“SNOBISME” IN PARIS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 34

“SNOBISME” IN PARIS

ARTISTS FEAR BEING OUT OF

DATE SHAM AND HYPOCRACY The adulation of social rank, and ! the desire to appear to belong to a ! higher class than one’s own, were no doubt meanings which st£U attached : to the word “snob” when the French borrowed it from the English; but as these things not only do not exist in France, but can hardly be conceived, and as Paris is an intellectual and artistic community, the kind of pretentiousness to which the word was j soon understood to apply became at- j tached to art and literature. The snob is the ignorant who pre- j tends to appreciate and understand! the new movements, when he has never even known anything about the old ones. His terror is to be out of date, not to be “a la page,” and he j seeks critical safety in an excessive j enthusiasm over every new talent, i with a determination not to be left j behind in art, which is something like j the religious enthusiasm of those who, a few years ago, attached themselves to the Clapton Messiah for fear they should be too late for the second com- j ing of the real One, writes the Paris j correspondent of the “Observer.” : For this kind of “snobisme” Paris has become an international forcing- 1 ground. New poets and new painters ; are constatnly being discovered, arising suddenly, fully armed at nineteen, like Athene from the head of Zeus, and pushed forward by their admirers 1 in a manner which can only be de- : scribed at artistic inflation. The expression can be taken directly I in its financial as well as in its figuratively artistic sense, for speculation has entered very definitely into the ! matter. All sorts of people have discovered that money can be made by buying pictures, and as,' in order to pretend to admire them, it is not even necessary to learn to read —which is almost indispensable to any kind of literary appreciation—picture booming opens a splendid field for the cunning and the ignorant. TJnder the title of “La Farce de i’Art Vivant,” Camille Mauclair, a critic who has done his share in the discovery and defence of real talent, has just published a hook in which, with judgment instead of innocence, he acts the part of the veracious child in | “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” One | may not agree with all his denunciations. One may think that Derain has I painted accomplished and powerful ! things, Vlaminck beautiful things, and j Marie Laurencin charming things, but ; one can only admire the healthy cour- ! age with which he pricks a great many j empty bubbles, and exposes the manoeuvres of a picture market in which dealers are not only commercial, but often corrupt. It is time that some of this “snobisme” should be shown up in other departments of the artistic life of Paris than the buying and selling and praising of pictures. The careless Bohemianism of artists, who could amuse themselves, but could also work, once created a real world of imaginative activity in certain cafes of MontmaYte, and even in the beginning of Montparnasse. Now it is sufficient to go to the Rotonde or the Dome on a Saturday night to see how false the whole thing has become. These two cafes overflow with a crowd of broad-rimmed hats and flowing ties, worn by painters who never touch a brush, and a crowd of tourists looking on, as if the show was one of wild beasts. The famous annual Bal des Quat’z’ Arts has become a festivity even more false. It has just been given, and in the nudity of male and female participants was as nearly complete as ever—the period of ancient Cretan art, chosen for the costumes, indeed lent itself to such developments. However, I wonder how many people at the ball had that familiarity with nudity in the studio which makes it inoffensive and how many had come with the vague desire to be shocked, without ever having been into a studio at all. I am sure that the latter—including, of course, those that were no longer capable of being shocked —were the large majority. There is another form of “snobisme” which has now reached such a pitch in Paris that one cannot but think it is on the verge of collapse. That is the enthusiasm for negroes, negro music, and what is called negro art. The “bal negre” in the Rue Blomet was a dance the colour of whose patrons was sufficiently unusual to attract the whole of fashionable Paris into its little back street a couple of seasons ago. Now there is another “bal negre” in the Boulevard Blanqui, which may have the same social success, as the enthusiasm for everything negro has been revived by the appearance of the revue “Blackbirds” at the Moulin Rouge, with its admirably drilled coloured company. The prevailing "snobisme” of the novelists and dramatists appears to be misogyny—the misogyny of young men. A generation ago there were indeed novelists who did not fail to j reveal the duplicity of women, but it was always with a certain indulgence toward them. Even Maupassant always had a certain sympathy for the “eternal feminine.” Today the young writer for the printed page, or for the theatre, adopts an attitude toward women which is either one of cynical contempt, as in recent plays of j Jacques Natanson and Marcel Pagnol, [ or fierce attack —-or is it defence ?—as in that of Andre Paul Antique or the j novels of Julien Green. One of the dangers of artistic I “snobisme” is the natural fear of the j spectator who does not really see any-1 thing in what he is told to admire that | he may find himself in the ranks of j the "pompiers” or the “passeistes.” j Clement Vautel. who wrote a book j called “Je suis un affreux bourgeois,” j and is the author of novels and plays J which frankly appeal to a popular I audience, does not hesitate boldly to j rally the “anti-snobs” to his banner; j and* in doing so he doubtless drives to j the banner of the “snobs” many who in any case do not want to confess ] themselves so retrograde, and would like to he in the main body, if not at the very front of the movement. After all, there are few people with the sincerity of a George 111., who admitted that he uld see nothing in Shakespeare or even with the courage merely to say “I do not understand.”