Introduction

The speculation on the works of art which took gigantic proportions since the success of some merchants of opportunist tables of the end of the XIX° century and the beginning of the XX° having benefitted from the sudden and late revelation of the impressionists after one hard times, modern publicity exerting a permanent and wretched pressure on the spirits and being used as propaganda with the tyrannical reign of the money, made suspect at our time any practical success, any notoriety of an artist or a movement.

Leon Gard denounced very early the harmful and destroying effects for art of this not-enlightened despot: money, and of its cheap maidservant: publicity.

We propose here three articles of Leon Gard appeared in the newspaper " Apollo ": The Celebrity became a trade, in July 1948, the sick Animals of the plague, in March 1949, Spiritual and Commercial Richesse, in 1946.

             Animals

               patients of the Plague

                                       By Leon GARD

LE current world of deeply rotted something: one sees that so that the world recognizes itself the state of rot or it is, by the evils who result from it: one diverge only on the causes, according to whether one may find it beneficial to accuse this one or that one, and one fall thus into the odious injustice so vigorously painted by the Fountain, in " the sick animals of the plague ", which consists in showing innocent of an evil that one oneself caused or maintained.

However, when one honestly reflected there, it appears clear that one is in the presence of a return more violent than ever to the worship of " golden calf ", and than one of these principal current agents, if not the main thing, is publicity, such as one practises it today, cunning and professional.

_ if one consider well, indeed, the devastation cause by the publicity, which be the death or the anguish of all it that it there be of more noble in the human society humaine, one be force to conclude that it be a large in addition to full of a pus repugnant, that one pour per ton on the poor humanity, and who represent the law of money.

Furthermore, the fact that people of value and decent people by nature were able from there to put up themselves with the purulency of publicity to the point to see it alleviating, inoffensive, and even useful is the most unquestionable sign depth of the evil. As on all the worst things to which one wants to give right of city, one spreads on publicity -- publicity still -- "bus " reasoning tending to justify it, or at least to minimize it, such as for example, which it is without effect with regard to the bad products, which is obviously false and would remove any raison d'être to him: if publicity were not used to make take for good things which are not it, with what could it be useful well, and why all this million absorbed with its service? The truth is that publicity obliging you, the knife under the throat, with saying that it is innocent and good, defends oneself only by the brute force and that all its arguments are bad.

Why, indeed, it became insufficient to make known goods by a simple sign, or a register containing the addresses of the various manufacturers, merchants or specialists, classified by categories, if not because plugging headlights of publicity, having created the darkness around it by the appearance of its halation of violent and artificial light, no one perhaps seen only by one higher bid of publicity which the others make?

Under these conditions, it is not inescapable that a man of great value, but without money and, consequently eliminated from the advertising halation, no means has of being distinguished at one time when it is not looked at that what is placed in this halation,

However, if one admits -- and it is impossible not to admit it -- that the defect of publicity can make that a great talent remains in the shade, one must be appropriate that it is not the value which decides notorieties of today.

Consequently, it is necessary that it is said to us frankly as it is wanted as it is the value which decides or the money.

With the remainder, if one were not sufficiently convinced of the abjection of publicity by his results, namely the resounding success of a crowd of poor products, so much of the trade, industry, intelligence and arts, one would be built by the character and the behavior of the publicity agent.

This one, indeed, if you entrust publicity to him, never requires of you to certify to him that your goods are worth something. It makes fun about it well. It is restricted to propose to you prices relating to the importance of the publicity which you consider, and consequently incites you to devote to it the most possible money: the morality of this man, they is that the more you give him money, the more it will say good of you, would be you the largest rascal. If you do not give any him, he will not say anything, would be you largest of the men. Well better, if your enemy pays it, it will trail you in mud, and all that will be regarded as honest trade.

The case of the publicity agent, unable businessman of emotion, would only suffice for him to make judge work which it makes.

But the publicity agent is only the comparse of a monstrous company which becomes more extensive each day and what undoubtedly put the roof at the imposture of publicity is the invasion of the world by the radio.

Everyone holds for certain that an opinion formed with light is bad. However what opinions stated by the radio of other that opinions done everything, interested, for the justification of which one is concerned with as much less to provide information, evidence and explanation, and to leave time to think of it, which them goal is at the same time to reach unceasingly all the parts of the world? Aren't they thus the most perfect type of the opinion formed with light, i.e. the type even of the worst opinion which is in the world?

The radio subjected to the money, is, like him, the expression of the brute force: isn't the first gesture of the modern conqueror to seize the radio sets, i.e. to be introduced into the intimacy of each one, in order to mean its will to him, using of speech, concerts and entertainments like oil to soften the hardness of the injunction?

But the corollary more seizing corruption which is publicity, in some form which it presents is, in the final analysis, the profusion of the false values which make the world such as one sees it: chaotic, dreadful, unmatched, malicious.

How many forgery great writers, false forgery, forgery, expert, bogus scientist, statesmen false large singers large actors? In fields which are not properly miens I will not quote names, though it is known well that I say true.

On the other hand, it is a field of which I had a duty, here, to return account with frankness, with the risk sometimes to be brutal, that of art: how to understand that, for example, Rouault, indefinitely repeating its poor easy way of a table resembling a dirty stained glass without it being able for all that to make characteristic, badly drawn because that made antiquated, that Picasso monkey crafty one, insipid or yelling painter, poor and fallacious draughtsman, whose cubism is the least mediocrity, that one Directs plagiarist of the monkey, that a Raoul Dufy draughtsman null and shameless, at most ready to variegate rustic fabrics, arrived at notoriety that they differently have than by the care of the corrupted publicity of the modern world?

At the time of Raphaël, there was no publicity. As long as one will let the reputations be established themselves, without anything to force neither to precipitate, preventing nor to violate the opinion, paying to have the lights directed on oneself and so that the extinguishers are posed on the neighbors, we will be always submerged and ordered by the false talents, in the medium of which truths, even known, even famous, will remain like suspect anomalies of authenticity.

       The Celebrity became a trade

                                                 By Leon GARD

" LE boniment formed part of the trade ", said a proverb, which probably applies to that of charlatan, and the poet Henri Heine, having pointed out this proverb, associates this insidious conclusion to him: " and the life is a trade like another ", conclusion that us kids brutally since it gives to understand that the life belongs to the most skilful liar legitimately.

At least, this cynicism indicates T-it with a sufficient clearness that certain spirits do not reject the charlatanism, admires it when it is clever, and goes not only until claiming that nothing important is made without its contest, but still that all people which arrive to a high reputation in the world are only charlatans of a species or another. It is still Henri Heine, indeed, who writes: " is he a considerable man who is not somewhat charlatan? ", which is beyond truth, because as widespread as is hypocrisy, is necessary it however as it takes its models some share.

Without us to become heavy on what is worth this amorality skeptic which introduces the intelligent swindler like the human type less méprisable, which pretends to see in honesty only one hypocrisy or a stupidity to exempt itself to honour it and to conform to it, we will restrict itself to note that it is a kind of people who regard the charlatanism as a philosophically valid attitude, if not higher, and consequently we would be faulty observers to be unaware of the practice of the methodical charlatanism in the world.

Admittedly " boniment formed part of the trade ", which teaches that it there trades where boniment is essential and of the trades which, in their principle, do not comprise any.

It follows that there exists in the humanity of the groupings which propose to serve the good faith, while others deliberately propose to serve the bad one.

Here thus which is quite distinct: the ones propose not to mislead; the others propose to mislead those which chose to be sincere, and they endeavour to make so that the good faith becomes like a species of " Achilles' heel ", the vulnerable point which they always strike.

However, those which do not want to mislead do not want either only one misleads them, and when they realize that they are easily deceived they enter vigorously fights about it against their dupeurs.

Consequently, it happens that the public, put in good faith in mistrust by certain disappointments, ceases biting with boniment, and at this point in time the " trade " of the charlatan knows periods of stagnation.

And it is not doubtful for example, that boniment, principal engine of the manufacture of the factitious celebrities, currently does not pass through a serious crisis. Will it go back from there? I do not know anything of it, and for my part, I wish ardently that it succumb, although I am not unaware of that it has the hard life.

One drew really too much on the cord from boniment and it lets see its wear. After the schemes to which one assisted, the orchestrations of press, the articles, is dithyrambic or abusive but paid, the ones like the others, the polemic concerted, the scandals systematic, the too spectacular conferences, the too luxurious editions, indecent favouritisms, the iniquitous proscriptions, the political intrigues, etc, to lead obviously to an attempt at " boom " of the goods, it is necessary to acknowledge that any famous man, of some edge that it is, became so much is not very suspect, because one has always the right to wonder of which proportion of puffiness its fame is made.

Very a long time, one believed of confidence -- and it is what made the easy way possible -- which a person can become famous only if there is in her some merit above the commun run. This opinion, about founded of the time when the generalized technique of publicity did not exist, became completely erroneous, today that the spontaneous selection in a work by the capacity to carry out this work is replaced by the process which consists in making believe in the existence of a talent by repeating the greatest number of possible time that this talent exists. Since one opinion oneself that one could suggest with crowd that Untel has genius while launching in the world with blow of million the name of So-and-so, there is no more reason so that one is concerned with saying true to be believed, since one found the means of being believed without saying true.

Formerly, the phenomenon of the celebrity broke up into two times: 1° to have talent; 2° thanks to this talent, to become famous. Today, always two times ago, but the order in is opposite: 1° to go celebrates by boniment unspecified, but noisy and widely diffused; 2° thanks to this boniment massively spread, to pass to have talent.

Unfortunately, the charlatans having found the means of manufacturing the celebrities misused it and manufactured them in series. From there inflation of famous people, i.e. cover-but (or cover-genius) insufficient, from there shock of the confidence and finally devalorization of the value-celebrity.

I thus see stinging during the day, I repeat it, where it will be enough that a name is famous so that one initially considers it with mistrust and reserve. And I do not make a paradox there. It is actually of our time that the celebrity will have known her greater prestige because, formerly, when a person of distinguished family started to make literature, for example, or it did not sign (Rochefoucauld published her maxims by signing them " three stars "), or it used a name of loan, which states sufficiently that it was not so much appreciated by people of quality to have his name harped with all the echoes.

Today this mark of good taste is letter died for the majority; one gray of the least appearance of celebrity, and the smallest names are rengorgent of a fame which they believe large, without seeing the vulgar side of this futile, conceited and false design of the celebrity who felt reluctant with our aïeux the best gifted ones.

Also, this salubrious devalorization of the celebrity will still have the advantage of releasing the justified celebrities of the peat of the artificial celebrities with whom, by the force of the things, they are intermingled: the company can only there gain considerably because nothing is more beneficial for a company than the right man in the right place. Just as anything is not more disastrous than a company where legitimately famous men are often ashamed their fellow-members as a celebrity, and where men of value are too much tempted to remain inactive, in the social direction of the word.

And then, it is not fatal that the word of divine Socrate is checked century in century: " They do not know what one owes, less than all, not to know: the sorrow reserved for the injustice ", i.e. the deflation of their skill even, of these people who believe themselves supremely skilful, which, when their tricks are thwarted, will make then, like still says it Socrate"  the effect not to be better a whole than children "?

   Spiritual and Commercial richness

                     By Leon Gard

Withimer a table relative with the sum of currency which it represents, it is not to like painting, because if the price breaks down, the love for the table will disappear at the same time as its monetary value. The true dimension of a table, it is the pleasure which it gives you: that which likes really the painting will always pay the price right, because it will judge it by its pleasure and its pleasure -- which is at the same time the pleasure of several people of taste -- is the true international currency.

All that is a large expert beautiful and good, will retort certain "realistic", but, which doubts to be? And in practice unfortunately, if we buy the paintings which we like, it would be very often those which do not have any chance to enrich us. On the other hand, didn't one see speculators, i.e. people not testing a very pure love for painting, to carry out enormous profits on the purchase and the sale of the tables? Consequently, little us chaut that the tables are good or bad in. It does not matter that we like them or that we do not like them! Isn't essence to have a method making it possible to envisage the rises and the falls in order to buy and to sell in convenient time?

Does one buy paintings to grow rich? We will retort. Admittedly, to grow rich, but how: is this to enrich our spirit or to enrich our purse? It is quite obvious that is to enrich our spirit, without what if one wanted only to enrich his purse one would buy ground of the investment properties, noble metals, precious stones, all that which one will want, except tables, which have any appearance to have value only by the work of spirit that they represent. If the tables manage, in the final analysis, to enrich the purse; it is because, in practice, they are presented as objects which one buys and which one sells, i.e. like goods, and which any goods are likely to enrich the purse by its salesman. It is thus clear that if the tables were not, essentially, intended to enrich the spirit, they could not become goods suitable to enrich the purse.

The lawyer of the speculator will say: one, by advertising processes, " did not launch " of the tables which were bought by a crowd of people of which none liked these tables, but which regarded them only as objects of speculation. This is true, but if the tables could become, in the hands of the speculators, of the objects of monetary profit, is because the tables had ceased, generally, to be regarded as spiritual richnesses, or is this because the speculators, not regarding them themselves as spiritual richnesses, however endeavoured to make them pass for such to the eyes of the public?

One can, will answer the sophist, to speculate in anything: on postage stamps, boxes of matches, trouser buttons, shells, as many objects stripped of eigenvalue: one thus speculates in a table, as one speculates in any object: it is thus the speculation which gives to the table its value and not the table which gives its value to the speculation.

But, will we notice, why speculates one in such postage stamp rather than in such other postage stamp? The sophist is forced to answer that one speculates in such postage stamp rather than in any other because this stamp is in small quantity of its species, in the same way for the box of matches, the button trouser, etc. However, is this also because a table exists only in small quantity of its species which one speculates with? It should be recognized that not, because there are tables far from many of their species and who, however, are by no means required. It is thus for another reason that the tables are required so that they can become objects of speculation. And if they are not because they are higher products of the spirit than they are sought, for which reason that could it be? The sophist speculator will have to agree that that can be for no other reason. However, when tables which, not being products of the spirit authentically higher, nevertheless succeeded in speculative operations, it is out of doubt that it has not been enough for that to existence to some speculators cynical, but that it still was necessary that these speculators suppose the participation of credulous purchasers, at least in the belief that certain purchasers would believe in the spiritual richness of these tables.

It is thus well established in an irrefutable way that firstly, a table can become a monetary richness only if it is initially a spiritual richness, and that secondly, if he passes sometimes for a monetary richness without being however a true spiritual richness, it is only insofar as, thanks to the fallacious publicity of the speculators, it arrives at being supposed such.

I concluded from it that, the day when time and the reflexion made it possible to distinguish that the tables which had become monetary richnesses because it was supposed them being of the spiritual richnesses, are not actually spiritual richnesses, their money value is destroyed all-with-blow.

However, the question is finally to know if what the trade gained on a side during one moment by these fraudulent operations, it does not lose it other, because a breach of trust discovered causes a crisis of paralysing mistrust, ruinous. It even should be wondered whether the trade does not lose as a whole more money in this hot mode and cold only in one moderate mode where one would sell less tables, but good? For me, that is not any doubt. Those which were accustomed to gain much money by too easy and not very honest methods, were usually accustomed has to spend about it much and when the fall comes, they are initially deprived and then became weak purchasers for the trade in general. Lastly, let us not forget that the speculators having carried out large benefit on these tables simply succeeded by chance in certain operations, as one gains with the lottery or the races; i.e. one undoubtedly does not gain, and that one is likely to lose tomorrow what one gained......

Perhaps that in despair of cause one will make me this last objection: but finally, which enables you to affirm that there were speculators on the enough shameless tables not to be at all convinced of the merit of their goods, but nevertheless determined to sell it as expensive as the goods of most beautiful quality. You, that is easy, but these consents which you put in their mouth, according to which a table is not for them a spiritual richness but an object of speculation, these consents, they make them speak really did them? Why wouldn't they, after have very acted in good faith? Which are your evidence?

Alas, those which would have the most interest to keep silence do not know, most of the time, by a rather naive vanity, to resist the desire for telling itself. Even when they are flattered, it is difficult for them, to pass at this time for others that what they are: their consents are all the more eloquent as they are involuntary.

Ambroise Vollard, in his " memories of a merchant of tables ", whose substance, made witty remarks and anecdotes, constitutes a poor book moreover, speaks only about people concerned about buy at the good time paintings called " to go up ". All are not happy acquisitions, either business of chance, or business of sense of smell, but all, except some large artists, Pissaro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas anxious to solve artistic and non-financial problems, seem reached desire of profit. A middle-class man whom it always saw rôder in the galleries of the street Laffitte acknowledged him that it came there to try to detect the tables most likely " to go up " so, by buying one of them, to constitute a dowry for his daughter who had just been born. He does not forget either to let us know that Gustave Geffroy sold all its Cézanne to its own portrait, finally that the widow of Manet and the brother of this one sold the few tables which remained to them workshop of Edouard Manet with processes which are with the praise neither of their artistic understanding nor of their delicacy. The purpose of these acute and sarcastic observations on general venality are obviously to show us that the merchants are not the only covetous ones and that the comparison with certain private individuals their is favorable. He has care, as for him, to paint itself as a merchant who acknowledges to be it, honestly, regularly, but higher than the others by his artistic sense of smell. This last point is contestable remainder: if Vollard had much chance by meeting Pissaro, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, and also by profiting, by the same occasion, their councils, it made however sterile acquisitions infinitely more than the others. Vollard in spite of the bright role that he wants to give himself was of an insensitivity in art that its " witty remarks " do not manage to dissimulate, but skilful businessman, knowing to be made friends of people suitable for inform it about the quality of the raw material with which he worked. It is necessary to also to admit him to be spiritual. But it, of is rained, the man who opened in France one era of abominable speculation. It étourdiment acknowledges it in this sentence where it evokes its beginnings: " one was not yet at the time where a fabric sold in Paris was repurchased in Berlin, was resold in New York and returned to Paris and all that in the space of a few weeks ". However which, if not with some others, brought these new methods to him?

It is between 1914 and 1929 that it this period ago of claimed prosperity, but whose factitious character appeared by a final collapse, and also by an immense distress in the artistic orientation.

Berthe Weill, famous commercial of tables of this " beautiful " time, published, it also, in 1932, a book of memories (it is an epidemic) heading: " Side! In the eye! ", where it examines the causes of the rout: " what created the current crisis in painting it is the lack of confidence, these are the disorders that the fictitious sales with the Drouot hotel caused, it is, for the speculators, the intensive speculation which, not acting, no interest consequently supports them " (sic). The opinion of this commercial tested known as good what she wants to say, namely that she does not chew that there were fictitious sales with the Drouot hotel. There is thus no possible doubt only one crowd of people who had not liked painting are for thirty years endeavoured to grow rich while speculating in the sale by the tables and whom art, the artists and the trade of the tables suffered much.

The morals of this history is that one should not, like one says vulgarly, " throw " the tables of the alive painters, because by this means, one obtains forced prices which, not corresponding to the real quality of the object, throw confusion on the market of painting put in vogue poor works, distort the education of the public with regard to the works of art and prepare ruinous panics. The courses of the hotel are hardly sure but insofar as they are established on tables which, more or less distributed in the collections, do not have to be launched and, not existing more with the inventory status report between the hands of the merchants cannot be the subject of outraged speculations. The old tables, indeed, do not appear, in general, in the auction-room that for normal reasons, for example: successions, reverse of fortune, need for carrying out money immediately, and not by spirit of speculation. The prices which they make thus correspond, except certain ridiculous obstinacies with a spontaneous evaluation of the amateurs present at the sale.

Thus, always let us keep a small mistrust with regard to the tables of alive artists who reappear constantly with the hotel, because it is the proof that their owners do not make a point so much of seeing them on their walls.

And let us let the alive painters take their place quite naturally, i.e. by the pleasure which one has to have their works.