Matisse, Gauguin and Primitivism

Week Six Post Six (Gauguin and Primitivism)

Option Two

Henri Matisse painted The Blue Nude (Souvenir at Biskra) in 1907. Biskra is a city in northern Algeria (Africa) that was built around an oasis and has been known as a winter vacation resort spot for a long time.   In The Blue Nude Matisse uses the heavy black outlines and bright palette of the primitivists to convey the quality of light in a sunny desert oasis.  This painting is a study of light reminiscent of Impressionism in that the palms in the background are painted in much warmer tones than the shaded area in which the figure reclines.  Her hues vary from Caucasian flesh tones to cool blues and purples in an exaggerated play of highlights and shadows.  Matisse is referencing the orientalist style in that the figure is the lounging female typical of this mode while he is referencing primitivism at the same time.  Combining these styles is a difference and makes the work avant-garde.

Though we like to think of artists as liberal and open to new ideas they are bound to be influenced by their culture.  The Euro centric, andro-centric view of life shows up in the attitudes toward the “other” in works by both Matisse and Gauguin, especially when it comes to female nudes.  The hopes of European straight males to gain life experience by travelling to exotic locations where women run or lounge around naked all day (and are therefore regarded as sexually available) are raised by these depictions.  I’m of course seeing a resemblance between Gauguin’s Manao Tupapau (Spirit of the Dead Watching) and The Blue Nude both of which create a sleepy sensual mood mainly through color palette and subject matter.  Matisse is going a little farther by using less realism in color, the flattening of the picture plane, distorting the figure and also in showing frontal breasts to leave no doubt as to the gender of the figure.  There is also a parallel in the attitudes about primitive, simple locations.  Both Biskra (Matisse) and Pont-Aven, Brittany (Gauguin) were in truth resort towns where Europeans often went to escape winter weather.  True, they still held on to traditional ways of life and manners of dress, etc. in those places  but whether life there was really primitive or simple is open to debate.  I suppose Gauguin had the right to call Tahiti primitive and exotic but the resort towns were only a short train and/or ship ride away from Europe by the late 1800’s. 

Matisse, unlike Gauguin does not seem to be deferring to any religious vision.  His work is more direct, decorative and therefore possibly less pretentious.  He is somehow closer to being primitive himself no matter the location that he travels toward to paint.  He seems to have a deeper understanding of simplicity than Gauguin and this may be because of his greater identification with the other and his own primitive side.   He is still depicting an idea and conveying a mood but in his nudes we get the sense that he (simply) doesn’t want to bother with painting clothes.  The Blue Nude has the colors of clothing on her body without the depiction of fabric.  Though I think he likes to glory in the colors of costumes and landscapes in deference to Impressionists and references primitivism and orientalism in subject matter he does combine these influences into his own style.

Modernity and Caillebotte

Week Five Post Five: Modernity and Masculinity in 19^th Century France

Option One

Caillebotte was a wealthy man from a wealthy family.  He supported Impressionists and exhibited with them and yet his works are different; he has obviously had formal art training and often employs academic techniques.  The brushwork is slightly Impressionistic- a bit looser than the strict academician might employ- but it’s his subject matter that usually drew the most disapproval from traditionalists.  As a modernist, Caillebotte painted what he saw around him.  Whether that’s a celebration of modern life or a critique of it depends not so much on the actual subject being depicted as it does on the attitude of the artist.  The artist creates a general mood through shifts in lighting, color and perspective but his real mindset is impossible to guess from the temporal distance of over 100 years after his death.

 We do, however, know some of the context in which we might place Caillebotte’s work.  In Luncheon (1876) Caillebotte may be showing the shift of his family’s dynamics after the death of his father in 1874.  His mother is placed at the top of the expanse of up-tilted table being waited on by a servant to display her authority.  Caillebotte’s brother appears to the left, absorbed with his food, and yet is in a more companionable place next to the implied presence of the artist behind his plate.  I don’t think this family is unusual for the time.  Everyone has their own place in the hierarchy and they don’t interact with each other all that much because the type of companionship in a family does not include the same type of interactions that occur among friends.  Family members expect to always be together, so connected by life-long association and blood lines that they don’t need or want interaction at all times.  This is a kind of isolation by choice that has been going on a very long time within family dynamics.  As recorded here by Caillebotte the modernist, it’s not the subject matter or even the lighting that tends to isolate the figures, it’s the perspective.  The artist may feel that his place is at the bottom of the table (read hierarchy) but he doesn’t seem to be protesting his place only showing us where he is. 

It is striking to compare Luncheon and a later work of 1879, Still Life, painted after the deaths of his brother and mother.  The same tableware appears as objects and subjects but with no people to use them.  This work seems almost cheery with its bright colors but placed in context with events in the artist’s life the lack of the family to use it makes the glassware look forlorn.  Caillebotte is being the modernist/realist again and painting what he saw on the table on a sunlit day during his time of mourning.  He may have called the work “Still Life” simply because his own life was at a standstill at this time or he may just not have liked to come up with fancy titles. 

A recurring theme in Caillebott’s work is the male figure looking out a window or from one type of space into another with some railing or barrier between.  This may be a more relevant subject when it comes to modern life and feelings of isolation.  As society became more industrialized more barriers arose between indoor, domestic spaces and the outdoors where all classes and kinds of people and animals might interact.  Indoor spaces could represent order and outdoor or other spaces chaos.  We might crave domestic safety but be bored and isolated in that space.  Hanging on that edge allows us the safety of the domestic while having a view of the more dangerous chaotic elements outside such as in Young Man at his Window from 1875.  When we feel too isolated we join the chaos for a while with the surety of the domestic sphere to retreat to for our more vulnerable moments like bathing.  Caillebotte’s outdoor subjects seem to have a more dynamic, stimulated feel than either his indoor subjects or those scenes painted from the viewpoint of a window.  In Pont de l’Europe Caillebotte has men, a woman a dog and a barrier one male uses to view from one type of chaos into another all incorporated.  All the human figures are depicted as living in their own space in the instant of time of the painting but there is room for interaction to take place in its future.  One man turns to talk to the woman, the man on the railing shouts to a friend below, the dog finds his master in one of the background figures, etc.

The inclusion of outsiders in the domestic space must have also been quite exciting to paint.  In Floorscrapers Caillebotte brings the chaos of interactions with the lower classes inside.  It’s no wonder this painting was treated by some critics as if the artist had suddenly introduced a herd of wild beasts into a dining room.  Modern workers enter a upper class home to do their work, temporarily destroying the order and safety usually to be found there and blurring that line between chaos and order.  The workers evidence the impact of their jobs on their bodies and do not conform to heroic academic specifications.  The perspective is again tilted and the lighting set so that the floor seems to be the real star of this show.  As a modernist Caillebotte again is painting what he sees and finding that mood of tension between outsiders and insiders, chaos and order to be his inspiration.  That the tension exists and is of enough interest to be painted leads me to think of Caillebotte’s paintings as a celebration of modern life even though he is seeing and representing both the up and down sides of Modernity. 

Impressionism and the Will to Forget

Week Four Post Four the Political Side of Impressionism

Only some aspects of Impressionism are actually forgetful.  As we learned a few weeks ago the avant-garde  ”references” and “differences” what has gone before.  When Impressionism does this it is not forgetful at all.  One can’t forget an event and reference/difference it at the same time. The covering of the ugliness of the recent past was a conscious effort of forgetfulness.  As Paris progressed from reconstructing to reconstructed, or at least cleaned up, artists painted the optimistic mood as a gloss of brightness over the grim past.   Paul Wood may have seen the phenomenon of a kind of forced optimism during a reconstructive phase as forgetfulness.  He may also have studied such phenomena in other places and times as I have not, but he is right in that the attitudes of artists and the public had shifted away from the political realm.  !870-1871 was such a horrible, bloody and destructive year for France and particularly Paris that we can be sure that anyone in Paris, including artists, would have liked to forget what occurred and look forward with optimism to a brighter future; but with reminders all around, true forgetfulness had to be unlikely. 

Renoir’s Pont Neuf Paris of 1872 shows the bourgeoisie enjoying a leisurely day of nice weather; promenading where citizens had been dying the year before.  We might not know of the events that had taken place in this location in the past but it is sure that Parisians from that time did.  This bright, happy day is portrayed in its own present time with a very realistic mood of joy and a positive outlook.  It references the past by the knowledge that the memories of the people that had been in that location in 1871 are the ”then” and the happy times are the difference “now”.  In Edgar Degas’ Place de la Concorde of 1876 Baron Lepic’s hat conceals the statue of Alsace, draped in black to commemorate the loss of this territory- which is another thing the French preferred to forget.  Monet sought to create beauty and consciously turned away from ugliness; choosing to show the reconstructed railway bridge at Argenteuil in 1874 and the garden of the Tuileries rather than the ruin of the palace in his painting of 1876.

 In the 1840’s through 1860’s artists were using a earthier, grittier palette to portray the real lives of workers, protest against the salon system, and present their political ideals to the general public.  Artists who helped organize and support the Commune such as Courbet found themselves jailed and/or exiled from France for this involvement.  Avant-garde types, including artists, are good at originating new ideas and ideals but probably not so good at the practicalities of implementing them when it comes to imposing changes on a public who is likely to prefer tradition.  Again, it seems to me to be a conscious choice of Impressionists to turn from politics in subject matter.  Brightening up their palettes with oil pigments from convenient tubes and using a technique of loose brushwork that could blur any remaining unpleasant elements of the past into a happy present seems a more likely avenue of forgetfulness.  Impressionists who painted a majority of interiors did tend to flatten the depth of the picture plane, like past modernists (a weird sounding phrase), but landscape painters such as Monet used quite a bit of natural depth.  His technique of painting color rather than strict form and his loose brushwork usually created an energetic, happy mood.  No one living then was likely to forget the desperation of the past but to believe in a better future they did have to move forward. 

It is interesting to contrast the paintings that depict the festivities of 30 June 1878 By Claude Monet and Edouard Manet.  Monet paints the celebrating crowd below and the blue sky above fenced and presented by a patriotic swirl of the tricolor with great energy and an evident optimistic mood.  References to the past are buried in the bustle of the present and yet it is the memory of the past that made the event important.  Edouard Manet  on the other hand had been around longer.  His The Rue Mosnier with Flags shows the celebration in a different light.  Reconstruction is still taking place, as symbolized by the ladder in the foreground.  The veteran of a battle, an amputee in the left foreground, shuns the crowds that likely make his crutches nearly useless and hobbles down the shady side of the street.  The scene is starkly lit, the flags are dots in the distance and other figures in the scene are bleached to de-emphasize them.  Manet had been thumbing his nose at the Academe and salon system since the 1860’s when he was flattening his picture plane and painting improper subject matter like the immodest nude women in Olympia and The Luncheon on the Grass.  In this later work of 1878 Manet is using looser brush strokes and a deeper perspective (such as Monet might employ as an Impressionist landscape painter) but he cannot resist the call of realism with its deeper, more political meanings.  He has not forgotten the past and never wants his fellow Parisians to either, whatever their mood during the party.

Claude Monet Impression: Sunrise

Week 3 Post 3: Impressionism with Formal Analysis

The work from which Impressionism got its name seems an appropriate place to start with in a formal analysis of this painting from 1872 by Claude Monet.  Monet’s aim was to create a style that involved using color to represent what he saw.  He was not interested in fine detail because he wanted his painting to contain a slice of time in a particular location and recreate the colors and mood of a moment that could never happen again.   This spontaneity and sense of immediacy is a hallmark of Impressionist painting.  Landscapes, cityscapes and seascapes had been popular long before the Impressionist style arose but the invention of collapsible metal tubes containing premixed oil paints gave artists a way to take their materials with them and set up a small portable easel in any location.  Critics of the time thought that the style had an unfinished, unpolished look and especially derided the uneven thickness of paint application. visible brushwork and the lack of detail because it seemed to them as if the artist was making a rough oil paint sketch in the field to take back to the studio to finish later.  Painters of this era were greatly influenced by photography especially when it came to cropping and composition.  A photograph using techniques available at the time could contain a great deal of realistic detail but the necessarily long exposure times gave many shots a contrived look since any movement would show up as an indistinct blur.  If paintings and photographs had to compete as art forms for the attention of the public in the 19^th century the technologically inclined might prefer photography but paintings had one great advantage in the opinions most people- they had color.  Monet was quite right in choosing a style that emphasized the spontaneous hues and textures of differing moods and sense of movement through time and space that the photographs of the time could not portray.

That said, the palette of colors for Impression: Sunrise is actually quite restrained.   Blues and oranges dominate with the tones and shades of the blue used throughout and the orange sun and color in the water and sky used as a contrasting accent.  The entire painting looks as though it has been painted using only five tubes of oil color:  blue, orange, white, black and perhaps a little yellow.  The browns of the clouds in the sunrise could be achieved by mixing blue and orange.  The oil pigments are applied in a painterly manner with very visible brush strokes which are sometimes employed in daubs of considerable thickness to add a textural quality impossible with photography.  The texture is especially apparent in the vertical line of the reflection of the rising sun on the water.  The ships and trees in the background are sketched in as foggy, blue shapes which blend into each other and yet are identifiable.  Every brush stroke has the purpose of creating the mood of the piece and providing just enough definition to keep the work from abstraction. 

The capture of a moment in time is provided by implied color shifts, textural elements and elements in the composition.  Compared to other shapes in the work the sun stands out as a regular geometric circle rising from the early morning fog.  It is a focal point which is emphasized by the reflection in the water and the echoing hue of the sky.  Except for the Sun’s reflection most of the lines in the painting are provided by the small boats in the foreground, the blurry horizontal line made by the larger ships with the background trees and the raked lines of the clouds lead the eye toward a point on the left side about two-thirds up from the bottom. The eye then travels upward and back around to the sun.   As the water ripples and the sunlight reflects from it we get a sense of movement.  Movement is also supplied in the angle up to the horizon line made by the small boats and the temporary arrangement of cloud lines.  We get a real feeling that this water traffic is transitory and that in a few minutes the boats will be in a different location, the sun will be higher in the sky, the clouds will move away and the colors will change from the blues and oranges of morning to the blues, greens and yellows of full daylight.  Photography could capture this scene but shooting into the sun usually means that the rest of the visual elements would be underexposed or the harsh lines of ships and docks would be more apparent.   Much of the beauty of the scene would be lost without the element of color.  Monet and other Impressionists were interested in creating beauty rather than in reproducing ugliness.  A photographer might be limited to harsh reality but an impressionist work allows us to see the transitory beauty of a real setting.

Socialism at the Horse Fair

Post Two:  Realism and the Early Avant-Garde

 

Marie-Camille de G. wanted art to depict social oppression in order to bring it to the attention of those in a position to do something about it.  The Horse Fair (1853-55) by Rosa Bonheur does show the lower class at work but in such a pretty, idealized way that Marie-Camille de G. might have been somewhat ambivalent about it.  She might have hoped that since the work was painted by a woman it could have gone farther to promote the cause of gender parity- but no- Rosa Bonheur found her place as a female artist (and therefore an outsider) using a traditional Academic style.   There are no figures identifiable as obviously female in the work.  Of course Marie-Camille had no real objection to the Academic style, she did, after all pick Martyrdom  of Saint Symphorian by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres as her favorite, or at least the least objectionable, painting of the Salon of 1834.  The work of Ingres shows how a human becomes a Saint by transcending suffering, oppression and death itself and Marie-Camille believed that the best subject matter came from a passionate, religious viewpoint.  Passion and emotion can move the viewer to action like no intellectual approach ever will.  The sheer size of the canvas and the beautiful subjects of The Horse Fair may create a sense of awe in the viewer but that is unlikely to bring about social change.

The Horse Fair is an idealized scene from a real event.  The horses are beautiful and the grooms and horse-handlers are handsome, strong men putting on a show for those with enough money to buy new horses for their farms, to pull their carriages and to ride to the hunt.  The painting reflects the horses as all are beautiful things up for sale.  Marie-Camille might have liked that men of the lower class are being shown as having control of the great power represented by the horses.   A slight change of subject matter such as including a couple of female figures in the painting as horse handlers or even spectators might have created more controversy than the artist wanted but could have made a feminist statement.

 Instead of actually changing the subject matter of the painting we might merely shift our viewpoint.   The men in the painting are being depicted in an idealized way but they might also be said to be living in a utopian world of the future.  In a socialistic utopia the horses likely would belong to a communal farm and be useful for the work that they do.  No individual would own these horses, as they belong to the collective.  The men circle the horses for a bit of training and exercise in the early spring before the busy seasons of plowing and harvesting and not to show them off as objects for sale.   Indeed, the artist who painted The Horse Fair, Rosa Bonheur, was raised by Saint-Simonian, radical utopian parents who subscribed to some of the same tenets as Marie-Camille de G.  They believed in equality of the sexes and in a female messiah who appears in the future.  Ms. Bonheur often dressed in men’s clothing to work since trousers restricted her movements among animals on farms and in stockyards much less than skirts.  Some say she painted herself dressed in her work outfit as one of the riders in the work.  Though there is no concrete reference to sexual equality- other than the gender of the artist- in this painting it is possible, with her background, that Rosa Bonheur is actually revealing a religious vision of some future socialist, utopian society.  She could be using Academic style and non-threatening subject matter as a cover to get this message seen by the masses.  Bonheur may have made a painting that meets with the approval of Marie-Camille de G. after all.