Birthday in Autumn

On a chill, rainy October evening in 1903, an impressive procession of elegant carriages made its way along the Avenue des Champs Elysees in Paris. As each carriage reached the door of the Petit Palais, it discharged its passengers: beauteous ladies in turn-of-the-century feathers and frills, aristocratic gentlemen in dove-grey redingotes and embroidered vests.

Many of the women gave little gasps of surprise when they saw the garland of new-fangled electric lamps decorating the entrance to the Palais' cellar. When they went down the stairs, they and their escorts found more reason for excitement. On the basement walls hung 990 pictures: oils by Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet and Felix Vallotton, a whole wallful of paintings by Paul Gauguin, only six months dead in his Pacific island paradise.

Paris' first Salon d'Automne was a smashing success. High society talked about it for weeks, and more than 4.000 ordinary people paid hard-earned francs to get in. Last week the Salon d'Automne was celebrating its 50th birthday with a special, three-part show designed to recall its past triumphs.

Beastly Riot. There was plenty to celebrate. The Salon d'Automne was the first Paris salon to stage a retrospective exhibition, devoting a whole room to the works of Cezanne. In 1905 the Salon got what it needed to become a popular fixture: a first-class scandal. Fauvism, expressed in the wildly colored canvases of les fauves (the wild beasts, e.g., Matisse, Marquet, Derain and Vlaminck), caused an artistic riot. Respectable gentlemen insulted each other, shook their ivory-capped canes at the canvases. Raged one critic: "A pot of paint has been thrown in the face of the public."

The Salon won more fame in later years with major retrospective shows of the works of Courbet and Gauguin (1906), Corot (1909), Pissarro (1911). Rodin (1919) and Renoir (1920). After the liberation of Paris, the Salon reopened in 1945 with a gigantic Picasso retrospective.

This year the Salon set up a special section in commemoration of its birthday, called Satte 1903. The organizers tried to get together as many as possible of the works displayed in 1903. Among the souvenirs: a Rouault clown and a Tahitian painting by Gauguin. A better showing was made in the section called Hommage aux Aines (homage to the elders), in which were displayed the works of now-famous artists who have shown at the Salon through the years. Among les Aines: Matisse, Dufy, Utrillo. Picasso, Vlaminck, Braque, Chagall and Leger.

Red Comic Strip. In the contemporary section of the 1953 Salon, the standouts were a brilliant tapestry design done by Jean Picart le Doux and an expertly drawn Quartet of musicians by Hilaire Camille. There was also some plain trash. The trashiest: two heavyhanded pieces of political propaganda by Communist Painter Andre Fougeron. One, called Atlantic Civilization, had all the artistic merit of a low-class comic strip; it showed a soldier shooting from a brassy U.S. automobile while a bloated capitalist looked on gloatingly and the proletariat wept over their coffins. Le Figaro called Fougeron's work an "imbecility," and it was too much even for Communist Poet Louis Aragon, who wrote in Les Lettres Franc,aises: "Fougeron's works are hastily and clumsily painted . . . We must tell Andre Fougeron, 'Stop here.' "

Some Frenchmen wondered how works of so little worth could have got onto the Salon's distinguished walls. But those who had followed the Salon through half a century of success suspected that the organizers of this year's show, like those who put forward the "wild beasts" of 1905. were quite happy that a row had been kicked up.

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