Renoir: Rococo Revival

The recently closed exhibition Renoir: Rococo Revival (Städel Museum, Frankfurt, 2 March-19 June 2022), relied on the excellent collection of both Rococo and Impressionist art to present Renoir and Impressionists as heirs to Eighteenth Century French painting. Rococo was the decorative style of late Baroque art in period 1715-1780, that originated in the court art of France, but which spread to Southern Germany, Italy and Austro-Hungary. It is characterised by the emphasis on curling natural forms, especially shells, lightness of tone, with an aim to titillate, amuse, arouse or instruct the viewer. This exhibition is reviewed from the catalogue.

Director of the museum, Philipp Demandt, sets out the thesis of the exhibition. “Unlike his colleagues Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and others, Renoir concentrated not on landscape but portraits and figural compositions in which he could easily pick up the thread of the Rococo’s genre scenes. And his depictions can indeed be read as new interpretations of Watteau’s fêtes galantes, Boucher’s pastorals and Fragonard’s elegant companies in fantastical gardens – now, however, freed of the moralistic undercurrent that had been a constitutive element of such works during the Ancien Régime. Instead, it was Renoir’s painterly representations of the lustre of skin, the iridescent sheen of glass and porcelain and the ever-magnificent and fashionable clothing of his female protagonists that forged links to the painting of that past age.”

During his lifetime, Renoir saw himself as a descendent of the Rococo painters. He supposedly said, “I am of the eighteenth century. I humbly consider not only that my art descends from Watteau, Fragonard, Hubert Robert, but even that I am one of them.” As curator Alexander Eiling points out, Rococo was a touchstone for discussion of Renoir’s art in the Nineteenth Century but that it became invisible in the following century, when referents became Dutch, Spanish and English painting, japonisme, Barbizon School and the realism of Courbet. Indeed, one might posit that Renoir’s occlusion in the later Twentieth Century is not just a matter of taste, but precisely because the emphasis on social realism, realism and foreign genre painting in Impressionist studies does not fit Renoir’s oeuvre. Rococo was an art of diversion and indulgence, a perfect grounding for Renoir, peintre du bonheur.   

From 1854 to c. 1858, Renoir had a job as a decorator of ceramics, working in the rococo tradition. He never rejected the decorative and pretty aspects of art. It seems that the humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War sparked a patriotic revival of support for Rococo as a national style, shorn of the connotations of decadent Ancien Régime. This does seem to push directly counter to interpretations of Impressionism as a fusion of realism, social critique and application of optical science. Add to this the “socially progressive” attitudes of some of the Impressionists (primarily Pissarro), and we find ourselves facing conflicting interpretations. Naturally, every movement (and in every complex artist) we see a confluence of influences that are to some degree contradictory. So, rather than seeing two opposite trends – “retrograde” Rococo and “progressive” social realism – struggling for the soul of Impressionism (or the credibility of historians of Impressionism), we would do better to consider the trends as co-existing sentimental attachments rather than considered conceptual positions.

Eiling points out that the Goncourt brothers and Théophile Thoré both “rediscovered” the Rococo as a distinctly French art form. The Louis La Caze donation to the Louvre, which went on display in 1870, making additional works by Fragonard and Watteau available to Parisians. Diderot considered Boucher a painter of (and for) women, characterising Boucher (and, by extension, Rococo painting) as feminine art, art that would be supplanted by the masculinity of David and Neo-Classicism. Certainly, this was how Neo-Classicism was regarded in its day and largely so since: the necessary cleansing of an era of decadent soft art with a purgative wave of moralistic hard art.

The fête galante is an ideal comparator for Renoir’s scenes of lower-class and lower-middle-class summer revelry. In Renoir’s early scenes set around Paris, on the café terraces of Montmartre and on the banks of the Seine, we get updated versions of Watteau’s scenes of wealthy commoners in cultivated pastoral settings engaging in flirtation and intrigue. The class levels have changed and the timelessness has been pinned down to explicitly the modern day (the latest bonnet, the current awning, the common matchbook), but the atmosphere and personal dynamics are carried over. Perhaps, we could say that revelry, flirtation, merriment and body language are nearly an unchanging constant in human relations.

In his catalogue essay, Guillaume Faroult investigates what Rococo art was on public display during the Nineteenth Century and consequently what the Impressionists would have seen. The reception of Rococo art via French museums was muted in the early half of the century, no doubt a lingering coolness to art associated with the French court and the dominance of Neo-Classical works acquired during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. In the 1820s Rococo paintings were sold for a pittance and the circle of knowledgeable collectors for the style small and not especially well-heeled. Only slowly – and by way of donation – did good Rococo paintings enter the Louvre from the 1840s to the 1870s.

Renoir’s taste for the art of courtly France is described as reactionary. The fact that he appreciated Fragonard, Boucher and Watteau as upholders of an older order – and not as paragons of proto-modernity – does tend to reinforce this view. Perhaps it is discernment of the connection between Boucher and Renoir that led to Renoir being so excoriated by critics. Both artists worked in ceramics and Renoir had copied Boucher on vases while working at the factory in his youth.

The selection of works for the exhibition – and illustrated full-page in the catalogue section of the book – are very good and include many unexpected delights. The fêtes galantes of Henri Baron, Émile Wattier, Jean-Baptiste Pater and Narcisse Diaz de la Peña are less familiar than Watteau’s. There is a full-length portrait of a woman by Ernest Meissonier, master of pompier art. The swathes of lace ruffles at the hem of the subject’s dress dominate the lower third of the canvas. This follows the sensuousness and attention to fabric paid by Boucher and Fragonard. Boucher’s (in)famous portrait of Louise O’Murphy travelled from Cologne to Frankfurt for the exhibition. The Renoirs come from around the world and include some masterpieces. It is nice to see Richard Guino’s bronzes, executed under supervision of the elderly Renoir, included in the display. Sculpture (and especially bas reliefs) were a feature of courtly decorative art, so it is understandable that Renoir was drawn to the field. Renoirs still-lifes are well paired with Chardin’s.

Essays by specialists discuss the drawings of Renoir, journal reproductions of Rococo, Renoir and decoration and Renoir’s portraiture and pastel painting of the Eighteenth Century. One text links Renoir, Charles Joshua Chaplin and Rococo art, looking at the distinction between decorative art and the art of the boudoir. Chaplin was noted for his Rococo brushwork and palette. Chaplin had also etched reproduction prints after Watteau. A fascinating article by Michela Bassu recounts the work done by Lionello Venturi towards a catalogue raisonné of Renoir, which remained unfinished and unpublished. Pages of notes, clipped illustrations and lists show Venturi gathering data and formulating assessments. Venturi (who wrote the first catalogue raisonné of Cézanne) considered Rococo art to be a key influence on Renoir. The footnotes and bibliography are extensive and Hatje Cantz have taken its usual care to ensure high production quality.  

Besides being a pleasurable book on Renoir – enthusiasts will not be disappointed by the illustrations – Renoir: Rococo Revival is a valuable source not only for those studying Renoir and the Impressionists, but also anyone seeking to understand the reception, and revival in fortunes of, Rococo art in Nineteenth Century France.

Alexander Eiling (ed.), Renoir: Rococo Revival, Hatje Cantz, 2022, cloth hardback, 328pp, 350 col./mono illus., €50, ISBN 978 3 7757 5134 6

© 2022 Alexander Adams

To view my books and art visit www.alexanderadams.art

Learning to Love Edward Hopper

[Image: Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning (1950), oil on canvas. © Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, VG Bild Kunst]

Part of growing up is learning to identify and correct your errors. This is different from taste changing. It is easy to have a misapprehension and for it to go unchallenged due to laziness or preoccupation with subjects that fully hold one’s attention. One assumption I had as a young artist was that Edward Hopper was easy. He went for the obvious; he relied on movie iconography and cinematographic techniques; he dealt in clichés. Whilst these observations are true, they are not the whole truth. The obvious can sometimes be the iconic that we remember; Hopper’s use of the cinematographic brought some new imagery and references to his art; clichés can be moving. My painting tutor at college said “I’ve been painting sunsets recently. I know they are clichés but I find myself attracted to them because they are beautiful. Even clichés can be beautiful while still being clichés.”

There are tough criticisms to be made of the art of Edward Hopper (1882-1967). These weaknesses are apparent in two new books on his art, published to coincide with the current exhibition Edward Hopper: American Landscapes (Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 26 January-17 May). Hopper is weak as a figure painter. There is no getting around it. His anatomies are creaky; his facial expressions are wooden; his skin tones are unpersuasive. There is no reason why should have been so. He could imbue his art with variety, energy and panache – see his drawings of trees and some very solid watercolours. Yet, for whatever reason, Hopper’s figures fail. This is not universal. Night on the El Train (1918) is an early etching which shows a couple in a subway carriage. The positions and attitudes of the couple are natural, telling and fluently depicted. The style is vigorous and fluent. Yet more often, Hopper’s figures are waxen mannequins.

A pertinent question is: do Hopper’s limitations as a figure painter make his paintings less effective? Many viewers note the poignancy of the situations, commenting on the emotional tenor of Hopper’s characters – muted, reserved and melancholy. Perhaps Hopper’s characters are more plangent for their lack of expressiveness. It is their very inexpressiveness which is expressive. On a point of principle, we can find Hopper’s shortcomings of an artist as an overall detriment, notwithstanding his achievements in spite of these limitations.

Edward Hopper A-Z is a collection of snippets collated by Ulf Küster, curator and author, during his work on the Swiss exhibition of Hopper’s art. It covers various aspects of Hopper’s life and art, including many illustrations, in a small hardback handbook. The miscellaneous facets include movies, cars, Paris, his wife Josephine Nivison and an expected fondness for German literature.

Hopper is not truly a realist. Some of his art is realist but even cursory study reveals compositions that include impossible juxtapositions, unfeasible perspectives and false horizons. Montage, viewpoint alteration, simplification and other techniques are used to create fictions that have the air – but not the substance – of reality. Doorways open directly on to oceans. Houses stand in fields without paths. Hopper’s realism is a distillation; it is a world pruned and tuned; streets are scrubbed, the posters and signage tamped down; pedestrians are reduced to sparse punctuation in the terse sentences of cityscapes. It is not especially different from the streets of Magritte, that other master deadpan painter of townscapes. Stairway (1949) is like a Magritte canvas from his 1926-9 era.

Once you understand that Hopper is not truly a realist – either a documenter of everyday life or a social realist – then you start to see him as the theatre director that he is. He is a poet who is mistaken for documentarian. Evidence of the early art (especially the watercolours executed en plein air) in Edward Hopper: American Landscapes (catalogue for the current exhibition) shows that Hopper was capable of capturing direct representations of his surroundings, sometimes with flair and feeling. Once you stop seeing his paintings as inadequate representations of real life but as artificial constructions expressive of states of meditation, loss, yearning and other intangible experiences. (“I am interested primarily in the vast field of experience and sensation which neither literature nor a purely plastic art deals with.”)

A problem which remains is Hopper’s handling of oil paint. Hopper was a talented draughtsman with pencil, pastel and etching needle. He used watercolour with accuracy, delicacy and care. He was a poor painter of oil paint. His canvases look better in reproduction than in life. The handling is dry, lifeless, a matter of filling in inside the lines, betraying their set qualities rather than emergent properties of a painting which comes about through the artist discerning new opportunities as the paint is put down. He worked as an illustrator when he was young and although this seems not to have hampered his drawing and painting in watercolour; his canvases betray all the failings of an illustrator. Despite his limitations, his canvases still work as images, scenes and evocations of place and time. If I had to own a Hopper, I would choose a work on paper.

[Image: Edward Hopper, Houses on a Hill (1926 or 1928), watercolour on paper. Private Collection, VG Bild-Kunst]

The catalogue of the current exhibition includes many great images – Gas (1940) (a man at gasoline pumps at a country filling station, Lighthouse Hill (1927) (a lighthouse and house on a headland in afternoon sunlight), Railroad Sunset (1929) (a vivid sunset is seen over a silhouetted horizon, punctuated by a rail signal box). Coastal views feature in many pictures exhibited, most of New England. Although Hopper and Jo travelled widely, most of the imagery is local to New York State and the Massachusetts and Maine coasts.

An early, atypically finely-handled canvas Valley of the Seine (1909) shows aerial recession of a deep landscape. The position is high. It is notable that Hopper rarely showed distant land horizons; instead preferring the high close horizon of a hill or nearby wood. In Hopper’s scenes, distance would undercut the sense of intimacy and interiority. A vast panorama would work against his intentions of showing people contemplating themselves or the off-scene. His characters do not confront the infinite as the Rückenfiguren of Friedrich. That would lend them a Romantic majesty and isolation. For Hopper, it is the banal commonality of moments of reflection creeping up on one unawares that is truer of human life. None of Hopper’s characters are ever anywhere that would cause them to meditate upon the sublime. They are never dislocated – or at least never dislocated in a way that differs from everyday ennui and alienation.

Second Storey Sunlight (1960) shows two women on a balcony, the figures positioned under two gable ends of a classic wooden house. It is an allegory of the stages of life, with the grey-haired woman seated with a newspaper and a young woman in sunbathing clothing. The blinds of the windows on the young woman’s side are pulled lower than those of the old woman’s side – a metaphor of some kind.

[Image: Edward Hopper, Freight Cars, Gloucester (1928), oil on canvas. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, gift of Edward Wales Root in recognition of the 25th Anniversary of the Addison Gallery, 1956.7 Foto: Bridgeman Images, VG Bild-Kunst]

Some paintings show Jo painting during their outings in search of scenery. The couple bought their first car (a Dodge) in 1927. From then until a few years before Hopper’s death, they travelled around America to collect motifs for their art. Their successive automobiles made fleeting appearances in Hopper’s paintings. Jo was also a model for Hopper. However, reading Hopper’s enticing yet inscrutable tableaux in an autobiographical manner is not straight forward and is best avoided. The best Hopper paintings allow us to daydream and inhabit these deceptively artless American landscapes.

Marine scenes, paintings of buildings, views of railways and roads, and studies of trees round out this selection of Hopper’s landscapes. The catalogue includes essays addressing various aspects of Hopper’s landscapes, a chronology and a good selection of large-format illustrations. American Landscapes is a very suitable introduction to one of America’s most significant artists. The smaller A-Z book is a handy supplement for anyone already familiar with Hopper.

 

Ulf Küster (ed.), Edward Hopper: American Landscapes, Hatje Cantz, 2020, hardback, 148pp, 88 col. illus., €58, ISBN 978 3 7757 4654 0

Ulf Küster, Edward Hopper A-Z, Hatje Cantz, 2020, hardback, 120pp, 37 col. illus., €18, ISBN 978 3 7757 4656 4

 

© 2020 Alexander Adams

To see my art and books visit: www.alexanderadamsart.wordpress.com

Picasso: Blue and Rose Periods

The Young Picasso: Blue and Rose Periods, Fondation Beyeler, Basel (3 February-26 May 2019 ***** EXTENDED TO 16 JUNE 2019 *****) is an exhibition which explores a period of rapid development from 1901 to 1907 in the art of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). It traces changes from painterly Post-Impressionism through the Blue, Rose, Gósol periods up to and including the proto-Cubism. This exhibition is from the catalogue Picasso: The Blue and Rose Periods.

The Birth of the Blue Period

The earliest art in the exhibition was made in Madrid, where Picasso was briefly based. He was attempting to launch an art-orientated publication called Arte Joven, one of a wave of European avant-garde art journals aimed at celebrating Symbolism, Art Nouveau and Post-Impressionism. While in Madrid Picasso heard of the death of his artist friend Carlos Casagemas in Paris. Depressed, Casagemas had invited friends to a restaurant where he attempted to kill his girlfriend then shot himself dead. The event preyed on Picasso’s imagination and later influenced his art.

Picasso’s art in early 1901 is an amalgam of Post-Impressionism and Symbolism, painted in a bravura manner. When he arrived in Paris in May he agreed his first exhibition in Paris, at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery in June 1901. The exhibition starts with portraits (including Yo Picasso (1901)) inspired by Van Gogh and El Greco. Subjects ranged from nightclub demi-monde types to self-portraits. The Vollard show exhibition launched Picasso’s public career in Paris and received good notices. Alongside Francisco Iturrino, Picasso exhibited 64 paintings and an unrecorded number of drawings. Some show evidence of being very hastily (and carelessly) painted, for example Femme dans la loge (1901). Most of the art was made over the course of a month before the exhibition.

In the summer, freed from the pressure of making pictures for his June exhibition, Picasso turned to the subject of Casagemas. Four critical works in the evolution of the blue period are included in the exhibition: two versions of the dead Casagemas, The Burial of Casagemas (1901) and a scene of mourning. It was the public suicide of Picasso’s friend Carlos Casagemas that inspired the use of blue to indicate his grief and led to a new preoccupation with the tragedy of life. The demi-monde gives way to the outright destitute and impoverished as subjects: beggars, prostitutes, cripples, mistletoe sellers. These blue paintings did not sell when exhibited in 1902, unlike the colourful paintings of the Vollard exhibition. Picasso spent January to October 1902 in Barcelona with his parents, unable to afford rent on a room in Paris. For the only time in his life Picasso was genuinely poor. Many paintings are made over old pictures because the artist could not sell much; he had little money for new materials. Paintings were also made on cardboard for cost reasons.

[Image: Pablo Picasso, La Vie (1903), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Schenkung Hanna Fund. © Succession Picasso / 2018, ProLitteris, Zürich Foto: © The Cleveland Museum of Art]

The exhibition includes his masterpiece of La Vie (1903). From sketches and X-rays, we know that when this picture was started it featured Picasso and a model in a studio with a painting in the background. Later the face of the man was changed to that of Casagemas. The woman and child on the right were also added. Interpretations vary: “(1) an allegory of sacred and profane love conveyed through the opposition between the standing naked couple on the left and the mother and child on the right; (2) as a symbolic representation of the cycle of life, progressing from the infant to the cadaverous woman in the lower center; and (3) as a working-class couple facing the hazards of real life, including potential pregnancy and venereal disease.” John Richardson, Picasso’s biographer, suggests that poet friend Max Jacob’s fascination with tarot and palm-reading may have suggested to Picasso various themes which directed La Vie.

Iconic exhibited Blue paintings are La Soupe (1902-3), The Blind Man’s Meal (1903) and La Célestine (1904). The fine self-portrait of 1901 is also in the display. It shows the artist as impoverished bohemian. Apart from a little exaggeration of the facial features to accentuate Picasso’s gauntness, that presentation as a starving artist was not far from the truth. The mystique of the bohemian poor youth of a genius is part of the reason people respond so strongly to Picasso’s early art.

[Image: Pablo Picasso, Self-portrait (1901), Musée national Picasso – Paris. © Succession Picasso / 2018, ProLitteris, Zürich Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau]

Picasso’s Sculpture

Accounts of Picasso’s sculpture often kick into gear with Cubism, featuring his Head of Fernande (1909) and the sheet-metal Guitar (1914). This selection demonstrates that sculpture – and sculptural thinking – played a larger part in Picasso’s early art than generally noticed. Picasso’s main form of sculpture in the Blue and Rose periods is modelled clay for both stoneware ceramics and (later) bronze casts. Picasso was deeply influenced by the example of Gauguin. Picasso’s dealer Vollard had many works by Gauguin. Additionally, Picasso was friendly with Paris-based Spanish sculptor Paco Durrio (1875-1940), who assisted Gauguin in making stoneware figures of based on Gauguin’s imagery of Tahitian culture. Durrio had some original ceramic pieces by Gauguin and Picasso would have seen them. Durrio trained Picasso in making ceramics in Durrio’s workshop and assisted him technically to make some of the pieces in this exhibition.

The heads of types are striking and the most impressive is Mask of a Blind Singer (1903), a small modelled head, cast in bronze in 1960. The physiognomy is the same as the acrobat and some of the beggars who appear in paintings and the celebrated Frugal Repast (1904), which is included in the exhibition. The image of the emaciated face with hollow eye sockets and open mouth is haunting. It is a vision of an outsider which blurs the line between living action and deathly repose. So often in Symbolist paintings the poor and starving exist in a liminal space between life and death. This sculpture is little known but very effective. Picasso’s output is so vast and various that such wonderful discoveries are a common occurrence, even for seasoned followers of Picasso’s art.

The wooden carvings of 1907 show Picasso replicating the lessons he was learning from African tribal art. The combination of paint and carving shows a wish to fuse painting and carving, which is very apparent in the volumetric modelling of figures in his paintings. He did not exhibit these totemic figures and was later sensitive about discussing African art in relation to the origins of Cubism. He was reluctant to provide evidence which might be used against him. He had already suffered accusations during the Great War that his Cubism was a German plot to undermine French art. He did not want to go into details about his links with African carvings only for that to be used against him.

[Image: Pablo Picasso, Femme à la chemise (Madeleine) (ca. 1905), Tate: Donation C. Frank Stoop 1933. © Succession Picasso / 2018, ProLitteris, Zürich © Tate, London 2017]

From Blue to Pink

From summer 1904 to spring 1905 Picasso’s mistress was Madeleine – a shadowy figure in Picasso studies, with even her full name unknown. Her thinness and delicate features appear in a number of art works at the time and her presence coincided with the transition from Blue to Rose periods. Picasso met Fernande Olivier in late 1904 and she would become his first celebrated mistress and muse. Picasso’s art is often divided into periods defined by Picasso’s mistress of the time. Madeleine is the “missing mistress”, whose influence has been overlooked due to the shortness of her relationship with Picasso and the paucity of information about her.

In early 1905 the unrelenting blues give way to touches of pink, sienna and ochre, mostly on figures. At first these co-exist with blue backgrounds but gradually greater colour variety takes over. At this time the waifs and beggars begin to be replaced by new characters: acrobats, circus performers, comedians, Harlequin and others. The melancholy is partly relieved. The art is stylistically Symbolism. The outright appeals to pity recede in the Rose period. The mood is lightened and varied now. A summer visit to Holland gave Picasso sturdy healthy farm girls to draw, taking him away from his raddled urban drifters. The new characters were still outsiders but ones who seemed more purposeful – outsiders by choice rather than victims of circumstance. One could imagine these individuals leading full lives and reaching old age, whereas the people in the Blue-period paintings seem unable to escape their fate to live tragic shortened lives.

The soulful Symbolism, picturesque content and accessibility of the Rose paintings make them perhaps Picasso’s most loved paintings. Picasso’s life was changing his art. The comfort and pleasure of a long-lasting romantic relationship with Fernande, a larger circle of French friends and the financial support of Gertrude Stein and her brothers (who became his collectors) all made Picasso feel more at home in Paris. A number of witnesses (including Fernande) noted that Picasso became in involved in occasional opium smoking at this time. Boy with a Pipe (1905) may be related to opium smoking, with the flower wreathing the boy’s head and appearing behind him perhaps representing intoxication.

[Image: Pablo Picasso, Acrobate et jeune arlequin (1905), Private Collection. © Succession Picasso / 2018, ProLitteris, Zürich]

Many of the Rose-period paintings are gouache on cardboard, a technique that Picasso largely neglected in later periods. He paints larger canvases too, daring to be more ambitious, as in the paintings of an actor on stage, acrobats and a boy leading a horse. This last is an image which seems to have been inspired by antiquity rather than circus life. Richardson suggests that it was related to a homage to Gauguin called The Watering Place, a picture that was never painted. Classicism was seemingly on the artist’s mind at the time, particularly Ingres, David and ancient art. The modish sentimentality is replaced by something tougher.

There is one aspect that makes Picasso’s art of 1901-6 melancholy, beyond the melancholy of sentiment and the predicament of the impoverished characters. The melancholy is seeing for the last time a top-flight artist animating characters in a meaningful way, as a director directs actors. We see Picasso bring to life his figures. We get to recognise them. We see their dramas and interactions. We attempt to read their expressions and discern their personalities. At the same time, Matisse and the Fauves were taking apart the unspoken Symbolist assumptions about the value of human drama in pictorial form. They shattered forms and detached colour from observation-derived description. When Picasso took on their achievements to develop a visual language that became called Cubism, he abandoned the possibility of narrative and entered the territory of fine art as a purely visual non-narrative field, rarely to leave it again.

From Gósol to Proto-Cubism

In 1906 Picasso and Fernande visited Barcelona then travelled to spend the summer in Gósol, a remote Pyrenean village in Catalonia. The rural setting and simplicity of the people and architecture charmed the couple. Picasso’s changed from pink to ochre, reflecting the stone and soil of the region. Picasso became increasingly engaged by the primitive. He connected with the simple archaic style of the Madonna and Child in Santa Maria del Castell (the local church) and memories of the Iberian primitives that he had seen in the Palais du Trocadéro Museum, Paris. He reached back into ancient history to revivify his art and purge himself of affectation. The inexpressive carved faces led to Picasso’s use of simplified masklike faces in the coming years. (The reduction in expression directed how he finished his portrait of Gertrude Stein, which he had left incomplete before departing for Spain.)

He painted nude figures – women of the appearance of Fernande, Fondevila (an old man whom Picasso befriended), ideal youths and children in a state of nature. The scenes he chose were generic. Mood was more important than story. Figures exist is uncomplicated situations, many of them nude. As Gauguin had found sought simplicity in ancient cultures in the Pacific, so Picasso thought he had found something personal, primitive and profound in Gósol. Moreover, it was in his adopted homeland of Catalonia; he had not had to travel to the other side of the world. Picasso completed a number of canvases and small works on paper and card, as well as a number of rough wood carvings. Although Picasso was not much attached to landscape painting, he recorded views of the village. The landscapes he did there, with their facets of muted earthen colours, seem to anticipate his Cubist landscapes.

Fernande becomes increasingly present in Picasso’s art, becoming the template for multiple figures (sometimes in the same picture). Her dark hair, high cheekbones and almond eyes represented an archetype for the artist. The couple were in close proximity constantly and deprived of distractions other than the communal festivals of the village. Fernande wrote in her memoirs that the couple were never happier or closer than during their three months in Gósol.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

On his return to Paris, he continued to make invented figures painted in earth hues, simply modelled forms and with inexpressive faces. The women become thicker, like earth goddesses – fertile and ponderous. Picasso thought of his art as a series of grand tours de force. (La Vie and Les Saltimbanques had been conceived in such a spirit). He worked towards a new allegorical painting of a sailor and a medical student in a brothel. As he worked on the preparatory material, he cut the two men and reduced the composition to the prostitutes. This became Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Inspired by the energy of El Greco and the late paintings of Cézanne (which suggested to him to flatten his pictorial depth) – and wanting to make his figures as alarming as they were alluring – Picasso radically simplified the forms. He later altered the two figures on the right to make their faces resemble the African masks he saw in Paris museums and galleries.

A few of the numerous preparatory studies for the painting are here. Some of them are unfinished – or rather they were just tests that were not intended to be considered as finished paintings for display. The main area was the heads of the women. The forms not so much drawn as hewn with curving strokes, with forms built of facets. The studies are in a variety of colours but it seems that the artist was just using what was to hand, scrubbing in areas to model the figures and space. The final colour selection for the painting is limited and restrained. Picasso realised that to use strong colour would have distracted from the innovations in design, line and pictorial space that the painting developed.

The Catalogue

The exhibition contains some 70 paintings, prints and sculptures. One of the key strengths of this exhibition is the loan of works from Russian museums, which left Paris before the Russian Revolution. Obviously, with the great value and fame of the paintings, it is difficult to arrange for masterpieces dispersed around the world to come together for exhibitions. The selection cannot include all of the most famous paintings but the selection is broad and covers all relevant aspects of the period. The inclusion of minor pieces allows us to give time to art that is often not included in general studies of Picasso. In the catalogue, each exhibited art work is given a full-page illustration with full data and commentary on the facing page. Concise yet informative summaries cover the development in the art and Picasso’s life and career. There is an interview with John Richardson about Picasso’s early work. The large size (31.5 x 28 cm) allows larger reproductions, which are of good quality.

Picasso’s art at this critical period would change the direction of Western art. In addition to its role in art history, the art of the Blue and Rose periods is widely respected and loved, which is why it has been so commonly emulated. The catalogue Picasso: The Blue and Rose Periods does a good job of displaying and explaining Picasso’s art 1901-7 in an attractively produced publication. It is highly recommended for fans of Picasso and those interested in the development of Modern art.

 

Fondation Beyeler/Raphäel Bouvier (ed.), Picasso: The Blue and Rose Periods, Fondation Beyeler/Hatje Cantz, 2019, half-cloth hardback, 300pp, 171 illus., €60, ISBN 978 377 5745055 (German edition also available)

© Alexander Adams 2019

See my art and books at: www.alexanderadams.art

Balthus

[Image: Balthus, Les Enfants Blanchard (1937), oil on canvas, 125 x 130 cm
Musée national Picasso-Paris, Donation by the heirs of Picasso, 1973/1978
© Balthus. Photo: RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau]

The art of Balthus (1908-2001) is hard to place. It is not Surrealist, although it was linked to Surrealism. It is not realism, though it is derived from life. It is allied to tradition but is not traditional. It is not Modernist but could not have existed without Modernism. It is erotic but it is not erotica. To class it as Post-Modern would be completely erroneous. What is its lineage? It is European but – like its chameleon creator – it cannot be placed. The artist was born in France of Polish descent, growing up in France, Germany and Switzerland, later spending many years in Italy before moving to Switzerland with his Japanese wife. To think accurately about this European painter you need to know Japanese art and Persian miniatures; to discuss this friend and associate of Artaud, Giacometti, Picasso and Derain you will need to remember Chardin, Piero della Francesca, Georges de la Tour and Courbet. Through extended study you will come to recognise his models yet they are transformed through art into images distinctly different from life and artificial. If you expect anything to be straightforward about Balthus then you are misapprehending the art. No matter how complex, allusive and humorous the artist becomes, he is never less than absolutely serious.

Welcome to the world of Balthus.

The current exhibition Balthus (2 September 2018-1 January 2019, Fondation Beyeler, Basel; touring to Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) forms a lean retrospective. (Reviewed here from the catalogue.) The exhibition consists of 40 oil paintings from all periods, starting when the artist was aged 20 and ending with his last completed painting, made when the artist was in his eighties. Considering the relatively small number of paintings, it is perhaps wise that drawings and watercolours have been excluded. The aim is establish a clear view of Balthus main subjects in a selection of representative paintings from the full span of his career.

All of Balthus’s subjects are included: portraits, conversation pieces, street scenes, landscapes and nudes. There is a hybrid work where a still-life is presented with a figure in the form of an incidental profile, not dissimilar to pictures by Bonnard of set tables. Paintings have been brought from around the world for this two venue tour.

Balthus’s first paintings were views of Paris, his home city. Place de l’Odéon, Quai Malaquais and Jardin de Luxembourg appear as they did in the 1920s. The youthful pictures are peopled by stock figures among sturdy trees and roughly painted architecture. They display a sure sense of colour and establish some of the staples of his later street scenes, though the skill and complexity are yet to manifest themselves fully.

The 1934 solo exhibition at Pierre Loeb’s Paris gallery established Balthus’s reputation as a singular – even wayward – painter of figures and assaulter of public morals. His most provocative early nudes – Alice dans le miroir (1933) and La leçon de guitare (1934), the latter of which was considered so sensational it was hidden behind a curtain at the Loeb gallery – have not travelled to Basel. However a number of works from that exhibition are here, including a scene from Wuthering Heights showing Cathy at her toilette.

[Image: Balthus, La Rue (1933), oil on canvas, 195 x 240 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Bequeathed by James Thrall Soby. © Balthus. Photo: © 2018. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence]

La Rue (1933) the large showstopper of the Paris exhibition has travelled to Switzerland from MoMA. The Parisian street is animated by figures who seem nearly wholly allegorical, lifted from book illustrations or old paintings, disconnected from each other. These atomised personages seem oblivious of each other and immersed in their own dreams, with the exception of the youth groping the girl. Whether or not is understands that she is being assaulted is unclear. Her face is impassive and her body language is stilted, not in motion (fighting or fleeing); it is hard to read her response. The youth was originally groping her crotch. The first owner demanded that Balthus alter La Rue to make it less indecorous, which he did. Balthus wavered on the subject of sexual provocativeness. He repainted a number of pictures to make them less overtly erotic. How much of that was genuinely held regret and how much was social positioning is unclear. In early years he shocked to gain attention and notoriety; in later years he curbed his earlier provocations in a bid for acceptance. That said, he did continue to paint nudes in his late years. It may be that he was simply swayed by the requests of his sitters and collectors to make their pictures more genteel. The famous narcissist and headstrong loner may have been less indomitable than he is sometimes presented.

In the late 1930s Balthus painted portraits. Sadly, the imposing and psychologically astute portraits of Derain and Miró have not travelled to Basel but the La Jupe blanche (1937) has. This full length portrait of Antoinette, Balthus’s first wife, shows the model in white clothing, rumpled creamy drapery clinging to the flesh and mimicking the pallor of her skin. The subject is a sensual and languorous object of desire while remaining detached and melancholic, sulky and bored; the subject is ultimately unreachably distant. That, of course, only makes the subject more alluring and memorable.

The late 1930s were Balthus’s Thérèse period, when Thérèse Blanchard modelled for 11 paintings, including a double-portrait with her brother. That painting was bought by Picasso and is loaned by Musée Picasso, Paris. Girls at the point of puberty or in adolescence henceforward became a constant subject. Girls at the threshold of becoming women present potent and changeable subjects because of the daily fluctuation and overlap between childhood and maturity, innocence and knowledge, timidity and adventurousness. In today’s society older girls are subjects bounded by taboos that go unspoken and sometimes unrecognised until they are transgressed.

Compare Balthus’s girls with depictions of girls of the same age by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805).

[Images: (left) Balthus, Thérèse (1938), oil on cardboard on wood, 100.3 x 81.3 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequeathed by Mr. and Mrs. Allan D. Emil, in honor of William S. Lieberman, 1987. © Balthus, Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence; (right) Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Broken Pitcher (1770)]

In Greuze’s tableaux the subjects are deflowered waifs and violated innocents. Although the purpose of Greuze was ostensibly moral and didactic, the subjects are salacious confections of wretchedness. The paintings are not so much moral warnings of the dangers of abuse as sadistic lingering upon the impact of that abuse. In contrast, Balthus’s subjects are mysterious beings, distant, playful and autonomous. Balthus’s paintings are as ambiguous and rich as people are, whereas Greuze’s paintings are shallow, one-note and fundamentally dishonest: ostensibly moral yet actually prurient. In Balthus’s paintings of adolescents we find an innovation in portraiture of the young that had not been seen since the portraits of children by Géricault in the 1810s.

In 1940, demobilised from the French army and living in the countryside, Balthus turned seriously to the subject of landscape. Two landscapes from the 1940s are included. Clarity and solidity are two of the primary attributes of Balthus’s landscapes. Balthus’s work became more mannered and artificial. When he was appointed director of the French Academy in Rome in 1961, Balthus became ever more engaged in ancient and non-Western art. He paid careful attention to every detail of the restoration of the academy’s home, the Renaissance Villa Medici. Balthus took pleasure in building surfaces in his paintings that evoke the thick encrusting of pigment on old plaster. References to Greek and Roman art abound. A visit to Japan is seen in several paintings and the relationship with his future second wife, Setsuko. The Basel exhibition includes the fragile and laboriously worked La Chambre turque (1965-6), which combines Persian and Japanese art in a painting of Setsuko. Experimentation with casein and tempera allowed Balthus to accentuate flatness and matte surfaces but at the expense of pliability. The increased rigidity led to thick and brittle paint surfaces which are fragile, especially on flexible canvas.

[Image: Balthus, Le Chat au miroir III (1989-94), Oil on canvas, 220 x 195 cm. Private collection, Asia. © Balthus]

Le Chat au miroir III (1989-94) shows a seated girl looking into a mirror, accompanied by a cat (a familiar motif for the artist). It is the artist’s last complete work. It is a summation of what came before but it is undercut by weaknesses in handling and conception. The extended gestation of the painting and frequent revisions are not so much evidence of a meditative patience but of a reluctance to finish, perhaps even of uncertainty. The artist may have felt the work was his last and was fearful of finishing and thereby cutting a cord to his working life and legacy. Too much rested on the painting and the desire to imbue it with a lifetime of knowledge and insight may have held the artist back. It might have been better to have worked on a number of minor pictures instead. It is some distance from his best work.

The catalogue is large format and profusely illustrated. The decision to place some illustrations as double-page spreads is regrettable. Illustrations should never be treated this way because it distorts the image by introducing a band of shadow and compression. Otherwise the production is good. Using strong (though not overpowering) colours for the margins of illustrations is effective. Brilliant white margins can clash with images, especially with richly coloured and tonally muted paintings such as Balthus’s.

Catalogue texts discuss works in the exhibition and illustrate others not included, including key works such as La leçon de guitare and the Miró portrait. One particularly useful text by Juan Ángel López-Manzanares deals with Balthus’s relationship with Antonin Artaud. The pair met in 1932 or 1933 and Balthus designed the sets for Les Cencis, the 1935 staging Artaud’s adaptation of Shelley’s verse drama. Balthus painted some portraits of actresses, including two of Iya Abdy. There are passing references to Balthus’s art as an expression Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty. The Theatre of Cruelty was the idea that naturalism and character had robbed Western theatre of the power of spectacle and mystery and that in order to restore the role of the sacred in theatre the dramatist and actors had to connect to the audience through transformational action and powerful emotion. The idea of Balthus’s early art running parallel to the Theatre of Cruelty – especially in the still-lifes of destroyed objects and the more aggressively erotic nudes – is a feasible thesis.

 

Raphaël Bouvier & Fondation Beyeler (eds.), Balthus, Fondation Beyeler/Hatje Cantz, 2018, paperback, 176pp, 120 illus., CHF62.50/€58.00, ISBN 978 3 7757 4445 4 (German and hardback versions available)

©2018 Alexander Adams

View my art and books at www.alexanderadams.art

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

Protean-rich Richter

Image: Gerhard Richter, “Seascape”

“The cataloguing of the art of Gerhard Richter (born 1932) has reached the years 1968-76. By this time an established international artist and leading teacher, he began to move away from the collective group activities of his early years. The period was also when Richter started painting series in different styles in fairly quick cycles. Blurred black and white photo paintings were superseded by colour variants, often with landscapes as subjects. At the same time, he was formulating abstract paintings of colour charts, painterly multicolour works and monochrome pieces. Fortunately for the reader, the paintings are listed in their different series as groups, so the sequence of images is not bewilderingly various.

“Gerhard Richter: Catalogue Raisonné Volume 2shows Richter at his most Romantic and most austerely modern. Colour paintings of clouds, seascapes and landscapes are mostly derived from his own photographs. They are contemporary Romantic landscapes: plangent, attractive, absent of figures. Sometimes single compositions are combinations of different photographs. The landscapes are flat and resist any Romantic immersion of the viewer in an environment. They are not picture-postcard pretty, but landscapes as seen from car or train window or viewed from a hotel balcony. The paintings have the disappointment of holiday photographs that fail to capture majestic panoramas and instead produce something lacking energy, depth and intensity. In that sense, these are landscapes of the snapshot generation. This is not a failure on Richter’s part but a deliberate choice and an intelligent one.

“Richter engaged with the Old Masters by painting versions of Titian’s Annunciation, obscuring the Virgin and angel under a queasy flurry of brushmarks. In later years, he approached Old Masters indirectly by lifting poses and echoing compositions…”

Read the full review online at The Art Newspaper, 30 August 2017 here:

http://theartnewspaper.com/review/protean-rich-on-the-gerhard-richter-catalogue-raisonne