Félix Feneon Anarchist and Aesthete
Fénéon, Les Temps Nouveaux, Musée de L’Orangerie
Have you ever heard of Felix Feneon ? (Figure 1) I sort of thought I had when someone asked me to accompany them to an exhibition at the Musee Quai Branly last September. If you don’t know the museum, I urge you to visit it. I like its exterior vegetation wall and peaceful, lovely garden, I like how the architect,France’s own superstar, Jean Nouvel, considered the museum’s collection and purpose, when he designed it. And I like the exhibitions that are held here which range from playful to intellectually engaging. As I say, I thought I had heard of Feneon, but turns out, I was thinking of Fenelon, as one does, the 17th century French archbishop, theologian, poet and writer. But I digress. Here we are talking about Felix Feneon, the late 19th/early 20th century anarchist, art critic, editor, gallery director and art collector.
Figure 1. Felix Feneon, Undated Photograph
The exhibition I saw in September was the first of two in Paris in Feneon’s honor. It was at the Quai Branly because Feneon was an early collector of African, North American and Oceanic art and objects. And unlike others, then and now, and this says heaps about Feneon, he didn’t call his collection ‘primitive art’ but rather ‘objects from distant places.’ Nothing demeaning or derogative, just open and receptive. (Figure 2) The guy was woke.
Figure 2. Feneon at Quai Branly
This current exhibition focuses on Feneon’s collection of avant-garde art paintings he acquired from artists whose works he championed, like the Neo-Impressionists, (Figure 3) a word he coined and the Italian Futurists. (Figure 4) The Orangerie was selected for this show because, according to the curators, the painting collection of Paul Guillaume, an early 20th century art dealer is permanently here. Guillaume, like Feneon, was a man of modest origins, Feneon’s father was a traveling salesman, Guillaume’s father was a tax collector. And both men collected African art and both men promoted and collected avant-garde art.
Figure 3. Paul Signac, Un dimanche, 1888-90
Figure 4. Giacomo Balla, StreetLight, c. 1910-11
Do you know the Musee de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens, next to the Place de la Concorde? It is a great museum because when you go, especially for a temporary exhibition, you are in for a triple treat - the temporary exhibition you have come to see, the Guilliame collection we have just been discussing and 8 large mural paintings by Monet, his Waterlilies. Simply put, you cannot go wrong with a visit to this museum. Feneon’s first job was in the Ministry of War, where he worked from the age of 20 to 33 (1881-1894), and eventually attained the rank of chief clerk. He needed the money, he took the job. But while he was at the Ministry, he was involved in anarchist activities and was the editor of, for example, Rimbaud. He probably could have continued juggling his life this way, but he got fired when he was arrested, tried and finally acquitted (after some months in prison) on suspicion of participating in an anarchist bombing of a restaurant popular with politicians. After the trial, Fénéon got a job at an avant-garde literary and art magazine La Revue Blanche. You may not have heard of that magazine, but if you get to the Grand Palais to see the Toulouse Lautrec show, you will see T-L’s delightful poster for La Revue Blanche. (Figure 5) After that magazine folded in 1903, Feneon worked briefly for another journal, Le Matins for which he composed three line ‘fillers’. Thank goodness one of his mistresses saved those little gems, which one writer calls haikus, another calls proto-tweets. Here are a few examples from Novels In Three Lines (translated by Luc Sante, 2007) : “There is no longer a God even for drunkards. Kersilie, of St.-Germain, who had mistaken the window for the door, is dead.” “A dishwasher from Nancy, Vital Frérotte, who had just come back from Lourdes cured forever of tuberculosis, died Sunday by mistake,” “In Oyonnax, Mlle. Cottet, 18, threw acid in the face of M. Besnard, 25. Love, obviously.”
Figure 5. Toulouse Lautrec, poster for La Revue Blanche, 1895
Feneon was passionate about the new art of his time. He befriended the artist Georges Seurat early in that artist’s career -which is actually the only time he could have befriended him since Seurat died suddenly one Sunday morning barely 31 years old. Have you seen the Sondheim musical ‘Sunday in the Park with George’? It brings to life Seurat’s masterpiece, ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.’ Of which you will see a study in this exhibition. (Figure 6)
Figure 10. George Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres, 1884
I loved it, my son, 16 when we saw it, tolerated it. In fact, I could only convince him to go because we had been binge watching the classic Mathew Broderick film, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ during which Ferris and his friends visited the Art Institute of Chicago. If you are looking for reasons to go to Chicago and Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture and Rick Baylis’s Mexican restaurants aren’t enough of an enticement, maybe the opportunity to see this fantastic painting will convince you. There are several other Seurat paintings at the Orangerie which Feneon had in his collection, among them three studies entitled, ‘Model, Front View’ (Figures 7, 8. ) and ‘Bathers of Asnieres’ (Figure 9) and ‘Wave’. (Figure 10)
Figures 7. George Seurat, Model facing front, 1859
Figures 8. George Seurat, Model facing front, 1859
Figure 9. George Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres, 1884
Figure 10. George Seurat, Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp, 1885
Quite a few of the artists Feneon championed painted his portrait, let’s look at a few. But let’s start with a photograph, the mug shot taken by an unknown police photographer when Feneon was arrested in 1894 for suspected anarchist activities. (Figure 11) Yes, he is a very severe looking guy with his square jaw and neatly trimmed goatee. A portrait of Feneon by Felix Vallotton from 1896 (Figure 12) is equally severe. He sits at his desk at La Revue Blanche, bent over at a 90 degree angle, the desk piled high with manuscripts on which he is busily at work. In another portrait of Feneon this one by Edouard Vuillard, (Figure 13) the writer is in the same pose, but as usual with Vuillard, the room is as busy as the writer, a wall of bookcases brimming with books, crammed with paintings above and a hallway beyond.
Figure 11. Felix Feneon. Polic Mugshot, 1894
Figure 12. Felix Valloton, portrait of Felix Feneon at La Revue Blanche, 1898
Figure 13. Edouard Vuillard , portrait of Felix Feneon at La Revue Blanche, 1901
Have you heard the term Dandy ? According to the Fashion Encyclopedia, dandy refers to a man who pays great attention to fashion and who dresses with a careful stylishness. There is a room in the Toulouse Lautrec exhibition at the Grand Palais devoted to dandies. Each of TL’s dandies wears or carries a top hat and often a cane. (Figure 14) The style began in England, and I was surprised to see these French men were called dandies. If the exhibition hadn’t told me they were dandies, I would have called these elegant men flaneurs, men who walk around with no set destination, free to go where they wish, when they wish. Feneon is depicted as a dandy in a portrait by Maximilien Luce of 1901, (Figure 15) Feneon is seated, with his coat over his shoulders, his cane resting on his lap. Behind him three framed Japanese prints, more proof, if any is needed, of Feneon’s taste for all kinds of art, including Japanese prints which were so important for the Impressionists.
Figure 14. Toulouse Lautrec, M. Louis Pascal, 1891
Figure 15. Maximilien Luce, portrait of Felix Feneon, 1901
One final portrait of Feneon, the fabulous poster for this exhibition by the Neo-Impressionist, Paul Signac, entitled, wait for it, it is a mouthful - ‘Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890,’. (Figure 16) To thank Feneon for writing a biography of him in, Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui, Signac decided to paint a portrait of the critic: ‘It will not be an ordinary portrait but a carefully planned composition meticulously constructed in terms of lines and colors… A decorative version of Félix, stepping forward with a hat or flower in hand’. Signac depicts Fénéon in left profile. The lines of the subject’s nose, elbow, and cane descend in a zigzag pattern, like the rhythmic “beats and angles” of the title, and the flower he holds echoes the upturned curl of his goatee. The background patterns were inspired by a Japanese wood block print, possibly a design for a kimono, which Signac kept in his studio. The abstract patterns are also probably an allusion to the aesthetic theory of Charles Henry, the Frenchman whose books on color theory and the “algebra” of visual rhythm Signac had recently illustrated. Neo-Impressionism The Science of Color from Seurat to Metzinger, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78734.
Figure 16. Paul Signac, Portrait of Félix Feneon, 1890
If you are worried that Feneon was an ascetic aesthete, you can relax, it seems not to have been the case. According to his biographer, Joan Halperin, he had married to oblige his mother; (and) kept a devoted lifetime mistress with whom he lunched every day; (he) had affairs with laundresses, painters, actresses and lesbians to whom he wrote tender and erotic letters when they were away. All of them, according to Ms. Halperin, remembered him fondly after his death.” (Felix Feneon: Aesthete and Anarchist in Fin-de-Siecle Paris, Joan U. Halperin. Yale U Press. 1988). That’s nice, I wonder how many of them were still around when he died. After he retired at 63, he lived for another 20 years, refusing requests to write a memoir or a collection of his writings. He told a publisher who approached the topic that, ’I aspire only to silence.’ An American angle? Sure. Dressed in top hat and cape, skinny and with his pointed beard, Feneon’s resemblance to Uncle Sam was frequently remarked upon. While the Feneon exhibition at the Musee Quai Branly is over, some examples of his African and Oceanic art are on view at the Musee de l’Orangerie. If you find yourself in New York next year and want to see both parts of the Feneon exhibition AND see how the Museum of Modern Art looks now (after having been closed all last summer), you can do so from March 22 through July 25, 2020. Finally, if you are in Paris and hankering after an immersion into African and Oceanic art, you can go to the Musee Quai Branly through June 2020 to see the Helena Rubinstein collection. Interestingly enough, she was recently the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Art & History in Paris, a great museum, if you haven’t been, on her collection of European avant-garde art. So, like Feneon, Rubinstein, (a founder of an entire cosmetic empire), collected African art and amassed a collection of avant-garde art.