Spiritual crisis and the 'call to order': the early aesthetic writings of Gino Severini and Jacques...

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Spiritual crisis and the 'call to order': the early aesthetic writings of GinoSeverini and Jacques MaritainZoë Marie Jones

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Spiritual crisis and the ‘call to order’: the early aestheticwritings of Gino Severini and Jacques MaritainZOE MARIE JONES

In 1937 the art critic Corrado Pavolini interviewed the renowned

neo-Thomist French philosopher Jacques Maritain for the

Italian art journal Il Frontispizio. The interview took place at

the Roman residence of the artist Gino Severini, a close friend

and spiritual prote�ge�e of Maritain. Although the subsequent

article was little more than a general profile of Maritain with

no reference to his philosophical achievements, Pavolini’s use of

descriptive artistic analogies makes it noteworthy. Pavolini

writes that Maritain ‘‘didn’t seem to be a philosopher, but

reminded one more of a painter: the last surviving of the

Impressionists: with an invisible folding easel, a box of colors

slung across his shoulder, a pipe at an angle from his mouth,’’

and concludes the essay with the observation that Maritain’s

overall appearance ‘‘makes one think of a painting begun by

Cezanne and finished by Renoir.’’1 Pavolini’s curious metaphors

attribute a profoundly artistic character to Maritain’s

personality and, accurate or not, they do much to illuminate

the philosopher’s close relationship with modernist artists of the

interwar years. By examining the relationship betweenMaritain

and one of these artists, the former Italian Futurist Gino

Severini, I will reveal the shared assumptions underlying the

aesthetic writings of both artist and philosopher, and in so doing

underscore the relevance of neo-Catholicism for an

understanding of the avant-garde in interwar France.

To date the impact of Catholicism on Cubist aesthetics in

interwar France — and on Severini in particular — has received

little attention among Anglo-American scholars writing on the

avant-garde’s so-called ‘‘return to order’’ in Paris between the

wars.2 As a result, art historians have not sufficiently grasped the

extent to which this ‘‘return to order’’ often was also a return to

religious belief in the guise of neo-Catholic aesthetics.3 I seek to

overcome this lacuna by demonstrating how Severini’s synthesis

of avant-gardism and tradition in the early 1920s helped shaped

Maritain’s own assessment of modernism’s spiritual import. The

alliance forged by Severini andMaritain, which arose in part as a

response to the spiritual, political, and economic crisis precipi-

tated by the First World War, set a precedent for other such

collaborations, most notably that between the Dominican

Marie-Alain Couturier and modernists such as Henri Matisse

following the upheaval of the Second World War.4

Severini and Maritain first met in 1923. This initial encounter

resulted in a strong intellectual and personal affinity based on

mutual respect and support for each other’s theories about art

and aesthetics.5Although each began the twentieth century with

vastly different objectives and life experiences, their emergent

intellectual and philosophical principles were strikingly similar.

Even before their first meeting, Severini and Maritain had

independently renounced their earlier adherence to the ideology

of philosopher Henri Bergson and instead formed a theory of art

and beauty that was based on the ideal of the artist as an ‘‘honest

workman’’ and a close study of the methods and practices of

classical scholars and artisans. Although the ideas of both men

continued to undergo revision, each had written key texts before

their initial introduction. Art et scolastique (1920) by Maritain and

Du cubisme au classicisme (1921) by Severini illustrate a surprising

amount of overlap in ideas and reveal the philosophical and

intellectual foundation for what would become an immediate

and lasting friendship. A close reading of these texts and their

subsequent impact on the European artistic community is neces-

sary to document the overall trajectory of the modernist agenda

shared by both Severini and Maritain and its adaptation to new

conditions during the interwar years.

Severini’s return to Catholicism

By the time Severini was first introduced toMaritain in the early

1920s he had already turned away from his earlier Futurist and

avant-garde roots and was experimenting with a more classical

and rational style. In his 1946 autobiography, he writes of a

strong desire for certainty and confirmation in the face of the

profound disorder immediately following First WorldWar. This

sentiment accompanied a return to Catholicism around 1919.6

The sequence of events that led up to Severini’s ‘‘conversion’’

speak of his increasing disillusionment with the state of the world

as well as a number of profound personal tragedies, including

the loss of his infant son Tonio, the death of his dear friends

Umberto Boccioni and Guillaume Apollinaire during the war,

his family’s poor health, and his continually precarious financial

situation.7 In other words, intense personal grief and suffering

combined with a general state of anxiety resulting from the

uproar and chaos taking place throughout Europe. This led to

an overwhelming inner crisis that ultimately led Severini to

reconsider the disdain for religion that permeated the thought

of his fellow Futurists. This culminated in two events: the

baptism of his young daughter, Gina, and a renewal of his

marriage vows to Jeanne Fort in the Catholic church.8

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It is particularly significant that the priest Gabriel Sarraute

presided over the Catholic marriage of Severini and his wife of

10 years, Jeanne Fort. Severini recalls in a memoir that one

Sunday in 1922 her husband went to Saint Germain en Laye

to visit the painter Maurice Denis, a central figure in the grow-

ing Catholic artistic community. Denis had played a significant

role in leading Severini back to Catholicism and inspired him to

follow his own example of putting his developing aesthetic

theories onto paper. At Denis’ studio Severini was introduced

to the young Sarraute, who was already familiar with the artist’s

treatiseDu cubisme au classicisme.9Drawn together by their mutual

interest in the correlations between modernism and classicism,

the two became immediate friends. Severini soon intensified this

relationship by taking Sarraute into his confidence and asking

for his assistance in arranging a Catholic marriage for himself

and his wife.10

Shortly after this ceremony Sarraute was asked to celebrate

the first mass in Maritain’s new private chapel at his house in

Meudon. The service was to have been held by the abate Daniel

Lallement, but at the last minute he fell ill and asked Sarraute to

substitute for him.11 While Sarraute had not previously met the

Maritains, his participation in such a significant event brought

him into their inner circle and paved the way for the eventual

introduction of the artist and philosopher. Soon after that

Sarraute was unfortunately called to the south of France on

permanent religious assignment. Although Sarraute was appre-

hensive about abandoning Severini in the midst of the painter’s

spiritual crisis, he consoles the readers of his memoirs by recal-

ling that ‘‘leaving Paris I had entrusted Severini to Maritain.’’12

The impact of Bergsonian thought

Like the Futurists, both Maritain and his partner Raıssa

Oumansoff initially found in Bergson’s metaphysical philosophy

an answer to the spiritual void left by the reigning positivism of

the times. Raıssa recalls in her memoir, Les grandes amitie�s, souve-

nirs, that ‘‘by means of a marvelously penetrating criticism

Bergson dissipated the anti-metaphysical prejudices of a

pseudo-scientific positivism, and recalled the mind to its real

function, to its essential liberty . . . . He created an enthusiasm in

us, a joyous recognition which was to survive through the years,

even through grave philosophical divergences.’’13

By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the Maritains

had completely abandoned the secular teachings of Bergson and

had instead turned to Catholicism and the teachings of St.

Thomas Aquinas. While this shift was certainly dictated by

personal choices, it also coincided with a general sense of unease

about Bergsonian teachings within the Catholic community.

Specifically, the ideas of Bergson were being cast as polluted

by ‘‘Asiatic’’ philosophy and were thus seen as ‘‘foreign’’ to the

church.14 While not directly referring to this debate, Maritain

sought to distance himself from his former Bergsonism in his

early philosophical work from the period 1910–1914.15 In these

works Maritain separated Thomistic philosophy from its secular

cousins, specifically Bergsonism.While he systematically criticizes

the philosopher’s most influential ideas in La philosophie bergsonienne

—most prominently those of intuition, dynamism, duration, and

the concept of creative evolution — he also credits Bergson with

helping to lift the veil of nineteenth-century positivism and

encouraging a renewal of human thought.16 Maritain also seeks

to distinguish Bergson’s underlying intention, which he sees as

wholly compatible with the ideas of neo-Thomism, from the

erroneous application of his ideas and Bergson’s tendency to

disregard ‘‘being’’ in favor of ‘‘becoming’’ and ‘‘intellect’’ in

favor of ‘‘intuition.’’17 In addition, he praises Bergson for being a

‘‘scrupulous and conscientious worker’’ (a high compliment from

Maritain and one that he would later also give to Severini) and for

the ‘‘subtlety and penetration of his thought, his love for truth’’

and his ‘‘desire for a truly disinterested philosophy in true con-

formity with the real.’’18

Maritain’s critique of Bergsonism found reinforcement in the

reactionary ideals of the Action Francaise, an extreme right-wing

group founded in 1899 and lad by Charles Maurras.19 Maurras

believed that Bergsonism was partly responsible for the chaos in

which France found itself in the years after the First World War.

The Action Francaise was opposed to the secular and anti-clerical

nature of the French Republic and instead desired a restoration

of the French monarchy and its nationalistic views. Although

Maritain never officially joined the movement and he did not

entirely subscribe to the group’s conservative views on modern-

ism, he had many close allies and friends (including Maurice

Denis) who were members.20 In 1920 the philosopher strength-

ened his connection to the Action Francaise by joining with

Charles Maurras, Henri Massis, and Jacques Bainville to

found La revue universelle, a journal tied to the movement in all

but name.21 In 1926 the Action Francaise was condemned by Pope

Pius XI as a danger to the true Catholic spirit and Maritain

withdrew his support from Maurras (later calling his involve-

ment with the movement and its reactionary politics a terrible

mistake). However, during the early 1920s the nationalistic and

conservative influence of the Action Francaise and its emphasis on

the revival of French traditionalism can certainly be seen in

Maritain’s thinking and at times conflicted with his support of

modernist and foreign artists such as Severini.22

Maritian was highly critical of Bergsonism and the appropria-

tion and distortion of Bergson’s original ideas by over-

enthusiastic avant-garde theorists. In a 1914 text, he cites a

passage from the catalog of the Futurists seminal 1912 exhibit

at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris. While the Futurists claim

that their Cubist nemeses ‘‘persist in painting the immobile, the

frozen and all the static states of nature,’’ they, ‘‘with absolute

futuristic points of view,’’ seek to renew art by expressing move-

ment. In short, ‘‘the gesture [they] wish to reproduce on canvas

will no longer be a fixed instant of universal dynamism . . . it will

be nothing short of dynamic sensation itself.’’23 According to

Maritain, this is a simplified and populist version of Bergson’s

theories of dynamism and becoming, which in their truest form

do not require evidence of actual movement or visible change.

Thus, while Bergsonian philosophy is to be criticized because it

60 ZOE MARIE JONES


‘‘offends intelligence and ruins the principles of reason,’’ Futurist

ideology commits the even greater crime of offending ‘‘sense

perception and the testimony of our eyes.’’24 However, in the

1927 edition of La Philosophie bergsonienne Maritain tempers his

previous claim by clarifying in a footnote that it is only the

bombastic theories of the Futurist movement that deserve such

criticism, and not the paintings themselves. He also excuses

Severini in particular from this criticism stating that Severini,

‘‘a very good friend and a most honest and scrupulous artist . . .

whose horizon has greatly broadened since then, will pardon

this allusion to his early struggles.’’25

While Severini had indeed moved beyond these ‘‘early strug-

gles’’ by the time he met Maritain, many of the artist’s initial

Futurist images were undeniably influenced by Bergsonian phi-

losophy. These images, particularly those depictingMontmartre’s

dancehalls, attempt to incorporate Bergson’s theory that only

through intuition and memory is it possible to enter into a

thing, perceiving it from the inside rather than from the outside.

According to Bergson it is only through this process that one may

grasp the absolute, or in Severini’s words, ‘‘total reality.’’26 Thus,

images such as The Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin from 1912

(figure 1) place a significant emphasis on the collective and unify-

ing energy of modern life and attempt tomerge all elements of the

environment (dancers, spectators, music, rhythm, light, etc.) in

accordance with Bergsonian notions of individual intuition and

the dynamic interpenetration of forms.

While paintings such as The Dynamic Hieroglyphic remain firmly

embedded in Futurist practice and theory, they also point to a

shift in Severini’s aesthetics. Although he was an official member

of F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist movement and nominally adhered

to Futurist ideology, Severini resided in Paris and interacted

with his Futurist colleagues primarily through written corre-

spondence. As a result, Severini’s primary artistic community

was made up of members of the Parisian avant-garde such as

Picasso and Braque, the Puteaux Cubists (primarily Gleizes,

Metzinger, and Le Fauconnier), and Robert Delaunay. Thus,

Severini’s work and ideas during the years leading up to First

World War attest to an assimilation of Cubist sources that led

the artist to adopt an intermediary position between the French

and Italian avant-gardes.27

Severini’s growing disillusionment with Futurism during the

war years led him first toward Cubism and then to a new

definition of classicism, a style that the artist had already experi-

mented with in 1916 with the paintings Maternita (figure 2) and

Ritratto di Jeanne.28However, it was not until after the FirstWorld

War and the publication of Du cubisme au classicisme that this

theoretical shift took a concrete form (the artist later insisted

that his project had always been to find a synthesis of these

Figure 1. Gino Severini, The Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin (1912,

Museum of Modern Art, New York).

Figure 2. Gino Severini, Maternita (1916, Museo dell’ Accademia Etrusca e

della Citta di Cortona).

61


impulses).29 By divorcing himself from the stylistic forms of

Futurism, Severini also turned away from the movement’s athe-

istic tendencies and revolutionary politics. While Marinetti and

the remaining Futurists aligned themselves initially with

Mussolini’s nascent Fascist movement in the years directly

after the war (only rejecting this connection when it became

clear that Fascism had moved too far to the Right), Severini

rejected this line of thought and instead embraced the conser-

vative beliefs of the Catholic Church and the teachings of the

classical masters.30

A meeting of minds: neo-Thomism and classicism

Severini’s writings from the war years, most notably two articles

published in theMercure de France in 1916 and 1917, trace the process

of his artistic and political transformation.31 These texts link the

Futurist statement quoted by Maritain above to Severini’s new

approach in Du Cubisme au classicisme by presenting the problem of

painting as defining a ‘‘new sense of space’’ that must leave behind

individual intuition and instead find a foundation in a universally

recognized system of values: geometry and mathematics.

Severini’s Du Cubisme au classicisme was first published in 1921

through the patronage of Le�once Rosenberg, director of the

L’Effort moderne gallery (which was then representing Severini)

and the publisher J. Povolozky (an old acquaintance from the

days of the cafe� Closerie des Lilas). While the book is dedicated to

the memory of Umberto Boccioni, a staunch adherent to the

ideas of Bergson and to Futurism until his untimely death in

1916, the text distances itself from this and other avant-garde

movements and instead positions itself as a manual for the artist

who wished to follow Severini in bridging the gap between the

excesses and exaggerations of the avant-garde and the rational

and mathematical rules of classical technique.

Although Severini’s treatise was written without any knowl-

edge of Maritain’s contemporaneous theories, the similarities in

their thinking soon became apparent. At the end of their first

meeting Maritain gave Severini a copy of his own artistic trea-

tise, Art et scolastique, published in 1920.32 In this volumeMaritain

discusses the condition of contemporary artistic production and

connects it to scholastic theological arguments, such as the

relationship between Universal Beauty, God, and the timely

beauty of modernist art. In a grateful letter to Maritain shortly

after this encounter, Severini writes of the book as ‘‘infinitely

precious to me. It was given to me in the precise moment in

which I felt the need to look at art from this same point of view.

In sum I found in your book the confirmation of my last

conclusions and the tools for deepening this aspect of the artistic

question.’’33 Severini was profoundly moved by Maritain’s

treatise and saw in it ‘‘the confirmation of certain thought

patterns, certain ways of clarifying these to myself and to

others.’’34

Severini also discovered in Art et Scolastique a much more

material confirmation of his own work, to which Maritain

makes a reference in his chapter on ‘‘Art and Beauty.’’ In his

discussion of integrity and proportion Maritain states that these

concepts have no absolute signification and must be understood

solely in relation to the end of the work.35 He uses the apparent

incompleteness of a Futurist painting as an example of this

concept, writing

If it pleases a futurist [sic] to give the lady he is painting only

one eye, or a quarter of an eye, no one denies him the right to

do this: one asks only — here is the whole problem— that this

quarter of an eye be precisely all the eye this lady needs in the

given case.36

Although neither Severini nor the title of the painting was

specifically mentioned in the text, Severini remembers Maritain

saying that his painting La danseuse obse�dante from 1911 (figure 3)

provided the inspiration for the comment.37Maritain’s choice of

this painting was especially prudent as the work exemplifies the

prismatic fragmentation and sense of disquiet that critics of

modernist aesthetics found so confounding and that the philo-

sopher was attempting to defend. The presence of this reference

in Maritain’s writing is also evidence that the philosopher had

taken notice of and was contemplating Severini’s work even

before their first meeting.38

The basic conception of art and its role in society advocated

by Severini’s Du Cubisme au classicisme parallels that found in

Figure 3. Gino Severini, La danseuse obse�dante (1911, private collection).

62 ZOE MARIE JONES


Maritain’s Art et scolastique. Severini sought to leave behind the

fragmentation and impulsivity that had characterized his

Futurist period and to instead bring the ‘‘dynamism’’ and

‘‘renewal’’ of modern art into a harmonious relationship with

the ‘‘unity’’ of classicism. The artist believed that the ultimate

purpose of art is to ‘‘create a harmony’’ and ‘‘to reconstruct the

universe according to the laws by which it is determined.’’39

Building on the Scholastic philosophers, Maritain had ascer-

tained that the absolute goal of art is to achieve Beauty, by which

he means a sense of perfection and harmony that is based on

eternal laws. Although Maritain gives this statement an explicit

religious connotation by professing that when art is able to reach

this end it will be able to transcend human nature and achieve a

sense of the divine, both his and Severini’s concept of art stem

from the same search for perfection and universiality.

Severini and Maritain place the creation of art firmly within

the realm of productive action. This view requires that the work

of art be an action that consists of imprinting an idea on matter,

not of allowingmatter to dictate the idea. Thus, the work of art is

something that must always be ‘‘thought’’ before being ‘‘made’’

and must never be guided by impulse or left to the caprices of

chance. For Maritain this means that art ‘‘will always retain

something of the spirit because it is ripened in the mind before

passing into matter.’’40 In order for this transference from mind

into matter to take place, the artist must control his production

through the use of formal elements, i.e., mathematics and

geometry. Maritain warns of the dangers of ignoring this advice,

writing that if the formal element is weakened then the reality of

art disappears and the work becomes ‘‘sensual slush.’’41To avoid

this unappealing end, it is imperative that an artist correctly uses

the universal laws of science.42

Severini, both as an artist and a theorist, illustrated how the

modern artist could go about acquiring this knowledge. In order

to distance himself from the ‘‘false’’ geometry and science of

Cubism and Futurism, Severini began to seriously study math-

ematical and geometric theories as early as 1918 and elaborated

on his findings in Du Cubisme au classicisme. He consulted, among

others, the contemporary theories of the mathematician Raoul

Bricard (he even visited the scholar in his offices at the College

de France43), the architectural theories of Vitruvius, Alberti,

Viollet-le-Duc, and Choisy, the geometrical explorations of

Da Vinci, and Durer’s treatise on proportion.44 In these works

he found confirmation that the concept of number, or the

immutable laws of geometry, would lead him toward an ideal

art of purity and harmony.

Throughout Du Cubisme au classicisme Severini’s constant

emphasis is on a meticulous method of ‘‘construction’’ that he

distilled from his study of these theories. He states that the work of

art must be ‘‘constructed, piece by piece, like a machine.’’45 He

divides this technique into three distinct parts: (1) the internal

conception, (2) the scientific and quantitative construction,

(3) and the execution. In the first phase, the artist accumulates

‘‘materials of all kinds like an architect, piling up in a corner the

stones, bricks, beams and lime which he will use for the

building.’’46 In the second phase, ‘‘that of the compass, of the

protractor, and of the set square,’’ the artist follows a ‘‘plan’’ and

‘‘lays the foundation of the edifice . . . raising its inner structure

and principle walls.’’47 This stage culminates in the careful con-

struction of a tracciato, or a scale drawing over which a complex

system of geometrical diagrams has been charted (figure 4).48 In

the third phase, this framework is removed, ‘‘the edifice is fin-

ished, the scaffolding disappears and the walls are painted.’’49

Severini places no limit on the amount of time that it takes to

produce a work of art in this fashion and instead advocates

patience and diligence throughout, saying that it can take months

or even years to bring a single work to fruition.50

Severini argues that contemporary art is in a state of anarchy

and degeneracy because the principles of construction and geo-

metry that were perfected in the Italian Renaissance had been

gradually forgotten. He laments that very few contemporary

artists possess the ability to grasp the true nature of art and that

this regrettable fact has largely come about due to an inadequate

understanding of mathematics and geometry. Severini believed

that the art of the twentieth century had thus far taken one of two

routes, both of which have led to a degenerative state. The first

was built on the misunderstood application of the laws of geome-

try and resulted in the ‘‘sensual’’ (by which he means false)

intellectualism of the Ecole des Beaux Arts.51 The second was

followed by avant-garde artists who ‘‘sought to excite admiration

through surprise and not through the pure beauty of the forms of

the mind.’’52 Instead of attempting to follow the teachings of the

classical masters through the study of the scientific and geometric

laws of number, these ‘‘artists have preferred to affirm their own

individuality, independently of any rule or method — but in

running after originality they have only arrived at singularity.’’53

Severini found in Maritain’s writings a justification of his own

critique of the general state of the arts in contemporary times. For

Figure 4. Gino Severini, Figure xx (From Cubism to classicism, 1921), p. 98.

63


example, inArt et scolastiqueMaritainwrites that the ‘‘modern artist

is confronted with an insane problem: a choice between the

senility of academic rules and the primitiveness of natural gift:

with the latter, art does not yet exist, except in potentiality; with

the former, it has ceased to exist at all.’’54

In order to rectify this situation both the artist and the philo-

sopher believe that an artist must focus on ‘‘rebuilding the

Universe through the aesthetic of number and of the mind,’’ a

project that was perfected by the Greeks and was rediscovered

by the artists and humanists of the early Renaissance.55 Thus

science and art must be reunified, as the forced division of these

disciplines has been one of the great causes of the decline of art

in past centuries. Severini views this unification as ‘‘the begin-

ning of a new art, closely related to science, developing together

with it, and capable of attaining an intensity of expression and a

transposition of universal life of a perfection such as no-one has

yet been able to imagine.’’56

One of the ways that this unity could be attained was by a

return to craftsmanship and an apprenticeship system.

Severini’s and Maritain’s mutual support for this system stems

from their admiration of the craftsman/guild workshops of the

medieval era.57 They believed that the collective nature of these

workshops prevented artists from falling prey to the cult of

individualism that appeared during the later Renaissance.

According to Maritain, in medieval times artists did not work

out of a desire for fame or wealth but applied their services in the

name of faith. In contrast, the individualistic nature of the

Renaissance only succeeded in driving ‘‘the artist mad by chan-

ging this and revealing to him his own peculiar grandeur.’’58

While neither Severini nor Maritain’s texts were meant as

polemics, both are quick to critique the working methods of past

art movements. Severini, as we have seen, is particularly critical

of what he sees as a superficial quality inherent to the avant-

gardes (particularly Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism) and

opposes their emphasis on a process of intuition, putting forth

his own (rediscovered) process of reason and diligence.59 For

Severini, ‘‘Cubism is still in the last stage of Impressionism in

that it is instinctive and sensorial’’ and thus bases itself on

empiricism because it ignores mathematical rules.60 As a result

of this ignorance Cubism is restricted to a decorative and sym-

bolic art and is incapable of further development. Through a

diligent study of geometry, however, he claims that artists can

realize the potential for new modes of expression and ‘‘a poetry

of a higher order.’’61

Despite the force of Severini’s accusations, in Du Cubisme au

classicisme there are still traces of the language that had charac-

terized his own earlier avant-garde writings. For example, he

writes that although the creation of art is a problem of ratios and

construction, ‘‘to this is attached the living, dynamic conception

of art, a conception which I have always defended since my

futurist researches, and which is based on this understanding of

the universe in terms of the atomic laws of ‘vibrations’ or of

‘undulations.’ ’’62 Yet, according to Severini, it is only through

mathematical laws of harmony that the means of translating

these vibrations into works of art have been made clear. Severini

thus argues that his work is still able to embody a ‘‘dynamic’’

conception of space. Even though the subject may be static,

the geometrical formulas used to arrive at its depiction endow

it with a sense of dynamism and movement. Statements such as

this attempt to link his current work with his avant-garde past

and thus forge a line of continuity across the entirety of his

artistic career.63

Maritain, also, while he is critical of the ‘‘barbarous dogma-

tism of its theorists,’’ finds in the avant-garde’s basic impulse a

constructive tendency that causes him to ask if Cubism might

represent a renewed search for a pure art and a desire to free

painting from the shackles of Academic imitation. Thus he

appears to be willing to credit Cubism with good intentions, if

not success. However, he adds to this that ‘‘a few of the artists

(especially those who have only recently come under the Sign of

the Cube) [i.e Severini] . . . have leaned towards the logical

coherence and the simplicity and purity of means that properly

constitute the veracity of art.’’64 He also writes that ‘‘these days,

all the best people want the classical.’’65 By ‘‘best,’’ of course, he

means those who fit into his mission to bring together modern-

ism and the classical values of the Church.

In a footnote added to this statement in the second edition

(1927) of Art et scolastique, Maritain admits that the term ‘‘classi-

cal’’ has been overused in contemporary theory and he refers to

Severini’s Du Cubisme au classicisme as an example of the correct

application of classical technique and science to art. While

Maritain allows that the ‘‘protractor, the compass and the num-

ber’’ still belong to the material means of art and thus are not

able to constitute Art itself, he writes that they are ‘‘the first

necessary conditions of honest art’’ and that ‘‘Severini’s book is a

most valuable testimony on that score.’’66 In Maritain’s eyes

then, Severini’s treatise is a commendable first effort at analyz-

ing the nature and material conditions of art, but it is unable to

make the leap to the next level, to that of a truly spiritual art. In

order to fully grasp art on this higher plane, Severini would need

the spiritual guidance of Maritain.

While both Maritain and Severini emphasized the role of

formal and fixed rules in art, neither takes this to mean that

there is only one correct style or external form for art. Maritain

writes in Art et scolastique that ‘‘because in the fine arts the work-

to-be-made is an end in itself, and because this end is something

absolutely individual, something entirely unique, each occasion

presents to the artist a new and unique way of striving after the

end, and therefore of ruling the matter.’’67 Severini also main-

tains that ‘‘the ‘means’ do not vary from age to age, it is only the

external appearance of the work of art that changes. On the

basis of these eternal ‘means,’ themselves based on the eternal

laws of number, each age has been able to create its own style.’’68

These concepts were particularly important for Maritain’s

discussion of Christian art. He is adamant that there is no

technique, style, or system of rules that belong strictly to

Christian art. In order to make Christian art one should only

‘‘be Christian, and simply try to make beautiful work.’’69

64 ZOE MARIE JONES


However, Maritain warns that this is not easily done: because

the artist can be considered an accomplice to God, he experi-

ences ‘‘a strange and saddening condition, where he must wear

himself out among bodies and live with spirits.’’70 Maritain’s

advice to the artist, then, was to ‘‘simply be, as an artist, what art

wants him to be — a good workman.’’71 According to Maritain,

‘‘the artist is subject, in the sphere of his art, to a kind of

asceticism, which may require heroic sacrifices . . . he must be

thoroughly undeviating as regards the end of his art, perpetually

on guard not only against the banal attraction of easy execution

and success but against a multitude of more subtle temptations

and against the slightest relaxation of his interior effort.’’72 This

statement must have been an infinite comfort to Severini, an

artist whose early career was racked with financial difficulty and

self-doubt.

Implicit in these comments is also the assertion that the artist

is to be set apart from the general populace through his ability to

approach the divine. This concept is reflected in Maritain’s later

claim that the artist ‘‘is not of this world, being, from the

moment that he works for beauty, on the path which leads

upright souls to God and manifests to them the invisible things

to the visible.’’73 Instead he is ‘‘a man who sees more deeply than

other men and who discloses in the real spiritual radiances

which others cannot discern.’’74The artist, then, has a particular

responsibility to society in that his works, when constructed with

care and diligence, are capable of leading ‘‘lesser’’ humans back

from their divergent paths and showing them a better future.

Modern art turning toward religion

Both Severini and Maritain believed that it is possible for an

artist to rise above the decadence that has come to characterize

their age and to push art forward in an honest and correct

direction. Severini, in the conclusion of Du Cubisme au classicisme,

states that the artistic community of the 1920s is primed and

ready to receive the guidance of an artistic ‘‘genius’’ who will

lead the way out of decadence and toward a ‘‘higher’’ art.75

Maritain, in a more overtly religious statement, argues that

what is needed is a spiritual guide, a sort of artistic Messiah.

Neither writer is sure who this guide will be, but both believe

that in the meantime the path can be prepared by a disciplined

education in technique and a study of the universal law of the

masters, which will ultimately give artists the necessary tools to

raise themselves above the anarchy of their era.

Years later, Maritain would look back on this period and find

in Severini a partial answer to his call for an artistic guide. He

writes in a short volume entitled Three painters that ‘‘Alexandre

Cingria [who worked with Severini on the Swiss church of

Semsales in the mid 1920s] is correct to affirm that Severini

should be hailed as ‘one of the powerful actors of the

Renaissance of religious art.’ ’’76 In this essay Maritain attempts

to justify the entirety of the artist’s career by casting it in a

language similar to that Severini used to describe his working

method: a time of internal searching and renewal (his Futurist

and Cubist years), a time of scientific and quantitative

construction (his study of classicism), and finally a time of execu-

tion in which his mature religious style emerges. Through the

consideration of Severini’s career as a continuum, ‘‘a constant

ascension,’’ even his Futurist works are to be admired for their

ability to ‘‘attain a true poetry’’ through their expressions of

‘‘joy’’ and the ‘‘ease of instinct.’’77 Severini, furthermore, is

singularly exceptional among his fellow avant-garde artists in

that he possessed a unique sense of spirit through which he was

able to ‘‘escape Cubism by going ahead of it,’’ uniting tradition

and modernity in a manner worthy of the great masters of the

past.78

While Maritain certainly viewed Severini as a link between

religion and modernism, the artist was by no means the only

cultural figure that fit these criteria. In allying himself with

Maritain during the interwar years, Severini joined a community

of artists and thinkers who were all searching for a way to cope

with a rapidly changing and de-centered world. Thomistic

thought provided a model for a new aesthetics that did not find

conflict between modernity and religious beliefs. Severini, a

foreign artist struggling to ground himself in a world that seemed

increasingly hostile, found personal and spiritual fulfillment in this

community and in Catholicism’s emphasis on the eternal. As

Gabriel Sarraute remembers, Severini was first able to leave

behind his troubled relationship with the avant-garde and enter

into the world of Catholic painters after his religious marriage

ceremony, but it was only after his friendship with Maritain had

solidified that he was able to find the spiritual mentorship and

intellectual exchange that were to help him through the difficult

years of the 1920s and 1930s.79 Maritain’s guidance gave valida-

tion to the ideas that had been tentatively laid down inDu Cubisme

au classicisme and ultimately helped Severini to construct an aes-

thetic framework in which the formal language of modernism, the

harmony provided by the church, and the craftsmanship of the

past would coexist and mutual benefit one another.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my advisor at Duke University, Mark Antliff, the chief

curator of the historical archives at MART, Paolo Pettenella, and

Signora Romana Severini, Gino Severini’s youngest daughter, for

their help and guidance with this project. All images courtesy of#

2009 Artists’ Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.

NOTES

1 – Corrado Pavolini, ‘Ritrattino di Maritain,’ Il Frontispizio, n. 2 (1937).

Original Italian (all translations are my own unless otherwise stated): ‘Non

s’indovinerebbe il filosofo; fa pensare piuttosto a un pittore: che so, l’ultimo

superstite degli impressionisti: invisibile il cavalletto pieghevole, la cassetta

dei colori a tracolla, la pipa nell’angolo della bocca’; ‘Fa pensare cosı a un

dipinto incominciato da Ce�zanne e finito da Renoir’.

2 – Romy Golan, Christopher Green, and Kenneth E. Silver, in their

otherwise exemplary analyses of the ‘return to order’ during and after the

First World War, do not discuss the role of Catholicism in Severini’s later

aesthetics, his impact on Maritain, or Maritain’s influence on avant-garde

65


circles in the 1920s and 1930s. See Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art

and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

1995); Christopher Green, Cubism and Its Enemies (New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 1987); Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit De Corps: The Art of the

Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–1925 (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1989). Christopher Green briefly references

Maritain in his discussion of Surrealist anti-clericalism in his important

overview of French modernism, Art in France, 1900–1945 (New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 162–164.

3 – Notable exceptions in this regard include Bruce Adams and Romy

Golan’s discussions of the Bergsonism and neo-Catholicism of Albert Gleizes

and his followers, Jane Lee’s concise analysis of Maritain’s impact on the

former Cubist Andre� Lhote and writers for the La Nouvelle Revue Francaise in

the 1920s, and Aiden Nichols recent book on sacral aesthetics. See Bruce

Adams, Rustic Cubism: Anne Dangar and the Art Colony at Moly-Sabata (Chicago,

IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Romy Golan,Modernity and Nostalgia;

Jane Lee, ‘Andre� Lhote, art critic for La Nouvelle Revue Francaise,’ in Art

Criticism After 1900, ed. Malcolm Gee (Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 1993), pp. 85–96; Aidan Nichols, Redeeming Beauty: Soundings in Sacral

Aesthetics (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2007).

4 – For a brief overview of Couturier’s interaction with major modernists,

see Jean Lacambre, ‘Le Pere Marie-Alain Couturier’, in L’Art sacre� au

XXe Siecle en France, ed. Paul Andre� (Muse�e Municipal de Boulogne-

Billancourt, 1993), pp. 153–157. For Couturier’s own writings on modern

art and religion, see Marie-Alain Couturier, Sacred Art (Austin, TX:

University of Texas Press, 1989).

5 – Gabriel Sarraute, ‘Ricordi su Severini e Maritain’, in Piero Pacini, ‘Una

testimonianza inedita di Gabriel Sarraute su Severini e Maritain,’ Otto/

Novecento: Rivista bimestrale di critica letteraria, n. 3 (1985), 164.

6 – Gino Severini, The Life of a Painter: The Autobiography of Gino Severini

(Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1995), p. 262. Severini speaks of this

rediscovery of Catholicism not as ‘‘conversion,’’ as he had been born and

baptized into the religion, but as a decision to embrace and return to his roots.

7 – Piero Pacini, ‘Severini e Maritain. storia di una conversazione’, Nuova

Antologia, (June 1973), p. 272.

8 – Sarraute, ‘Una testimonianza inedita di Gabriel Sarraute su Severini e

Maritain’, p. 161.

9 – Jeanne Fort Severini, ‘Qualche ricordo fra le due guerre,’ in Gino Severini

‘Entre Les Deux Guerres’, ed. Maurizio Fagiolo, Ester Coen, and Gina Severini

(Roma: Straderini editore, 1980), p. 43. Sarraute also recalls that he had

heard of Severini at least 10 years before he met him, through an article on

the 1912 Futurist exhibition at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in the weekly art

journal La France Illustre�e. Sarraute, impressed by a quote from the Futurists

that stated that ‘‘our work is drunk with spontaneity and power,’’ had clipped

this article out of the journal and saved it (Sarraute, p. 151).

10 – Jeanne Fort Severini, p. 44.

11 – Sarraute, p. 164.

12 – Ibid.

13 – RaissaMaritain, Les Grandes Amitie�s, Souvenirs (NewYork, 1941), p. 122–123.

14 – Robert C. Grogin, The Bergsonian Controversy in France, 1900–1914

(Calgary: The University of Calgary Press, 1998), p. 167.

15 – La Philosophie Bergsonienne: Etudes Critiques, Maritain’s first book, was

originally published by Marcel Riviere et Cie in 1914. In the Preface to the

Second Edition (1929) the author admits that his understanding of

Bergsonian philosophy was incomplete and that in retrospect the book is full

of shortcomings. However, he justifies its importance by saying that it was

one of the first manifestations of neo-Thomist thinking in pre-First World

War France and thus represents a crucial effort to swing the pendulum of

contemporary philosophical thought back into the trajectory of classical

thought. Jacques Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, trans. Mabelle

L. and Gordon Andison (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 11.

16 – Ibid., p. 278.

17 – Ibid., p. 285. Maritain distinguishes in this section between a

‘‘Bergsonism of Fact’’ and a ‘‘Bergsonism of Intention.’’ See also Mark

Antliff, Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde (Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) for a discussion of the phenomenon of

Bergsonism.

18 – Ibid., p. 281.

19 – See Eugen Weber, Action Francaise: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-

Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962) for a complete

history of the movement.

20 – Maritain actively encouraged his friends Henri Massis and Ernest

Psichari to join the movement; John Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New

Catholic Left, 1930–1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 23.

21 – In 1918 a French infantryman named Pierre Villard left his fortune, over a

million francs, jointly to Maritain and Charles Maurras. Maurras suggested

that they pool their resources to begin a new journal devoted to the intersec-

tions between royalist political views and Thomist theology. Although initially

skeptical, Maritain eventually joined the review as the editor of the philosophy

section. He resigned from his post in 1927. William R. Keylor, Jacques Bainville

and the Renaissance of Royalist History in Twentieth-Century France (BatonRouge, LA:

Louisiana state University Press, 1979), pp. 156–157.

22 – For an overview of the impact of the Action Francaise’s theory of classicism

on the conservative politics of Cubism, e.g. Maurras and Leon Daudet, see

Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit de Corps, pp. 103–104. Although Silver does not

address the impact of the Action Francaise on Maritain, one can extend these

precepts to encompass much ofMaritain’s aesthetics, which in turn made his

support for modern art an aberration when compared to the reactionary

aesthetics promoted by Maurras and other conservatives cited by Silver.

23 – Quoted in Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, e.g. This final

statement was first published by the Futurists in their Futurist Painting:

Technical Manifesto of 1910, signed by Boccioni, Carra, Russolo, Balla, and

Severini.

24 – Ibid., p. 280.

25 – Ibid.

26 – Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (New York: Zone Books, 1991),

p. 38; Gino Severini, ‘Introduction’, in The Futurist Painter Severini Exhibits

his Latest Works (London: Marlborough Gallery, April 1913), reprinted in

Maria Drudi Gambillo and Teresa Fiori, eds, Archivi del Futurismo (Roma:

De Luca Editore, 1958), p. 113.

27 – In his autobiography Severini makes a distinction between his own

championing of French neo-Impressionism, which found compatibility with

the Bergsonism of the pre-war Cubists, and the Milanese Futurist’s adher-

ence to the technique of Italian Divisionism. Severini, Life of a Painter, p. 37.

For a discussion of the Puteaux Cubist’s understanding of Bergson, cf. Mark

Antliff and Patricia Leighten, Cubism and Culture (London: Thames and

Hudson, 2001), Chapter 2.

28 – AlthoughAnneCoffin Hanson dates the official end of Severini’s Futurist

period and subsequent shift to Cubism to 1917, it is clear that this was not a

transition that took place overnight.Many of Severini’s paintings from the war

years, such asWoman Seated in a Park from 1916, show an attempt to find a

middle ground between the impulses of Futurism and Cubism: Anne Coffin

Hanson, Severini Futurista, 1912–1917 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Art

Gallery, 1995). However, it is important to clarify that the Cubism with which

Severini experimented during and after the war was not the same Cubism to

which he had been exposed before thewar. By 1916Cubismhad been stripped

of its earlier Bergsonian leanings and was reconfigured as a rationalist, ‘‘Latin’’

movement that had been distilled and purified to conform to the ‘‘return to

order.’’ See Christopher Green, Cubism and Its Enemies: Modern Movements and

Reaction in French Art, 1916–1928 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

29 – Hanson, p. 184.

30 – Gunter Berghaus, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and

Fascist Reaction, 1909–1944 (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1996), p. 118.

Severini was not the only member of the Futurist movement to distance

himself fromMarinetti’s political and aesthetic choices during these years; of

the original five members to sign the Manifesto of the Futurist Painters in 11

February 1910 only Giacomo Balla would continue to adhere to the

movement in its postwar form.

66 ZOE MARIE JONES


31 – While a complete analysis of these essays is out of the scope of this

project, descriptions of the texts and their ability to reveal Severini’s

changing perspective can be found in the writings of Daniela Fonti and Peter

Brooke: Daniela Fonti, ‘1916–1920: Un nuovo Rinascimento dorico e pita-

gorico,’ in Gino Severini: Catalogo Ragionato (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori

Editore, 1988); Peter Brooke, ‘Introduction,’ in Gino Severini, From Cubism to

Classicism (London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2001).

32 – Severini, Life of a Painter, p. 287.

33 –Quote taken from a letter from Severini toMaritain dated 18 September

1923 located in the Archivi Maritain in Kolbsheim: quoted in Cecilia De Carli,

‘Giovanni Battista Montini e l’arte: Le grandi premesse (1920–1955): Da

Maritain agli artisti. Una mostra e le sue ragioni’, in Paolo VI e l’arte: Il coraggio

della contemporaneita: Da Maritain a Rouault, Severini, Chagall, Cocteau, Garbari,

Fillia, ed. Cecilia De Carli (Milano: Skira editore, 1997), pp. 13–31.


35 – Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism and the Frontiers of Poetry, trans.

Joseph W. Evans (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), p. 25.

36 – Ibid., p. 27.


38 – In the second (1927) edition of Art Et Scolastique Maritain added four

footnotes that referred specifically to passages from Du Cubisme au Classicisme,

proving that he had indeed studied Severini’s book and found its ideas

relevant to his own work.

39 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 62.

40 – Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 9.

41 – Ibid., p. 38.

42 – Ibid., p. 19.

43 – Jeanne Fort Severini, p. 43.

44 – Severini, Life of a Painter, pp. 210–212.



47 – Ibid., p. 134.

48 – Simonetta Fraquelli, ‘From Futurism to Classicism’, in Gino Severini: from

Futurism to Classicism, ed. Simonetta Fraquelli and Christopher Green

(London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 1999), p. 17.

49 – Ibid., p. 135.

50 – Sarraute, ‘Ricordi su Severini e Maritain’, p. 155.


52 – Ibid.

53 – Ibid.

54 – Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 41. According to Maritain, ‘‘to the extent

that the rules of the Academy prevail, the fine arts revert to the generic type of art

and to its lower species, themechanical arts’’ (Maritain,Art and Scholasticism, p. 48).

55 – Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 61. Interestingly, Severini’s critique

of contemporary art practices implicitly suggests that although the Italians

had reached a height of geometric perfection during the Renaissance, the

French (or those living and working in France, including himself) were now

responsible for the restitution of these concepts. Maritain echoes this

sentiment in his later essay on Severini, going through great length to place

the artist firmly within the French tradition by stating that while the artist

was heir to the great accomplishments of the Italian past, he was now all but

Parisian in character, artistic lineage, and connections; Jacques Maritain,

Art and Poetry, trans. E.P. Matthews (New York: Philosophical Library,

1943), p. 31.


57 – A theory that was also shared and promoted by Severini and Maritain’s

mutual acquaintance Maurice Denis.

58 –Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, p. 22. Severini also affirms that during the

sixteenth-century ‘‘the ‘individual’ began to begin separating himself out and

attain originality and that this was the first step in the direction of deca-

dence’’ (Severini, From Cubism to Classicism, p. 56).

59 – He does, however, give some credit to the ambitions of these groups,

and particularly to Ce�zanne, saying that they cleared the ground for a

renewal of classical research by destroying the misguided rules of the

Academy —– a point of view echoed by Maritain (Severini, From Cubism to

Classicism, p. 102).

60 – Ibid., p. 60.

61 – Ibid., p. 101.

62 – Ibid., p. 63



65 – Ibid.

66 – Ibid, p. 187.




70 – Ibid., p. 34.

71 – Ibid., p. 36.

72 – Ibid., p. 78.

73 – Ibid., p. 37.

74 – Ibid., pp. 59–60.

75 – Severini, From Cubism to Ccassicism, p. 140.

76 – Maritain, Art and Poetry, p. 37.

77 – Ibid., pp. 32 and 38.

78 – Ibid., p. 34.

79 – Sarraute, p. 162.

67


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