Chapter 11 Maurice Denis’s Mission: To Reveal the Continuity between Byzantinism and Modernism
Karen Stock
If God had granted that I be born some centuries earlier, in Florence at the time of Brother Savonarola, certainly I would have been among those who defended the aesthetic of the Middle Ages with a puerile and violent ardour, against the invasion of classical paganism. I would have been one of those pious reactionaries, faithful to the hieraticism of the past, for whom the new ideas announced immediate decadence. Humble student of Angelico … among the penitent painters, among the believing masses, I would have decried the Renaissance.1 ∵
In some ways Maurice Denis (1870–1943) does seem a man born in the wrong century with his unshakable devotion to Catholicism and belief in the social vocation of the artist. Denis was a pious reactionary who was both iconophile and iconoclast. Though he did decry the Renaissance and many contemporary movements, he embraced other modern trends in the ultimate goal of keeping religious art alive to serve and enlighten. From the age of fourteen, Denis’s mis- sion was to “celebrate the miracles of Christianity through art,” and until his death in 1943, his dedication never wavered.2 Denis is best known as a member of the Nabi group, which was active in Par- is from 1888–1900, and was known appropriately as the “Nabi of the beautiful icons.” Denis, Paul Sérusier, Emile Bernard, and Jan Verkade were the most reli- giously devout members of the Nabi group and sought inspiration beyond the metropolitan milieu of Paris. The influence of the primitivism of Paul Gauguin
1 Maurice Denis, “Notes sur la peinture religieuse,” in Théories, 1890–1910: Du symbolisme et de Gauguin vers un nouvel ordre classique (Paris, 1920), p. 30. 2 Maurice Denis, Journal, v. 1. 1884–1904 (Paris, 1957), p. 59. Date of entry May 12, 1885.
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(1848–1903) on these young artists has been widely discussed; however, the in- spiration found in the “primitivism” of Byzantine art is largely overlooked. Gauguin’s influence fits neatly in the teleology of modernist evolution from one avant-garde expression to another. However, Denis’s devotion to the Byz- antine carries a retrograde connotation that seems to place him, at least super- ficially, in opposition to progress. If modernism is understood as secular and revolutionary then Denis appeared to move backward. However, Denis’s con- ception of Byzantium is a model for moving religious art into the 20th century. The cultural and artistic forces of Denis’s own time as well as the subsequent scholarly definition of modernism work against religious art being considered part of the modernist canon. Denis’s uncomfortable hybridity of being religiously devout and a propo- nent of modern art has proved problematic, since modernist scholarship has its own perspective to defend and its own narrative to legitimate. Modernism, its art and historiography, perform a kind of passive iconoclasm that does not actively destroy but rather renders religious art irrelevant to the avant-garde. Sincere religious devotion was unfashionable, and even a little embarrassing, in the mid-20th century when secular saints like Paul Cézanne were being canonized. In art historical accounts, Denis’s influence seems to end in the 1890’s; however, even after the Nabis disbanded, he remained a prominent fig- ure within the avant-garde. His copious writing, even more than his painting, shaped perceptions of art well into the 20th century. The relation between religion and modernism is “radically underdeveloped” in current scholarship and modernist art historians “tend to over secularize the avant-garde.”3 This article, however, aims to contribute to this underdevel- oped area by elaborating on Denis’s vision of reconciliation between the Byz- antine and the modern. His conception of Byzantium must be pieced together from numerous writings and this contribution brings these fragments together while also placing Denis’s ideas within the context of the French Byzantine revival that occurred at the turn of the century. This revival took many forms. Some artists luxuriated in the mystery, sensuality, and exoticism of Byzantium. Other artists rigidly mimicked Byzantine mosaics without adapting the artistic forms to the modern era. Denis chose a more nuanced path that showed both a profound respect for the Byzantine works he saw in Italy as well as a creative adaptability that restores the living religious spirit of Byzantium. Scholarship today would be enriched if art historians could adopt Denis’s ability to see in- novation in the ancient and tradition in the new and step out of their own centuries of study.
3 Debora Silverman, Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art (New York, 2000), p. 13.