Les Artistes Felix Pyat Nouveau Tableau de Paris 1834 The history of words is like the history of men. Words, if you’ll forgive the analogy, are a great people who live in a country known as Dictionary, which extends from the mountain A all the way to the frontier of Z, and is bordered on all sides by the empire of numbers. Forgive me once again, but the comparison forces me to continue: words are born, and they live and die, in the social world. They respect public order and they have their freedom, their rights and their duties. Some are great French dignitaries and others are working class. Some make a noisy entrance into the world and others edge their way in without even a birth certificate, lowly and ashamed, the orphans of vocabulary. The lords are nouns, and what is an adjective but a valet, a serf, the next thing to a participle, a slave who backs up his master, a zero who has no value unless he’s beside a number, a marshal of the Empire following behind Napoleon, living forever as a poodle, working under a shadow, a humble servant, a vassal. But the noun, the aristocrat of words, that noble of grammar gives orders and is obeyed. He sends runners out ahead and has followers behind. He sends the submissive pronoun out to march ahead, while the faithful verb remains behind, and then the stupid adverb, the deaf and dumb part of the sentence, always ready, crossing its arms and waiting. There are often revolutions in language, upheavals, violent shocks that redefine its existence, the high brought low and the low raised on high. We have seen common adjectives elevated proudly to the condition of nouns, and we have seen nouns sink first to the middle level of humiliation that is the adjective, then sink lower still to the brutal condition of adverbs – a final degradation from which no word can recover. The fate of words is in the hands of the one who holds all destiny! But words are always like men. Once they have risen up, they become tyrants, usurpers, without shame or restraint, imposing themselves everywhere, taking on the airs of the dictator whose power is absolute, until the tide that carried them up high takes them back down to the lowest depths of the Pyat 1 student textbook. The despot of today is the word artist. No legitimate king has ever had so many subjects, and no courtesan has ever had so many Alcibiades.1 It is the Venus of the dictionary, an expression that is open to the public, a prostitute who works the streets, who annoys passers-by, and who can be had on the sidewalk by absolutely anyone. Everyone waves its banal flag; it has throngs of followers. Hairdressers, vaudeville performers, glaziers, theater impresarios, pedicurists, café waiters, politicians, shoe polishers, fashion salespeople, the Minister of Fine Arts, countermark dealers, learned dogs, academics, trained elephants, flea circus workers, Franconi’s animals and men2 – everyone wants to be an artist. There are many others: The governor of Algiers, artist. Vidocq, artist. The inventor of the clysopome, artist. Those who spoiled the Tuileries, artists. All those who have touched the hand of Victor Hugo, artists. M. Soult, for his collection of Spanish paintings, artist. M. Edmund Blanc, with a law degree and a medal of honor, artist. If we were to name all those claiming this fashionable adjective, we would never finish the list. Art is almost a cult, a new religion whose arrival was well timed just as god and kings departed. Even money, the real power of our time, has to recognize a rival force. Bankers want to be artists. There isn’t a single rich man, be he deaf, blind and stupid, who does not own a piano, an art collection and a library. M. Séguin, so well known from his connection to Ouvrard3 and from his twenty thousand francs to spend each day, had three hundred and sixty five violins made a year. At the pace this trend is moving in France, I do not despair of seeing us all become artists. In the past, artists were few; today they are many, at least in name. Some have incomes of their own, booksellers that they pay, journalists that they entertain lavishly. This is Byronic literature, the school of fine carriages. Others have debts, holes in the elbows of their clothes, 1Alcibiades was known for sexual prowess. 2 Antonio Franconi was founder of a famous Paris circus. 3 A reference to extremely wealthy financiers of the time. Pyat 2 neglected hands. This is the genre of the lycanthrope.4 The difference between them is only in the form. At one time, it was necessary to be a martyr in order to earn the title of artist. It was necessary to sacrifice body and soul in order to achieve this beautiful name; it was necessary to dare to crucify a man like the painter who needed to suffer agony; to die in prison like Tasso or of hunger like Camoëns. Or like Callot to forget one’s country, fortune, and noble station to go and study in Italy. Or like Vernet, to be tied to a mast in order to paint a realistic storm at sea. But then there was no Minister of Fine Arts, no encouragement for the fine arts, no academy of fine arts. Instead the genie was free and accepted no orders for inspirations twenty feet long and ten across. Today the word is everywhere. One is an artist the way one was a landlord; it’s an occupation ascribed to those who have none. It’s often said that artists in earlier times had beliefs, that Raphael, for example was inspired by his faith – no doubt while using his mistress as a model for the Virgin Mary! But art itself is a belief and the true artist is a priest of this eternal religion which differs from all others because it creates rather than destroying. God was the first artist, for he created the world – and what a work of art it is! What harmony, what scale in this great drama in which the sun and the earth and the ocean take the lead roles! And surrounding these main characters, such extras and walk-on cameos and supporting players! Where can a more beautiful set be found? Or an orchestra more resounding than the thunder? The curtain rises. The sun rivals the ocean for possession of the earth, a bride crowned with flowers. Which is it to be? The moon, a confidant to the sun, serves him when he is away whenever she can, but in vain. The first act ends with torrential rain and the ocean triumphs. But a rainbow appears, sent out by the sun as a promise to his inundated beloved. In the second act, the ocean is in full retreat before the fires of his enemy and leaves the stage. The plot has remained there ever since, despite the treachery of men who help the defeated ocean with all their might, who cut and split and dig and channel the poor earth in every direction in the sincere desire to bring low tide all the way up to the foot of Montmartre. We will see how the last act unfolds. 4 Or werewolf. A term used by Petrus Borel, a member of the pre-Murger bohemian group. Pyat 3 God created all this and, if we believe Genesis, he created it in six days. On the seventh, being an artist, he became a flaneur and to this day he is still a flaneur. In this, he created the artist in his image. But if God is an artist, the artist is also God since art is life, energy, creation. God is the patron saint of artists just as St. Eligius is for goldsmiths or St. George for soldiers. With such a leader, this is a powerful group! And what does it take to march under such a banner! The bar is set high for those who join such a movement. The term ‘artist’ is not reserved only for painters, for poets, for sculptors, for musicians, for architects, for actors, for dancers; it belongs to all those whose spirits have been creative. Broussais, the physician who developed such admirable ideas about physiology, was he not more of an artist than the architect who recreates Greek columns in France and builds an Athenian temple to house the Stock Exchange in the streets of Paris? Thus, it makes no difference whether you are a king or a carpenter, a lawyer or a doctor as long as you have a spark of the divine power, and as long as you possess an intelligence that discovers and is fertile. On the other hand, you may be a successful painter, an architect to the king, the poet laureate, or the editor of a feuilleton, but if you are an imitator, if you create nothing, you are not an artist. You can stop shaving, you can let your hair grow long, you can die of hunger, you can wear clothes no one else would wear, you can have ink on your face and paint on your fingers – my God, all the carelessness and long hair in the world won’t make any difference. You’ll be no more of an artist than the National Guard who takes care of his leather straps and belts and is a slave to his equipment. No, all these young people who wear old-fashioned hoods, become beggars, talk about the Middle Ages5, and swear by the towers of Notre Dame, who give up their individuality and trust all their future glory to imitation, to copying, to bringing up the rear, to holding the master’s coattails, all these young people are not artists.