Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)
AT HOME AND ABROAD - SOPHIE BARTHÉLÉMY: Pan! Dans l'oeil...The Paris Salons' Reception of the Hungarian Fauves in the Mirror of Contemporary French Critiques, 1904-1914
SOPHIE BARTHÉLÉMY Pan! Dans l'œil... 1 The Paris Salons' Reception of the Hungarian Fauves in the Mirror of Contemporary French Critiques, 1904-1914 On first inspection, the undertaking proposed in the title may appear both futile and hopeless, in view of the fact that throughout the first decade of the 20"' century contemporary French papers published very little about the Hungarian painters, who exhibited in the French salons. In general, it is fair to say that the French critics were primarily interested in French artists; the only exceptions in this regard were the Russian, German and Scandinavian artists, who occasionally did catch the French critics' attention, although their response was rarely favourable. A thorough study of journalistic reports about the salons reveals that, regardless of the character or political motivation of the newspapers concerned, many critics were xenophobic, quickly raising the alarm about "the invasion of foreign art" and claiming that this could harm and contaminate French art. In addition to the obvious subjectivity of such radical nationalism and art criticism, this attitude had a more rational and readily understandable motivation, namely the crowdedness of Paris salons, which often transformed the journalists' visits to the salons into a military operation. At the same time, their work was not made any easier by the fact that the number of both the exhibition venues and the exhibited works continued to grow, especially in the cases of Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants, which can explain why the critics left many artists out of their reports. On reading the articles, it also becomes clear that in the eyes of many a critic, Central Europe remained an uncharted territory, both geographically and culturally. 2 May —and the two Avant-garde shows, Salon des Indépendants 4 in March and Salon d'Automne 5 in October. The latter two exhibitions seemed to offer greater attraction to the young Hungarian artists, who preferred the innovative spirit and the scandalous reputation associated with these to the cold and formal atmosphere of the former. 6 On top of that, the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants were the places where they were more likely to find the compositions of Matisse and his boldest colleagues. Two Forerunners: József Rippl-Rónai and István Csók Paris in the Orbit of the French Salons Rippl-Rónai and France For the young Hungarian painters in Paris, the prime scenes of their studying were private galleries and salons, which they frequented with great enthusiasm and which provided them with the opportunity to meet their French paragons and to exchange ideas with them. But when it came to showing themselves as painters, their only option was taking part in exhibitions. In those days, the art life of Paris evolved around the four annual exhibitions, which were covered by the contemporary papers, both general and specialized, in a polemic form and in varying depth. These were the two official 3 Salons — Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in April and Société des Artistes Français in Rippl-Rónai showed the way for his fellow Hungarians: he began his studies at the Art Academy of Munich; in spring 1887 he went to Paris, where he first studied under Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury at the Julian Academy on a grant 7 , before becoming the assistant of the Hungarian genre painter, Mihály Munkácsy. After having seen the Gauguin exhibition held in Café Volpini in 1890, and following his meeting with Maillol in the same year (it was the latter who introduced him to the Paris society and the circle of the Nabis), he quickly abandoned the path of academic painting, which he had learned from his Paris masters and Hungarian colleagues.
