Jean Paulhan in front of painting

The first time I was invited by Jean Paulhan - a few years after the war of 14 - he had the good grace to first show me one of my drawings in colored pencils, a process which I was accustomed to at that time. I was very happy with it but what caught my attention was, on the same wall, next to a large watercolor by Paul Klee, two Chiricos representative of his “metaphysical period”: Ariane, The Silent Statue. There is a story attached to these two paintings as beautiful as a tale from days gone by: Jean Paulhan was warned (we were still in the middle of the war) that all the paintings left by Giorgio de Chirico in his apartment in Montparnasse were going to go to some scrap metal fair, the manager of the building wanting to clean up. These paintings, so prestigious since that time, had been moved into the corridors when the poet Ungaretti decided to put a stop to the impatient and barbaric mood of the involuntary owner of these works. The painter's compatriot then rushed to Paulhan and informed him of this dark situation: Chirico had suddenly left Paris, joined Italy and left things as they were. He hadn't heard from her again. It was then that the intervention of Jean Paulhan worked wonders: he obtained a short delay from the owner of the place, warned his young poet friends who were later to become the founders and lieges of Surrealism.

Revelation, wonder at these paintings which were one day to be a cornerstone of the future movement. The entire lot was purchased, the owner compensated for unpaid rent and the works distributed among the best hands. Should we not add that the great Italian artist had made the acquaintance of Apollinaire? - Yes, but before the bloody event; but the enchanter was at the front, unaware of the imminent sinking of the “great work” of his former portraitist.

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What was striking about him was his never-failing defense of the painting of our time. I will mention here a discussion, when we were returning together from a visit to my illustration of Coup de Dés. risky illustration that fascinated him; I showed a little melancholy because the result was not, as always, entirely in accordance with my intentions. An evil genius made me remind him of Hegel's terrible sentence on what has since been called "the death of art", he indeed revolted against this De profundis, called Hegel all the names, even that of an idiot, my word! Finally his retort was sharp: “There has never been a more beautiful era for painting than ours.” To go all the way, with the help of a sentence from Delacroix's Journal: "Tradition - Finit à David (excluded)" tradition, that is to say "art: way of doing things" common to a whole series of generations, the "modern" painter being isolated, must invent even this "way of doing things" - and this nostalgia for the past: for the artist integrated into society; there was therefore some truth in the verdict of the philosopher, thinking that art, although it can always elevate itself, has ceased to be "the supreme existence of the mind" — "the supreme mode in which truth procures an existence"; he didn't want to give up.

To complete this real disputation we agreed on a compromise: yes, there would no longer be art in the old sense of the word, yes the artist is an autodidact, yes the artist is no longer part of a continent, but of a Polynesia, a multitude of small islands of which each artist is an islander, yes there is no longer art in the old sense but there are still artists capable of inventing new forms and new trends. However, they are no longer or will no longer be essential. For more than a century, art has been “homeless,” as Rilke de Rodin so rightly said. Remembering this recent afternoon, reading Patrick Waldberg's extraordinary work on Magritte, I find in a passage confirmation of the moral situation of the 20th century artist: "Magritte must be taken completely literally when he says that his paintings are born outside of any aesthetic consideration. The support doesn't interest him. As long as the idea is sufficiently indicated, any other concern seems futile to him. Now depending on the nature of the thought called to take shape, the painting can be schematic, carelessly treated, hasty, or, quite the contrary, pushed with consummate art to extreme refinement. Better than anyone, the surrealists understood that the secret of ancient painting was lost forever. It remained to express oneself against all, by any means.

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Coming from Jean Paulhan, this fierce defense of an expression that is in any case threatened should not make us forget his – very personal – capacity for humor.
Being in the United States and for many months cut off from all individual communication with Europe, the first letter I received after the Nazi defeat was a letter from Jean Paulhan. He told me, among other things, that the reproduction of one of my drawings from The Spanish War chosen by Georges Limbour had brought down a young magazine edited by him. And this from number one, and concluded: “Even not being there you manage to cause a scandal…” Needless to note that this was rather complimenting on the part of Paulhan.
Another time, the N.R.F. having invited me to salute Nicolas Poussin's “Retrospective” at the Louvre, I wrote a simply clumsy little page because I insisted on the wisdom of Poussin, relying on a statement by our so-called “classical” painter. For example: “My nature compels me to seek and love well-ordered things.” I made him the Sage of great painting. So Paulhan: “Do you find it? - I find him a little crazy...» Admirable editing because if Poussin had taken his statement literally he would be nothing more than a Le Brun, a Lesueur, or a Simon Vouet.

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Shoot the Boss. Here I feel unable to define why Jean Paulhan gave his preference to Georges Braque among the other painters who were his friends in the few years when Cubism took hold.
Certainly Braque's painting is, like that of Nicolas Poussin, naturally French. The words of Georges Braque sometimes seem to echo those of the master of the Bergers d'Arcadie: “Love the rule, correct the emotion” echo this love of “well-ordered” things. And then we will undoubtedly find “Workshops” at the painter’s house. and birds flying to their nests a “bit of madness” — that is to say, ultimately, genius.

ANDRE MASSON (Paris-Ferrara - February 1969)