Sans Documents, Pas d’Incohérents / Sztuki Niezborne i Praktyka Dokumentu (1882–1893)


Galeria

Sztuka i Dokumentacja nr 20 (2019) │ Art and Documentation no. 20 (2019) • ISSN 2080-413X • e-ISSN 2545-0050 • doi:10.32020/ARTandDOC290

doi:10.32020/ARTandDOC/20/2019/25



Galeria

291Sztuka i Dokumentacja nr 20 (2019) │ Art and Documentation no. 20 (2019) • ISSN 2080-413X • e-ISSN 2545-0050 • doi:10.32020/ARTandDOC

Corinne TAUNAY

INCOHERENT ARTS AND THE 
PRACTICE OF DOCUMENT
(1882-1893)
                
The last exhibition of Incoherent Arts took place 
in 1893. However, Alphonse Allais retroactively 
presented three of four pieces from 1883 and 1884 
displayed during the Incoherents’ exhibition as 
late as in his 1897 April Fools’ Day Album which 
features mainly “monochromes.” It is true that 
only three titles are registered in the Incoherents’ 
catalogues: First Communion of Anemic Young 
Girls in the Snow, Tomato Harvesting by 
Apoplectic Cardinals on the Shore of the Red 
Sea, Great Pains Are Silent. It was retroactive as 
well when in 1904 - long before Yves Klein - in an 
article signed “Aesop Jr.”, printed in Le Sourire, 
Allais established the term “monochrome” to 
describe pieces created with the use of one 
color only. This very text from 1904, which 
content seems to have been overlooked, marks 
the beginning of the monochrome’s  genealogy. 
Considering the analysis scheme of Alphonse 
Allais’s work presented here a starting point, it is 
easy to understand the role which documents – 
prints – have played in the history of Incoherent 
Arts and their reception up until now. In this 
article I am analyzing publications where certain 
documents were printed (daily newspapers, 
exhibition catalogues, entry cards, bills, posters, 
etc.) throughout the history of the artistic group 
known as Incoherents. The group which used to 
consist of over six hundred artists and presented 
more than a thousand pieces during their seven 
exhibitions organized in Paris between 1882-1893 
exists in our collective memory nowadays, despite 
the great volume of its artwork, solely thanks 
to archives. Paradoxically the group members 
ignored all administrative conventions and 
classifications in power at that time. They held 
in disregard rules settled by the Academy of Fine 
Arts and adopted a different, seemingly simple 
one: “Show an exhibition of drawings made by 
people who cannot draw.” Incoherent artists 
created many innovative pieces, anticipating the 
most avant-garde artistic forms of the XX century; 

they were artists of a new kind – people of 
different professions. To present some examples 
of the few humoristic masterpieces I would like to 
mention Feet by Henri Gray, sculpted in a piece 
of gruyère cheese, or Venus de Mille Eaux (Venus 
of Thousand Waters which pronounced in French 
sounds the same as Venus de Milo) – a plaster 
copy of the Greek statue overlaid with bottled 
mineral water etiquettes. The ephemeral artistic 
practice was bound to result in dematerialization 
of Incoherent works; what remains are no more 
than a dozen of original pieces. Thus, these are 
documents of all types that allow one to analyze 
some of Incoherent works’ meaning, reveal the 
Incoherent artists’ intentions and deepen one’s 
knowledge concerning this still rather obscure 
artistic movement. For many years it was thought 
nothing more than a farce, a group of people 
making “insignificant jokes,” now however, we 
have discovered that Incoherents were closely 
connected with avant-garde movements of their 
day, such as naturalism or impressionism, though, 
they parodied those. Ridiculing everything 
including themselves they criticized the bourgeois 
social and political reality. Thanks to press releases 
we managed to establish that their first exhibition, 
with no catalogue or poster, took place on 2nd 
August 1882, on the day when the parliament 
passed a law concerning morality image. Thanks 
to documents, which we continue to discover, it 
is now known that the movement was far more 
complex than it may have primarily seemed. The 
radical contempt for classical academic drawing 
situates the group next to other avant-gardes 
of the late XIX century, its critical perspective 
questioned the culture of “good taste” as well 
as the middle-class, institutionalized notions 
concerning beauty. Incoherents pioneered many 
avant-garde artistic forms that flourished in the 
XX century, though particularly – that is what we 
claim – their attitude towards the relation between 
art and non-art anticipated the dada movement.

doi:10.32020/ARTandDOC/20/2019/25