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Indepth Arts News:
"Robert de Montesquiou or the art of
showing off"
1999-10-12 until 2000-01-23
Musee d'Orsay
Paris, ,
FR France
If dandyism was a nineteenth century invention, Robert
de Montesquiou was no doubt in France its most
accomplished representative. An artistocrat and an
aesthete, he organised his self-celebration with a refined
talent and he posed for numerous portraits : this modern
Narcissus wanted his image to be immortal. As his
eccentricity made him ressemble a character out of a
novel, he inspired Huysmans and above all Proust, who
chose him as a model for his Baron Charlus.
often befalls a few selected characters to embody the
social and cultural background of a precise period in
time through their tastes, aspirations and fame, and also
through their excess and outrageousness. One name in
particular encapsulates society life in Paris at the end of
the nineteenth century: that of an aristocrat, scholar,
aesthete and dandy, the Count Robert de Monstesquiou
(Paris 1855-Menton 1921).
His place in contemporary literature is well-known:
indeed, some of his physiological and psychological
traits have been immortalised in the shape of Joris-Karl
Huysmans's character des Esseintes (A Rebours,
1884), Jean Lorrain's Comte de Muzarett (Monsieur
de Phocas, 1901), Henri de Régnier's Vicomte de
Serpigny (Le Mariage de Minuit, 1903), Edmond
Rostand's Peacock (Chanteclerc, 1907), and naturally
Marcel Proust's Baron de Charlus (Remembrance of
Things Past).
These are only the most famous examples, but the
unmistakable staged representation of himself -
elaborate outfits, a incredibly large vocal register,
unsettling calligraphy, impressive impertinence,
disarming vanity etc -constantly drew the attention of
chroniclers and observers in the form of admiration,
irritation or sarcasm. Over a period of twenty years he
became an undisputed judge of taste, in particular for
the parties he organised, designed as true works of art.
During his life much ink was spilt over him and he also
initiated a varied and abundant iconography. If he is
remembered specifically today it is thanks in particular
to the talent and intuition of the pioneer Philippe Julian
(Robert de Montesquiou, un prince 1900, Paris, 1965).
It is part of this iconography that the exhibition
displays. The Musée d'Orsay owns two important
pictures of the count: the famous portrait painted in
1897 by Giovanni Boldini and the bronze, dated ten
years earlier, made by the sculptor Paul Troubetzkoy,
which have in common their highlighting the model's
haughty profile, his slender fingers, his smart, very
arched silhouette, and the elaborate design of his outfit.
These works, like others signed Paul Helleu, Antonio de
la Gandara, Philip de Laszlo, belong to the mundane
genre. But Montesquiou was also a favourite target for
caricaturists. He is perhaps best immortalised by Sem
and Leonetto Cappiello, whose irony and insolence the
count, who wrote several essays on the art of caricature,
highly valued. These artists captured his most chiefly
remarked-upon characteristic: an unparalleled
smartness, in spite of affected manners, poses full of
vanity and his famous voice, voluble and high pitched to
the point of being falsetto.
An important group of photographs is also displayed,
thanks to the generosity of a private collector and the
Département des Manuscrits of the Bibiothèque
Nationale de France. It includes a number of prints
from Parisian workshops specialised in mundane poses
but above all a large number of pictures devised by the
count himself. In these, he constructed a form of unique
self celebration: he decided upon the costume, the
expression, the gesture, the angle of the shot and
sometimes he even determined a reading of the picture
by means of a written commentary. This enterprise,
which he summed up under the significant title Ego
Imago, in a series of four albums, irresistibly recalls to
mind the Comtesse de Castiglione whom he worshipped
and to whom he devoted a remarkable study.
This celebration of Robert de Montesquiou constitutes a
matching piece to the exhibition set up by the Musée
d'Orsay about the divine comtesse and an echo to the
exhibition on Proust presented at the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France.
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