Resistance politics of non-violence: Jean Paulhan’s ’Fautrier the Enraged’ (1943)

ABSTRACT

The idea of adequately ‘representing’ violence was an important point of discussion amongst Resistance artists and intellectuals at the time of the French Occupation. In particular, intellectual resistant Jean Paulhan had written on the subject in his text introducing Jean Fautrier’s retrospective exhibition of November and December 1943 in occupied Paris, ‘Fautrier the Enraged’. While the thematic of the exhibition proposed an academic and traditional subject matter, Paulhan demonstrated that Fautrier’s typically matierist and anti-naturalistic approach was instrumental in ‘suggesting reality’. Fautrier’s individual creative process, Paulhan argued, led to a transparent experience to be shared between viewer and artist not only on an aesthetic level, but also from a political point of view. At the time of ‘Fautrier the Enraged”s writing, Paulhan had indeed been concerned with issues of political engagement, as is evident from his essay ‘The Flowers of Tarbes or Terror in Literature’ (1941), which reflects upon the human condition and is concerned with reconciling poetry, politics and ethics. The author believes that such questions were being addressed in Paulhan’s text on Fautrier and by Fautrier’s art and that an aesthetic reading of Paulhan’s text is inseparable from a political interpretation of Fautrier’s art within the context of the Occupation. Indeed, the aesthetic criteria used in Paulhan’s text as framework to his argument were then loaded with political meaning. For instance, Paulhan considered virtuosity as an essential artistic characteristic to be opposed to the art of imitation based on the technical ability to observe and simulate ‘nature’ as imposed by the occupants. With excerpts from Paulhan’s essay and exchange of letters with Fautrier as well as visual analysis of some of the artworks presented in the exhibition, this paper deals with the wider issues of ‘representation’ in the historical and cultural context of the Second World War in France.

KEYWORDS:

• French Resistance
• Jean Paulhan
• Jean Fautrier
• French Occupation
• politics
• violence
• art
• matierism
• resistant writing
• Fascist aesthetics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Curtis and Butler, Jean Fautrier. 1898–1964, 150.

2. This included Fautrier’s illustrations of Douze Lettres à Fautrier and Éluard’s Dignes de Vivre (both published in 1944) which had developed from the clandestine publication Poésie et Vérité 1942, whose freedom of expression was a call for Resistance in the fight against the Occupation.

3. Moreover, according to Germaine Tillion, the head of the Communist Resistance movement F.T.P., the activity of publishing clandestine reviews was accompanied by intelligence networks gathering and transmitting information, by organizations collecting arms and preparing for military actions, and by escape networks for deserters. Tillion, À la Recherche du Vrai et du Juste, 117.

4. Parrot, Tableaux et Dessins de Jean Dubuffet.

5. Together with Robert Brasillach, André Thérive and Jacques Chardonne, Drieu La Rochelle travelled to Nuremberg in June 1941 to meet the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Goebbels. Azéma, De Munich à la Libération.

6. Paulhan had been the sub-editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française from 1920 and its chief editor from 1925. Bercot and Guyaux, Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises, 830.

7. The name of the Resistance network was given by Germaine Tillion in 1946 when she dealt with the dossier at the Liberation. Tillion, ‘Dix-Huit Juin’, 136. In her account of the formation of the Musée de l’Homme network, Tillion observes that Paulhan was part of a Resistance cell managed by Professor Fautier. This particular cell was independent, from while keeping close ties with the Musée de l’Homme network. This is the reason why Paulhan remained unknown to Albert Gaveau whose betrayal led to the arrest of the group around Boris Vildé by the German police. Tillion, ‘1940: la Périphérie d’un Réseau Parisien’, 110.

8. According to Tillion, the subtitle Bulletin of the National Committee of Public Safety was chosen by Boris Vildé as it had a greater Republican and Jacobin resonance than Résistance. Tillion, ‘Le Réseau Musée de l’Homme’, 145. Goetschel and Loyer, Histoire Culturelle et Intellectuelle de la France au XXè Siècle, 96.

9. Paulhan, Résistance: Bulletin Officiel du Comité National de Salut Public, no. 4 (1 March 1941): 10–11.

10. Bercot and Guyaux, Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises, 830–31.

11. Babelon, ‘Visite à l’Atelier Fautrier’, 5.

12. Although missing the political element, Butler’s ‘Fautrier’s First Critics: André Malraux, Jean Paulhan, and Francis Ponge’ was very useful for my analysis of Paulhan’s Fautrier L’Enragé. Carter and Butler, Jean Fautrier, 39–47. Paulhan, Les Fleurs de Tarbes ou La Terreur dans les Lettres.

13. Paulhan, letter addressed ‘À Fautrier’, in Jean Paulhan à travers ses Peintres, letter no. 82, 82–83 (5 July 1943).

14. Ibid.

15. Paulhan, letter addressed ‘À Fautrier’, in ibid., letter no. 84, 83 (Sunday). My translation.

16. Paulhan, letter addressed ‘À Fautrier’, in ibid., letter no. 81, 82 (29 June 1943). My translation.

17. Paulhan, letter addressed ‘À Fautrier’, in ibid., letter no. 84, 83 (Sunday). My translation.

18. Fautrier, letter addressed ‘À Paulhan’, in ibid., letter no. 88, 84–85 (n.d.). Translation: Butler, 200.

19. Paulhan, letter addressed ‘À Fautrier’, in ibid., letter no. 85, 84 (Saturday). My translation.

20. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 217. Translation: Butler, 179.

21. Paulhan, ‘L’Espoir et le Silence’, 721–2.

22. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 219. Translation: Butler, 183.

23. Maurice de Vlaminck, Comoedia (6 June 1942), in André Lhote, “De la Palette à l’Écritoire”, Corréa (1946): 415–419, in Lionel Richard, L’Art et la Guerre, 183. My translation.

24. Richard, L’Art et la Guerre, 159–60 and 183.

25. Campagne, ‘Les Beaux-Arts’, Les Nouveaux Temps (10 June 1942): 2, in Musetti, “La Sculpture de Jean Fautrier. 1898–1964 – Annexe: Compte-Rendu des Expositions”, unpaginated. My translation.

26. See Perret, “Facing the Occupation of France and the ‘Humanism’ of the French Art Establishment in the 1940s,” 19–31.

27. Fautrier, ‘Note Biographique Envoyée à Paulhan’, unpaginated. My translation.

28. Musetti, ‘La Sculpture de Jean Fautrier’. My translation. The first sentence locates the article at the time of Fautrier’s first exhibition at the Galerie Alfred Poyet in 1942 after a long absence from the artistic circuit.

29. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 216–17. Translation: Butler, 178.

30. Paulhan, “Commentaires “, 56–60.

31. Unpublished letter by Pierre Seghers archived in Paris, Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine, fonds Paulhan [1943]. My translation.

32. Sabile, ‘La Doctrine Esthétique du National-Socialisme et l’Organisation des Beaux-Arts sous le IIIè Reich’, 18–35 (Série Documents, no. 4).

33. Sabile, ‘La Doctrine Esthétique du National-Socialisme’, in ibid., 25.

34. Wernert, ‘L’Art dans le IIIè Reich’, in ibid., 26.

35. Hautecoeur, Littérature et Peinture en France du XVIIè au XXè Siècle, 307.

36. Mentioned in Richard, L’Art et la Guerre, 185.

37. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 219. Translation: Butler, 182.The additions in bracket in this paragraph are to be found in the translation of the revised and limited edition published by Auguste Blaizot in Paris in 1949, not in the original version of Fautrier L’Enragé in the exhibition catalogue Fautrier: Oeuvres (1915–1943), ed. Paulhan.

38. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 217.

39. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 218.

40. Ibid. Translation: Butler, 180.

41. Cabanne, Jean Fautrier, 145–55. Matthias Bärmann, ‘Biografía / Biography’, 266–73 (exh. cat.).

42. Ibid. Translation: Butler, 180.

43. Ibid.

44. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 219. Translation: Butler, 182.

45. Ibid. Translation: Butler, 182.

46. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 217. Translation: Butler, 179.

47. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 218. Translation: Butler, 180. ‘Matter’ has been translated as ‘materials’ in the text, followed by a list of examples. I believe however that there is a crucial distinction to be made between the materials used by Fautrier and the resulting matter in the painting or sculpture, which in turn resembles ‘watercolors and fresco’, ‘tempera and gouache’.

48. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 219. Translation: Butler, 183.

49. The art critic, convinced by the anti-Semite arguments of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Bagatelles pour un Massacre (1937), had evolved from a pacifist and traditional nationalist position to a Fascist standpoint with the French defeat and the globalization of the conflict. Attacking the Third République and the Front Populaire as much as the Conservatism of the traditional Right and its institutions, including the Clericalism of the Vichy regime, Rebatet had re-launched Je Suis Partout with the objective of supporting radical Collaborationism: he was convinced that only Germany could bring about the revolutionary upheaval which he judged was essential for a better European future. Bercot and Guyaux, Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises, 925–6. It is in this context that he had published in July 1942 his pamphlet Les Décombres whose great library success also scelled his name to the collaborationist circle forever. Organized on 3 October 1942 at the Rive-Gauche bookshop, the book launch for Rebatet’s Décombres was indeed attended by the whole collaborationist establishment. Azéma, De Munich à la Libération, 152.

50. Rebatet, ‘Les Arts et les Lettres’, unpaginated. My translation.

51. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 218. Translation: Butler, 180–181.

52. Paulhan, Fautrier L’Enragé, 219–220. Translation: Butler, 184.

53. ‘Classic’ is defined as the ‘representation of the arts of antiquity’ with ‘overtones of calm, balance and superiority’. Eric Fernie, Art History and its Methods, 330.

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Notes on contributors

Caroline Perret

After finishing her PhD in Social Art History on ‘Dubuffet, Fautrier and Paris under the Occupation and in its Aftermath: A Study in the Visual and Textual Ideology of Matter’ at the University of Leeds in 2008, Dr Caroline Perret started working as a Research Associate for the Group for War and Culture Studies at the University of Westminster, where she researched the impact of war on cultural production. She is particularly interested in art, illustrated books, literature, films and poetry in the historical, political, social and cultural context of the First World War and the Second World War in both Britain and France.