SOURCE: “Writers as Art Critics: Three Views of the Painting of Paul Klee,” in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 18, 1977, pp. 75–92.

In the following essay, Hubert discusses Crevel's written criticism of the artist Paul Klee.

Many major French writers have devoted critical essays to painting and, in a sense, have created a new literary genre. Eluard, Aragon, Leiris, Apollinaire, Bonnefoy, among them, have provided a wide range of examples of what appears to be by now almost an established genre quite distinct from the Salons of Diderot and Baudelaire. Many of these texts have such outstanding literary value that the reader may hardly notice their success or failure as criticism and thus show little concern for critical assumptions or postulates. Indeed, when poets or novelists turn to criticism, the chances are that their comments will correspond to tendencies and problems inherent in their creative works. René Crevel, Roger Vitrac, and Henri...