Paul Morand - Venices

Everywhere, in Italian art criticism, one hears of nothing but confusione and terreno di nebulosità, of influsso giorgionesco, or derivazione giorgionesca . Giorgione is growing ever more distant…

Max Jacob

APRIL 1964 CRAZY BIDDING

ELEVEN O’CLOCK in the morning; it might have been dawn, the sky was so murky. This unwashed Venice reminds me of those postcards sent by Max Jacob, in which the cigar ash crushed into the gouache represented suburban fog. There was a biting north wind; we were walking along the Grand Canal, where the surface of the water was being pummelled by the wind, accompanied by the noise of those Italian motor engines that vibrate like a bowstring relieved of its arrow.

The auction began at midday, at the Palazzo Labia. Strapped tightly into his jacket, the forehead of an intellectual and slim as a sub-lieutenant, a precise, ingenuous look in his eye, a partaker of all the good things in life, M.R. had brought me along to the sale at the Labia, the last Venetian palace to disgorge its riches; he knew that all human possessions are nothing more than a warehouse…

Our munificent friend B. had decided to hold out against Time; to rebuild a palace was to reject the abyss, it was like writing the Temps perdu . Once his work was achieved, B. was no longer interested in it.

Even Proust, dreaming about what he would like to do once the Great War was over, imagined himself as the owner of a Venetian palace, where, “like Réjane”, he would have invited the Poulet Quartet to play Fauré for him “as the dawn rose over the Grand Canal”.

The frescoes in the palazzo were so famous in their day that Reynolds and Fragonard made the journey to Venice in order to make copies of them. In the old days, at the turn of the century Labia, when the guide was showing people the paintings on the celebrated ceiling, he used to say: “ Signori , PEGASUS PUTS CHRONOS TO FLIGHT.”

Who will ever put Time to flight?

As we were walking along the canal, M.R. told me the history of the Labias: half a century of abusive power, of gold plates being hurled from the windows, of virgin walls being entrusted to the talents of Tiepolo, of Zugno, of Magno, of Diziani; ruined by Napoleon, the Labias had handed over the building to the Lobkowitz family, until a South African tycoon, who, extraordinarily enough, was also called Labia, bought back this house in which he wished he had been born. As they were negotiating the sale, he is said to have made the following play on words: L’abbia o non l’abbia, sarò sempre Labia .2

We had to clamber over barricades of paintings that looked even bigger now that they had been taken down, and over consoles, their gilt fading, which were being carried down the stairs as the rooms that had been laid waste by the auctioneers were cleared. Stripped of their chandeliers, the ceilings revealed rat holes and brickwork in a deplorable condition, its stucco chipped and flaking, held together by worm-infested pillars. Hollow footsteps echoed on the uncarpeted floors. Here, shorn of its former livery — Italian footmen trussed in gold like maritime proveditors — labourers were knocking back flasks of wine.

The Baroque, that exuberance of joy, cannot cope with neglect.

In the main courtyard, the international antique dealers, admired from a distance by the small traders from the alleys of Venice, had taken their places. Experts and dealers, who had flown in from Chelsea or Manhattan, magnifying glasses in hand, were swamped by a stream of noble effigies and horned doges, and mingled together amidst a Capernaum of off-stage operatics. Tax inspectors, Venetian fiscal authorities and spies from the Treasury and Customs and Excise departments watched the future bidders closely.

Beneath M.R.’s ivory hammer, an entire art-lover’s world would vanish; artefacts have no master.

Only the Tiepolos would remain, their fate bound to that of the walls of the empty building: The Negro with a Strawberry, The White Horse, The Musicians’ Gallery; The Embarkation of Antony and Cleopatra, The Greyhound with Centurions, the famous perspective of The Silver Dish . Above them was the throng of goddesses, painted as permanent frescoes, and who were now mistresses of a deserted Palazzo Labia, laughing for all eternity, like the Rhinemaidens.

Detached from their supports, in whose arms would these beautiful women now lie? Where would these Bacchuses parade their drunkenness, or these Ceres their harvests? Casting a dark glance at their bidders, ermine-cloaked doges on bituminous canvases no longer ascended the Giants’ staircase, but that of the auction house. Marshals clutching their batons, ordered the assault, but the voices of the auctioneers were louder. Removal men lolled about on sinuous settees, intended for voluptuous siestas; light from the chandeliers beamed down on the buyers; floating upon this ocean of highly-valued objects were squadrons of Chinese vases, candelabra, girandola, jugs and pots. To the highest bidder for prows of ships that would never see battle again would go the coats of arms, destined for the hallways of Greek shipowners.

“At a hundred thousand lire, no further bids?” Beneath the naked vaults, hewn from Istrian marble, the words echoed: No further bids…

These were the last rites for the life, not of a great collector, but of a great art lover… Italy has one camposanto fewer…

1964

JUST AS IN 1917 I had observed Venice cast its shadow over my exiled life, similarly, as I left that auction sale, the Venice of the 1960s was to open up a gulf between my mature years and old age. Something, or someone, leads me, has always led me, whenever I believed I was paving my own path.

I look upon that world of yesteryear without resentment, nor regret; quite simply, it no longer exists; for me, at least, since it continues, without any bother or fuss, in a universe that is a little more brutal, a little more doomed, and in which the average level of virtues and vices must have remained more or less constant. It is merely that its ways are no longer mine; the barber cuts my hair with a pair of clippers; at the restaurant I am obliged to sit opposite my guest, not next to him, on a stool; hotels refuse my dog; when I arrive, the porter no longer takes the keys of my car in order to park it; at restaurants it is only in Greece that I am allowed to go and choose what I want from the stove; in Paris there is no longer any difference between the pavement and the road; at parties, I don’t recognise people behind their beards and wigs, and I can’t keep pace with so many first names. In the old days, the Mediterranean was my swimming-pool; nowadays, if I want to swim in it, I need the permission of the Russian or American fleets. Rheumatism confines me to drinking Vittel; can one go out in the evening without a glass in one’s hand? It casts a chill on the evening and offends one’s hostess, who feels that her dinner party is thereby undermined. Paintings used to make me happy; today’s art is the painting of iconoclasts. “You’re a painter, why haven’t you continued painting?” I asked Robert Bresson. “Because I would have committed suicide,” he answered. As for dodecaphonic music, I only have to think of it to prefer death.

Awkward to look after, there’s nothing left for me to do down here except make way; I shall never accustom myself to electronic gadgetry, nor to living in a country whose fate is being determined six thousand kilometres from where I live.

Everything sets one’s teeth on edge in this world where it is always rush-hour and where children want to be Einsteins; the couples who go off to market clasping one another, as they see in the films, get on one’s nerves; their kisses in public, it’s no longer kissing, but eating; women’s flesh is treated like meat. To crown it all, the young are far better looking than we were.