Frida Kahlo: Art Trumps Identity

“Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, the new exhibition at the V&A London, examines Kahlo’s private world, displaying paintings, drawings, photographs and private possessions to form a powerful presentation of Kahlo the artist and the woman.

“Such an approach might seem intrusive. Yet Kahlo (1907-1954), one of the most famous painters of the 20th century, was an artist uniquely concerned with her self, displaying it in its various guises. Her symbolic portraits and self-portraits – combining Surrealism, Mexican painting and naive amateur art – and her personal life – her precarious health, commitment to Communism and tempestuous marriage to famed muralist Diego Rivera – all flowed into what is a strikingly autobiographical artistic enterprise, rich in allusion and metaphor. Indeed, fascination with her autobiography, combined with acclaim for her art, propelled Kahlo to stardom long after her death, spawning films, documentaries and numerous books…”

Read the full review online here: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/frida-kahlo-art-trumps-identity/21529#.WzSbFe4vzIU

Innovative Impressions: Prints by Cassatt, Degas and Pissarro

[Image: Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926), Woman Bathing (La Toilette) (c. 1890–91), Brooklyn Museum, Museum Collection Fund, 39.107]

Innovative Impressions: Prints by Cassatt, Degas, and Pissarro at Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma (9 June-9 September 2018) examines the three most prominent printmaking painters of the Impressionist movement: Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Camille Pissarro (1855-1903). The exhibition is reviewed from the catalogue.

This exhibition shows us the complex interplay of collaboration and rivalry that influenced the printmaking of three leading painters of the age. All three artists trained in etching early in their careers then set aside the medium to concentrate on painting. At the time, etching was considered a component of a rounded education for professional artists and also pursued by hobbyists, thus it was a widespread skill. In the 1860s there was a revival in etching in France, with the Société des Aquafortistes was established in 1862. Publishers encouraged artist-printmakers to produce etchings which they then marketed to fine-art collectors in competition with lithographs.

Etchings by Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic (1839-1889) show us the work of a critical figure in Nineteenth Century French printmaking. Lepic is best known for eau-forte mobile, which is the creative inking of plates that – in the case of landscape designs – adds atmosphere, changes weather and lighting conditions and can even turn day to night. This is not pure etching, wherein the plate is inked uniformly throughout an edition and which remains faithful to the etcher’s original intentions, but instead it is a hybrid of etching and monotype, with impressions varying widely. While atmospheric inking can contribute to the impact of a line etching, it can go too far and become a game or a distraction, covering up for the inadequacies of the etching. Lepic was hugely influential among artists and master printers. Lepic’s practice was enriching but also impoverishing, causing printmakers to make etchings that were deliberately incomplete or ambiguous, which allowed the application of Lepic’s eau-forte mobile technique. (Compare this to the example of filmmaking. Some directors rely so heavily on computer-generated imagery, dubbing, digital editing and post-production effects that they become slapdash in the filming and directing of actors, which is the essence of good live-action films.) There is a viable case to be made that Lepic’s influence was more deleterious than beneficial.

Another significant figure was etcher Félix Bracquemond (1833-1914). The exhibition includes three of the ten states of Bracquemond’s masterful reproductive etching of Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus. Bracquemond joined the Impressionist movement, though his art was often not close stylistically to the most common Impressionist approach. He was a brilliant technician but it is clear why he is both less known and considered more of an associate of the Impressionists than an essential member of the movement. (To read my review mentioning Marie Bracquemond, the Impressionist painter married to him, click here.)

Catalogue essays direct us to consider notions of authorship and purity in fine art.

Richard R. Brettell discusses the collaboration between Corot, Dutilleux, Grandguillaume, Desavary and the Cuvelier brothers in Arras. Together they developed the cliché-verre printing technique, producing many prints for which the authorship is shared or uncertain. This risks giving the impression that the working relationship of Cassatt, Degas and Pissarro was closer than it actually was in 1879, though Bretell’s point is taken. The Impressionists occasionally worked in in pairs and groups in painting expeditions, arranging group exhibitions and preparing the Le Jour et la nuit journal. Bretell points out that collaboration, criticism and sharing of techniques and ideas was a significant part of the careers of many artists who are commonly considered in monographic isolation. Often in the catalogue text we encounter mentions that one of the artists gave advice to another on printing or actually helped to print certain proofs. They exchanged and purchased each other’s prints.

Many critics of the era condemned the finish of Impressionist art. (The very name Impressionism came from a critic’s slur about the supposed incomplete condition of a Monet painting.) The sequential nature of printmaking means that we have a chance to consider when a work of art is finished. It also raises the issue of how much importance we attach to a work of art and how much to the creation of that art. It is very common to read in catalogues more about the preparation for, development and revision of, a work of art than about the finished work itself.

In 1879 work began on Le Jour et la nuit which was intended to be a journal featuring the prints of Cassatt, Degas, Pissarro, Bracquemond and Caillebotte, Raffaëlli, Forain and Rouart. With little accompanying text, it would have been essentially a bound version of the print portfolios of loose sheets published at the time. The journal did not appear in 1880 partly (according to a contemporary) because Degas was late with his contribution. The journal was never published but a number of etchings were prepared for it and have been identified, including Cassatt’s In the Opera Box, Degas’s Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery and Pissarro’s Wooded Landscape at the Hermitage, Pontoise. Pissarro’s print (based on a painting) seems to have been straightforward. Cassatt made three versions of her print in a number of states, dramatically altering the lighting using aquatint. Degas developed his print to completion then developed a second print which used the figures in different position and setting in a distinctive vertical format. This print – Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery – was also translated into painting by the artist. It was perhaps the extended revision of the second print through 20 states that delayed Le Jour et la nuit.

 

[Image: Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallery (1879–80), Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr., 1947.459]

Sarah Lees writes that it is likely the Le Jour et la nuit prints were exhibited at the Impressionist exhibition of 1880. “It is even more revealing that each artist chose to show more than one state of the prints, much as Bracquemond had done in 1874 with his Erasmus. In this way they not only highlighted the significance of the creative process, but also undercut notions about the primacy of the finished, final work.” She notes that it is possible to show an etching plate in different states the way it is not possible to with a unique oil painting.

The exhibition includes many prints from before and after the Le Jour et la nuit project. Some of the highlights of the selection are Cassatt’s colour aquatints. The lines are drypoint – scratches which hold ink with a characteristic emphatic blur – and the colour shading is in speckled aquatint, with sparing use of soft-ground etching. This is a rare technique. Included are the most famous Cassatt prints The Letter (1990-1) and La Toilette (1890-1). They are exquisite and justifiably praised. The influence of Japanese colour woodblock prints (exhibited in Paris in 1890) is obvious but not distractingly so. Cassatt used adventurous colouring and the editions display wide variation in colouring. Unfortunately, Cassatt’s drawing sometimes went awry and a number of her prints are irretrievably marred by obvious and painful flaws in anatomy. In such clear, sparse and (relatively) realistic works, these faults gravely damage the prints.

Pissarro also made prints in aquatint and drypoint. The results are uneven. The weather in Rain Effect (1879) was an afterthought. The torrential rain makes the scene of two figures sitting and standing in a field seem ridiculous. Woman Emptying a Wheelbarrow (1880) is a lot better and may have been destined for Le Jour et la nuit.

[Image: Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903), Woman Emptying a Wheelbarrow (1880), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.7311]

Pissarro and Degas experimented by proofing Pissarro’s Twilight with Haystacks (1879) in different colours. Examples in black, red and blue are reproduced in the catalogue. Degas preferred to add colour to his prints in pastel and paint, using the print (or counterproof) as the framework for a unique work of art. Included in the exhibition are three rare landscape monotypes that Degas made by painting dilute colour oil paint on a metal plate and running this through a press with paper. The exhibition also includes some monotypes of bathing nudes and brothel scenes.

Pissarro is not well known as a printmaker and his contributions are uneven. The colour etchings and monotypes from the 1890s of peasants and landscapes verge on the crude. The use of heavy outlines (perhaps derived from Cloissonisme) is unpleasant and works against the artist’s long experience in building forms in colour without drawn outlines. The overpowering outlines and casual draughtsmanship, combined with the unpleasant effects of oil on paper, have produced rather ugly prints. A late lithograph in monochrome is very good. The loose wash effects and emphatic shadow create drama and solidity that seem close to Romantic art or the wash drawings of Poussin.

It is heartening to encounter such a scrupulously researched art-historical exhibition, especially regarding prints, a medium often passed over as minor. Particular commendation is due for the meticulous cataloguing of technical data (including plate and paper size) and provenance, information which is often lacking in exhibition catalogues.

Sarah Lees (ed.) and Richard R. Bretell, Innovative Impressions: Prints by Cassatt, Degas, and Pissarro, Philbrook Museum of Art/Hirmer, 2018, hardback, 130pp, 100 col. illus., €39.90, ISBN 978 3 7774 2978 6

 

© 2018 Alexander Adams

 

African Modernist Architecture

[Image: Hotel President Yamoussoukro, (1973-9), Yamoussoukro, Cote d-Ivoire. Source: Wikimedia]

Decolonisation is not a simple subject and even its most basic points are a matter of fierce ideological debate. What is agreed is that independence is not a clear matter of binary opposites: a colonial possession does not become a fully autonomous state with the raising of a new flag. Independence is a process of negotiated detachment.

In a time when even the appearance of “cultural appropriation” sends ripples of guilt and moral opprobrium over alleged transgressors, it is good to be reminded of a period when cultural actors actively sought out foreign influences to solve practical problems. In the 1950s and 1960s a wave of African countries that had been the possessions of European states gained independence. Upper echelons of new independent governments wanted to make a clear break and to assert national confidence. Prominent public buildings of the new republics would be distinct not just from their colonial past but also from local traditional and vernacular idioms. New materials, new forms and new priorities would inspire the local population; they would also make a bold statement to foreign visitors. Late Modernist architecture would be the template for Africa just as it had been for developed nations worldwide.

With the spurs of new resources, international loans and nation pride, a building boom took place in African countries in the 50s, 60s and 70s. African leaders found Late Modernism provided a conveniently neutral style in states that were ethnically and religiously diverse. Indeed, the very heterogeneity of the states left the newly independent states with a need for neutral civic architecture to bind together groups with disparate traditions. African Modernism is a large book of over 600 pages that examines landmark examples of Modernist architecture in five Sub-Saharan countries that gained independence in the wave of decolonisation of the 1950s and 1960s, namely Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya and Zambia. The book focuses on public buildings such as schools, universities, libraries, parliamentary buildings, markets, hotels, offices and flats.

[Image: Kenyatta International Conference Centre KICC (1966-73), Nairobi, Kenya. Source: Wikimedia.]

The authors explain that relatively few black African architects had been trained by the early-independence period, so the primary architects of the period were European and Israeli. Israeli architects had experience of building in a hot sunny climate and were seen as fellow pioneers of independence from colonial power. Many of the architects came from the former colonial powers but there were also many Scandinavian architects. Even when European architects were commissioned, it was not a case of remote architects designing standardised buildings to be imposed upon African cities. Tropical Modernism was a branch of Late Modernism which was developed to respond to the challenge of construction in equatorial climates. Direct sunlight is limited by the use of brise-soleil, louvres and overhanging ledges that cast shade; intense heat is mitigated by open areas and perforations that allow air to circulate; large areas of glass are avoided. Concrete is the preferred material as it is resistant to rot and parasites. (In Zambia it is brick.)

It is too easy to dismiss the wave of building as vanity projects of dictators and generals. Some projects were undoubtedly unwise, hubristic or overbearing. There are photographs of ten-lane highways in Cote d’Ivoire entirely bereft of traffic, typical of the grandiose folly that is the country’s underpopulated capital. The country’s first president decreed that his rural home village would become the nation’s new capital and a lavish building programme turned Yamoussoukro into an outsize ghost-city full of landmark buildings.

Many of Africa’s new buildings did directly benefit ordinary people. New airports and hotels encouraged tourism and international trade; schools and universities provided advanced educational environments; infrastructure projects provided power and transport links that invigorated local economies. A number of these buildings were designed or built during the transitional phase, when colonial authorities prepared for independence by spending on civic infrastructure.

The book contains one section for each of the countries which includes a brief essay and a timeline discussing history and circumstances pertinent to the country. Buildings or complexes are given 2, 4, 6 or more pages each. Essays discuss different aspects of architecture in Africa. Specially commissioned photographs show buildings as they exist today – chosen in preference to photographs of the structures when they were pristine – and we see environments that are lived and worked in. Some of them are dilapidated and others are just in need of a coat of paint; a few are abandoned and close to ruin. The Pyramide Abidjan (1968-73) – a giant pyramid bisected by a Brutalist concrete block – is a dramatic and disastrous failure. Partly empty, poorly maintained and impractical, the building will no doubt be demolished. The temptation to use such failures as symbols of national decline is undercut by the examples of similar buildings in full use and cared for. The spectacular Hotel Ivoire, Abidjan (1963-70) (with its palm trees, swimming pool and wood-panelled lobby) looks like a lost fragment of 1970s jet-set glamour.

[Image: St. Paul’s Cathedral (1980-5), Abidjan, Senegal. Source: Wikimedia]

There is a melancholy aspect to some of the optimistic designs that have become anachronistic in the light of later poverty, strife and terrorism. The former American embassy in Accra (1965-9) is a model of welcoming openness, raised above the ground on tapered concrete pillars over an open-air seating area, surrounded by a lawn. Security considerations mean that embassies nowadays are fortified bunkers bounded by fencing and anti-traffic bollards. The buildings of Zambia bear witness to the burst of prosperity the populace enjoyed before a slump in copper prices impoverished the country and dispersed urban populations back to the country in search of work and food.

Senegal favoured a distinctly French form of Late Modernism, in line with its close affiliation with the mother country. President Senghor (in office 1960-80) had an aesthetic policy to promote a native Senegalese Modernism that would feature asymmetric parallelism, hence the abundance of triangular forms in Senegal’s architecture. Other unique developments include student accommodation inspired by mud-brick buildings of traditional villages. Photographs of an outdoor market in Nairobi show the stalls, vendors and buyers in riotous profusion. We see street vendors with their carts outside a ministry buildings, children playing football below apartment buildings, multi-coloured washing hanging from concrete balconies.

The variety of forms, materials and languages in these buildings epitomise Modernism that adapted to African resources, skills and traditions. This approach is now being superseded by less inventive contemporary architecture, which uses the brute force of expensive air-conditioning, standard designs and uniform materials in buildings which are increasingly homogenising skylines around the world. African Modernism is a unique record of a period when Internationalism meant optimism and when Africa played host to ingenious and elegant architectural solutions. It is a fascinating social record of African life of recent decades, as well as being a book full of beautiful and memorable images.

 

Manuel Herz (ed.), African Modernism, Park Books, 2015, flexi-cover, 640 pages, 909 colour and 54 b/w illustrations, 246 plans, €68, ISBN 978-3-906027-74-6

Obsession: Nudes collected by Scofield Thayer

[Image: Egon Schiele, (Austrian, 1890–1918), Egon Schiele, (Austrian, 1890–1918)
Standing Nude with Orange Drapery (1914), Watercolor, gouache and graphite on paper
18 1/4 x 12 in. (46.4 x 30.5 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982]

The sudden rise to prominence – and subsequent descent into obscurity – of Scofield Thayer (1889-1982) reads like an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. A young American playboy tours Europe then returns to the USA to marry. When he returns to Europe after the Great War, the young man is an editor of a literary journal and uses his fortune to support the literary lions of London, Vienna and Paris. He undergoes analysis with Dr Freud in Vienna. Now divorced from his wife, he is a dedicated libertine and decadent, his life devoted to the compulsive pursuit of novelty: principally promoting avant-garde writing, collecting erotic art and engaging in sexual conquests (both women and men). He amasses a great collection of art, some of it striking erotic art. On his return to the New York, he slowly descends into insanity and lives out the largest part of his long life in obscurity, spending periods in various institutions. By the time of his death, he has long outlived his notoriety and his death goes almost unnoticed.

Thayer edited Dial, one of the most important literary journals of the 1920s. It published ground-breaking prose and verse by T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and many others, famous and unknown. Dial also brought advanced European art to American readers. Thayer bought large quantities of art, mostly because he liked it but also a few pieces he intended to trade at a profit. In Vienna, he encountered the art if the recently deceased Klimt and Schiele. In war-impoverished Vienna, excellent drawings were cheap and Thayer could amass a fine collection of graphics, especially erotic drawings by the pair, some priced as low as $6 each. His collection of almost 600 pieces of art, ranging from German Renaissance prints and Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs to paintings by the Expressionists, Braque, Bonnard and Matisse, was bought before Thayer’s mental instability sent him into seclusion at the end of the 1920s. Some of collection was erotic in character. This uneven and partly salacious collection was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum on his death in 1982. One can only imagine the mingled pleasure and embarrassment among museum administrators and curators discovering the unabashed sexual nature of much of the art received into the collection. This catalogue documents the exhibition Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection of 52 nudes by three prominent Modernist artists: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Pablo Picasso. The exhibition will be held at the Met Breuer (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York from 3 July to 7 October 2018.

Klimt drew thousands of studies – mainly figures – during pauses between painting sessions. He drew as preparation for his Symbolist paintings (including public commissions, such as the murals for Vienna university) and also as a general exercise to keep his skills sharp. Visitors to his studio recalled nude models lounging around, ready to inspire the artist with a gesture or position. Klimt had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ready models. The drawings of nudes in the Thayer collection are typical of the late period of Klimt. Slender young women with bountiful tresses drape themselves over undepicted beds, sometimes pleasuring themselves. The style is dreamy, with the often undifferentiated subjects drawn lightly, with little shading, most executed in pencil. Outlines – which are almost all there is to Klimt’s figures – are sometimes uncertain and repeatedly reworked to build up solid but insubstantial forms.

[Image: Gustav Klimt, (Austrian, 1862–1918), Reclining Nude with Drapery, Back View (1917–1918), Graphite, 14 5/8 x 22 3/8 in. (37.1 x 56.8 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982]

The best of the drawings is a standing figure of 1906-7. The unusual rounded hairstyle, striking pose (with hip jutting) and evidence of a revised pose all make this piece stand out as memorable. The other pictures by Klimt are fair examples of their type but not very engaging.

Egon Schiele’s interests were even more frankly sexual. Unlike the more expensive and public oil paintings that he made, Schiele could use drawing on paper as medium in which to be more adventurous and explicit in imagery and subject matter. Thayer’s 32 drawings and prints (29 of which are reproduced in the catalogue) cover the whole of Schiele’s short career, starting in 1911 and ending the year of his death, 1918. The earliest drawings are sketchy, with simple lines picking out aspects, those lines sometimes floating as if detached from the motif.

Observed in a Dream (1911) is an unusual showpiece from Schiele’s early years. The fanciful title (prominently inscribed on the front), thorough colouring with watercolour paint and coquettishly sexual pose all indicate the artist aping the pornographic photographs and drawings easily to be found in Vienna in that period.  Ultimately, Schiele’s art became more sophisticated and personal without losing its sexual edge. One gets the impression that a more confident and independent Schiele would later collaborate with his models to explore expressions of sexuality that were less clichéd.

The drawings and drypoints of 1914 include the button eyes and doll faces typical of that phase. There are a few of Schiele’s typical line drawings coloured by broken patches of gouache diluted with gum arabic. By 1918, Schiele’s lines were fatter (conté crayon or black chalk replacing pencil) and the curves more emphatic. The models were no longer the scrawny adolescent waifs of the early years but adult women bursting with health, some of them buxom. There are drawings of a child model, who was apparently the child of a female model, as evidenced by a drawing showing the mother and child together.

The art by Picasso is less explicit in general. Although Picasso was often driven by erotic impulses, it came out in playful, indirect and witty ways rather than straightforward realistic depictions of nude figures. One exception is Erotic Scene (1902), showing a woman with long hair performing oral sex on the artist. The work is from the Blue Period. It is poorly painted, with little feeling or care. Picasso later disavowed the painting and refused to authenticate it. However, there is no doubt about its authenticity. Picasso’s biographer John Richardson had a dim opinion of the painting, suggesting that the artist painted it hastily for money.

[Image: Pablo Picasso, (Spanish, 1881–1973), Youth in an Archway (1906), Conté crayon on paper, 23 1/4 x 16 3/4 in. (59.1 x 42.5 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982. © 2018 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]

Other drawings by Picasso are of standing nudes executed in Gosol and Paris in 1906 and bathers executed in the artist’s Neo-Classical period of the early 1920s. The gap is not accidental. Thayer disliked Cubism and abstract art, so had no desire to collect any art made by Picasso during the 1907-1917 period. There is a 1922 pastel portrait of an idealised woman (probably a composite of Sara Murphy and the artist’s wife Olga) which is more tender than erotic. Picasso’s art seems distinctly public; the art of Klimt and Schiele is definitely of a private character. Picasso seems to be engaged in dialogue with artists of the past; Klimt and Schiele were more concerned with depicting reality and establishing connections between artist and subject. Picasso deals with ideals; Klimt and Schiele deal with actual subjects. Picasso worked from memory; Klimt and Schiele worked from life.

The selection of works tells us about Thayer’s priorities. It is notable that despite his sexual preference for men (though Thayer was apparently bisexual), the majority of subjects of the art he purchased were female. This is partly due to the fact that erotic depictions of nudes by the most prominent artists of the period were female ones, made by heterosexual male artists, which meant that the majority of erotic art of the time featured female subjects. Thus most of the nudes available were of female subjects. It also tells us that the quality of the art was more important to Thayer than its erotic potency. There was plenty of homosexual erotica for sale but none of the artistic quality of the art that entered Thayer’s collection. Thayer’s collection of non-erotic art was excellent, including some fine pieces by Matisse, Bonnard, Chagall and Demuth.

The catalogue is a useful addition to the body of literature on erotic art. The exhibition promises to be a celebration of erotic desire, the urge to present the beautiful in art and the lasting appeal of this art for viewers.

 

Sabine Rewald and James Dempsey, Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (distr. Yale University Press), 2018, paperback, 132pp, 110 col. illus., $25, ISBN 978 1 588 39 65 25

[Revised on 21 June 2018 to correct factual inaccuracy]

© 2018 Alexander Adams

Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900

 

[Image: Marie Bashkirtseff (Ukrainian, 1858–1884), In the Studio (1881), oil on canvas, 60 5/8 x 73 1/4 in. Dnipropetrovsk State Art Museum, Ukraine, KH-4234. Photo: Dnipropetrovsk/Bridgeman Images. Courtesy American Federation of Arts]

“Recent gains in women’s participation in the arts now demands an assessment of those who have paved the way – both women artists who struggled to establish careers in art and art historians who reinvented the critical language to accommodate them.”

So states curator Laurence Madeline in her essay introducing a current exhibition on women artists. Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900 (the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 9 June-3 September 2018; touring from Denver Art Museum and Speed Art Museum) gathers almost 90 paintings by 37 female artists from 11 countries, all of whom worked or trained in Paris. This exhibition is reviewed from the catalogue.

The period examined by this exhibition and catalogue was a turbulent and rich one. Despite the rise of Naturalism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Symbolism, the Salon dominated public reception of art and academic painting was a significant proportion of the art produced and consumed. The studio system of training, the École des beaux-arts and Prix de Rome were important in the training of artists and this presented women with a number of hurdles to becoming full-time artists. Women were not admitted to the École des beaux-arts until 1897 and had limited choices in the studios they could study at. Académie Julian became a favourite not just of women students but adventurous male students and a large number of the most successful artists of that period and the immediately following era studied there. In 1881 the Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs was founded to promote and exhibit women.

Statistical analysis in this catalogue indicates that female participation in the annual Salon ranged from below 10% to as high as 20% in a period when women as full-time professional artists were a rarity. This shows that women artists were recognised publicly in proportion to their participation in the fine-art field, even though it seems their art was less likely to have been awarded prizes and bought by the state. Such advantages naturally went to the most established artists, who were predominantly male. (Footnote 1)

Seeing a gathering of pictures by some unknown women artists seems to reinforce the impression that women are (or were) unduly discriminated against. Yet the art of twenty times that number of forgotten male artists from the period could have been assembled – with each of those artists as good as the women artists here. Go through any academy store room and you will encounter fine pictures by unknown artists, male and female. There simply is not enough wall space, book pages and public attention to cause these artists to be remembered. History bestows oblivion upon legions of capable professionals, regardless of gender. Fame is exceptional and, by definition, most artists are destined for obscurity. Nowadays, critics, curators and historians trawl archives and store rooms specifically in search of forgotten women artists to promote. Rescuing women artists from obscurity is an outcome of – and justification for – much Feminist art history over the last 50 years. Today there is no prejudice against women artists in the West. Women are rapidly becoming the majority of arts administrators and art historians. Today, among professionals and critics, there is an in-built favouritism towards women artists. Not a week goes by without a press release heralding the posthumous revival of a forgotten woman artist.

So, how good is the art exhibited here? Much of it is very good.

A number of artists need no introduction. Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès and Marie Bracquemond were respected and popular artists in the Impressionist circle, though the latter (who was married to acclaimed printmaker Félix Bracquemond and exhibited with the Impressionists) has faded from attention, partly due to her early retirement from art. Morisot, Cassatt and Gonzalès are presented fairly here, with first-class pieces.

[Image: Berthe Morisot (French, 1841–1895), The Cherry Tree (1891), oil on canvas, 57 5/8 x 35 in. Collection of Bruce and Robbi Toll; Photo: CAPEHART Photography. Courtesy American Federation of Arts]

A good case is made for Marie Bracquemond, with her Impressionist paintings of women and domestic life matching the quality of her more famous colleagues. Her reputation is likely to rise.

Naturalist painter of rural scenes Rosa Bonheur was celebrated in her lifetime as the equal of male painters. Bonheur was a phenomenon, becoming famous and being granted special privileges. Her art sold for high prices. Her paintings of farm animals were accurate and have an impressive physical presence but such art has become unfashionable and it is hard to see her name becoming common currency again. Fellow Naturalist painter Marie Bashkirtseff was very talented but one wonders if she would have left any more of a significant mark had she not died at the age of 25 in 1884. The adeptly executed In the Studio (1881) is one of the few large-scale paintings she painted in her short career. The Bastien-Lapage style of Naturalism she adopted was already verging on the fusty and sentimental by 1884. Was she capable of innovating or was she only a superior adherent of Cosmopolitan Realism?

Bastien-Lepage’s Naturalism became the dominant painting style in Scandinavia from his Salon success of 1878 until well into the Twentieth Century, long after his death. His approach was to paint scenes of rural life, including mild social commentary about the lives of working people. The doctrine of Naturalism through local colour, studying from life and painting at least studies en plein air won him legions of followers in France and Northern Europe. In this exhibition, nearly all the Nordic painters are indebted to him. Lady Elizabeth Butler’s patriotic scenes are more aligned to academic salon painting. Annie Louisa Swynnerton’s standing female nude is in the beaux-arts tradition, influenced by Pre-Raphaelitism. Amélie Beaury-Saurel’s pastel portrait of a young woman smoking and drinking coffee is bold, accomplished and lively. It is a very fine picture.

Grand claims for Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) are not borne out on the evidence presented here. There is a concise and beautiful painting of an interior (The Door (1884)); the only strong contrast in the picture is the glow of light coming through gaps around a closed door. However, the other pictures by her are weak stuff – a Botticelli copy, soft-focus social realism, a Whistlerian portrait. A strikingly modern self-portrait in a manner similar to Kitaj is not included, as it falls outside the dates for exhibited work.

[Image: Emma Löwstädt-Chadwick (Swedish, 1855–1932), Beach Parasol, Brittany (Portrait of Amanda Sidwall) (1880), oil on panel, 11 7/16 x 19 11/16 in. Private collection, Stockholm; Photo: Lars Engelhardt. Courtesy American Federation of Arts]

There are idiosyncrasies in curation that are puzzling. The curators state that they deliberately avoided so-called typically feminine subjects such as flower paintings and portraits, yet included are maternities, domestic interiors and conversation pieces featuring women – all subjects that were particularly close to women artists’ hearts and the centres of their artistic production. Some of the artists are ones who visited or trained in Paris rather than living there for significant lengths of time. Paula Modersohn-Becker should not have been included.

The catalogue includes informative essays by Jane R. Becker on Marie Bracquemond and by Vibeke Waallann Hansen on the Nordic painters. Impressionist scholar Richard Kendall writes about the careers of the female Impressionists. A valuable biographical section presents data about each artist.

Bridget Alsdorf makes some unfounded judgements in her catalogue essay. She contends that in Manet’s portrait of Eva Gonzalès painting at her easel, Manet appropriates Gonzalès’s painting  of flowers on her easel as “his own” by painting it in his own manner. Gonzalès was Manet’s student and her style is very indebted to his. Breaking the stylistic continuity within the portrait by transcribing a Gonzales painting idiomatically correctly would have been completely inconsistent within the aesthetic and practice of Manet. Alsdorf asserts that Orpen included the portrait of Gonzalès in Orpen’s own Homage to Manet (1909) in a way that “is perfectly ironic, a further travesty of Gonzalès’s already awkward image as a femme peintre”. Orpen was including the most celebrated and publicly available painting by Manet situated in the British Isles in 1909. There is nothing ironic about the inclusion. Women artists suffered inequality in this period. Inventing slights only distracts attention from the actual difficulties they faced.

There is some high quality art which we benefit from encountering, often for the first time, but are some of these artists unfairly overlooked? Not really. Bonheur and Bashkirtseff are scarcely more obscure to today’s gallery-goers than Bastien-Lepage and painters of the Barbizon or Hague Schools; Cassatt and Morisot are mentioned in every publication on Impressionism. What about the lesser-known ones? Schjerfbeck is capable but inconsistent; Virginie Demont-Breton is a competent Salon painter; Kitty Kielland is a skilful Norwegian landscape painter. Are these artists good? Yes. Are they better than the (male) artists who are more well-known? No, though some are equal in competence.

Yet there are hundreds of shadowy others at the elbows of Schjerfbeck and Killand, also ready to claim a seat in Parnassus.

On the opening of the Musée fin-de-siècle in Brussels, I was astonished to encounter the paintings of Hippolyte Boulenger (1837-1874). After 20 years of studying and writing about art of the period, I counted myself fairly familiar with the painting of the era, yet here was this painter who was the equal of Corot, who painted with the energy of Courbet and I had never heard his name. His landscapes are deeply immersive, full of bold brushwork and underpinned by acute observation, yet today not even one Belgian in a thousand would recognise his name. His art would have fitted into this exhibition – he deserves a monographic exhibition – yet there is no academic mileage in reviving the reputations of Belgian male painters. No cultural connoisseur or social historian will ever become indignant about the unjust neglect of Hippolyte Boulenger. Yet I would rather have hanging on my wall a Boulenger marine painting in preference to anything painted by Turner or Constable.

The canon is a limited field and it necessarily excludes the overwhelming majority of all art ever produced. Just as the newspaper acclaim and jury prizes of past eras do not secure a place in the canon for dazzling Salon painters, so too the perorations of art historians today do not permanently alter the course of history. The best approach is to look at art frankly (and sceptically) and assess bodies of work as honestly as possible. On that basis, there is plenty in Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900 which is appealing and surprising and we can be grateful to have encountered it.

 

Laurence Madeline et al, Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900, American Federation of Arts/Yale University Press, 2018, paperback, 288pp, 150 col. illus., $45, ISBN 978 1 885444 45 5

(1) Prizes, awards and state purchases are not distributed equally according to the merit of exhibited art. It is in part dependent on the status of the artist and that artist’s reputation.

If famous artist A wins 10 prizes in a career, less famous artist B does not get a proportionate 8 prizes (equivalent to 80% of artist A’s recognition) but more likely 1 or 2 prizes in a career. There is a limit to the number of prizes available. Members of the public or prize juries may recognise a limited number artist names. The difference in recognition between being number 1 and 2 on that list is small; the difference between being number 19 and 20 on that list may be large. Similarly, a graph of all living artists’ income per annum would be flat at zero and near-zero for almost the entire X axis showing the low income of the majority, grow slightly for the small number who make a living income and then reach a sheer wall for the tiny number of super-rich artists. This is a form of winner-take-all situation.

Thus, prizes are awarded in a disproportionate manner. If the top ten most celebrated artists in any given cohort are male then the remaining 90 artists – regardless of whether they are male or female –who are less famous will receive 90% or even 50% of the prizes but about 10% between them due to the winner-take-all economy.

See: Hans Abbing, Why Are Artists Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts, 2014, Amsterdam University Press, 367pp, ISBN 978 9 0530565650

 

© 2018 Alexander Adams

Brothers in Arms: Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti

[Image: ALBERTO GIACOMETTI AND FRANCIS BACON, 1965, Gelatin silver print, © Graham Keen]

Bacon – Giacometti, Fondation Beyeler, Basel (29 April-2 September 2018) examines the bonds between Francis Bacon (1909-1992) and Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). The two artists were near contemporaries – though Bacon was a late starter and so considered much more junior than the actual eight years between them – and shared social, intellectual and artistic connections. Bacon – usually so guarded in his compliments – was notably and publicly respectful of Giacometti. Giacometti was also an admirer of Bacon. This exhibition is reviewed from the catalogue.

When Bacon was emerging as a mature artist in the late 1940s, Giacometti was re-emerged from a prolonged retreat from the public art world. He had been a leading figure in the Surrealist movement in the early 1930s but by the late 1930s had left the movement. During the war he was isolated in Switzerland, working on figures that were allied to realism – or at least observation. In a series of photographs of Giacometti’s Paris studio published from 1946 onwards, the public became acquainted with an artist newly devoted to depicting the figure and his art. The startlingly primitive conditions of the studio were notably photogenic and the image of the artist in crumpled tweed suits, cigarette in mouth, hands working on a clay model, proved to be totemic. For a young artist seeking to be taken seriously, Giacometti’s art and life became a template. Exactly how much of the example of Giacometti was adopted consciously by Bacon – and how much simply coincided with Bacon’s pre-existing attitudes – is an open question, on that this exhibition and catalogue examine.

Both artists were influenced by Surrealism but rejected it as a doctrine. Both were committed to depicting observed figures in new ways. Both were artists of habit and routine. They had relatively little engagement with landscape. They were out of step with art of their time. Both artists were admirers of Egyptian sculpture. The many statements by Giacometti about Egyptian art, and reviews discussing this connection, may have led Bacon to investigate Egyptian art more deeply in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Bacon stated outright in later interviews that he preferred Egyptian carvings to any other sculpture.

The pair became acquaintances in the 1950s and friends in the 1960s. Among their common acquaintances were writer Michel Leiris, critic David Sylvester, dealer Ernst Beyeler and collectors Robert and Lisa Sainsbury. The catalogue includes photographs taken by Graham Keen of Bacon visiting Giacometti as he set up his exhibition at the Tate Gallery on the 13^th of July 1965. They met infrequently in London and Paris. In a catalogue essay, biographer Michael Peppiatt points out that friendship could have deepened further, as Bacon spent increasing amounts of time in Paris in the late 1960s and 1970s.

[Image: Alberto Giacometti, Head of Isabel, (1937 – 1939), Plaster and pencil, 21.6 x 16 x 17.4 cm, Fondation Giacometti, Paris, © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2018, ProLitteris, Zurich]

[Image: Francis Bacon, Portrait of Isabel Rawsthorne Standing in a Street in Soho (1967), Oil on canvas, 198 x 147 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. 1967 acquired by the estate of Berlin, © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved / 2018, ProLitteris, Zurich, Photo: © bpk / Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Jörg P. Anders]

Both artists tended to work with portrait subjects they knew personally and tended to reject commissions. Though known for their portraits, they declined to use the demand for their ability to be used to portray subjects who could afford to pay for commissioned paintings. Isabel Rawsthorne (1912-1992) modelled for Giacometti and Derain in the 1930s and later, when she lived in London, she modelled for Bacon. Drawings and sculptures of Rawsthorne made by Giacometti in the late 1936-48 are displayed alongside Bacon’s small portrait paintings and the large full-figure portrait on canvas, loaned from the Nationalgalerie, Berlin. She became one of Bacon’s most significant models during the 1960s-1990s. She became an artist in her own right and exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery, London, Bacon’s dealer.

[Image: Alberto Giacometti, Boule suspendue (1930), Plaster and metal, 61 x 36 x 33,5 cm
Kunstmuseum Basel, Depositum of the Foundation Alberto Giacometti, © Succession Alberto Giacometti / 2018, ProLitteris, Zurich, Photo: © Kunsthaus Zürich]

Giacometti’s use of cuboid frames around his sculptures was initially pragmatic, allowing him to suspend objects in space. Consider Boule suspendue (1930) and La Nez (1947). Later, the frame became a formal device in tableaux (for example, La Cage (1950-1)). The space frames were then introduced into Giacometti’s paintings. In the paintings and drawings they situate the figure in space as well as on the picture plane. They would directly inspire Bacon to adopt the device by 1947 in his own painting. It became one of his most persistent aspects of his art.

[Image: Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait VII, (1953), Oil on canvas, 152.3 x 117 cm,
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A.M. Burden. Acc. N.: 254.1956. © 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved / 2018, ProLitteris, Zurich ]

The cult of genius that sprang up around Giacometti was pervasive, certainly in the art world before Giacometti became a household name after his death. The example of a determined artist living in near squalid conditions in pursuit of his art – but who was a noted bon vivant and frequenter of public bars, cafés and clubs – was something that accorded with Bacon’s personal inclination to hard work in Spartan conditions and high living in public. Like Bacon, Giacometti was also a former Surrealist who had been rejected by the movement and sought a new direction. He was a defiantly figurative artist at a time when abstraction – especially from America – was ascendant.

The generously sized catalogue has full-page illustrations, which is particularly good for the unique painted Giacometti plasters. It is unfortunate that casting dates for the Giacometti bronzes are not given in the list of details, as this clarifies whether the artist oversaw the production and patination. The selection of works is adroit, with works taken from the Beyeler Foundation and loans from around the world, including triptychs by Bacon.

The co-operation of the Fondation Giacometti, Paris has allowed delicate unique plasters to travel to Switzerland. Giacometti embellished plasters with touches of paint and pencil lines. These have different qualities to the better known bronzes. The plasters have different coloration and the air of great fragility. The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation, Monaco also loaned material for the exhibition.

Some of the art is the very best made by the artists. By Bacon there is the uncanny Head III (1949), the fine recovered Study of Velázquez (1950) and Figure with Meat (1954) with its richly coloured sides of beef, which has travelled from Chicago. The Study for Bullfight No. 2 (1969) is very effective in fusing the bullfight with a crowd from a Nazi rally. The analogy between these two group spectacles of primal anger, fear and catharsis is an intelligent one. The 1967 triptych showing two homosexual couplings flanking a crime scene is one of Bacon’s lush and visually satisfying paintings. The more austere triptych of 1972 includes a rare example of dry-brushing, where Bacon has applied paint in a rough veil over background elements. In Memory of George Dyer (1971) is a weak triptych. Whatever the strength of the emotions Bacon experienced in relation to the death of his lover Dyer, those did not translate into paint here. The triptych depicting Dyer’s death is much more powerful.

Giacometti’s pieces include busts of Annette, Diego, and Eli Lotar, some of them the original plasters of the artist’s last busts. There are versions of walking men and standing figures, including the Women of Venice. Grande tête mince (1954) has Diego Giacometti’s head reduced to the narrowness of a blade or flint arrowhead, while retaining the essence of the subject’s humanity. It does not appear freakish at all. La Nez (1947) is a strange piece, expressing a profound sense of horror and angst. The extended nose does not seem an affectation; it is less a distortion than visual expression of abnormality and distress.

Some pairings are questionable. Trois hommes qui marchent (petit plateau) (1948) is reproduced opposite Bacon’s Marching Figures (c. 1952). The former seems a study of random encounters in an urban setting, while the latter is probably derived from a photograph of marching soldiers. Most of the comparisons are apt and informative. There is single serious and inexplicable omission to the selection.  Head (of a Man on a Rod) (1947) is a key work of a head crying out, related to a traumatic memory Giacometti had of witnessing a man die. It is close in character to Bacon’s figures screaming, many of which are included. Head exists in numerous casts and would have been difficult to borrow for an exhibition of this quality.

The catalogue essays, illustrations and artist biographies allow people to track the parallels (and differences) between two of the most important figurative artists of the Late Modern period.

 

C Grenier, U Küster, M Peppiatt (eds.), Bacon – Giacometti, Hatje Cantz/Fondation Beyeler/Fondation Giacometti, 2018, hardback, 204pp, 162 col. illus. (incl. 4 fold-out pages), €58, ISBN 978 3 7757 4417 1  (German version available)

© 2018 Alexander Adams