ECOLE DE PARIS

SINCE Louis XIV looked with favor upon the artists of France, Paris has been the capital of the world of art. Great art revolutions spilled out of Paris; great art masters stormed the barricades there, ruled as tastemakers for more than two centuries. In mid-20th century, with France drifting toward ever lesser status as a world power, how does the Ecole de Paris stand?

Paris dealers scooped up some $9,500,000 for their 40,000-odd artists last year; the Ecole de Paris remains the most talked about, the most museum-represented "school" in the world. But there are no revolutions, no barricades. There are no new leaders to rank with or even near Picasso and Chagall and Braque. There is a group of talented artists who paint in styles ranging from realistic to expressionistic, from primitive to symbolic (see color pages). Among the best: P: Alfred Manessier, 47 (TIME, Oct. 24, 1955), who was shaken out of his surrealist visions by World War II nightmares, spent four days in 1942 in a Trappist monastery that "transformed" him. Today he tries to "create works which reflect my thirst for harmony and unity." His "meditations in paint" are vivid abstractions that combine warm, bright Fauve-like colors with the restrained forms of cubism. P: Jean Dubuffet, the chief barnstormer for "I'art brut" (raw art), who mixes a thick paste of colors with sand and even ashes, constantly changes his style because "I am unstable and anxious." Using as his point of departure children's scrawls and the art of the insane, he is convinced that "art has much to do with madness." P: Serge Poliakoff, a gypsy who paints geometric designs and says his "ambition is to speak the truth ... A red circle is not the sun. It is a red circle." P: Bernard Buffet, who once used his mother's torn sheets as canvases, has had the most spectacular success, now owns a chateau and a Rolls, says "wealth aids my creative spirit; poverty does not necessarily help genius." A painter of contorted, distorted, sad human beings, Buffet is as disillusioned and almost as popular in France as his friend, Novelist Francoise Sagan (see MILESTONES). The opening of his recent retrospective show in Paris, which attracted a total of 40,000 visitors, nearly turned into a riot as his fans mobbed him. Another gallery is now showing seven large Buffet canvases of the life of Joan of Arc. P: Georges Mathieu, a shrewd showman (Paris publicity head of United States Lines), who scoots about in a 1924 Rolls, stuffs his mouth with diced raw beef like a kid gobbling popcorn. His self-dubbed "spontaneous creations" are flashy signatures squeezed in a frenzy straight from the paint tubes onto one-tone backgrounds. P: Edouard Pignon, who went from coal mining and a Citroen assembly line to painting Picasso-flavored landscapes, now adds a lyrical personal tempo to his semi-abstractions. A neat, natural talent whose 1957 oils convey the Mediterranean joy, light and life of a little resort near Marseilles, Pignon is currently on view both in Paris' Galerie de France and Manhattan's Perls Galleries.

P: Andre Bauchant, for many years a gardener, whose paintings in the primitive tradition of Henri Rousseau show his love of trees and flowers.

P: Balthus (real name: Balthasar Klossowsky), who comes from a wealthy, art-minded Polish aristocratic family. He started painting at 16, insists "an artist should remain anonymous," keeps within the realist tradition. He snaps back at those who attack his studies of young girls as Freudian and sinister with: "Maybe it is the people who look at them, and not my paintings, that are sinister, erotic and morbid."

P: Jean Bazaine, an outstanding abstractionist, who often listens to classical music as he works, produces calm harmonies of rhythmic, flowing color patterns.

These upperclassmen among Paris' 40,000 are winning international prizes and winning acceptance. But in the contemporary class of the Ecole de Paris, with wide range, without new movements, no new genius has been recognized. Said Paris

Art Critic Alain Jouffroy: "Paris once was a volcano. It is now gradually turning into a big circus." Although there are many new performers in that circus, the best acts are the work of an older generation.

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