To himself, and S. Sebastian

In their later periods (after 1900) both Odilon Redon and Claude Deubussy turned to mystical and esoteric themes in their work to express their sentiments about art. That they turned to these mystical themes during their respective late periods shows that they were not only trying to communicate the disenchantment of being misunderstood, but the realization that the true innovative artist became a martyr for his own aesthetic. Odilon Redon’s friend and art critic André Mellerio noted this change in the introduction to the catalogue of an 1894 exhibition of Redon’s work:

The artist isolates the essential concept of the vices, the virtues, the sufferings that surround him. Then, abruptly, he rises above the real world. which presses and oppresses us from all sides, beyond banal and narrow daily contingencies. In ecstatic faces burst out gleams of a divine dream– faces of martyrs for whom the burning stake turns into roses.(1)

During the years from 1909 through 1913, the Italian playwright Gabriele D’Anunzio was in Paris working on his latest production, Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (henceforth Le Martyre), a play in the symbolist æsthetic. Little has been said about this play in Paris, and the art historian Philippe Jullian considers it to be a work of little artistic merit and too late in its conception for it to have been appreciated fully by the public, since its performance took place in 1911, the tail end of the symbolist vogue. To chose the martyrdom as a subject was already purely symbolic, as many Romantic artists saw themselves as martyrs for their are, but the subject was further charged by being the martyrdom of S. Sebastian, historically one of the most erotic of Christian icons. The subject matter was not intended to be didactic, but to illumen aspects of artistic creation and human desire. Here truly the spirit of the mystical middle ages mingles with the sexual cult of Adonis. St. Sebastian is paralleled in his poem Adonis in which he writes: “Thus died the Adolescent, in a great mystery of Pain and Beauty as imagined by my Dream and Art.”(2)

(Ida Rubinstein as S. Sebastian; 2 sketches by Leon Baskt for D’Annunzio’s passion play)

The play was to be written by this Italian in mediæval French, to further heighten the connection with past mystic plays. And, perhaps the most scandalous and shocking aspect of the work was the choice for the role of the saint: it was to be created by a female, Ida Rubinstein. This blatant effort to heighten the androgyny always attributed to the saint caused a great stir in Paris, with the archbishop condemning the play on the basis of heresy. Ida Rubinstein with her long, thin figure and grace was seen as the perfect choice in the eyes of the poet to fully give the effect of androgyny he wanted to be attached to his saint. He was clearly carrying on a tradition that had been established in iconographic portrayals of the saint ever since the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. D’Annunzio contacted Debussy, asking if he would write incidental music for his mystery play, probably as a result of the growing appreciation of the musician due to the success in previous years of his music drama Pelleas and Melisande. To this Debussy answered:

Mon cher Maître                      Hotel Krantz Vienna                        30 November 1910

Your letter has been forwarded to me here where I am staying for some time and for my sins. Forgive me for not writing at once to say how happy I am to have received it. How could I not love your poetry? The very thought of working with you gives me a kind of advanced fever.
I shall be back in Paris around 20 December. I’m sure I have no need to say how pleased I shall be to see you.

Yours most sincerely
C.D. (3)

The collaboration that resulted was a magical one because of the way in which the text and music complemented each other to form a work in which was presented the transcendence of earthly pain, and achievement of inner peace through an inescapable intellectual martyrdom. This resounded heavily with the artists of the time, and Odilon Redon seems to be among them. Debussy’s aesthetic was very in tune with the artistic and psychological requirements of the representation of the life of a martyr; during his work on Pelleas he achieved a style of understated melodic material that relied on harmonic colour, using harmonies to give birth to a melody rather than merely as support. At this time he was engrossed in the study and revision of the writings of the late baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau, in whose treatise of harmony he urged that true melody arose from harmony. This concern with the colourist harmonies was one that was shared by Odilon Redon, who around this period had turned to the use of colour to create visual harmonies on the canvas.Though still unclear whether Redon attended a production of this play or not, it is likely that he did given his appreciation for Debussy’s music as well as the fact that at the time, his output reflects a heavy leaning toward pictorial representations of Saint Sebastian that were probably inspired by D’Annunzio’s play and Debussy’s music. This of course is not be the first time that Odilon Redon draws inspiration from musical sources, since he was an ardent music enthusiast, which can bee seen in many of the entries to his journal A Soi-meme:

Music is a nocturnal art, a dreamlike art. It reigns in winter at the hour when our soul is confined. Music shapes our soul in youth and later we stay faithful to our first emotions; music gives them a new life, a sort of resurrection.

The vast amount of musical language employed, not only by Redon, but his contemporaries is a testament to this idea. His works depicting the legend of Parsifal also serve as an example of Redon utilizing the elements found in music-drama as a springboard for creation, clearly drawing from Wagnerian influences which were so dear to the symbolist generation. Given this strong bond between music and pictorial art, it is not unusual that Redon was inspired by the collaboration between Gabriele D’Annunzio and Claude Debussy in Le Martyre, even if no stress is ever made in the literature concerning Redon.

It was in the years surrounding the production to Le Martyre, from 1909 to 1913, and only around those years, that portrayals of the Saint appear Redon’s oeuvre. This strange, and not discussed, parallel of events is the germ for the speculation that there was a mutual inspiration between this group of artists that, as seen above, admired each other’s works. Let us now turn to a detailed discussions of the works in question. The first work depicting this subject that is documented in the artist’s catalogue is a watercolour from 1910. In this work, we find the saint tied to an offshoot of a tree that is of a blue hue; his figure is one of repose, his eyes closed, his head tilted. It is a composition of graceful beauty with the saints body posed in an organic matter that seems to be almost reclining against the trunk as if languishing upon nature’s divan. Saint Sebastian’s figure, pure and lean, emerges from the gnarled rough bark the tree turned cradle. The arrows and the violence they represent disappear into the composition giving way to the sublimity of the act of submission and sacrifice for the ideal.

The same year (1910) he produced a work dealing, once again, with the subject of Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom.

For this work he chose to use pastels, a medium which he employed often after his turn to colour. This work contains a lot more colour than the earlier piece. In comparing these two pieces it is possible that the watercolour might have been created as a study for the pastel work because of the similarities in composition and the use of colours. In any case, this work in pastel adheres closer to more realistic hues than the watercolour; the background gives the impression of a mountainous landscape draped in a beautiful blue sky that is highlighted by golden tints so as to suggest the twilight of the day, in an attempt to capture the same twilight of the Saint’s life. The plane is once again divided vertically by the tree to which is fettered the the lean body of Sebastian, pushed back against the trees by the impact of the arrows; he stands on a bed of small red blossoms which stand in sympathetic harmony to the spilled blood of the one who is steadfast in his ideals.

Another watercolour of the same subject appeared in 1912, this time the composition is extremely unusual and is more an expression of a personal fancy or sentiment rather than a strict narrative of the martyrdom.

In this particular depiction the Saint is not in any was fettered to a tree, but rather within a womb-like outline, which points to a Freudian desire for safety and protection; within this womb we find, once again, a backdrop of flowers. The martyr is not, however, free from his danger since within this structure the arrows are still present, presenting the dichotomy that the martyr (or the artist) can find little refuge from his fate, even within the uterine enclosure. Pictorially this is a work that is one that is greatly lacking in perspective; the arrows (and here Redon uses more arrows than in any other depiction) serve mainly to highlight the flatness of the pictorial plane because they approach the Saint from all directions and surround him in a most menacing way. Once again, the martyr appears with closed eyes, which remove it from the plane of reality into the real of escape or the false paradise.

There are three other works from this period in which Redon portrays S. Sebastian, always alone, in a firmament of flowers or blue.

Is there a connection with the D’Anunzio-Debussy play? Did he view himself as that artist/martyr? His life was one of struggle, searching his inner world for the images that would give life to his deepest sentiments and tribulations, exposed like the martyr to the world, naked; fettered to his life only to accept willingly (but not without pain) the arrows of scorn and misunderstanding by those who thought him different. He writes:

How sweet it would be to age if the stream of years dried up in us the source of pain! But no. On the slope on which we are descending, we have a too faithful companion: the heart does not leave us.

Questions remain to be answered, perhaps they are hidden neath a scattered gold foliage.

(To be continued, perhaps)

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(1) Dorra, Henri. Symbolist Art Theories. Berkley: University of California Press. 1995. p. 58.

(2)quoted in: Jullian, Phillippe. D’Annunzio. New York: Viking Press Inc. 1971.

(3) translation from the original French in: Nichols, Roger. Debussy Letters. London: Farber and Farber. 1987. p. 227.

The Musical Other

The World Exposition of 1889 held in Paris was a spectacle in every sense of the word, there was a great deal of attention paid to capturing, and reproducing for the spectators, a scene that was a synthesis of the “essential” elements of the country or region in question. The Javanese pavilion, for example, became a world unto itself, being fenced in with a large entrance that was flanked by two large turrets in the related architectural style. Within, the spectator escaped the real world of Parisian life with its new machines, industrial developments (note that the Eiffel Tower was erected for this Exposition), noisy crowded streets, and stepped into a veritable Arcadian paradise where time seemed to be still in a moment of human history when humans were in communion with nature and the higher unexplainable forces therein. This was a very desirable setting for a society that was both excited but highly disturbed with the quickening pace of human technological development:

Like any other pastoral construct, the Javanese village depended on the dual opposition between city and country, artifact and nature, presenting a glimpse into an exotic Arcadia while containing the Other within the primordial natural space.(1)

Upon entering the village the spectators were guided to the performance space by a group of musicians carrying drums and bamboo instruments, thus giving the first encounter with the exotic Other, and helping to establish a transition from the outside world to the paradise within. This sort of procession was the visitor’s first encounter with music; one can imagine that to the psyche of the nineteenth century visitor this caused great curiosity and must have seemed to them as if they had literally stepped into another country and were thus engaged in a sort of safari expedition. Once established comfortably in their tables at the performance pavilion within the village, the audience would receive drinks and other such commodities, and the performance of music and dance begun. The audience was then enveloped in a world of different sights, sounds, textures, and scents that contributed to a complete sensory immersion into this other realm. To the artists among the lot, this sort of synesthetic experience would have recalled the Baudelairian principle of correspondances extolled in his famous poem of the same name.

(above: Four of the Javanese Dancers – Photograph from 1889;
Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris)

For composers such as Debussy this encounter with the musical Other served to expand the horizon of his musical language. It is reported by contemporary accounts that Debussy would spend endless hours in the Javanese (and Vietnamese) pavilion listening attentively to the wandering sonorities of the ensemble.

In a letter to the poet and writer Pierre Louÿs, Debussy states:

To Pierre Louÿs 22 January 1895

But my dear good fellow! Remember the music of Java which contained every nuance, even the ones we no longer have names for. There tonic and dominant had become empty shadows of use only to stupid children.

Later, in his 1913 article “Taste” he would also refer to the music of Java thus:

There were, and still are, despite the evils of civilization, some delightful native peoples for whom music is as natural as breathing. Their conservatoire is the eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind among the leaves and the thousand sounds of nature which they understand without consulting any arbitrary treatise. Their traditions reside in old songs, combined with dances, built up through the centuries. Yet Javanese music is based on a type of counterpoint by comparison with which that of Palestrina is child’s play. And if we listen without European prejudice to the charm of their percussion we must confess that our percussion is like primitive noises at a country fair. (2)

In all the previous quotes one can grasp the impact this music had on Debussy, who at this time was still at quite a formative period of his career. What Debussy found in these musics was exactly what he was trying to achieve in his own æsthetic, which went strictly against that of the teachings of the Conservatoire where he had studied. In the music of the Other, he found validation for his æsthetic and received a great deal of new harmonic and melodic material. It is important to note that Debussy was not exactly concerned with documenting exactly the music he heard, but rather to gain from it and internalize its essential aspects into a style all his own. This harken to Théophile Gauthier’s Theory of Transposition where one takes an art form and tries to express it with another. In the nineteenth century, especially in this environment of discovering new cultures, appropriation was a concept that was a common thread among artists of the time; creativity lies not in what you appropriate but how you take the elements and synthesize them into your own style, which is what Debussy was able to achieve.

One of the first pieces that can be chronologically connected to the experience of hearing the gamelan is his Fantaisie pour Piano et Orchestre which was composed around 1890: Listen to it!

Peace.

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(1) Fauser, Annegret. Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. New York: University
of Rochester Press. 2005. pp. 166-7

(2) Quoted in: Lockspeiser, Edward. Debussy: His Life and Mind. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1962.

Belgian Hothouse Waffles

(above: The outcast, 1898. Minne)

George [Baron] Minne was born in Ghent in 1866, and though details of Minne early life and family are sketchy, as the title in his name indicates, he was probably from a well-off family; we do know that he attended the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe, as did Maeterlinck, and studied illustration and sculpture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts (Ghent) from 1879 to 1886 where he studied with Jean Delvin. In 1884 Minne produced the sculpture Human Suffering, which is considered his first major work; by the title of the work one can deduce the brooding and despairing qualities of Minne works to follow, which are characterized by “expression of dejection, desperation, resignation, loss, self-protection, self-absorption, introversion, and anxiety.”(1)
The works of Minne are plagued by a deep-seated psychoses, in which he presents most of his figures in positions of vulnerability and introversion. His figures seem to close in on themselves and embrace their own bodies as to protect themselves from the menacing outside world: this self-absorption is characteristic of the Symbolist aesthetic. Art historian Lynne Pudles classifies Minne works into three interrelated types of imagery:

The first consists of isolated figures, absorbed in contemplation, inner vision, melancholy, or pain. [...] The Second class consists of single figures clutching a second figure–such as a dead child, a deer, or a wayward son– whose autonomy is minimized, so that it appears only as a desperately clutched object, a possession, or an intimate extension of the first figure. A third class suggests the replication of the self: a single figure is accompanied by a duplicate or multiple image of itself. As in the second class, here there is little or no interaction among the figures.(2)

Minne met Maeterlinck in 1886, at the age of twenty, the same year as the latter’s life-altering visit to Paris. The two became rather close friends, most likely because they shared the same melancholy, absorbed, and mystical disposition which can be seen in their works. This would indeed be a fruitful friendship because in the years following their acquaintance the two collaborated frequently. In the years 1886 to 1889 Maeterlinck read several of his early works to George Minne and asked him to provide illustrations for their publication. Among these are The Princess Meleine, his first drama which was received great praise by the critics (especially Octave Mirbeau), and his first published collection of poetry, Serres Chaudes.

__________________________

(1) Pudles, Lynne. “The Symbolist Work of George Minne.” Art Journal. College Art Assoc. Summer, 1985.

p. 120

(2)Ibid. p. 121