Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești (; born Alexandru Bogdan, also known as Ion Doican, Ion Duican and Al. Dodan; June 13, 1870 – May 12, 1922) was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art, and a sponsor of the Romanian Symbolist movement. Together with other Post-Impressionist and Symbolist cultural figures, Bogdan-Pitești established Societatea Ileana, which was one of the first Romanian associations dedicated to promoting the avant-garde and independent art. He was also noted for his friendship with the writers Joris-Karl Huysmans, Alexandru Macedonski, Tudor Arghezi and Mateiu Caragiale, as well as for sponsoring, among others, the painters Ștefan Luchian, Constantin Artachino and Nicolae Vermont. In addition to his literary and political activities, Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești was himself a painter and graphic artist.
Much of Bogdan-Pitești's controversial political career, inaugurated by his support for anarchism, was dedicated to activism and support for revolution. He also had an interest in the occult, and maintained close contacts with Joséphin "Sâr" Péladan—sponsoring Péladan's journey to Bucharest (1898). He was detained by the authorities at various intervals, including an arrest for sedition during the 1899 election, and was later found guilty of having blackmailed the banker Aristide Blank. Late in his life, he led Seara, a Germanophile daily, as well as a literary and political circle which came to oppose Romania's entry into World War I on the Entente Powers' side. He was arrested one final time upon the end of the war, by which time he had become the object of public hatred. The enduring mysteries and contradictions of Bogdan-Pitești's career have since drawn interest from several generations of art and literary historians.
Biography
Early life and anarchism A native of Pitești, Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești was the son of a landowner from Olt,Tudor Vianu, p.370 and, on his father's side, the descendant of immigrants from the Epirote area of Ioannina, whose ethnicity was either AromanianCernat, Avangarda, p.42 Constantin Coroiu, "Pluta de naufragiu (2)" , in Evenimentul, December 30, 2002 or Albanian. Krikor Zambaccian, Chapter VIII: "Al. Bogdan-Pitești", in Însemnările unui amator de artă, published and hosted by LiterNet. Retrieved July 14, 2007. His father became a local leader of the Conservative Party. His mother was a boyaress, and, as art collector and memoirist Krikor Zambaccian recounted, may have been a descendant of the Balotescu boyar clan. Bogdan-Pitești also had a sister, Elena Constanța Bogdan; both she and her mother reportedly survived his death.Veronica Marinescu, "Un «prinț al artelor» uitat de vreme. Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești și Vlaiciul primelor tabere de creație", in Curierul Național, July 22, 2006 As one of his eccentricities, Bogdan-Pitești encouraged the—unsustainable—rumor that he was a direct descendant of an ancient Wallachian ruling house, the Basarab Princes.Mitchievici, p.346, 347–348
According to at least one account, Bogdan-Pitești was educated in Geneva, at a local Catholic institution. Raised in the Romanian Orthodox faith, he converted to Catholicism in his twenties,Boia, p.189; Cernat, Avangarda, p.17, 42; Mitchievici, p.341, 344; Teacă, p.52 but was no longer a practicing Catholic by the time of his death. He supposedly attended medical school at the University of Montpellier, without ever graduating, and afterwards left to join the bohemian milieu of Paris. He may have enrolled at the University of Paris, studying Law and Letters, but probably withdrew after a short while. Art historian Sanda Miller recounts that Bogdan-Pitești attended the École des Beaux-Arts in the French capital, but that he was ultimately expelled.Sanda Miller, "Paciurea's Chimeras", in Apollo, October 2003 Other sources express doubt that the Romanian aristocrat was ever affiliated with any university or college, in either France or Switzerland.Teacă, p.52
According to literary historian Tudor Vianu, at that stage, the young man began associating with the criminal underworld. He soon established a connection with the French anarchist circles, while also associating with a branch of the growing Symbolist movement.Cernat, Avangarda, p.42; Mitchievici, p.337, 344; Teacă, p.52-54 Like others in his generation, he may have been driven by a desire for shocking and morbid experiences. According to art historian Theodor Enescu, these ranged from erotic experimentation to the "boisterous shivers of anarchism", and from criminal enterprise to decadent poetry.Teacă, p.53 Bogdan-Pitești was a presence in the anarchist group of Auguste Vaillant (later guillotined for plotting a terrorist coup), and was possibly acquainted with some of the more prestigious anarchist intellectuals: Élisée Reclus, Laurent Tailhade and (especially influential on him) Félix Fénéon.Teacă, p.52-53
Reports exist that Bogdan-Pitești's politics were already a merger of opposite or hardly compatible doctrines. He respected Catholicism and Judaism as the most elevated religious cultures, rejected Orthodoxy, atheism and communism as ideologies for the mediocre, and depicted himself as a Catholic anarchist.Mitchievici, p.344, 357 He believed in craniometry, and took scientific racism at face value.Mitchievici, p.346-349 At some stage during the late 1880s, Bogdan-Pitești became a supporter of General Boulanger, who attempted to gain power in France with support from the Orléanist, Bonapartist and socialist camps; he reputedly befriended the prominent Boulangist and Romantic nationalist thinker Maurice Barrès.Cernat, Avangarda, p.42. See also Mitchievici, p.327-328, 337
In parallel, he himself became a representative of literary and artistic Symbolism, and supposedly maintained contacts with authors such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, Maurice Maeterlinck, Octave Mirbeau, Jean Moréas, and Paul Verlaine.Cernat, Avangarda, p.42. See also Mitchievici, p.337; Teacă, p.52 Another influence on him was the occultist and novelist Joséphin Péladan, whose Rosicrucian salon he attended several times.
Bogdan-Pitești debuted as a writer and political essayist. It was later reported, but not confirmed, that he published his pieces in newspapers and magazines of diverse backgrounds—Le Figaro, Le Gaulois, Gil Blas, L'Intransigeant and La Libre Parole among them. He also claimed to have played a part in staging the first Genevan showing of Richard Wagner's Die Walküre.
Salonul Independenților
Placed under surveillance due to his involvement in revolutionary politics by 1894,Boia, p.189 Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești was eventually expelled from France, despite Huysmans' intervention in his favor. Reputedly, the deportation document identified him as a "threat to public order".Ionescu, Mișcarea..., p.234 One urban legend recounts that Bogdan-Pitești was present at Vaillant's public execution and leaned over to kiss Vaillant's mangled body, which both disgusted and alarmed the judicial establishment.Mitchievici, p.127, 350, 389 Zambaccian suggests that the decision to deport the Romanian provocateur was not politically motivated. He writes that Bogdan-Pitești had exhausted the patience of French authorities by trafficking in stolen bicycles.
From France, Bogdan-Pitești had contemplated the idea of revolutionizing Romanian art, and, upon his arrival to Bucharest, began organizing artists' reunions at the Kübler and Fialkowski coffeehouses.Rus, p.79 In 1896, with Post-Impressionist artists Constantin Artachino, Ștefan Luchian and Nicolae Vermont, he founded Salonul Independenților, the Romanian replica of the French Société des Artistes Indépendants.Jianu & Comarnescu, p.34-36; Lassaigne & Enescu, p.49-51, 104. See also Ionescu, Mișcarea..., p.227-235; Rus, p.79 Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, "Artachino", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 222, May 2004 They were soon joined by painter Nicolae Grant and caricaturist Nicolae Petrescu-Găină.Jianu & Comarnescu, p.35
The exhibits featured some of Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești's own drawings, which he intended to use as illustrations for his book of French-language poems, Sensations internes ("Internal Sensations"). He planned for his art movement to reach outside Romania, and, also in 1896, financed an international exhibition of independent and avant-garde artists. Salonul was known for its public protest against academic art: located just outside the Romanian Athenaeum building (a main venue for local Neoclassicism), it put up Petrescu Găină's huge caricature of academic artist C. I. Stăncescu, and flew a red flag next to it. This call to socialist rebellion attracted public attention, and the flag was urgently taken down by agents of the Romanian Police. The subsequent exhibitions were viewed with sympathy by a section of the press, including the leftist newspaper Adevărul. It republished pieces ridiculing Stăncescu in his role of official curator, and made favorable comments on all of the Salonul Independenților artists.Ionescu, Mișcarea..., p.229-234 Noting the leader's own anarchist past, Adevărul art columnist Gal wrote: "Bogdan has all the qualities and flaws of a sincere French revolutionary, but one who is not entirely clear and scientific. He has an extraordinary love for all things independent and hates to the point of excess all sectarian people, and all schools." In June 1896, the group of "secessionists" was commissioned to decorate Bragadiru Garden, where Romania's press held its annual fair. The show, attended by Bogdan-Pitești, prominently featured Stăncescu's caricature at the entrance.
Despite rhetoric, the new art club was not entirely opposed to tradition, and occasionally appealed to it as a basis for cultural reconstruction.Ionescu, Mișcarea..., p.227-235; Amelia Pavel, "Pictura evreilor din România: interferențe culturale", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 29, September 2000 Salonul boasted among its honorary members the lionized oil painter Nicolae Grigorescu, who had trained with the Barbizon school.Lassaigne & Enescu, p.51 Bogdan-Pitești was especially fond of Luchian's work, and, in an 1896 article for the cultural magazine Revista Orientală, spoke of him as "an admirable colorist", a "free spirit", and a purveyor of "revolutionary ideas".Lassaigne & Enescu, p.104. See also Rus, p.78-79, 80 He boosted Luchian's self-confidence, urging him to apply his talents to illustrating "an idea", and was entirely adverse to Grigorescu's traditionalist manner. Luchian still used Grigorescu as a source of inspiration in his own work, prompting scholars to argue that Grigorescu's Salonul Independenților reception was Bogdan-Pitești's unwilling concession to his star protégé.Jianu & Comarnescu, p.40
Literatorul, Bronzes, Ileana