Cubists and Post-Impressionism

by Arthur Jerome Eddy

When the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was founded in 1890 in a spirit of revolt against the old Salon Société des Artistes Français—which dates its expositions from 1673—the schism was complete and the movement was denounced as revolutionary. The art world was divided into two bitterly hostile camps. The two Salons seemed absolutely irreconcilable.

Now they exhibit side by side in practically the same building. The visitor can stand in the main gallery of the one and gaze into the galleries of the other. The only distinctions are separate catalogues and an extra charge of a franc or two if you wish to pass from the one to the other.

Passing from the old Salon to the newer, one still has—to a slight degree—the feeling of passing from older and more conservative pictures to a newer, lighter, and somewhat more modern collection. And there is a difference but it is so slight that casual visitors do not notice it. In fact nine out of ten who visit the two Salons would think they were in but one exhibition, selected and arranged by the same committee, were it not for the additional fee and the two catalogues.

There is no reason today why the two Salons should not coalesce and make one exhibition.

In less than twenty-five years the older has absorbed much of what was good in the revolutionary force of the younger, and so much of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the younger has subsided that the members of the new Société fight side by side with the members of the old against the two more radical exhibitions, the Salon d’Automne, organized in 1903, and the Société des Artistes Independents, organized in 1884.

In time the Salon d’Automne will become quite as conservative as the two older Salons and there will be no reason why it should not exhibit and coalesce with the older.

What is happening in Paris has happened in Munich. The Munich Secessionists, once denounced as aesthetic anarchists, have so far subsided that they exhibit with the academic painters, retaining a faint show of identity by having the word “Secessionist” over the doors of the few rooms they fill.

The old Secession having subsided, the “Neue Sezession” has been organized by “Die Wilden” of Munich and that is now rampant; in ten or twenty years it will be absorbed in the main stream and a still newer secession challenge attention—and so on to the end of progress, for progress depends upon new and newer and ever newer departures. Already there is a division in the New Secession; the “Blue Riders” have withdrawn.