Émile Gallé. Émile Gallé

      A woman, old and emaciated, sacrifices a life full of piety and mercy, a body that must be supported and stands upright by keen charity, is supported with a noble concern on the balcony of a terrace. The night is far gone. The stars faded. The city sleeps. It is the child of this woman. This is a maternal apprehension for the city that forced her to stand up, that tied her to her place in the cold morning.

      St Genevieve fears the fire for her Lutetia. The Huns outside, the enemy within. Paris, you can sleep. Genevieve is listening in silence. The lamp is also on and her hand is placed on the stone as if she feared to awaken a newborn. This shadow of a mother is the very symbol of love. This lamp is the symbol of the enlightened soul. The silence emanating from the opus and surrounding it, everyone takes it away in his heart.

      Let me stop after this excellent example of the purest symbol.

      My conclusion is therefore that the idiom for ‘symbol’ is closely fused with the term ‘art’. Conscious or unconscious, the symbol signifies, vivifies the oeuvre; it is its very soul. And at the dawn of the 20th century, please allow me to greet the revival of a national popular art, heralding better times.

      “This is the work of the modern artist”, said Charles Albert at the Congress for Art in Brussels, “which will create the tone of tomorrow.” This work must be a fight for justice around us, for Justice inside of us. And hence life in the 20th century will no longer miss joy, art, or beauty.

      Toast Pronounced at the Lorraine-Artiste Banquet on 16 February 1901

      There was much discussion on the question of the role of art. Some believe that the artist has a beneficial mission to complete. Others say that a painter should only worry about painting well and that the rest is of trifling importance. As for me, I will never consent to see in you anything but impassive photographers of colour plates. I know there are artists here that vibrate generously at the shows of life, excited and enthusiastic men, passionate admirers of nature. And those of our designers from Lorraine are no different.

      They draw their inspiration from her to renew the decoration of our homes. They will look for the same sacred fire on the same altars as you do, painters and decorators we all are, the priests of the same house of worship, the worshippers of the natural beauty spread around the world.

      There are, you know, in the colours of the atmosphere, in the depiction of the mountains and the shapes of clouds, inexhaustible motives of inspiration, of work, and also of enjoyment unexploited by most men. There are, far away, in the plains and on the waters, intangible treasures. It depends on the artist to bring this ideal treasure to the public domain, creating reasons for enthusiasm and joy within everyone’s reach. A much larger number of people could certainly reach for it, if only they had their eyes open.

      Note, in fact, how quickly, immediately after the sophistication of a walk in a museum, the eye and the brain are able to discern the performances of the street, and all the beauty scattered throughout the countryside. But this is, I think, one of the most positive benefits of the artistic work.

      It is a good thing that the painter, the sculptor, the art worker, aware of the kudos that their work can exercise, voluntarily become educators, advocates of the colour, of the line, of the beauty, ‘missionaries in their interior’ in the midst of modern cities, which, when compared to the intact forest, to the sea horizon, to the aerial architecture of trees and clouds, are mostly heaps of distressing ugliness, demoralising.

      Instead, the happiness received from grassland, from the flower, from the changing times and seasons, from the setting sun and the starry night, inexpensive pleasures and very well known by certain peoples – like the Swiss mountaineers and Japanese farmers – these are moralistic pleasures. The natural beauty is indeed in a lower order probably akin to moral goodness, and these innocent emotions are degrees towards virtue and justice, in the spiritual order, which are also of great beauty.

      These are, of course, considerations a little harsh to fall for; they are inspired by the memory of your exhibitions, seriously-minded too, because one feels that in our modern city a group of artists, painters, decorators in search of possible reasons of stir for itself and others, constantly watching the beauty in nature and also, in areas where it is sadly disfigured, in the streets of the cities where we have to toil.

      Here we can see the artist noting, among the stones and mud puddles, the reflections of the sky, like an archaeologist collects piously in the mud enamel debris. In narrow, infamous lanes there will, nose in the air, be leering over the rooftops some fragment of blue, crossed by clouds at large. And we’ll all sigh towards a horizon that throws a little more light, over there, at the very end of the suburbs, dreaming of the first day of spring, when the artist will find his great friend, nature, in its untouched grandeur.

      Fortunately, the artist, like all happy lovers, feels the urge, which itched King Candaules so much, to make his friends appreciate every reason he had to love. Thus, the landscape gardener gives us in his studies, in his works, all his joys.

      “La Nuit” footed cup, 1884. Transparent crystal glass with black powder inclusions, height: 11.1 cm. Corning Museum of Glass, Corning (New York).

      “Élévation” vase, designed in 1888, executed in 1891. Brown – and turquoise-coloured, opaque cameo glass, partially opalescent, height: 16 cm, width: 16 cm, depth: 10 cm. Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen.

      Goniatite vase, 1884. Transparent glass, covered with heated fragments of coloured glass, sanded, engraved, and gilded egdes, height: 20 cm, diameter: 15 cm (mouth). Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris.

      As the botanist who brings back, attached to a specimen from the Alps, a plot of the mountain, the landscape gardener gives us back pieces of a happy and free land. Put on the picture rail or behind the shop window of the dealer, the work of his hands will halt the poor people passing by who go through life without looking up to the clouds. He cheerfully shows them, with the tip of his brush, the Lost Paradise:

      “Just look, above the dirty streets and grotesque chimneys, just look at this little piece of sky after the rain! And this fragment of the coast below! And in this spot of the prairie under the Argentine willows! And this little country home at the edge of the woods!” The artist is recompensed when, by chance, the teary look of a passerby says, “Yes, this is where I want to go and to live.”

      What a unique person among all beings, the artist who falls under the charm of a large rock that he cannot eat, a meadow that he cannot graze, who kneels down before a flower that he likes but does not love, holds out his arms to a cloud that he has no plans to caress! In his strange madness, does the artist not unconsciously try to carry man back to his natural environment, to the better life, the primitive one, to the real setting, the noble architecture of a free existence?

      And that is why I am delighted to be among the painters and portraitists of our old mother Lorraine. Thanks to you, our sons will regain some of their dear old faces under the wounds that men make him: canals, roads, customs barriers, forts and barracks, factories, townships, black cities. The landscape gardener constantly engaged in watching this magnificent front, the countryside, to show it to his forgetful children, he is an educator.

      The decorative artist, too, wants to devote himself to the same task. Among the flow of ugliness, he creates art shelters. He tries to hide a little the disgrace of our utensils. He seeks to replace modern existence among the natural elements that are banned from it, the tree in his pride, the wild beast in his freedom, the flower in its virginity. That is why the decorator looks at the naturalist painters like big brothers, and I just wanted to make this clear…

      “L’Escargot

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