CASSANDRE by Roland Mouron, Estate of A.M.CASSANDRE

CHRONOLOGICAL QUOTATIONS ON A.M.CASSANDRE

FORMATION AND EARLY YEARS (1919-1922)

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Maximilien Vox (who encountered him during this period):

"A young man of small but robust stature, clear forehead, deep eyes, smiling but speaking little, sometimes dreaming, sometimes calculating, a friend of flowers, books and silence. Thus Cassandre appeared to us."

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R.L. Dupuy, critic from Vendre (1925):

"Cassandre is a young man who, having talent, had the additional good fortune of not having seasoned professors take charge of this talent. He was a free worker on the stools of the Julian academy, forging without any rule other than his own, his way of translating what he saw with his eyes."

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Hachard (his first publisher, around 1922):

"What you do is unsellable, but prodigiously advertising.

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THE "BUCHERON" REVOLUTION (1923-1925)

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Pierre Andrin, L'Affiche (1926):

"Even those least initiated in advertising matters understood that a revolution had just taken place in the art of the poster."

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Bernard Champigneulle (recollection from 1950):

"It was in 1923 that I saw on the walls of Paris this striking poster and, at that time, unusual, where in a radiance of strange light, a vigorous woodcutter was felling a tree with an axe. Everything was inscribed in a simple and sure rhythm. The gaze was naturally led toward the name of the firm to be celebrated. Clarity, schematism, dynamism, perceptible symbolism, vigor of execution, everything was there."

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Henri Sauguet:

"Even more than it made known the Woodcutter for which it had been composed, it taught its name and with this name a new sense of image, of the use of lines."

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R.L. Dupuy on the giant panels:

"The one [panel] at Place Clichy, with its colored orbs, is of particularly astonishing appeal power. People stop open-mouthed. Obviously, they are all a bit stunned. They would be for less! 'Look, cubism!' they exclaim. Cubism if you will, but if this cubism has attracted your gaze, it has fulfilled its office."

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THE ATTACK BY L'ESPRIT NOUVEAU (1924)

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Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, L'Esprit nouveau n°25 (July 1924):

"The tumult is in the streets. The Woodcutter displays at Boulevard Saint-Germain. In ten days, cubism, over a kilometer, spreads and is presented 'to the popular.' The popular takes it, finds it very funny. This cubism, however, is not funny, it is false. Crude copying of serious works (is Léger sad or happy about it?). Formula stolen and brutalized by a dauber."

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But Le Corbusier, in his letters prior to the Woodcutter (May 27, 1923):

"The advertising you organize on the hoardings of Paris is certainly the most interesting that has been conceived at this moment and one can say that it is truly new spirit."

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THE 1926 MANIFESTO

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Cassandre himself, L'Affiche (December 1926) - Fundamental text:

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On the art of the poster:

"The poster is not, must not be, like the painting, a work that its 'manner' differentiates at first sight, a unique specimen destined to satisfy the jealous love of a single more or less enlightened amateur; it must be a series object reproduced in thousands of copies, like a pen or an automobile."

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On his method:

"Faithful to my geometric or, more exactly, architectural method, I strive at least to ensure my posters have an undeformable 'ground floor.'"

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On the primacy of the letter:

"Because the poster is not a painting. It is above all a word. It is the word that commands, conditions and animates the entire advertising scene."

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On creation:

"I have only one concern, to renew myself perpetually. [...] Each poster is a new experience to attempt or rather a new battle to attempt, to wage."

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THE GLORY YEARS (1927-1935)

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On Étoile du Nord and Nord-Express

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R.L. Dupuy, Vendre (June 1927):

"Above all, let us bow low to the unexpected, phenomenal, disconcerting... encouraging success: a man was found to sell the Nord Company two posters by Cassandre. Make no mistake, this man is a hero."

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R.L. Dupuy on Étoile du Nord:

"Right in the Gare du Nord, when they generally think of hurrying toward the exit, numerous travelers stop in front of this poster and look at it attentively."

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On L'Intransigeant

Louis Chéronnet, L'Art vivant (1926):

"The one where I believe I found my full measure." [Cassandre himself]

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On Pivolo

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Cassandre explaining his method:

"For PIVOLO, for example, my favorite poster along with that of L'INTRANSIGEANT, because the clients accepted them immediately as I had conceived and realized them without any discussion, for Pivolo therefore it's the advice of the famous instructor pilot: 'And then fly high!', popularized in all aviation schools and deformed into 'Pivolo', from which I drew by way of pun (magpie flies high) the black and white bird that I schematized in order to symbolize the new aperitif."

INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION AND THEORIZATION (1929-1930)

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Cassandre, preface to L'Art international d'aujourd'hui - La publicité (1929):

"As it escapes the 'Museum' or the 'Collection', Advertising escapes all judgment. It is something like love: one does not JUDGE it – one UNDERGOES it. It is no longer a game, but a natural phenomenon like night and day; one of the most beautiful consequences of contemporary activity: LIFE itself."

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Cassandre on his conception of the poster (around 1930):

"A poster must carry within itself the solution to three problems: 1. OPTICAL – 2. GRAPHIC – 3. POETIC [...] Image linked to a word (or a name), the goal of a poster is to create around this image-word a series of very simple associations of ideas and associations of ideas that could not be forgotten."

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And his shock formula:

"Thus the poster will therefore not necessarily be pleasant or sympathetic, provided it is moving. It is not asked to make itself loved or understood, only to make itself undergone. It is to Painting what rape is to love."

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REVOLUTIONARY TYPOGRAPHY

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On Bifur (1929)

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Charles Peignot:

"Neither Cassandre nor we wanted to make a 'pretty thing'. We wanted to construct a publicity type: suppress from each letter what is useless to distinguish it from others."

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R.L. Dupuy, acerbic critic in Vendre:

"Bifur presents itself to us equipped with a declaration in due form of which one wonders only with anxiety, if it is more a panegyric or a 'dada' manifesto."

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Maximilien Vox (defense):

"Bifur is the greatest thing done in 500 years."

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Blaise Cendrars (support):

"May you discover... the giant and simple word to match above Paris the monster poster of Baby Cadum... It is to print this word that Bifur was cast."

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Marcel Jacno (testimony):

"In the hall of the Bœuf sur le toit, I noticed an alphabet on metal nicely framed. It was the Bifur character designed by Cassandre... Bifur gave me the urgent desire to do the same."

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On Peignot (1937)

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Charles Peignot (post-war, philosophical):

"It was the somewhat scandalous rupture in an art and particularly traditionalist milieu, which demolished some taboos and had the merit of liberating us ourselves."

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Jérôme Peignot:

"After four years of effort to perfect his character, Cassandre still managed to overcome it. This feat alone makes his alphabet a historical milestone in writing."

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CREATIVE APOTHEOSIS: DUBONNET AND NICOLAS

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Dubonnet (1932)

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Arts et Métiers graphiques (n°32, November 1932):

"We cannot congratulate the Dubonnet house enough for the happy choice of its triple poster whose appearance puts on the walls of Paris a note of gaiety that has pleasantly surprised the public and technicians. This living poster testifies to a transposition on the graphic plane of cinema technique."

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Marcel Zahar:

"The little character with the bowler hat, incarnation of Mr. Everyman."

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Mune Satomi (witness to the creation):

"I was with Loupot in Cassandre's studio when suddenly the idea came to him and he began to dance with joy."

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Savignac on the influence:

"It was the day when Cassandre made Dubo-Dubon-Dubonnet, breaking with objects and machines, rediscovering Guignol and beyond caricature, the human, that he opened my window."

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Nicolas (1935)

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Raymond Mason:

"The Nicolas was a sort of sublime graphic vociferation, a choreographic intoxication of syncopated planes where wildly swirled masses of concentric circles of raw tints: yellow, orange, violet, green."

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Marcel Zahar:

"A flash of his creative genius that would never recur in this masterful line, outside fashions and outside time."

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THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (1936-1938)

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Ernestine Fantl, preface to the MoMA catalog (1936):

"He [the Dubonnet man] has the universal charm of Mickey Mouse."

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Fortune Magazine (March 1937) - presentation of his projects:

"If you think that Mr. Cassandre takes the subconscious too seriously, remember that his ideas are solidly founded and that the subconscious is undoubtedly the best shared thing on earth."

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Cassandre himself (bitter assessment of 1937):

"As for me, I had once believed I felt an intense life in advertising and that it would allow constant intervention in the unfolding of days and society, that it would be for me a means of expressing a certain form of activity. Unfortunately I gradually realized that it was in fact uniquely dominated by particular interests."

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Marcel Jacno (on New York solitude):

"The exile comrade Cassandre was, despite his success, reputed for his dark character... His painting was cold and ineffective. It was undoubtedly this impotence that gnawed at him because he was not unaware of it, hence undoubtedly his mood."

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WAR AND PAINTING (1939-1945)

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Drouin Exhibition (1942)

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René Barotte, Comoedia (November 21, 1942):

"We would like to find more sensitivity and even science there. Only the landscapes reserve pleasant surprises."

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Lucien Rebatet, Le Petit Parisien (November 28, 1942):

"Does this mean that Cassandre has realized his ambitions? Far from it and even from everything... The elements are rather insipid, disparate and clumsy."

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Derain (according to Henri Mouron):

"For painting, you're wrong, but for theater, you've understood the trick."

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Personal correspondence

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Cassandre to Lola Saalburg (February 18, 1945):

"Only painting remains my reason for living. But it is miserly, oh! how much and gives me little."

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Cassandre to Lola Saalburg (February 19, 1945):

"Today, my painting no longer nourishes me all the less since we are free one must be cubist or communist to know the favors of those gentlemen of rue de la Boétie. My little obsolete painting is far from it!"

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THEATER: SCENOGRAPHIC REVOLUTION

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Theories

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Cassandre (manuscript text on theater):

"Making a set is above all organizing a space: the scenic space. It is not an enlarged painting as, since Diaghilev, we see too often. This space is destined to highlight and propel toward the audience an actor."

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On "over-proportion":

"The figured space is all the more beneficial as the object it contains is not quite to its measure (at the same scale). It then becomes unusual and poetically receivable substance."

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Don Juan in Aix (1949)

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Cassandre explaining his project:

"When the organizers of the Aix-en-Provence international music festival asked me for the decoration of Mozart's Don Giovanni, there was no opera theater in Aix, but only a courtyard, that of the former Archbishopric."

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Pierre Jean Jouve (dazzled witness):

"Swarming hall with white wooden frameworks, whose ceiling was the dark starry sky. [...] Small and large stage. Prominent characters, of a particular dimension, were placed in the Music in a just space, while their brilliant tableau received, from above, the denial of the night. Extreme visibility, due to this contrast. Feeling of a real, human fairy tale, and thereby more universal than the night."

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Guy Blanchard, Canadian critic:

"The decorator Cassandre has penetrated Mozart more intimately than had yet been done."

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John Cage, New York Herald Tribune (only reservation):

"The spectators were easily distracted by the bells chiming the hours in a nearby church, the song of some lost nightingale or the simple contemplation of the stars in the sky."

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The failure of Phèdre (1959)

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Pierre Jean Jouve (defense):

"This effort of style, therefore of beauty in arrangement, immediately encountered the most virulent and coarse cabal of newspapers that had been seen for a long time; it was a well-conducted concert of animosities and errors."

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Claude de Boisanger (witness to rehearsals):

"One morning... I heard him [Cassandre] tell two young bewildered pensioners whom he was 'auditioning' for the role of Aricie: 'Young ladies, decidedly, you understand nothing. Besides, the question is simple: do you believe in divine right? If you don't believe in it, useless to continue.' 'And then' he added after a moment: 'do you go to mass? How to play Racine's tragedies when one doesn't go?'"

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TESTIMONIES ON THE MAN AND THE CREATOR

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His working method

Savignac (his assistant):

"He works in tempera on canvas paper stretched on a frame. At the real dimensions of the poster he must realize. When he is not happy with his sketch, we bring the canvas to the garden and there, we hose it down. We erase everything. And he starts again. With renewed and strong joy. Because he knows how to succeed."

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Savignac on his pedagogy:

"To learn, I only have to watch him, open my ears and listen to him. Because while working, he talks. He comments aloud on what he's going to do, what effect he intends to obtain. He judges, he sorts, he retains. And this oral secretion that is not addressed to me is the best of teachings."

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His personality

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Henri Sauguet:

"Cassandre's eye immediately imposed on us its particularities, its evidence, its unusual presence, by the means best suited to surprise, to astonish, to strike: the poster."

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Henri Sauguet on his character:

"His whole and lively character, his brusqueness, his outbursts, his violence."

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Gabriel Dussurget:

"I was particularly fascinated by Cassandre's personality, a mysterious angry man."

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Savignac on his evolution:

"He had become irritable. But as we didn't see each other often, I had no reason to annoy him much. Although with him, one never knew which foot to dance on."

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Lola Saalburg:

"Standing, speaking low, head down, in that state of muffled anger that had not left him for a very long time."

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THE LAST YEARS AND DEATH

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Correspondence from the last years

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Cassandre to Lola Saalburg (June 29, 1954):

"I must think of my 'luminous' friends who are Balthus, Jouve and Reverdy."

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Cassandre to Lola Saalburg (August 24, 1955):

"Total suppression of Maxiton and Co. and especially, especially the return of those precious wonderments before nature lost for so many months (if not years)."

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Cassandre to Lola Saalburg (June 29, 1958):

"The Racinian fiction that made me live in another world these last three months, once broken and entrusted to drawers, I find myself today like an idiot persisting in subsisting in a world that no longer concerns him."

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His death (June 17, 1968)

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Raymond Mason (letter to Odile Pascal, July 9, 1968):

"With Doctor Legendre, I went to his deathbed. In an apartment brilliant with cleanliness, our friend, dressed with great care, was lying in a position of absolute rest, one hand on his heart, feet crossed, the folds of the pillow making a star around the noble and firm head."

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CRITICAL JUDGMENTS AND POSTERITY

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On his creative genius

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Raymond Mason (1966):

"Cassandre's initial gesture was the right one. He went down into the street... Look at these works thirty-five years old! Why this brilliance, why this freshness? Why do they fill us with happiness? Undoubtedly, because they were made for the great light of day, because they were situated in life, in the joy of the street. Where they spoke to people..."

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Alain Weill (contemporary analysis):

"Cassandre in everything he touched in the field of graphic arts or even the stage [...] has never ceased to be an inventor. There are few inventors. There are virtuosos but having people who find both new paths and completely new ideas and who manage to apply them in a style that is also ahead of the time of their time. This is a very rare thing."

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Alain Weill on his place in history:

"He is not the best, he is simply out of competition! The most talented of his peers will recognize it."

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On the poster artist/painter paradox

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Alain Weill:

"Like the vast majority of people who have known glory in advertising as a poster artist he wants to have his recognition as a true artist. [...] To my knowledge none of the great poster artists of whom I can really say that he deserves to appear in the history of the poster would deserve and does not appear in the history of painting."

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Savignac:

"All the time that Cassandre made posters, I believe he was a happy man."

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Quotes on his specific innovations

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Pierre Faucheux (on his work for Signes, 1946):

"His perspective inventions for presenting fashion and his Vincian drawings still dazzle me."

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Paul Morand (letter to Cassandre on Champions du monde):

"A poster that knows how to persuade without violence or vulgarity, advertising that leaves those who undergo it in contentment, that leaves behind not victims or furious people, but admirers, is unique."

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On the choice of pseudonym

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Alain Weill:

"Why he called himself Cassandre. It seems quite obvious that he chose the mythological character of this daughter of King Priam [...] who finally announced to the Trojans news that was not necessarily pleasant. [...] The announcing side of Cassandre in relation to what was going to happen is certainly a good example [...] It's true that the rest of the story can be that without knowing it and without measuring the consequences. He had given himself a name that would very well correspond to the end of his life of his career."

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FINAL ASSESSMENT

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Cassandre himself (1960, Feuilles mortes):

"The golden rule must only specify the ideal proportion previously sensed by instinct: a means of verification and not a system of composition, doomed to death like all systems."

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Henri Mouron (his son):

"At dawn, the dream dissipated, the entire palace slowly rose into the flies to leave room only for a chalky landscape burned by sun where the 'young man' found again never to leave it his shadow, faithful companion of his solitude, to the hammering of the brass of Sauguet's beautiful music."

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