Maurice Denis’s ‘Définition du Néo-traditionnisme’ and anti-naturalism (1890)

An examination of Maurice Denis’s Définition du Néo-traditionnisme (1890), a key text on early Modernism written when Denis was only nineteen years old, the article begins by investigating how his youth affected what he wrote. By assessing Denis's necessarily limited frame of reference, which importantly included the 1889 Exposition Universelle, it is possible to establish in many cases to which works of art Denis's telegraphic text refers. By so doing it the anti-naturalist tone of his arguments becomes explicit. The article also considers how Denis's arguments and even language have parallels in very recent art writing, and analyses how Paul Sérusier stimulated Denis's ideas and the links with Gauguin's recent work. Thus this important text is re-interpreted in very specific contextual terms.