Chaim Soutine (b. 1887) and Marc Chagall (b. 1893) both emerged from what is now Belarus to pursue their art in Montparnasse – Chagall arrived in 1911, Soutine in 1913. When Chagall memorialized the deprivations of his Hasidic upbringing in Vitebsk, he painted a cow floating fancifully with an umbrella above his humble village. When Soutine expressed his relationship to the cows of his shtetl, he painted a bloody carcass of beef, having hauled it up the narrow stairs to his studio and suspended it from the ceiling to the disgust of his neighbors. Chagall was soon regarded as a Surrealist and Cubist darling, endorsed by André Breton and Apollinaire, and later beloved by suburban Jews who would approve of his “Jew with Torah” (1959) on CJP calendars.
But Soutine, who rejected Cubism and extended the vision of Expressionism, received little attention and no respect. His work was too crude, his behavior uncouth, and he did not live long enough to be remembered endearingly by admirers. Writing about the “underrated” Soutine in The New Yorker in 2018, Peter Schjeldahl noted that “Clement Greenberg, in 1951, adjudged his work ‘exotic’ and ‘futile,’ owing to its lack of ‘reassuring unity’ and ‘decorative ordering.’” But actually, at least by the mid-1970s, critics such as Alfred Werner regarded Soutine as not only a great artist but one of a rare and vanishing breed “who takes little notice of the public, who sacrifices all to his work and concedes nothing to his comfort.”
Werner’s Soutine is the figure we encounter in Ralph Dutli’s ingenious and rewarding novel Soutine’s Last Journey. On August 6, 1943 in Champigny, the ailing Soutine was placed in a Citroën hearse for the clandestine 15-mile ride to a Paris hospital where he died on August 9 after surgery for gastric ulcers. Accompanying him was his lover, Marie-Berthe Aurenche, who had been devoted to him since 1940, the moment when the Nazis occupied France and began rounding up Jews for transport to the camps. She had been married to Max Ernst. The arc of Soutine’s life – his difficult youth and early training in Vilnius, the shared studios in Paris, his friendships (especially with Modigliani), the sudden recognition of his work in the 1920s, the major works, the travel through France, and then the Occupation – all of this is illuminated in Dutli’s narrative.
There are historical novels that inform us by portraying events and offering proofs, and there are those that provoke us to think, ask and wonder. Dutli wants his Soutine to retain its mysteries and deeply embedded impulses such that the artist’s temperament and expressive needs are approachable and envisioned but ultimately understood as fugitive. Like the indirect route of the hearse, eluding the enemy’s checkpoints, Dutli’s narrative proceeds via side roads and detours toward a known fate, passing through Soutine’s own recollections and delusions; the artist is dosed with morphine. But the prose retains a remarkable clarity, its rhythms – adeptly shaped in Katharina Rout’s attuned translation – abet our desire to see more, perhaps, for instance, to grasp why Soutine was in the habit of destroying many of his painting, even buying back canvases so he could shred them. Soutine simply didn’t resemble any of his émigré contemporaries:
“And Soutine will become none of it, neither some family’s Bolshevik nor an ambassador of joy, but will never leave behind the shame of having been born, or the label of a god-forsaken painter of misfortune. The issue is neither good fortune nor misfortune. The issue is colour or non-colour. White with blue and red streaks. Veronese green, turquoise, scarlet and the colour of blood. The death of colour that cannot die, and the resurrection of colour. The issue is colour applied too abundantly, colour that blisters or is hatched; bristling, tormented, triumphant colour.
Colour does not reconcile with reality; no, if you believe black and white to be harsh reality, and colour, paradise – no, everything is once again different. Irreconcilable colour bends to no law; it is by itself the rebellion against and the resurrection of matter and the flesh. Paradise will be white, will not know colour. But at what cost.”
I’m reminded, via Schjeldahl, that Willem de Kooning said Soutine was his favorite painter, and regarding the carcass paintings, added “Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented.”
Any artist working in any genre, including literary ones, will have their spine stiffened by this novel. In a new interview, the artist Celia Paul commented, “It’s so difficult to be ambitious about your own work and also be desirable. There’s a conflict between being loved and following your own path.” The eleventh of twelve children, Soutine was routinely mistreated by his siblings and parents; when he began drawing, he was told that graven images are prohibited to Jews. Undesirable, he painted his grief and his independence. And in the moment of the journey, the oppressive and murderous actions of the Germans turned his personal anguish into communal torment.
“The stomach ulcer stayed; the pain silenced any happiness, which always arrived without warning. He was afraid of becoming a different person, of having become one. The old wound must remain open. If it disappears, his gift will suffocate. Poverty, hunger and ugliness are marvelous possibilities. Pure beauty rests in itself and takes the brush from his hand. Modigliani’s beauties: he cannot see them. He made the bodies glow, a bit like paper lanterns. Beauty extinguishes them.
He becomes sad when someone speaks in his presence of a just world. The painter loves injustice, sees it as an opportunity. Justice strikes him as a miserable goddess who strives to diminish people. To him, the slightest opportunity is vastly preferable. Everything has been distributed unjustly, you understand? Everything. Health, wealth, beauty, talent, and fame. Inequality alone inspires and spurs us on …”
Dutli conjures Soutine’s delirium as he approaches the hospital – his dream of a pure white room, the attending doctor who tells him he has been cured but that he may no longer paint. And then, Marie-Berthe beckons the Hungarian photographer Rogi Andre to his bedside to take pictures of the corpse, shaved and the hair brushed.
Soutine is known for his portraits:
“Whenever Soutine painted people, his models visibly aged in front of his eyes. They sat before him for a few hours and during that time became ancient men and women. In their faces the years had already done their work; they had dug deep into wrinkles and furrows, warped people’s bewildered mouths, made the cheeks droop and the nose dominant … Why does Soutine deform the bodies of his models? Some curious person wants to know. And Modigliani replies: But he doesn’t. During the session the model becomes what he sees, the invisible behind the appearance. The human being, mistreated by life, having long been marked by death. The revelation of our ultimate, final state.”
Dutli’s prose, shifting between episode and hallucination, despair and assertion, succeeds in sketching the invisible urges and wants behind the biography of Soutine. The art is illuminated and celebrated. Soutine’s self-portrait acquires a voice.
[Published by Seagull Books on April 4, 2020, 260 pages, $24.50 hardcover]