort Severini, p. 44. 11 – Sarraute, p. 164. 12 – Ibid. 13 – Raissa Maritain, Les Grandes Amitiés, Souvenirs (New York, 1941), p. 122–123. 14 – Robert C. Grogin, The Bergsonian Controversy in France, 1900–1914 (Calgary: The University of Calgary Press, 1998), p. 167. 15 – La Philosophie Bergsonienne: Études Critiques, Maritain's first book, was originally published by Marcel Rivière et Cie in 1914. In the Preface to the Second Edition (1929) the author admits that his understanding of Bergsonian philosophy was incomplete and that in retrospect the book is full of shortcomings. However, he justifies its importance by saying that it was one of the first manifestations of neo-Thomist thinking in pre-First World War France and thus represents a crucial effort to swing the pendulum of contemporary philosophical thought back into the trajectory of classical thought. Jacques Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, trans. Mabelle L. and Gordon Andison (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 11. 16 – Ibid., p. 278. 17 – Ibid., p. 285. Maritain distinguishes in this section between a “Bergsonism of Fact” and a “Bergsonism of Intention.” See also Mark Antliff, Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) for a discussion of the phenomenon of Bergsonism. 18 – Ibid., p. 281. 19 – See Eugen Weber, Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962) for a complete history of the movement. 20 – Maritain actively encouraged his friends Henri Massis and Ernest Psichari to join the movement; John Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, 1930–1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 23. 21 – In 1918 a French infantryman named Pierre Villard left his fortune, over a million francs, jointly to Maritain and Charles Maurras. Maurras suggested that they pool their resources to begin a new journal devoted to the intersections between royalist political views and Thomist theology. Although initially skeptical, Maritain eventually joined the review as the editor of the philosophy section. He resigned from his post in 1927. William R. Keylor, Jacques Bainville and the Renaissance of Royalist History in Twentieth-Century France (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana state University Press, 1979), pp. 156–157. 22 – For an overview of the impact of the Action Française’s theory of classicism on the conservative politics of Cubism, e.g. Maurras and Leon Daudet, see Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit de Corps, pp. 103–104. Although Silver does not address the impact of the Action Française on Maritain, one can extend these precepts to encompass much of Maritain's aesthetics, which in turn made his support for modern art an aberration when compared to the reactionary aesthetics promoted by Maurras and other conservatives cited by Silver. 23 – Quoted in Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, e.g. This final statement was first published by the Futurists in their Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto of 1910, signed by Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo, Balla, and Severini. 24 – Ibid., p. 280. 25 – Ibid. 26 – Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 38; Gino Severini, ‘Introduction’, in The Futurist Painter Severini Exhibits his Latest Works (London: Marlborough Gallery, April 1913), reprinted in Maria Drudi Gambillo and Teresa Fiori, eds, Archivi del Futurismo (Roma: De Luca Editore, 1958), p. 113. 27 – In his autobiography Severini makes a distinction between his own championing of French neo-Impressionism, which found compatibility with the Bergsonism of the pre-war Cubists, and the Milanese Futurist's adherence to the technique of Italian Divisionism. Severini, Life of a Painter, p. 37. For a discussion of the Puteaux Cubist's understanding of Bergson, cf. Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, Cubism and Culture (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001), Chapter 2. 28 – Although Anne Coffin Hanson dates the official end of Severini's Futurist period and subsequent shift to Cubism to 1917, it is clear that this was not a transition that took place overnight. Many of Severini's paintings from the war years, such as Woman Seated in a Park from 1916, show an attempt to find a middle ground between the impulses of Futurism and Cubism: Anne Coffin Hanson, Severini Futurista, 1912–1917 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1995). However, it is important to clarify that the Cubism with which Severini experimented during and after the war was not the same Cubism to which he had been exposed before the war. By 1916 Cubism had been stripped of its earlier Bergsonian leanings and was reconfigured as a rationalist, “Latin” movement that had been distilled and purified to conform to the “return to order.” See Christopher Green, Cubism and Its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916–1928 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 29 – Hanson, p. 184. 30 – Günter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944 (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1996), p. 118. Severini was not the only member of the Futurist movement to distance himself from Marinetti's political and aesthetic choices during these years; of the original five members to sign the Manifesto of the Futurist Painters in 11 February 1910 only Giacomo Balla would continue to adhere to the movement in its postwar form. 31 – While a complete analysis of these essays is out of the scope of this project, descriptions of the texts and their ability to reveal Severini's changing perspective can be found in the writings of Daniela Fonti and Peter Brooke: Daniela Fonti, ‘1916–1920: Un nuovo Rinascimento dorico e pitagorico,’ in Gino Severini: Catalogo Ragionato (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1988); Peter Brooke, ‘Introduction,’ in Gino Severini, From Cubism to Classicism (London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2001). 32 – Severini, Life of a Painter, p. 287. 33 – Quote taken from a letter from Severini to Maritain dated 18 September 1923 located in the Archivi Maritain in Kolbsheim: quoted in Cecilia De Carli, ‘Giovanni Battista Montini e l'arte: Le grandi premesse (1920–1955): Da Maritain agli artisti. Una mostra e le sue ragioni’, in Paolo VI e l'arte: Il coraggio della contemporaneità: Da Maritain a Rouault, Severini, Chagall, Cocteau, Garbari, Fillia, ed. Cecilia De Carli (Milano: Skira editore, 1997), pp. 13–31. 34 – Severini, Life of a Painter, p. 289. 35 – Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism and the Frontiers of Poetry, trans. Joseph W. Evans (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), p. 25. 36 – Ibid., p. 27. 37 – Severini, Life of a Painter, p. 288. 38 – In the second (1927) edition of Art Et Scolastique Maritain added four footnotes that referred specifically to passages from Du Cubisme au Classicisme, proving that he had indeed studied Severini's book and found its ideas relevant to his own work. 39 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 62. 40 – Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 9. 41 – Ibid., p. 38. 42 – Ibid., p. 19. 43 – Jeanne Fort Severini, p. 43. 44 – Severini, Life of a Painter, pp. 210–212. 45 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 101. 46 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 133. 47 – Ibid., p. 134. 48 – Simonetta Fraquelli, ‘From Futurism to Classicism’, in Gino Severini: from Futurism to Classicism, ed. Simonetta Fraquelli and Christopher Green (London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 1999), p. 17. 49 – Ibid., p. 135. 50 – Sarraute, ‘Ricordi su Severini e Maritain’, p. 155. 51 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 55. 52 – Ibid. 53 – Ibid. 54 – Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 41. According to Maritain, “to the extent that the rules of the Academy prevail, the fine arts revert to the generic type of art and to its lower species, the mechanical arts” (Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 48). 55 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 61. Interestingly, Severini's critique of contemporary art practices implicitly suggests that although the Italians had reached a height of geometric perfection during the Renaissance, the French (or those living and working in France, including himself) were now responsible for the restitution of these concepts. Maritain echoes this sentiment in his later essay on Severini, going through great length to place the artist firmly within the French tradition by stating that while the artist was heir to the great accomplishments of the Italian past, he was now all but Parisian in character, artistic lineage, and connections; Jacques Maritain, Art and Poetry, trans. E.P. Matthews (New York: Philosophical Library, 1943), p. 31. 56 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 132. 57 – A theory that was also shared and promoted by Severini and Maritain's mutual acquaintance Maurice Denis. 58 – Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 22. Severini also affirms that during the sixteenth-century “the ‘individual’ began to begin separating himself out and attain originality and that this was the first step in the direction of decadence” (Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 56). 59 – He does, however, give some credit to the ambitions of these groups, and particularly to Cézanne, saying that they cleared the ground for a renewal of classical research by destroying the misguided rules of the Academy —– a point of view echoed by Maritain (Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 102). 60 – Ibid., p. 60. 61 – Ibid., p. 101. 62 – Ibid., p. 63 63 – Severini, Life of a Painter, p. 184. 64 – Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 53. 65 – Ibid. 66 – Ibid, p. 187. 67 – Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 47. 68 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 56. 69 – Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 66. 70 – Ibid., p. 34. 71 – Ibid., p. 36. 72 – Ibid., p. 78. 73 – Ibid., p. 37. 74 – Ibid., pp. 59–60. 75 – Severini, From Cubism to Ccassicism, p. 140. 76 – Maritain, Art and Poetry, p. 37. 77 – Ibid., pp. 32 and 38. 78 – Ibid., p. 34. 79 – Sarraute, p. 162.

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