Background
Reference: Stanley Appelbaum.
French Satirical Drawings from "L'Assiette au Beurre". selection, translations and text by Appelbaum. New York: Dover Publications, 1978. Images reproduced full page, original sizes, many in color.
Quoted here in part, Patricia Leighten's essay
Rèveil anarchiste: Salon Painting, Political Satire, Modernist Art concerns the relationship of anarchism and progressive/left philosophy to what became known as 'Modernism' in art, prior to World War I.
[Théophile] Alexandre Steinlen is a superb example of an artist whose work was considered of major importance to cultural critics in the period, but whose very allegiance to political themes, caricatural styles, and allegorical and narrative genres--all germane to his career as a cartoonist--disqualifies him as a significant modernist for the wilfully amnesiac culture of post-World War I. Rather than finding them subject to the autocracy of oil on canvas, one sees artists purposely working in other media--particularly satirical cartoons--with the aim of reaching a variety of audiences for specifically political purposes; an understanding of the contemporary issues that inspired these cartoons and influenced the left-wing bohemia of Paris before World War I will help to make sense of the involvement of modern artists with anarchist journals such as L'Assiette au beurre and Les Temps nouveaux, and the seriousness of their engagement with political issues of the day.
Anarchism as a political philosophy was without question more influential on turn-of-the-century artists than socialism, in part because anarchist theory specifically called for the participation of artists in social transformation and in part because anarchism at one end of its spectrum stood for an absolute individualism fully compatible with a politicized bohemianism; socialism played a smaller, if still significant, role in prewar French artistic culture. In short, attending to the role of left-wing politics, and specifically anarchism, in prewar Europe presents a telling corrective to myths about modernist art still in force.
Leftist politics characterized the art of prewar France much more than is usually realized. From large-scale salon paintings to political cartoons to avant-garde abstractions, artists preoccupied with social criticism sought appropriate mediums, styles, and audiences based on their differing conceptions of art's influence on society. Whether they employed 'high' or 'low' media and aimed at 'high' or 'low' audiences reflected conscious choices made in relation to a complex field of production and marketing. Socially-critical academic artists such as Jules Adler operated within the old salons, annually exhibiting naturalist paintings expressive of social concerns and addressed largely to the class in power, the bourgeoisie. Artists such as Jules-Fèlix Grandjouan and Bernard Naudin abandoned painting altogether in favor of political satire in journals costing half a franc and addressed to both the masses and left-wing intellectuals. Others such as van Dongen and Kupka divided their time between political cartooning and an outrageous avant-gardism that would, according to anarchist theory, pave the way for a new consciousness and a new society even in its abandonment of (and by) a popular audience. During this unsettled period, one can see artists responding to the dilemmas posed by such popularized and contradictory anarchist ideas: art should expose the follies and iniquities of the present social order, should be addressed to the masses, yet should be the untrammelled expression of the individual and open the path to a new social order. Prewar artists found a shared compass of concerns but differing solutions to the problems posed by the intersection of political commitment and artistic self-expression.
Patricia Leighten, Associate Professor of Art at Queen's University in Canada when this essay was written, has published Re-Ordering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897-1914 (1989) and guest-edited a special issue of Art Journal (winter 1988) on "Revising Cubism." She has published numerous articles on art and politics and in 1989-90 was completing a study of art, anarchism, and primitivism in pre-World War I Paris entitled The Politics of Form: Anarchism, Primitivism, and the Parisian Avant-Garde.
Alexandre Steinlen
Steinlen's work appeared in numerous journals, including
Le Rire and
Simplicissimus as well as
L'Assiette au Beurre. His illustrations "depicted with much bitterness and pain, [the] suffering and poverty of the downtrodden and disinherited, of workers (particularly miners), abandoned children, tramps and prostitutes."
[World Encyclopedia of Cartoons]
Below: Steinlen and another artist, Roubille, collaborated on issue #219, June 10, 1905 of
L'Assiette au Beurre. It was titled:
Misere du Cheval (The Misery of Horses), and was based on the writing of photographer, artist and writer, NADAR, (Félix Tournachon, 1820-1910).
The centerfold (detail on left) has an extensive quote by Victor Hugo.
The back cover, by Roubille, shows a shabby bystander, looking at a dead horse in the street, saying "He's free. Me, when....?". There is also a thank you note from Nadar to his two friends, Steinlen and Roubille, for their illustrations in this issue.
Three Steinlen images below: In the center, the caption asks the reader to decide which one is the 'brute.' On the right, the cab driver angrily blames the horse for the police citation he has received.
See also work in two other issues of
L'Assiette au Beurre:
La Vision de Hugo (all images by Steinlen) and the
special issue on the adulteration of milk (includes one image by Steinlen).
