In testimony of the aforesaid I have written and issued this protocol for legal use.
P. Brionne.
[1] The names were not revealed.
From the photograph it may be seen that the donkey had been teased with some appetizing food held before his mouth, to which tantalization the so-called Boronali responded with the wags of his “tail-extremity,” according to the phraseology of the solemn document.
The picture then having been taken to the Salon, Monsieur Boronali was asked to pay his membership fee, and thenceforward his name figured among those of Matisse, Rousseau, Le Fauconnier, and other great. To the astonishment of the Fantasio group, their prank remained unnoticed for some time; the critics spoke of Boronali’s work along with the other pictures, and the manifesto of the Excessivists was but slightly commented upon. In a series of sensational articles and piquant stories The Fantasio finally succeeded in drawing general attention to their chef d’oeuvre. The Paris press, as well as the foreign, opened a hot discussion on the significance of Boronali’s work in a serious tone. Only the Kölnische Zeitung in a review of the manifesto and the picture carefully remarked, “If it is not a carnival joke”—referring to the manifesto but not doubting the authenticity of Boronali’s canvas. True, the title of the picture seemed mystifying: why The Sun Asleep over the Adriatic, when there were neither sun nor sea? The Gazette de France ridiculed the title. The New York Herald, endeavoring to justify the name of the picture, suggested that the sun was asleep beneath the Adriatic—an ingenious hypothesis. The Revue des Beaux-Arts gave a detailed and scholarly account of the picture, but found in it nothing extraordinary in comparison with the other Independents. The hardest blow to Boronali’s genius was dealt by De l’Art Ancien et Moderne, which accused him of being banal. “Among the cosmopolite crowd, along with Messrs. Ghéon, Klingsor, Jamet ... struts the sheer banality of M. Boronali.”
The scandal that took place after the mystificators had revealed their trick is of secondary importance. What looms out of this incident is the dangerously vague line of demarcation between what is true art and what is mere daubery in Futurism.
The Gaulois summed up the affair in a few significant words:
The scholastics had maintained that “It is much easier for the ass to disprove than it is for the philosopher to assert.” But here came an ass and proved something in spite of all the philosophers of the world. He has proved—not a priori but a posteriori—that the most manifest daubery may pass as a picture in the eyes of those who accept the non-real, the improbable, and the absurd for new art.
Thought uttered becomes an untruth.—Thaddeus Tutchev.