The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/Modern Art (December 1923)
MODERN ART
I HAVE a suspicion now that gendarmes were dotted more thickly about the entrance of the little Théâtre Michel the night of the modern art "evening" than the apparently innocent programme of music and recitations warranted. Certainly they were called for and were of great use just as soon as the proceedings got under way, but I wonder now how they came to be so conveniently there. Did young Mr Tzara, who was the author of several of the poems and also of the little dramatic sketch a portion of which we almost heard later on, tip them off, thinking it might add to the fun? And did the commissioner of police in detailing his men for the job instruct them to go easy? The psychology of those police gets me. There was such an uproar, you see, and seething-mob stuff, and flashing police clubs, and villains carried struggling over the heads of the audience and forcibly propelled through the door, and yet when all was over, no one went to jail, and no one had been hurt, not even a scratch. I puzzle over this the more since Mr Tzara threatens to translate the scene of his activities to New York and actually contemplates an "evening" here. Could our highly sensitized policemen stand it, do you suppose? And go away nicely at the end merely shrugging their shoulders at "these artists"? As Mrs Asquith said when the reporters became too tumultuous with their questions, "I wonder!"
The Théâtre Michel evening failed a trifle I thought from being over managed. There must be an uproar, of course, and scandalized upholders of virtue must protest shriekingly against the licence that comes to them from the stage, but in arranging for this Mr Tzara secured more shriekers than things to be shrieked at. His bravi were so impetuous and unrestrained that at the very first line of the very first poem they shrieked themselves, the police aiding, out of the theatre. Young Mr de Massot had a tiny poem each line of which said that somebody died upon the field of honour. He began, "Madame Sarah Bernhardt est morte sur le champ d'honneur," and immediately the bravi shouted "Thank God" and otherwise misbehaved themselves. By the time two or three well-known people had died sur le champ d'honneur in Mr de Massot's poem the whole house was standing upon its feet and two of the interrupters had actually mounted the stage to strike Mr de Massot, the one with a fist upon the cheek and the other with a walking stick upon the shoulders. There was only time to get in about two resounding whacks before the agents de police bore the intruders, as I said, amid much flashing of police clubs, over the heads of the audience to the exit. Then the hale reader went on in absolute silence to tell us who the others were who had died upon the field of honour, and for half an hour or three-quarters, there was a boresome, respectable silence for everything on the programme, even for Man Ray's quite terribly-insulting-to-our-intelligence moving picture. But by the time the dramatic offering of Mr Tzara was reached, the belligerent bravi had somehow crept back into the purlieus of the Théâtre Michel and were there to shout and to mount upon the stage and to finally stop the performance. They were undoubtedly the same bravi and the query is to me, how did they fix it up with those gendarmes so to re-enter the arena like that. What took place between them and the police outside? Did the police say, "Now will you promise to be good if we let you go in again?" and did they promise, or what? At any rate it is possible to envy Paris her police system. We have nothing like it here. I had to explain to Mr Tzara that we martyrize the first person who does anything in America and that our martyrdoms are not amusing and do not necessarily lead to much. I cited the Gorki incident for him—of the hectoring Gorki received because of the lady who came with him and who was not Madame Gorki. I explained that now half Greenwich Village lives with ladies who hate the term Madame with a Queen Victorian hatred and that at present Gorki could pass unmolested from Boston to Hollywood. Mr Tzara seemed to think the amount of preparation our public requires for an idea formidable. He was somewhat sad and unsmiling as he talked of the evening at the Théâtre Michel. He appeared to be conscious that there had been something of a formula about it and that an effort in a new country and under new conditions might help the cause. I said as little about our police as I conscientiously could, but nevertheless I fear I said enough to disturb him. If Mr Tzara does not have an "evening" soon in the Sheridan Square Theatre I suppose I shall be to blame.
Mr Erik Satie, whom I met at Braque's, was not too much elated by his share in the Théâtre Michel entertainment, either, although his share had been above reproach and had soothed savage and gentle alike. The Braque studio, which, alas, Braque is soon to quit, is charming. It is over the hill in Montmartre, but still so high that the view from the roof terrasse on the seventh floor would do admirably for Louise's Pa, in the opera, to curse.
I spied by chance yesterday in the Kraushaar window something that gave me great pleasure—a small, gilt-bronze statuette of a costumed female figure by Gaston Lachaise. The pleasure was the more in that I was meeting an old friend—I had seen the figure in the clay a year or two ago and had often wondered what had become of it. There is perhaps no harm in telling that Mrs Bertram Hartman posed for it though Lachaise in the end carried it beyond the portrait stage in which I first saw it. I had gone to call upon the Lachaises late one Sunday afternoon and blundered upon the pose which had evidently been undertaken impromptu. Lachaise and Mrs Hartman and young Mr Nagel, who was there, assured me that I was not interrupting and that it really was too dark for further work and that if I would but enter I should have a cup of tea. Now the Lachaise establishment is famous for the excellence of the tea it dispenses, but it is, naturally, Madame Lachaise who looks after this end. She had gone calling somewhere and Lachaise explained that his own technique in tea-making was somewhat wobbly, but, with a look of desperate resolve, he would do his best. He did do his best and his best was not bad and Madame Lachaise, who came in just as our festivities got under way, expressed no special disapproval though insisting with perhaps a shade of firmness that all present should come in again the following Sunday for another cup of tea. The second Sunday's tea was, of course, superb, but—so perverse is human nature—both teas registered with equal firmness upon my brain and I shall never see the charming and poetic little bronze without thinking of two pleasant Sunday afternoons.
Archipenko, the extraordinary Russian sculptor, has come to town, is already ensconced in a studio, and intends to seek pupils. Of this, undoubtedly, there will be more anon.