Tag Archives: Modern art

Manet’s Civil Wars, part II: The Siege of Paris

Posted on by
Reply

“…every war is worse than expected.” – Paul Fussell

During the Franco-Prussian war everyone in Paris, whether painter, poet, or plumber, was swept up by history. Even after the abdication of Napoleon III and the birth of the new Republic that Édouard Manet and his fellow Impressionists had long dreamt of, the armies of the “Government of Defense” continued to suffer defeat after humiliating defeat across French territory. By the autumn of 1870, there seemed little hope of stopping Prussian forces in their relentless drive towards Paris.

The Siege

As bad news continued to flood in, many Parisians – if they had the means – fled from the city. Monet, who had a military exemption purchased by his father, headed north — crossing the Channel to London. There he was joined by Camille and their son where a small artists community of exiles was forming. Pissarro (who was technically a Danish citizen) came with his family, then Sisley, Daubigny, and their art dealer Durand-Ruel. Cezanne headed in the opposite direction — home to the south of France — to avoid being drafted.

1870 Paris: Manet (left) in Bazille’s studio/Bazille in uniform

Manet and Degas, however, stayed to defend their city. Partisans of the new French Republic like so many of their friends, they enlisted in the National Guard. Renoir joined the cavalry. Rodin was drafted but later dismissed because he was too nearsighted. Gauguin served in the French navy in a group that captured four German ships. Frédéric Bazille, a close friend of Monet and Renoir, was killed leading an assault on the Prussians 65 miles south of Paris. Corot, in his 70s, refused to leave his studio and donated huge sums to the poor of Paris. Courbet, Gustave Moreau, Fantin-Latour, and Daumier also remained. Berthe Morisot, who could have spent the war far from the fighting with her sister in Normandy, insisted on staying with her parents in the city’s affluent neighborhood of Passy.

As the Prussians drew closer, the battered, retreating French armies, along with farmers from the countryside, poured into Paris. The population of the capital grew rapidly – just as the new Republican government was struggling to figure out how to feed a city about to be cut off from the outside world.

Continue reading →

Manet’s Civil Wars

Posted on by
1

In June 1864, the painter Édouard Manet was trying to recover from the brutality of the critics’ response to his Salon entries that January. This had followed on the heels of being treated as a laughingstock the year before when he exhibited a painting that became infamous in Paris, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), at the Salon des Refusés (the Salon of the Refused). Despite his desire to be accepted by the academic community, Manet found himself described as a radical artist, ignorant of the basic tenets of art. Somewhat bewildered, he was searching for a subject that could revive his reputation and ensure his admission into the next Salon.

Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur L’herbe, 1863

What was the Salon?

In today’s art scene with its myriad pathways for exhibiting, the importance and power of the Salon is hard to comprehend. Begun in the early 1800s to show off the work of academic prize winners in the Louvre’s Salon de Carré (hence its name), by the 1860s it had become essentially the only exhibition in Paris that mattered. If you were a young artist, you had to be accepted to the annual Salon to receive any kind of notice. An academic jury consisting of members of the Ecole de Beaux-Arts and prizewinning artists from previous Salons served as either your gateway to a future in art or your roadblock. The judges expected paintings with historical, uplifting subject matter or scenes from mythology. All submissions were expected to be “skilled,” in other words, have a polished, finished appearance.

Édouard Dantan, A Corner of the Salon

Unfortunately, acceptance to an annual Salon was only the first step. Where and how your work was hung in its many rooms also mattered.  In the 19th century, artworks were displayed in rows stacked up along the walls. A small painting hung high near a doorway would never attract notice, while a work placed at eye level in a grand room could mean a great deal to an artist’s reputation.

The Battle

While preparing for the annual family vacation along the Normandy coast of France, Manet read in the Paris newspapers about an exciting naval battle of American ships that had just taken place off the harbor of Cherbourg. In one of the most important sea battles of the American Civil War, the Union’s USS Kearsage, which had crossed the Atlantic on a mission to sink one ship — the Confederate navy’s CSS Alabama — finally caught it.

Continue reading →

Kokoschka’s Alma Mahler doll

Posted on by
3

A strange, life-size doll is at the center of one of the Modern era’s most bizarre episodes. Its inspiration was the sudden end of an intense love affair between the Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka and the fascinating Alma Mahler.

Born in 1879, Alma Maria Schindler grew up surrounded by the best of Viennese society. Her father was a noted painter; Crown Prince Rudolf was one of his patrons. While she would become a composer and a writer, it is her love affairs with some of the most important artists, architects, and composers of the 20th century that have kept her celebrity alive since her death in 1964. Continue reading →

Loïe Fuller: Artist and Inspiration

Posted on by
Reply

While at the Cleveland Art Museum earlier this month, my attention was caught by an impressive plaster head by Rodin. It was immediately familiar as a large scale version of one of the heads from his famous The Burghers of Calais, but I thought it even more moving in its own right. The marks of Rodin’s fingers as he created such a sorrowful expression were amplified by pencil marks and the traces of colored washes — I never knew Rodin did such things. But I was surprised a second time when I read the label and it said “Gift of Loïe Fuller.”

I was already aware that Loïe Fuller was an extraordinary woman. Could she be even more extraordinary than I knew?

Marie Louise Fuller was born in 1862 on a farm outside of Chicago. As a young girl, she was inspired to be an actress by Sarah Bernhardt. She found her truer calling while acting in a play, when she twirled her long white skirt in a way that suggested a rising butterfly. The audience loved it and soon she was performing across the country as a dancer in vaudeville, burlesque, and even Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.  Known best for her free-spirited Serpentine dance, today she is considered one of the founders of Modern Dance despite never having taken any lessons. But it wasn’t until she was 30 and crossed the Atlantic that she became one of the most famous dancers in the world.

As Loïe Fuller, she became the toast of Paris when she opened her show at the Folies-Bergère in 1892. At the center of an empty dark stage, Fuller entered in a white silk costume of her own design and then flung the material out in ever-changing huge abstract forms. Unbeknownst to the audience, inside hundreds of yards of fabric, she had sewn in bamboo sticks to push out the shapes. Colored lights, manipulated with mirrors from the sides of the stage, illuminated the billowing forms. Audiences were mesmerized by the magical metamorphosis taking place before their eyes.

Continue reading →

Diary of an Affair: Picasso and Marie-Thérèse

Posted on by
1

As the sun set in Paris, on January 8, 1927, Pablo Picasso was walking past a fashionable department store when his eyes fell upon a young shopper. Immediately infatuated, the artist (then unhappily married and in his mid-forties) took Marie-Thérèse Walter by the arm and said, “I’m Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together!” She was confused by the man and unaware of who he might be. Picasso introduced himself by dragging her into a bookshop and showing her a book filled with reproductions of his paintings. Thus began a passionate affair and an enormously productive period for Picasso. Continue reading →

The truly Old Masters, Modern edition

Posted on by
Reply

matisse at workVolume 2 of our series “Truly Old Masters” focuses on Modern and Contemporary artists who lived long and fruitful lives in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (except Americans, who will be the subject of Volume 3). Since medical care improved considerably after 1900, it has become more and more common for artists to live to a ripe old age. That’s why for this volume we’ve raised the bar from 75 to 80 years old. Still, the list is long, even though it covers not much more than a century.

While there are plenty of artists who worry about aging, many celebrate it as an opportunity to do more and better work. To congratulate the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman on reaching his 70th birthday, the 77 year old film-maker Akira Kurosawa wrote to him about an artist who “bloomed when he reached eighty.” Kurosawa, who lived to 88 and continued to write films almost to the end, told Bergman that he realized his own work “was only beginning” and that artists are “not really capable of creating really good works until [they] reach the age of 80.”

2009-louise-bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois in 2009

Recent studies are debunking the old theories that great artists (and scientists, for that matter) do their best work by the time they are thirty. The sculptor Louise Bourgeois who lived nearly to 100, described herself as a ‘long distance runner.’ When she was 84, she was asked whether she could have made a recent work when she was younger. She replied, “Absolutely not.” When asked why, she explained, “I was not sophisticated enough.”

Old age is not without its hazards, but even they can be inspiring. Henri Matisse suffered from a near fatal illness in his seventies.  After he survived a dangerous surgery, he said,

“My terrible operation has completely rejuvenated and made a philosopher of me. I had so completely prepared for my exit from life that it seems to me that I am in a second life.”

Despite being mostly bedridden, his ‘second life’ led to the exuberant, colorful paper cut-outs that occupied him for the rest of his life.

Below is a gallery of portraits and works by twentieth century artists who did not die young but lived long enough to truly become old masters. [Click on an image to begin slide show.] Continue reading →

A visit to Matisse’s ‘crowning achievement’

Posted on by
1

For the conclusion of his 2010 BBC documentary, Modern Masters: Matisse, the British critic Alastair Sooke visited Matisse’s Vence Chapel in the south of France for the first time. In this segment, Sooke is overwhelmed by emotion, while he contemplates how the old, frail artist managed to have a final burst of creative energy at the very end of his life.

Designing the Chapel began in the late 1940s. Matisse, already in his late seventies, was recovering from surgery for intestinal cancer and had nearly died.  His nurse was a former model, Monique Bourgeois, now a novice Dominican nun, Sister Jacques Marie.

The project confused his friends like Picasso, who knew Matisse was an atheist. Yet Matisse called the Chapel his ‘crowning achievement.’

Matisse in bed working on Vence Chapel c. 1950

Matisse drawing a head for the decoration of Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence (The Matisse Chapel) in his studio/room in the Hotel Regina, in Nice-Cimiez, 1950. Photo by Walter Carone/Paris Match.

To celebrate the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, The Cut-Outs, which opened this month, the Café presents Sooke’s moving tour of the the Dominican Chapel of the Rosary in Vence, France.  Or as most of the world knows it — Matisse’s Chapel.

See and hear Matisse — drawing with charcoal and scissors

Posted on by
Reply

henri_mattise_drawing_3The following two short videos provide brief glimpses of Henri Matisse at work in his studio.  In the first from 1946, he draws a portrait of his grandson, Gerard, with charcoal. In the second, he was filmed near the end of his life “drawing with scissors,” which is how he described his method of working with hand-colored papers.

Besides the rare opportunity to see Matisse at work, we can also hear his voice in the first video.  He is explaining how he thinks about drawing. His comments translated into English are:

“Me, I believe that painting and drawing are the same thing. Drawing is a painting done in a simpler, limited way. On a white surface, a sheet of paper, with a pen and some ink, one creates a certain contrast with volumes; one can change the quality of the paper given supple surfaces, light surfaces, hard surfaces without always adding shadow or light. For me, drawing is a painting with limited means.”

 

Lydia Delectorskaya, Hôtel Régina, Nice, c. 1953 Courtesy Henri Matisse Archives

Lydia Delectorskaya, Hôtel Régina, Nice, c. 1953
Courtesy Henri Matisse Archives

Jacqueline Duhême, one of Matisse’s studio assistants in the late 1940s, describes how he made his cut-outs here.

A visit to Frida Kahlo’s studio

Gallery

Posted on by

This gallery contains 14 photos.

Frida Kahlo‘s home and studio, La Casa Azul in suburban Mexico City has been renovated in time to celebrate her 107th birthday. On the second floor, one can visit her studio just as she left it when she died in … Continue reading →

The Unwanted Gift: Picasso and Matisse

Posted on by
Reply

Detail, New Hebrides Mask (Musée Picasso)

Detail, New Hebrides Headdress (Musée Picasso)

In Paris’s Musée Picasso, a four-foot tall idol from the Pacific Islands sits in a glass case.  Wild eyed and dramatic, with arms flung out stiffly, visitors might justifiably assume that it was one of the many native objects that Picasso kept in his studio for inspiration.  But the story behind it is much more complicated. The idol was a gift from Matisse that Picasso didn’t want.

While their styles were quite different, both artists were inspired by the art of aboriginal peoples (‘primitive art’ as it was known then).  For Picasso, it is well known that African art was the catalyst for his Cubist revolution.  What is less well known is that Matisse collected African sculptures even before Picasso. In fact, he was the person who introduced Picasso to one of them at a soirée in Gertrude Stein‘s apartment in Paris in 1906.

According to Max Jacob, a friend of Picasso, who was there that evening,

Matisse took a wooden statuette off a table and showed it to Picasso. Picasso held it in his hands all evening. The next morning when I came to his studio the floor was strewn with sheets of drawing paper. Each sheet had virtually the same drawing on it, a big woman’s face with a single eye, a nose too long that merged into a mouth, a lock of
hair on one shoulder … Cubism was born.

Ultimately, Matisse found the work of the Pacific peoples more to his taste.  In 1930, when he was 60, he even traveled on a ship to Polynesia and lived in Tahiti for a couple of months.matisse-tahiti

By the late 1940s and early 1950s, after decades of sometimes bitter competition, Picasso and Matisse’s wary but respectful relationship had grown into an important friendship. Whenever the old rivals met together in the South of France, they discussed what they were working on and from to time exchanged gifts and paintings.  Since Matisse was twelve years older than Picasso, there was an element of the mentor in their interactions — one Picasso resisted.

Matisse's studio at Le Régina, Nice, 1953. New Hebrides mask on chair at right. (Photograph: Hélène Adant)

Matisse’s studio at Le Régina, Nice, 1953. New Hebrides mask on chair at right.
(Photograph: Hélène Adant)

When Matisse presented Picasso with the New Hebrides idol from his tour of the South Seas, Picasso could only smile and say thank you.  But Francoise Gilot, Picasso’s companion at the time, noticed how Picasso’s jaws tightened as Matisse explained how he had come to own it and how it was used in rituals.  In her 1990 memoir Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art, she describes how she “could tell right away he didn’t like it.”

Picasso left Matisse’s studio without his gift by explaining that there wasn’t room in the car for it. As they drove away, Pablo released his anger. “Matisse thinks I have no taste. He believes I am a barbarian and that for me any piece of third-rate tribal art will do!”

When Gilot suggested they accept the gift, but put it in a room in their home where no visitor would ever see it, Picasso wouldn’t stand for it.  “Certainly not!…I will not accept this awful object…If I accept the hideous gift from my so-called friend, I will have to put it in a place of honor.  If I don’t our relationship is in jeopardy.”

Picasso spent much of the drive home angry and cursing. Obviously frustrated, he fretted, “I am in a bind; what am I to do?”

Gilot and Picasso decided the only thing to do was to come up with excuses whenever they went to Matisse’s home for why it was not the right time to take the idol with them.  This was not so easy.  Every visit they discovered that Matisse had placed the bright red, white, and blue idol in whatever room they were.  Yet somehow Picasso managed to never accept the gift from Matisse.

Ceremonial Headdress, New Hebrides, South Malekula in Musee Picasso, Paris, Tree ferns and pandanus coated in painted clay

Ceremonial Headdress, New Hebrides in Musée Picasso, Paris
Tree ferns and pandanus coated in painted clay

This is why Gilot was shocked to see it thirty years later proudly displayed in the Musée Picasso when she attended its opening in 1985. She later learned from Matisse’s son Pierre that after his father’s death in 1954, Picasso had asked him for the long postponed gift.  By then Gilot had already left Picasso.

Picasso with New Hebrides idol, Cannes,1956. (Photograph: Lucien Clerque)

Picasso with New Hebrides idol, Cannes,1956.
(Photograph: Lucien Clerque)

After considering this surprising news, she realized that several of Picasso’s later pictures had figures reminiscent of the wild-eyed idol.  Somehow, according to Gilot, “Matisse had foreseen his friend’s further evolution” and managed to mentor Picasso — even after his own death — with an unwanted gift.