When I was taken to the Champs-Élysées, to play on the sandy site of the Cirque d'Été, which had recently been demolished, as the ruined facade of the old Palace of Industry descended, I saw the Grand and the Petit-Palais and open the grand perspective Alexandre-III.
These buildings were not made of cardboard stone, we noted with finished, they could last... While, in 1889, we had happily oriented ourselves towards an architecture of iron and steel, in 1900, we returned to stone and to the styles as they were taught to Fine Arts.
The palaces were not finished when, already, forty-two medal-winning sculptors, supported by Toulouse parliamentarians (Toulouse, Athens in 1900), adorned statues and various academic trophies on all the sculptable surfaces, decorated the cornices of urns or pots-a-feu and crowned the domes with various ornaments. When there was no more space on this huge console of the Grand-Palais, we put on the roof a station glazing.
We circled around the work of Deglane, where so many artists had contributed their stone, wondering which was the most beautiful façade, that of avenue d'Antin or that of avenue Nicolas-II?
There are only mural frescoes and friezes in polychrome sandstone, allegorical statues:Science that works in spite of Ignorance or Inspiration guided by Wisdom. Everyone seems to find it natural that 19th century art should end up on such rubbish.
Unleashed bronze quadrigas whose runaway horses precipitate naked women into the void burst the sky at every angle and, by their poor bearing, contrast with the crew of the Comte de Castellane, which I see pass at the roundabout, in a big carriage with powdered lackeys.
At the Petit-Palais, it's ancient art.
At the Grand-Palais, it is the art of the last ten years; this Decennial, representing contemporary art, there are ten Salons stacked on top of each other.
The public goes straight to the masters they have been guaranteed; he admired Charles le Téméraire by Roybet, Les Trompettes by Detaille, Le Pont Alexandre by Roll, Cormon, Flameng, a mixture of fantasy and truth... Ahead of Henner, Bonnat, Dagnan-Bouveret (student of Gérome, medal of honor ), the immortal author of La Noce chez le photographe, La Vaccination, etc., it's a procession.
Monet, Degas, Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Cézanne, Seurat, Denis, Vuillard, none of those by whom we are guaranteed to last have been invited; or they are hidden under the stairs.
Moreover, at Georges Petit, at the Chocquet sale, Cézannes have just made one hundred and fifty francs and Monets three hundred and ten francs.
This is the time when Paris is populated with a crowd of cast, carved or modeled idols:Leconte de Lisle and Chopin in Luxembourg, Chappe, Sainte-Beuve, etc.
Marqueste exposes a group of Electricity. Everywhere triumph the anecdote, the trompe-l'oeil
vain ornamentation, the wax museum, the allegory, the page of history.
At the corner of the avenue de l'Alma, far from the Prix de Rome and the gesticulations in campo-santo marble, Rodin exhibited alone. He is the only one from whom nothing has been ordered for the Exhibition.
He shows his drawings for the first time; enthusiasm among the artists!
Unknown masterpieces were currently converging on Paris:the Conques treasure, the Hoéntschel or Martin le Roy collections; marvels of Romanesque art, Limousin art, brassware of the 11th and 12th centuries.
All this prepared the general public to understand Rodin; we finally realize that it is connected with our primitives on the one hand and, on the other hand, with the Greeks and the Egyptians; its grace resembles that of the French of the Renaissance, its busts of Houdon and Carpeaux.
Except for the brilliant Camille Claudel, he has no students. We admire him for being so alone. To tell the truth, these works of 1900, Balzac, the Bourgeois de Calais, the Gates of Hell were not, as we have seen since, the best Rodin.