The Politics of Aesthetic Harmony: Neo-Impressionism, Science, and Anarchism Author(s): Robyn S. Roslak Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Sep., 1991), pp. 381-390 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045811 Accessed: 07/04/2009 22:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=caa. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
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The
Science,
Politics
of and
Aesthetic
Harmony:
Neo-Impressionism
Anarchism
RobynS. Roslak In 1899, Paul Signac sent his friend and fellow anarchist, Jean Grave, a copy of his newly published book D'Eugene Delacroix au Neo-impressionisme, a belated manifesto of NeoImpressionism which focused upon the technical and stylistic concerns of the movement. Several weeks later, the book was reviewed favorably and recommended in Grave's journal Les Tempsnouveaux. Why an anarchist would have been attracted to an aesthetic program such as that described by Signac, the goal of which was to create visual harmony through the application of paint according to certain scientific principles, is a question that remains unanswered in the numerous studies of Neo-Impressionism.' Scholars have, however, examined related aspects of the sociology of the movement. We know, for example, that close personal relationships existed between the Neo-Impressionists and several prominent anarchists working and writing in France in the late nineteenth century.2 We also know that the Neo-Impressionists were sympathetic to anarchist socio-political concerns, especially to the creative liberty that many anarchists granted artists who wished to serve the anarchist cause.3 Grave, in particular, implied that an artist need not sacrifice formal interest in order to make his or her art figure actively in the creation of a more just society.4 Such generosity must have appealed to the Neo-Impressionists, who indicated in their letters a distaste for "realist" propaganda and collectively produced only a few lithographs and even fewer paintings with subjects that one could call overtly anarchist.5 But if
recognizable anarchist subject matter was not the issue for Grave or for most of his colleagues, what, then, encouraged anarchists to take note of these artists, and what sustained their mutual interest in, and respect for, each other during the last two decades of the nineteenth century? It is this question that concerns me here, and I will attempt to answer it through exploring anew the Neo-Impressionist aesthetic to which Grave paid tribute in 1899. To examine style and technique as a means of understanding Neo-Impressionism is nothing new: they not only drew most of the attention of the movement's contemporary critics, chief of whom was Felix Feneon,6 but have continued to hold the interest of 20th century scholars as well. Most of the studies undertaken from this perspective focus upon the paintings of Georges Seurat, who pioneered the dot-like, divided touch and the "scientifically"applied color for which Neo-Impressionism is primarily known. Several of these readings are particularlynoteworthy. In 1935, Meyer Schapiro acknowledged the connection between Neo-Impressionist form and scientific color theory identified by Seurat and later by Signac, but went further to propose a relationship between the artists' formal inventions and the climate of scientific, technological, and industrial innovation surrounding them in Paris in the 1880s.7 This relationship between the Neo-Impressionist aesthetic and science was not explored again in detail until 1964, when WilliamInnes Homer
An earlier version of this article was first presented as a paper entitled "Art, Anarchism, and Atomism: A Reconsideration of the Scientific Aesthetic of Neo-Impressionism," as part of a symposium on NeoImpressionism held at the University of Chicago in January 1988 on the occasion of the exhibition "The Aura of Neo-Impressionism." I would like to thank my fellow participants in the symposium for their comments and criticism. ' In addition to the works cited in the notes below, the following publications are also among the most important general studies of Neo-Impressionism: R. Herbert, Neo-Impressionism,New York, 1968; E. W. Lee, The Aura of Neo-Impressionism, Indianapolis, 1983; NeoImpressionism,ed. J. Sutter, trans. C. Deliss, Greenwich, Conn., 1970; D. C. Rich, Seuratand the Evolutionof "LaGrandejatte,"Chicago, 1953. 2 For the best discussion of these relationships, see Herbert. 3 For example, the anarchist philosopher Elisee Reclus, who was friendly with the Neo-Impressionists Thio van Rysselberghe and Camille Pissarro, wrote in 1892: "Painters, engravers, musicians ... it suits you to remain yourselves and to freely reproduce that which you perceive in your interior mirror" (from "Aux Compagnons r6dacteurs des entretiens," Entretienspolitiqueset litteraires,v, July 1892, 3). 4 See Grave, who devoted an entire chapter to art. He wrote: "Free art . .. will render the artist his own and only master. It will be able to give currency to all his imagination, to the flights of his fancy, to execute the work such as he will have conceived it" (p. 367). 5 See Herbert for letters from the Neo-Impressionists to Grave indicat-
ing their aversion to propagandistic art. For detailed descriptions of the drawings and lithographs by the Neo-Impressionists with anarchist subject matter that appeared in Les Tempsnouveaux, see Dardel. Besides these works, most of which were sympathetically drawn pictures of the poor, the homeless, and peasants, there also exist several other groups of Neo-Impressionist drawings with anarchist subjects. In 1889, Camille Pissarro produced an album of twenty-eight drawings entitled "Turpitudes sociales," which were paired with quotations from Grave'sjournal La Revolte; at the same time, his colleague Maximilien Luce regularly contributed propagandistic drawings to the working-class anarchist journal Le Pere Peinard. None of these lithographs or drawings was executed using the pointillist technique. The only painting by a Neo-Impressionist containing readily recognizable anarchist subject matter is Paul Signac's In the Time of Harmony, 1894-95 (France, Mairie de Montreuil), which is his vision of the anarchist society of the future. 6 Feneon's important early reviews of Neo-Impressionism that focus on the characteristic Neo-Impressionist style and technique are aux Tuileries" of 1886 and "Le Neo"L'Impressionnisme impressionnisme" of 1887, both originally published in L'Art modeme and reprinted in Feneon, 53-58 and 71-76. Other critics who wrote regularly on Neo-Impressionism from a stylistic point of view include Gustave Kahn, Georges Lecomte, Jules Christophe, and Edmond Cousturier. 7 See Frequently Cited Sources.
in his book Seurat and the Science of Painting thoroughly
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documented the body of contemporary color theory available to Seurat, and attempted to demonstrate how he applied it precisely and accurately in his paintings to create pictures that imitated quite closely the color values and the intense luminosity present in nature.8 Homer's thesis, which has been the basis for much of the work on Neo-Impressionism to date, went unchallenged until 1987, when Alan Lee and John Gage independently took issue with his assumption that Seurat understood and strictly adhered to scientific color theory in the construction of his paintings. Lee argued that Seurat misunderstood the science underlying his method, and made little effort to question its validity for painting.9 Gage convincingly suggested that Seurat's application of paint in discrete, colored points did not, as Homer asserted, inevitably produce an optical fusion of color when his paintings were viewed from a distance, or capture accurately the color and luminosity of solar light, but instead produced an evenly textured and harmonious field of pigment on the canvas, which was Seurat's overriding concern in the first place.'1 Gage also proposed that Seurat was attracted less to the colors theories of Ogden Rood and Hermann von Helmholtz than he was to those of Michel Chevreul, because Chevreul paid more attention than his colleagues to the creation of aesthetic harmony through the juxtaposition of contrasting and complementary colors." Gage suggests that Seurat's primary purpose in using the dotted technique was to create fields of color that, while always appearing finely divided to the eye, nevertheless emerge as unified and harmonious in the final analysis. This was a goal shared by Seurat's fellow Neo-Impressionists and also observed repeatedly by sympathetic critics of the movement. Camille Pissarro, for example, when asked in 1889 to identify the most important condition for his art, said: "I don't just see spots. When I begin a picture, the first thing that I search to establish is accord . . . the big problem to resolve is to bring everything, even the smallest details of the picture, into harmony with the whole, that is to say into accord."12 The art critic Felix Feneon's description of the Neo-Impressionist aesthetic in 1890 reveals a similar awareness of the artists' desire to create the illusion of formal unity using a perpetually divided touch: "The flight of each color is free, and the solidarity of all is strict: the canvas is unified under their surge."'
8
For a succinct summary of this thesis, see Homer, 163-164. 9 A. Lee, "Seurat and Science," Art History,x, 1987, 203-226. '0J. Gage, "The Technique of Seurat: A Reappraisal," Art Bulletin, LXIX, 1987, 448-454. Seurat underscored his perpetual interest in harmony near the end of his career in a letter of 1890 to Maurice Beaubourg, which began with the axiom "Art is Harmony" (quoted in Seurat in Perspective,ed. N. Broude, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1978, 18). " For a complete discussion of this means of creating artistic harmony, which Chevreul called the "simultaneous contrast of colors," see Chev-
reul. 12 Quoted in Les Impressionnisteset quelques-unsde leurs contemporains, Basel, 1970, 26.
3
Gage's intelligent re-evaluation of Seurat's technique stops short of examining why he and his colleagues painted with the goal of aesthetic harmony so firmly in mind in the mid-1880s and 1890s. Signac, always the spokesman for the movement, reveals the reason obliquely in his manifesto: "A neo-impressionist work . . thanks to its constant observation of contrast, its rational composition, and its aesthetic language of colors, includes a general harmony and a moral harmony."14 This belief in aesthetic harmony as a vehicle for promoting moral harmony, an idea probably introduced to the Neo-Impressionists by the scientific aesthetician Charles Henry, must be considered in the endeavor to explain the mutual admiration of artists and anarchists.15 Specifically, we need to determine, given the fact that the Neo-Impressionists infused their aesthetic with social significance, whether the anarchist social philosophy for which they felt such sympathy played a role in the formation of that aesthetic, or was in some other way connected to it. As early as 1935, Meyer Schapiro anticipated the need for this kind of investigation, charging scholars with the task of discovering whether, if at all, the political affiliations of the Neo-Impressionists played a role in the formation of their art.16That call was not answered until 1960, when Eugenia and Robert Herbert tentatively established a connection between Neo-Impressionist subject matter and anarchist social theory, but unfortunately omitted the Neo-Impressionist aesthetic from their analysis altogether.17 In 1961, Eugenia Herbert continued to explore the relationship between the anarchist sympathies of the Neo-Impressionists and their choice of subjects in her book The Artist and Social Reform, paying particular attention to the drawings and lithographs that the artists contributed to the anarchist press.18 The discussion that follows will bring the formal and social "poles" of Neo-Impressionist scholarship closer together, by
13 F. Feneon, "Signac," Les Hommesd'aujourd'hui,CCCLXXIII, 1890, repr. in Feneon, 176. 14 Signac, 1964, 104. In the same text, Signac also referred to "the moral effect of lines and colors" in Neo-Impressionist paintings (p. 51). 15For a discussion of Charles Henry's contributions to psychophysics, see J. Arguelles, Charles Henry and the Formation of a Psychophysical Aesthetic,Chicago, 1972. In particular, it was Henry's "Introduction a une esthetique scientifique," La Revue contemporaine,nI, 1885, 441-469, that highlighted the connection between social improvement and the formal beauty of artworks produced under the influence of science (see p. 441). 16 Schapiro, 16. The Herberts identified the Neo-Impressionist 17 Herbert, 478-480. paintings of urban, suburban, and industrial life from the 1880s as those containing anarchist critiques of traditional middle-class French society and social mores. They also suggested briefly that some NeoImpressionist seascapes and agrarian landscapes may contain anarchist sentiment, a subject that I explored at length in my "Scientific Aesthetics and the Aestheticized Earth: The Parallel Vision of the Neo-Impressionist Landscape and Anarcho-Communist Social Theory," Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1987. For another view of the relationship between Neo-Impressionist subject matter and anarchism that focuses upon the creation of an art social, see J. Hutton, "A Blow of the Pick: Science, Anarchism, and the Neo-Impressionist Movement," Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, Evanston, 1986. 18 E. Herbert, The Artist and Social Reform:France and Belgium, 18851898, New Haven, 1961, 182-192.
NEO-IMPRESSIONISM,
examining the Neo-Impressionist aesthetic within the context of the social theory of anarchism and the science upon which both were based. I will argue that artists and anarchists appropriated a common vocabulary from the laws and processes of chemical science and philosophy, which not only seem to have provided them with the basis for their remarkably similar aesthetic and social patterns, but also helped initiate and sustain their lengthy rapport. Science and Structure in Anarchism and Neo-Impressionism
The anarchist movement in France in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was a combination of political practice and social theory, the joint goal of which was to overthrow the existing state and the hierarchical society surrounding it and establish instead a decentralized, non-authoritarian socio-economic order.'9 The first, activist arm of the movement favored propaganda by deed, which took the form of revolutionary struggle carried out through direct action against the institutions of the bourgeois world. Due to its penchant for violence and its aversion to organization of any kind, it never attracted the following its advocates had envisioned. The second, more philosophical arm of the movement insisted that propaganda by the word, rather than the deed, was the best means by which to transform society. This idea was quick to catch on among creative intellectuals, including the Neo-Impressionists, who yearned for social justice yet were not willing to agitate aggressively for a collective cause or vision.20 The variety of anarchism to which the Neo-Impressionists were attracted was a combination of anarchism and communism (called anarcho-communismfor short). Its social theory was formulated in the late 1870s through the 1890s by Jean Grave, the Russian exile Pierre Kropotkin, and the Belgian geographer Elisee Reclus, who together promoted it into a lively presence in the anarchist and avant-garde press and maintained it as such for nearly twenty years.21Anarcho-
'9 For a survey of the anarchist movement in France, see J. Joll, The Anarchists(1964), 2nd ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1980, andJ. Maitron, Le Mouvementanarchisteen France (1975), Paris, 1983. 20 For a survey of anarchism in late 19th-France within a cultural context, including the varieties of philosophical anarchism espoused by creative intellectuals and their expression in art and literature, see R. D. Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siecle France, Lincoln, Nebr., 1989. The Neo-Impressionists' anarchist activism was largely artistic. Each artist contributed drawings to the anarchist journal Les Temps nouveaux (1895-1914), which were given upon request, and without compensation, to its editor, Jean Grave. The artists also gave Grave at least one lithograph each between 1895 and 1899, all of which were for sale at the offices of Les Tempsnouveaux. They provided cover illustrations for several anarchist books and brochures published by the journal in the 1890s, and they donated paintings or drawings to be given away as prizes in lotteries, which Grave held to support the journal in 18991900 (see Dardel, 83, for a list of these donations). Finally, in what was undoubtedly the most sacrificial gesture for the anarchist cause made by any of the Neo-Impressionists, Camille Pissarro, who was the poorest of the group, twice paid the debts of Les Tempsnouveaux, each time with a thousand francs. 21 The major anarchist periodicals were Le Revolte (Paris, 1880-87); La Revolte (Paris, 1887-94); Le Libertaire(1895-1914); L'Endehors(Paris, 1891-93); Le Pere Peinard (Paris, 1889-94); and Les Tempsnouveaux
SCIENCE,
AND ANARCHISM
383
communists (hereafter referred to simply as "anarchists") shared with socialists a fundamental desire for economic communism and equality of social conditions. Both groups stood for collective ownership of the means of production, the abolition of private property, and the dissolution of social class. But while the socialist idea of the collectivity was relativelylarge (the size of a nation or greater), the anarchists always thought in terms of small groups, often the size of neighborhoods, made up of individuals who would never lose their autonomy although they were integral members of a greater whole. The building block of the anarchist society-indeed, its point of departure for every human associationwhatsoeverwas, in fact, the individual, a unit rarely forgotten in any anarchist's portrayal of the composition of the social fabric. In 1899 Grave characterized the individual as a social creaturewho should be "left free to attach himself according to his tendencies, his affinities, free to seek out those with whom his liberty and aptitudes can agree."22Consequently, second only to the importance of the individual was a condition that anarchists discussed and yearned for more than any other: a harmonious relationship between individual human beings and society as a whole, with one equally responsible for the well-being of the other. Grave succinctly described this association in his journal Le Revoltein 1884: "Social interest and individual interest can never be antagonistic in a well-equilibrated society .. . and the two carry it
toward our ideal: Harmony."23Though the specific details characterizingthe anarchist society of the future might differ from anarchist to anarchist, the essential configuration of that society remained the same: a cohesive, classless social fabric in which the essence, autonomy, and well-being of each member were preserved at all times. This social ideal finds its aesthetic parallel in NeoImpressionism, a relationship that the historian D.D. Egbert very briefly but perceptively identified in 1970 in his book Social Radicalism and the Arts: "...
The very technique that
the Neo-Impressionists employed, with its strongly accentuated individual brush strokes,which nonetheless are brought together in harmony to form the picture as a whole, paralleled the individualistic yet communal spirit of communistanarchism."24Indeed, on a typical Neo-Impressionist canvas, individual touches of paint of approximately equal size are applied evenly to the canvas to form unified, "egalitarian" surfaces (similar in configuration to the nonhierarchical,
(Paris, 1895-1914). Avant-garde art and literary periodicals that sympathized with the anarchists (as well as with Neo-Impressionism) included La Revue indipendante(Paris, 1884-90); La Plume (Paris, 1889-1905); La Revue blanche (Paris, 1889-1903); Les Entretienspolitiques et littdraires (Paris, 1890-93); La Societe nouvelle (Brussels, 1884-96) and L'Art moderne(Brussels, 1887-1914). 22 Quoted in A. F. Sanborn, Paris and the Social Revolution, Boston, 1905, 11, from the first English translation of Grave's LAnarchie, son but, ses moyens,1899. 23 J. Grave, "Autorite et organisation," Pt. III, Le Rdvolte,VI, 11 May 1884, 2. 24 D. D. Egbert, Social Radicalismand theArts: WesternEurope, New York, 1970, 240.
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socially coherent, and harmonious anarchist society of the future), while still maintaining their unique, discrete character (as would ideal anarchist citizens, whose individuality would invariably be respected). Reinforcing this parallel relationship between the Neo-Impressionist technique and the social configuration of the anarchist society is the importance for Neo-Impressionism of Chevreul's law of simultaneous contrast, which Signac freely paraphrased in a diary entry for 1895: "For a color to be beautiful, it should influence its neighbor by harmonizing with it and subduing it, for their common benefit. From this charming duo is born perfect harmony. ... It is the great scientific and philosophic law of contrast."25 This language subtly establishes an analogy between individual colors and human individuals, a relationship that Signac confirmed with more force and clarity in 1902 when he wrote: "Justice in sociology, harmony in art: same thing."26 Signac's language of 1895 is also reminiscent of descriptions of the anarchist society of the future as one populated by myriad diverse individuals who naturally coexist in harmony. Kropotkin, for example, described that society as "an ever-changing and fugitive equilibrium between a multitude of varied forces and influences of every kind," whose dual function consisted of "developing in broad daylight and counterbalancing one another."27 Another anarchist, writing anonymously in 1887, characterized the same social configuration in more succinct terms as "harmony, [or] order in infinite variety" 28--a phrase remarkably similar to that of Signac's "variety in unity," which he used to describe the surface of a typical Neo-Impressionist painting.29 It would be incorrect, however, to conclude that it was this particular relationship between Neo-Impressionism and anarchism that alone accounted for the mutual attraction of artists and anarchists. Both groups also shared a deep faith in science as the foundation for their respective aesthetic and social systems. That this should be the case for the anarchists is hardly surprising, given that two of the three most prolific and influential of the movement's theorists were trained as scientists before they committed themselves to the anarchist cause. Kropotkin was schooled at the university level in mathematics, geography, and geology in the late 1860s and early 1870s in Russia, while Reclus was trained as a geographer in the late 1840s in Belgium.30 Their scientific outlook not only shaped fundamentally their own anarchist theory,
3
but also influenced that of their comrade Jean Grave and his associates at Le Revolte in the 1880s. In common with other political groups on the Left, these anarchists used science and its laws as blueprints for predicting the direction of human history and justifying the structure of an ideal human society.31 An anarchist writing in the literary supplement of La Revolte in 1891 expressed this concept particularly well: Man is ruled by natural laws, regular in their course, consequent in their effect, immutable in their essence. ... When the secret power which animates the universe formed the globe that man inhabits, it imprinted on the beings of which it was composed the essential properties which became the rule for their individual movements, the bond for their reciprocal rapport, the cause of the harmony of the ensemble.32 The natural laws upon which the anarchists grounded their social theory were taken specifically from chemical science. Beginning in the early 1880s, anarchists called upon these principles continually to formulate and justify the precise shape of their ideal social configurations. The earliest and most comprehensive example of their chemical language at work is found in an article written by Grave for Le Revolte in 1882 entitled "Autonomy According to Science": Science shows us that everything in nature is governed by immutable laws . . . laws which have it that all molecules having certain affinities search for each other and unite ... When molecules, the cells making up the universe, have been able to freely associate with each other, when nothing has hindered their evolution which leads to the formation of an organism, so their amalgamation, their association occurs, and it results in a complete being, perfectly constituted. . . It is precisely because we, anarchists, want a healthy and perfectly-constituted society that we ask that the autonomy of individuals-these molecules of society--be respected. It is precisely because we desire that everyone who has the same affinities be allowed to freely associate according to the inclinations of each that we reject every power wishing to reduce all individuals to the same stamp.33 By the mid-1890s, Kropotkin likewise began to utilize a scientific metaphor based on the particulate nature of matter and its natural affinities in the construction of his social
25
Signac, 1949, 171. 26This appears in an unpublished manuscript located in the Signac Archives, Paris. Quoted in Herbert, 479. 27 P. Kropotkin, "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal" (1896), in Kropotkin'sRevolutionaryPamphlets (1927), ed. R. Baldwin, New York, 1968, 124. 28 "La Loi de la force et le concert pour l'existence," Le Revolte, Ix, 7-13 May 1887, 1. 29Signac, 1949, 170. 30 For more information on the lives of Kropotkin and Reclus, see G. Woodcock and I. Avakumovic, TheAnarchistPrince:A GeographicalStudy of Peter Kropotkin,London, 1950, and M. Fleming, TheAnarchist Wayto Socialism:ElisdeReclus and Nineteenth CenturyEuropeanAnarchism,London, 1979.
The use of science by political radicals to justify and understand the mechanisms of social relationships and to create new patterns of social harmony was not limited to the French anarchists of the 1880s. Throughout the last quarter of the century, Marxian and scientific socialists also relied heavily on science in the construction of their social theories. For a summary of this phenomenon, see G. D. H. Cole, A Historyof SocialistThought, 1: Marxismand Anarchism,1850-1890 (1954), London, 1961. 32Volney, "Essence de l'homme," La Revolte, Supplementlitteraire, rv, 16-22 May 1891, 37. 33J. Grave, "L'Autonomie selon la science," Le Revolte, Il, 4 February 1882, 1. 31
NEO-IMPRESSIONISM,
theory. In 1894, he called his scientific variety of anarchism a "synthetic philosophy," one that he said came from a new understanding of nature.34Under the old Newtonian conception of the universe, it was believed that all matter was controlled by one celestial body: the sun. This order eventually was rejected, to be replaced in the nineteenth century by one in which atoms and molecules, described by Kropotkin as "the infinitely small, associated among themselves but keeping their own life,"35assumed the more powerful role and determined the way in which the universe as a whole would function. He emphasized that its operation would be marked by a natural harmony, which he called a "lasting equilibrium between diverse energies."36 Other anarchists besides Grave and Kropotkin used a chemical vocabulary to describe what they believed was the naturally "anarchist" structure of the physical world. For example, an anonymous writer in Le Revolte in 1887 characterized the world as "a rhythmic gravitation of independent molecules between which all partial disagreement is lost."37 Grave's and Kropotkin's friend Charles Malato applied that metaphor more specifically to humanity when he characterized the world in 1894 as a collection of "humanmolecules."38 In 1893, in an article on anarchist philosophy written for La Plume,the poet Andre Veidaux (whowas originally trained as a chemist) identified the harmony he found inherent in nature as a condition of "varietyin unity," which he elaborated upon as follows: "We maintain that the atom moves freely in its sphere, balanced by the gravitation of the surrounding atomism. The testimony of nature cannot be rejected. Minerality, vegetality, and animality all display in their individual manifestations the spectacle of harmony in autonomy."39 Although chemical metaphors predominate in anarchist social theory of the 1880s and 1890s, anarchists occasionally varied their scientific language, calling the individual "the primordial cell of society,"40or describing human social relationships in organic terms, as Grave did in 1895: "By associating their efforts, individuals, like cells, become more dependent on each other, in the sense that the good-or the bad-experienced by the whole, will be experienced by each particle."41No matter what the choice of scientific metaphor, however, two ideas remained constant: the anarchistvision of perfect social harmony was perceived as "natural"because it was already immanent in nature itself, and the condition of harmony in nature emerged as the result of the natural, chemical affinities that existed between individualized units of matter. Together, these concepts helped make the anarchists' dream of "harmony in autonomy" in human society
34 35
Kropotkin,7.
Ibid., 8. 36 Ibid., 12. 37"La Loi de la force" (as in n. 28), 1. 38 C. Malato, "Discutons," La Revue libertaire, II, 1-15 January 1894, 25. 39A. Veidaux, "Philosophie de l'anarchie," La Plume, v, 1 May 1893, 189. 40 These words belong to Elisee Reclus, and are quoted in F. Albert, Elisie Reclus et l'anarchie,Ghent, 1905, 29. 41 Grave, 158.
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seem more plausible. Yet most anarchists, in common with experimental chemists, were not content to allow scientific law to work its magic unaided. They envisioned themselves intervening to play a creative role in the construction of their ideal societies, a fact that Grave stressed as follows in La Societefuture:"The role of the anarchists,in sociology, cannot be of another capacity than that of the chemist: their work is to prepare the milieu where individualscould evolve freely."42 Once these scientific underpinnings of anarchist theory are revealed, the analogy between Neo-Impressionist form and anarchist society resonates with new meaning. The social configurations described by Grave, Kropotkin,Veidaux, and their comrades become more than simple testimonies to the role played by science in the formation of radical social theory. They are also remarkable analogues to the formal configuration of a Neo-Impressionist painting, itself a miniature "universe"whose contrasting colors remain distinct and atomistic yet were perceived by the artists as being harmoniously and naturallyunited as a result of the operation of the laws of light and color. And just as the anarchistsdreamed of helping to create through their "scientific"theories a world in which social discord would disappear after individuals were released from the yoke of unnatural authority and nature's laws could operate freely, so the Neo-Impressionists created paintings infused with a scientific aesthetic that they imagined possessed the power to promote in a viewer the condition of moral harmony, and presumably through it the possibility of social harmony as well. Neo-Impressionism and the Chemical Model The Neo-Impressionists certainly would have noticed, and presumably appreciated, the chemical model that provided the anarchistswith much of the scientific basis for their social theory. In fact, similar models were attracting the attention of French intellectuals in a variety of political camps and creative professions, including the visual arts, throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Within artistic circles, chemical metaphors emerged most clearly in the vocabulary of Neo-Impressionist criticism from the 1880s and early 1890s. Critics sympathetic both to the movement and to the anarchist affiliation of the artists borrowed words and concepts from chemical science to describe the formal appearance of the artists' pointillistic paintings. Analytical chemistry-the process by which compound substances are broken down into their constituent elements, and the study of those elements and their atomistic and molecular structure-provided critics with an especially rich source of terminology. The earliest example of this language at work is Emile Hennequin's laudatory review of Neo-Impressionism written for La Viemodernein 1886, in which he commented as follows upon the pointillist touch: "It permits a closer imitation of nature, where colors usually result from the optical mixture of diversely colored masses or molecules."43
42
Ibid., 384.
E. Hennequin, "Notes d'art: Exposition des artistes independants," La Viemoderne,11 September 1886, n.p. 43
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Two years later, Felix Feneon, the artists' friend, champion, and fellow anarchist, used similar language to compare Pissarro's Neo-Impressionist method unequivocally with the method of a chemist, calling it a "formula" that was "scrupulously executed in molecules of tone through the process of division."44 This incorporation of a chemical metaphor into Neo-Impressionist criticism was not a short-lived phenomenon, but persisted well into the 1890s. In 1892, for example, a critic reviewing Theo van Rysselberghe's pointillist portraits for LArt modeme praised the artist for his "marvelous practical knowledge of the reciprocal reaction of colored atoms which riddle the canvas."45 Likewise, in 1893 a sympathetic reviewer for the anarcho-symbolist journal Les Entretiens politiques et litteraires described the atmosphere in Pissarro's Neo-Impressionist landscapes as being "in perpetual molecular aggregation and disaggregation."46 These and other critical responses to the Neo-Impressionist aesthetic that feature the language of chemistry imply that the relationship between Neo-Impressionism and science encompassed more than the theories of colored light and pigment that traditionally have been considered the basis for the "scientific aesthetic." They especially suggest an affinity between the Neo-Impressionist method and contemporary issues in chemical science centering around the division of matter into atoms and molecules. This concern, which will be examined below, was part of the era's widespread preoccupation with an analytical, often reductionist, view of the physical world-a view that assumed that in order to understand a given thing or event, one had first to uncover and understand the more fundamental level of reality located behind or beneath it.47 In the history of science the nineteenth century is best understood as the century of the atom. The decades before 1870 saw the atom established as the basic unit of chemical combination and theory, while the last decades of the century were devoted to explorations of the relationships between atoms and molecules, as well as to more specific problems of chemical structure.48 By the late 1870s, it was the concept of the physical, rather than the chemical atom, that generated the greatest controversy among the scientific community in France.49 Strict positivists, who maintained that all physical
FF.enon, "Exposition Pissarro," L'Artmodere, IX, 20 January 1889, reprinted in Feneon, 136. The Belgian critic Edmond Picard was equally explicit in linking the Neo-Impressionist and the chemical methods in his article "La Peinture," L'Artmodere, xI, 4 January 1891, 3, where he observed that one of the processes of Neo-Impressionism consisted of "chemically analysing the mixture of tones on the palette." 45 A. Ernst, "L'Evolution de la critique," L'Artmodeme, xII, 9 October 1892,325. 46 E. Cousturier, "Notes d'art," Les Entretienspolitiqueset litteraires,VI, 10 April 1893, 332. 47 For a discussion of this phenomenon, see S. Kern, The Cultureof Time and Space, 1880-1918, Cambridge, Mass., 1983, chaps. 6-7, and J. D. Bernal, Sciencein History(1965), II, Cambridge, Mass., 1971, chaps. 8-9. 48 For a discussion of the history of chemistry in the 19th century in France and elsewhere, see A. J. Ihde, TheDevelopmentof ModernChemistry (1970), New York, 1984. 49 The chemical atom is an abstract unit of reaction and equivalency, an understanding of which requires a basic knowledge of chemical theory. 44
3
theory had to come from direct experimental evidence, rejected the idea of a physical atom on the grounds that they had never seen one. In response, chemists who came to its defense constructed models of atomic and molecular structure based on experimental evidence in an effort to convince their opponents that tiny, indivisible particles did indeed exist, and were, in fact, the building blocks of the material universe. The controversy exploded publicly in Paris in 1877, when two prominent scientists, Marcellin Berthelot and Adolphe Wurtz, engaged in a widely publicized debate held in the forum of the French Academy of Sciences regarding the existence of the physical atom. At its conclusion, the question remained unresolved: Berthelot could only accept the existence of a chemical atom, while Wurtz argued in favor of the atom as a particle of matter. Apparently as a means of exploring further the issues raised in his debate with Berthelot, Wurtz published a book in 1879 entitled La Theorie atomique. Written in clear, accessible prose, this text was reissued frequently throughout the 1880s (the fourth edition, in fact, appeared in 1886, the year that NeoImpressionism made its public debut at the last Impressionist exhibit in Paris). In the lucid conclusion to his text, Wurtz paid particular attention not only to the construction of the atom as a physical entity, but also to the ways in which atoms combined under the influence of stable natural laws, a condition known as chemical affinity, to form systems characterized by their harmony and equilibrium. He described this process using a crystal as an example: "The smallest rudiments of the crystal are formed by numerous aggregations of molecules similarly arranged. Each of these molecules is formed by atoms ... They are placed at sensible distances in proportion to their dimensions, and vibrate in a coordinated way, forming systems in equilibrium .. ."50 This picture of the naturally occurring construction and behavior of a typical physical system, described using the language of chemistry, begs comparison with the surface of a Neo-Impressionist painting, which exhibits the same interplay between the atomistic and the aggregate through individual dots of paint arranged evenly together in a manner that Signac called "equilibrated," to create an aesthetic which he described as "a complex system of harmony"51 characterized by "the vibration of diverse combined elements."52 Based on this comparison, Seurat's fascination with the aesthetician David Sutter's statement of 1880 that "art is one facet of the laws of order and harmony in nature"53 becomes more meaningful. If we identify the laws in question as those that govern not only the behavior and
The physical atom is simply a particle of matter. It was the latter that had the greater impact by far on the popular imagination and the intellectual climate in France in the late 19th century, undoubtedly because it was easily imagined without the benefit of specialized training. 50 A. Wurtz, La Theorieatomique(1879), 4th ed., Paris, 1886, 226. 51 Signac, 1964, 119.
52 Ibid., 83. 53D. Sutter, "Les Phenomenes de la vision," L'Art,xx, 1880, quoted in English in Homer, 45.
NEO-IMPRESSIONISM,
perception of color and light, but also those that promote physical harmony via chemical affinity throughout the material world (including the realm of paint on canvas), then the harmony which the Neo-Impressionists repeatedly claimed was the result of their scientific aesthetic appears more plausible. Wurtz was not alone in describing the configuration of matter as a series of balanced conglomerations of vibratory particles, or the world itself as a system in a state of physical equilibrium as a result of the operation of natural law. Close readings of several of the color theorists and optical scientists familiar to the Neo-Impressionists reveal that they, too, imagined a similar construction for the material world. Ogden Rood, for one, defined light in his ModernChromatics of 1881 as "atoms ...
in vibration, communicating
this
vibratorymovement to other particles with which they are in contact,"54while Hermann von Helmholtz, in the French edition of his Optiqueet la peinture of 1878, described the atmosphere of the earth as a unified mass of "fine molecules" and "reflecting molecules."55 Charles Henry and Michel Chevreul, both trained as chemists, also referred to the particulate nature of matter in several of their texts, which were available to the Neo-Impressionists. For Henry, one of the goals of his book Le Cerclechromatique of 1888, with which Seurat, Signac, and Pissarro were familiar, was to utilize a scientific method to analyze what he characterized as "the infinitely minute molecular world" of light, color, form, and sound.56 Although Chevreul did not use either the term "atom" or "molecule," he, too, was concerned with analyzing matter into its component parts, reminding artists that "if we examine paintings with sufficiently powerful magnifying instruments, we shall see that the colored material, far from being continuous in all its parts, is in separate particles."57 The belief that the world was atomistic in structure, and that those atoms existed together naturally in a dynamic and equilibrious state, did not remain sequestered within the French scientific community. In addition to thriving in anarchist society theory, it emerged as well in the pages of avant-garde journals such as L'Artmoderne, La Revue independante, La Plume, and La Societe'nouvelle, all of which played major roles in shaping the intellectual climate surrounding the Neo-Impressionists. These periodicals not only published examples of the Neo-Impressionist criticism that utilized a chemical vocabulary and occasional articles on anarchist theory, but also printed numerous articles addressing the subject of modern science, many of which made liberal reference to the atom and the molecule. Several of these articles are noteworthy for the way in which their authors, in the manner of Wurtz, paid special attention to the process by which such particles combined to form complex yet balanced organic and inorganic bodies, each controlled
54 O. Rood, Students'Text-Bookof Color,or ModernChromatics(1879), New York, 1908, 11. 55H. von Helmholtz, L'Optiqueet la peinture, Paris, 1878, 180-182. 56 Quoted in English in Arguelles (as in n. 15), 162, from C. Henry, Le Cerclechromatique,Paris, 1888. 57 Chevreul, 191.
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by the same set of laws that governed the greater physical universe. While the authors of such essays were a varied lot, they shared a vision of the world whose discrete parts were combined in an organized manner and functioned smoothly and predictablyin accordance with stable natural laws. Much of this writing appeared between 1884 and 1896 in the pages of La Societe'nouvelle, a broadly left-wing journal devoted to art, literature, science, and sociology. Some of the more prominent examples include a discussion by the German materialist Louis Buchner of humankind's status as a product of nature, made up of atoms and molecules and thus subject to nature's laws;58the scientific socialistAgathon de Potter's detailed examination of the development of organic and inorganic forms by way of the reciprocal attraction of their elemental parts;59and Clemence Royer's survey of chemistry in 1892, which focused upon matter as a conglomeration of atoms held in a delicate balance.60Other periodicals also featured articles of a similar cast, including La Revue blanche,Essais d'art libre, and La Revue independante.61The latter was edited by Feneon, who in 1888 went so far as to announce to his readers Lothar Meyer's Theoriesmodernesde la chimie,a two-volume survey that the journal praised for its descriptions of "compound bodies," but that also discussed the nature of the atom and its reciprocal attraction in language easily accessible to a general audience.62 My point in emphasizing the interest in atomism and molecularityshown by various members of both the scientific and the more general intellectual communities at this time in France is not to suggest that the Neo-Impressionists were equating their dots of pigment literally with atoms and molecules. Rather, I propose that their practice of conceiving of pictures as assemblages of parts, each of which was considered significant in and of itself at the same time that all were interdependent, goes hand-in-hand with the analytical world-viewthat fascinated so many of their contemporaries, particularlythe anarchists.As Henri-Edmond Cross wrote in 1908 about the process of making his pictures: "When one has conceived of the ensemble, study separately each frag-
L. Buchner, "La Libre pensee et les doctrines philosophiques: Considerations sur le spiritualisme, le materialisme et le positivisme," La Societe nouvelle, II, 1887, 103-108. Buchner was a favorite of the anarchists, particularly of Grave, who frequently reprinted his essays in Le Revolte and La Rdvolte. 59A. de Potter, "L'Origine de l'humanite sur un monde," Pts. I-II, La Societenouvelle, vI, 1890, 405-418, 507-519, 660-667. 60 C. Royer, "Les Sciences de la vie-Les Theories chimiques en 1892," La Societenouvelle, VIII,1892, 600-622. 61 See, for example, A. Lefevre, "L'Univers et la vie," La Revue inddpendante, I, July 1884, 175-191 (a discussion of organic life as an aggregation of "millions of particles," each of which maintain "autonomy in unity"); R. Nyst, "La Verite: Confere l'etre et la force," Essais d'art libre, iv, August 1893, 129-136 (a description of physical and mental life as configurations of particles of matter that naturally assume a state of perfect harmony); J. de Gaultier, "Des Fondements de l'incertitude en matiere d'opinion," La Revue blanche, x, 1896, 84-89 (an argument for 58
sensationas a seriesof movementsof uniquemoleculesthat the intellect
orders to promote meaningful perception, a process that he called "unity in diversity"). 62 See "Calendrier," La Revue independante,vi, 1888, 303.
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ment, then the details of each fragment, finally the details of each detail, in order finally to foresee as far as possible-how each detail is itself a pretty thing."63 Despite their attention to the individual points of color, however, the Neo-Impressionists always insisted that their paintings were integrated entities created by units of pigment working harmoniously together. Each artist took care, according to Signac, to "establish the physical harmony of his canvas, from the smallest detail to the large ensemble."64 They, but especially their critics, typically used the word "synthesis" to describe that holistic, harmonious condition, often pairing it with the term "analysis." For example, a reviewer for L'Art moderne defined the NeoImpressionist method in 1889 as "the will to work confidently and dispassionately [which] allows more penetration into the interior and the soul of things; one analyzes them ... which in doing so leads toward their synthesis."65 A few weeks later, Van Rysselberghe's technique was described in the same way, as "an analysis leading to a kind of synthesis."66 In chemistry, synthesis is the process by which essential particles of matter naturally combine and react together as a result of chemical affinity to create new, compound substances. Synthesis not only proceeds naturally from analysis, but cannot occur without it, because it is only through analysis that the principles under which specific units of matter combine in the first place can be discovered. Members of the scientific community viewed chemical synthesis as a highly creative science, because synthetic chemists regularly produced from simple, known elements new physical compounds that were considered far more complex than the mere sum of their component parts. Berthelot, who was one of the first chemists to use the word "synthesis" to describe the creation of organic compounds from basic elements,67 even compared chemistry to art in a book he wrote for the general reader in 1886 entitled Science et philosophie.68Hejustified his statement by noting that science has two faces: one positivistic and concerned only with "directly observable relations," the other idealistic and "led by an invincible force to construct and imagine . . . systems based not only on the consideration of matter, but invoking at the same time moral and intellectual notions."69 In 1897, he called for the "synthesis" of a new society, realized as the result of a "spiritual chemistry, which changes the moral nature of man, as profoundly as our chemistry transforms material nature."70
Berthelot was not only a scientist but a moderate politician as well, who was elected senator in 1881 and appointed minister of education in 1886. He spoke vigorously and publicly in defense of science as a means by which the economic and social circumstances in Third Republic France could be improved. His philosophical works were probably familiar to the Neo-Impressionists, as they were cited frequently in articles pertaining to science in the avant-garde periodicals mentioned above. His books and lectures were announced from time to time in La Revue inddpendante, and in 1892 the journal published a short story in which he appeared as a character who taught an anarchist how to make forged coins in his makeshift kitchen laboratory.71 He may even have been a fringe member of the intellectual community surrounding the Neo-Impressionists: he was a supporter of the arts in general, and his name appears on the guest list for a banquet held in honor of Symbolist poets in January 1891, which also included Seurat and Signac.72 Although we have no conclusive evidence to prove that the Neo-Impressionists indeed were influenced by Berthelot, the excerpts above from his writings could just as well be referring to the synthetic ends that the artists envisioned for based on what Berthelot would have their paintings-ends called "the consideration of matter" in the form of the "scientific" arrangement of colored particles of pigment, but which ultimately led to the moral and intellectual transformation of a viewer as a result of the creative mind and hand of the artist at work. In a manner akin to Berthelot's ideal science, the Neo-Impressionists believed that the conditions of aesthetic harmony and equilibrium that marked so many of their paintings held an abstract, evocative value that made it possible to transform the human intellect or psyche in a positive direction and perhaps promote noncompetitive, harmonious social behavior. The artists and their critics rarely named this moralizing synthesis explicitly. Instead, they implied its presence by asserting that Neo-Impressionist pictures occupied elevated positions for themselves above the realm of the mundane world of mere naturalistic description. In common with the Symbolists, the Neo-Impressionists believed that their pictorial surfaces, while constructed using an objective method, could express a subjective idea or evoke an emotional or a psychological state.73 Feneon, who often wrote his art criticism in a Symbolist mode in the late 1880s, described this aesthetic and ideational condition as both a "superior and exalted reality"74
H.-E. Cross, "Dernier carnet d'Henri-Edmond Cross (1908), Pt. II, comp. F. Feneon," Bulletin de la vie artistique,1 June 1922, 256. 64Signac, 1964, 125. 65 "Aux XX," L'Artmoderne,IX,3 February 1889, 34. 66 Ibid., 10 February 1889, 42. 67 See M. P. Crosland, "Pierre Marcellin Berthelot," Dictionaryof Scientific Biography,II, New York, 1970, 63-72. 68 Berthelot, 64: "Chemistry creates its object. This creative faculty, similar to that of art itself, essentially distinguishes it from the natural and the historic sciences." 69Ibid., 18-19. 70 M. Berthelot, "En l'an 2000," Scienceet morale,Paris, 1897, 510-511.
71G. Bonnamour, "Anarchistes,"La Revueindependante,xxrv, 24 September 1892, 293-294. 72 The list, compiled by Francis Viele Griffin, appears in "Le Banquet d'hier," Entretienspolitiqueset litteraires,II, 1 February 1891, 62. 73 For a discussion of the interaction between the Neo-Impressionists and the Symbolists, see J. Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin (1956), New York, 1978, 137-146, and J. U. Halperin, Felix Feneon: Aestheteand Anarchist in Fin-de-Siecle Paris, New Haven, 1988, chaps. 6, 7 and 9.
63
74 Feneon,
74.
NEO-IMPRESSIONISM,
and as "a grand synthesis."75His vocabulary was shared by critics and artistsalike. CharlesAngrand, for example, stated that "to make a picture is to go beyond an impression and beyond reality, it is to reach a synthesis."76Using similar language, Cross stressed that Neo-Impressionism began with an emphasis on the accurate rendition of the reactions of colored light but resulted in an art "of superior importance to exact objective reproduction."77One of the Neo-Impressionists' champions, the critic Georges Lecomte, identified the artists'moralizing goal with a bit more clarity in an essay he wrote for L'Artmodernein 1892: "These splendid evocations of nature surpass much of reality..... They are suggestive as well as representative.... This painting satisfies the soul as much as it enchants the eye."78Signac alone was specific, claiming outright in his D'Eugene Delacroix au in a section on the importance for Neo-impressionnisme, of the paintings of Delacroix, that the Neo-Impressionism artist, "after having ... established the physical harmony of his picture .. . can, with as much scientific certitude, assure
moral harmony through it."79 Clearly,then, both the formal aesthetic of Neo-Impressionism and the anarchist theory to which the Neo-Impressionists were attracted must be understood as likely products of a time in French history when chemical science was providing new models for the structure and function of the physical world-models that proved compelling because they provided scientific certification for a dream shared by many that the world was an inherently stable place whose physical and social components were naturally integrated. This was a vision entirely appropriate to the 1880s, when the economic and social stability of French society at large was being threatened. In February 1882, the Union Generale, a large Catholic bank whose stocks had risen dramatically in the boom years of 1879-81, collapsed, ushering in an economic depression that would last through most of the next decade. Its effects were felt across the country, but they were most severe for the urban poor and the working class of Paris,who suffered from widespread hunger and unemployment.80The situation was not much better outside of the capital, however. In the industrialregions of the Loire valley and northwestern France, reduced metallurgical and textile production provoked rumblings of discontent from a new industrialworking class, and in the agriculturalcountryside several years of bad 75
Ibid., 117. Quoted in CharlesAngrand, 1854-1926, Musee Municipal, Dieppe, 1976, n.p., from one of the artist's undated notebooks. 77 H.-E. Cross, "In6dits d'Henri-Edmond Cross, Pt. v, comp. F. F6enon," Bulletin de la vie artistique, 15 September 1922, 426-427. 78 G. Lecomte, "Salon des XX: Conf6rence de M. Georges Lecomte: Des Tendances de la peinture moderne," Pt. III, L'Art moderne, XII, 28 February 1892, 66. 79 Signac, 1964, 78. 80For more on the economic history of this period, see Histoire economique et sociale de la France, rv, L'Ere industrielle et la societe d'aujourd'hui, 1880-1980, Paris, 1979; J.-M. Mayeur, Les Ddbuts de la TroisiemeRepublique, 1871-1898, Paris, 1973, and M. Reberioux, The ThirdRepublic:FromIts Originsto the GreatWar, 1871-1914 (1973), trans. J. R. Foster, Cambridge, 1984. According to the first source (p. 485), there were over 200,000 workers unemployed in Paris in 1883, and that number continued to rise through 1885. 76
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harvests, combined with the destruction of nearly one third of the country's vineyards by the phylloxera disease, sent peasants who were unable to pay their taxes or their debts into states of financial distress.81 The Republicans only added to the problem by offering protective aid to the railroads,the powerfulindustrialists,and the large agriculturists, but neglecting to legislate for the economic and social change that would truly benefit those hardest hit by the economic slump. These were issues of concern not only to moderate politicians (like Berthelot), but to a host of political groups on the Left, including the anarchists. By bolstering their calls for socialjustice with theories based upon a chemical model, the anarchists not only made their doctrine appear more rational and inevitable, but in the process attracted the attention and respect of the Neo-Impressionists. The chemical model afforded artists and anarchists alike the illusion of control, allowing them to predict the outcome of their aesthetic or their social visions and providing them with a psychological hedge against the uncertainty of human perception and human behavior. Equally important, both artists and anarchists shared a love for rational means, which led with ease and without conflict to their ideal ends of moral or social harmony. In the case of the Neo-Impressionists, this condition was supposed to be achieved effortlessly and privately through the perception of paint on canvas; for the anarchists, it would occurjust as easily as the result of the natural affinity of one individual for another. The smooth transition between means and ends is symptomatic of the "gentle" radicalism common to both groups, who, in the end, bypassed the social question altogether by insisting that profound social or moral change would occur naturallywithout human struggle or sacrifice, provided that the laws of nature were left alone to operate. The results of that belief are the stable, harmonious surfaces of Neo-Impressionist paintings, and the stable, harmonious social configurations of anarchocommunism, which together were efforts to create new normative systems to counteract social, political, and economic systems that were becoming increasingly dysfunctional and degenerative. It is no wonder, then, that the Neo-Impressionists and the anarchists sustained their close relationship over the course of nearly two decades. Their shared commitment to social improvement, in combination with their faith in a creative and regenerative scientific model, could not but encourage their mutual admiration and respect. Robyn S. Roslak received her Ph.D from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1987. Her currentproject is a study of Neo-Impressionistlandscapepainting and its relationship to French anarchism and environmentalism [DepartmentofArt, University of Minnesota at Duluth, Duluth, Minn. 55812-2496].
This article was accepted by Walter Cahn, the previous Editor-in-Chief, but it could not be published earlier because of space limitations imposed on TheArt Bulletin last year. 81For a discussion of the agricultural crisis, see L. A. Loubere, Radicalism in MediterraneanFrance: Its Rise and Decline, 1848-1904, Albany, N.Y., 1974.
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FrequentlyCited Sources Berthelot, M., Scienceetphilosophie,Paris, 1886. Chevreul, M. E., The Principlesof Harmonyand Contrastof Colors(1839; 1854), trans. C. Martel, New York, 1981. Dardel, A., "Catalogue des dessins et publications illustr&esdu journal anarchiste 'Les Temps Nouveaux,' 1894-1914," 2 vols., Ph.D. diss., Paris, 1980. Fen6on, F., Oeuvresplus que completes,I, ed. J. Halperin, Geneva, 1970. Grave,J., La Societefuture,Paris, 1895. Herbert, R. and E., "Artists and Anarchism: Unpublished Letters of
3
Pissarro, Signac, and Others," Pts. I and 11,Burlington Magazine, CII, 1960, 472-482 and 517-522. Homer, W. I., Seuratand the Scienceof Painting, Cambridge, Mass., 1964. Kropotkin, P., "Les Temps Nouveaux," confirencefaite d Londres, Paris, 1894. Schapiro, M., "Seurat and 'La Grande Jatte,'" ColumbiaReview, XVII, November 1935, 9-16. Signac, P., 1949, "Excerpts from the Unpublished Diary of Paul Signac, Pt. I," ed. J. Rewald, Gazettedes beaux-arts,6e per., LXXXXI, July-Dec., 166-174. , 1964, D'Eugene Delacroix au neo-impressionnisme(1899), ed. F. Cachin, Paris.