“What?”
“Francs. Thousands upon thousands of them. Will you join me in a drink?”
The discussion around the Lautrec table became animated. Everyone turned his attention that way.
“How is ‘ma methode,’ Seurat?” asked Lautrec, cracking his knuckles one by one.
Seurat ignored the gibe. His exquisitely perfect features and calm, mask-like expression suggested, not the face of one man, but the essence of masculine beauty.
“There is a new book on colour refraction by an American, Ogden Rood. I think it is an advance on Helmholtz and Chevral, though not quite so stimulating as de Superville’s work. You could all read it with profit.”
“I don’t read books about painting,” said Lautrec. “I leave that to the layman.”
Seurat unbuttoned the black and white checked coat and straightened out the large blue tie sprinkled with polka dots.
“You yourself are a layman,” he said, “so long as you guess at the colours you use.”
“I don’t guess. I know by instinct.”
“Science is a method, Georges,” put in Gauguin. “We have become scientific in our application of colour by years of hard work and experimentation.”
“That’s not enough, my friend. The trend of our age is toward objective production. The days of inspiration, of trial and error, are gone forever.”
“I can’t read those books,” said Rousseau. “They give me a headache. Then I have to go paint all day to get rid of it.”
Everyone laughed. Anquetin turned to Zola and said, “Did you see the attack on ‘Germinal’ in this evening’s paper?”
“No. What did it say?”
“The critic called you the most immoral writer of the nineteenth century.”
“Their old cry. Can’t they find anything else to say against me?”
“They’re right, Zola,” said Lautrec. “I find your books carnal and obscene.”
“You certainly ought to recognize obscenity when you see it!”
“Had you that time, Lautrec!”
“Garçon,” called Zola. “A round of drinks.”
“We’re in for it now,” murmured Cezanne to Anquetin. “When Emile buys the drinks, it means you have to listen to an hour’s lecture.”
The waiter served the drinks. The painters lit their pipes and gathered into a close, intimate circle. The gas lamps illuminated the room in spirals of light. The hum of conversation from the other tables was low and chordal.
“They call my books immoral,” said Zola, “for the same reason that they attribute immorality to your paintings, Henri. The public cannot understand that there is no room for moral judgements in art. Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones. A whore by Toulouse-Lautrec is moral because he brings out the beauty that lies beneath her external appearance; a pure country girl by Bouguereau is immoral because she is sentimentalized and so cloyingly sweet that just to look at her is enough to make you vomit!”
“Yes, that’s so,” nodded Theo.
Vincent saw that the painters respected Zola, not because he was successful—they despised the ordinary connotations of success—but because he worked in a medium which seemed mysterious and difficult to them. They listened closely to his words.
“The ordinary human brain thinks in terms of duality; light and shade, sweet and sour, good and evil. That duality does not exist in nature. There is neither good nor evil in the world, but only being and doing. When we describe an action, we describe life; when we call that action names—like depravity or obscenity—we go into the realm of subjective prejudice.”
“But, Emile,” said Theo. “What would the mass of people do without its standard of morality?”
“Morality is like religion,” continued Toulouse-Lautrec; “a soporific to close people’s eyes to the tawdriness of their life.”
“Your amorality is nothing but anarchism, Zola,” said Seurat, “and nihilistic anarchism, at that. It’s been tried before, and it doesn’t work.”
“Of course we have to have certain codes,” agreed Zola. “The public weal demands sacrifices from the individual. I don’t object to morality, but only to the pudency that spits upon Olympia, and wants Maupassant suppressed. I tell you, morality in France today is entirely confined to the erogenous zone. Let people sleep with whom they like; I know a higher morality than that.”
“That reminds me of a dinner I gave a few years ago,” said Gauguin. “One of the men I invited said, ‘You understand, my friend, that I can’t take my wife to these dinners of yours when your mistress is present.’ ‘Very well,’ I replied, ‘I’ll send her out for the evening.’ When the dinner was over and they all went home, our honest Madame, who had yawned the whole evening, stopped yawning and said to her husband, ‘Let’s have some nice piggy talk before we do it.’ And her husband said, ‘Let’s not do anything but talk. I have eaten too much this evening.’”
“That tells the whole story!” shouted Zola, above the laughter.
“Put aside the ethics for a moment and get back to immorality in art,” said Vincent. “No one ever calls my pictures obscene, But I am invariably accused of an even greater immorality, ugliness.”
“You hit it that time, Vincent,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.
“Yes, that’s the essence of the new immorality for the public,” agreed Gauguin. “Did you see what the Mercure de France called us this month? The cult of ugliness.”
“The same criticism is levied against me,” said Zola. “A countess said to me the other day, ‘My dear Monsieur Zola, why does a man of your extraordinary talent go about turning up stones just to see what sort of filthy insects are crawling underneath them?’”
Lautrec took an old newspaper clipping out of his pocket.
“Listen to what the critic said about my canvases at the last Salon des Independents. ‘Toulouse-Lautrec may be reproached for taking delight in representing trivial gaiety, coarse amusements and “low subjects”. He appears to be insensible to beauty of feature, elegance of form and grace of movement. It is true that he paints with a loving brush beings ill-formed, stumpy and repulsive in their ugliness, but of what good is such perversion?’”
“Shades of Frans Hals,” murmured Vincent.
“Well, he’s right,” said Seurat. “If you men are not perverted, you’re at least misguided. Art has to do with abstract things, like colour, design, and tone. It should not be used to improve social conditions or search for ugliness. Painting should be like music, divorced from the everyday world.”
“Victor Hugo died last year,” said Zola, “and with him a whole civilization died. A civilization of pretty gestures, romance, artful lies and subtle evasions, my books stand for the new civilization; the unmoral civilization of the twentieth century. So do your paintings. Bouguereau is still dragging his carcass around Paris, but he took ill the day that Edouard Manet exhibited Picnic on the Grass, and he died the day Mane finished Olympia. Well, Manet is gone now, and so is Daumier, but we still have Degas, Lautrec and Gauguin to carry on their work.”
“Put the name of Vincent Van Gogh on that list,” said Toulouse-Lautrec.
“Put it at the head of the list,” said Rousseau.
“Very well, Vincent,” said Zola with a smile, “you have been nominated for the cult of ugliness. Do you accept the nomination?”