During the Holiday season, it was inevitable to compare and contrast the titans of the 20th Century, French modernism, Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), far left, and Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) left.
The Guggenheim Museum presents Picasso Black and White through January 23 while the Metropolitan Museum of Art has Matisse: In Search of True Painting, through March 17.
In this informal faceoff, from a critical viewpoint, the Matisse exhibition, while relatively small with just 49 works, wins hands down over the Picasso project which fills the museum with primarily minor works and is best described as a disaster and possibly a fiasco. artes fine arts magazineMore
Edgar Degas, La Toilette (1884-86) Private Collection. See End Note #1
“I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine…of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament—temperament is the word—I know nothing.” ~Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas, best known in the public imagination for his more sentimental, impressionistic works—ballet scenes, race tracks, opera and music hall scenes—was, first and foremost, a student of the human figure. With the current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Degas and the Nude, a first-ever sweeping survey of some of his best and also least-known figurative works, here is an artist who still has the capacity to shock and surprise. Pulled from the extensive holdings of the MFA, The Musee D’Orsay, in Paris and dozens of other private and public collections, Degas and the Nude offers a retrospective of his work over a fifty-year time frame, from his days as a classically-trained student, to his ‘modern’ work at the turn of the 20th century. Much to the dismay of many late 19th century critics and the Parisian public-at-large, Degas, the radically-inventive artist, challenged a then, time-honored establishment’s approach to representing nude subjects, as he relentlessly strove to capture the most intimate and disarmingly candid moments in their private lives. artes fine arts magazineMore
The Dramatic Influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints on Impressionist Painting
Japanese portrayal of Commodore Matthew Perry’s gunship in Edo Harbor, 1853, block print, artist unknown
From the word orient, we take our meaning, ‘to establish a direction or a path based on the points of the compass’. Navigators over centuries faced east to trace the path of the rising sun to its apex for the noon sextant sighting—toward the Orient—the land of mystery somewhere over the horizon. That this archipelago of exotic lands lost in a vast sea, with its towering mountain ranges walling off enormous swaths of snow-choked plains, rain-drenched jungles, powerful emperors and marauding armies, rising and falling from power somewhere in the veiled mists of time, could elude Western eyes for so many centuries, was no accident. For more than a thousand years, with few exceptions and under very limited conditions, the empires of the East enacted a moratorium on European exploration and trade along their shores. artes fine arts magazineMore
“In Gertrude Stein’s writing every word lives and, apart from concept, it is so exquisitely rhythmical and cadenced that if we read it aloud and receive it as pure sound, it is like a kind of sensuous music. Just as one may stop, for once, in a way, before a canvas of Picasso, and, letting one’s reason sleep for an instant, may exclaim: “It is a fine pattern!” so, listening to Gertrude Steins’ words and forgetting to try to understand what they mean, one submits to their gradual charm.” -Literary Critic, Mabel Dodge Luhan, in Speculations (1913)
Hers was a personality writ large on the pages of early 20th century cultural history. Whether in physical stature, intellectual prowess, life-style choices, the artistic and literary sphere-of-influence drawn to her, or that expansive ego, this was a figure to be reckoned with. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), is one of the most influential Americans of her day, perhaps most famous as a modern writer and the creator of such oft-repeated phrases as , ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’ and ‘There is no there, there.’ But Stein¹s reach across the arts was extraordinary, extending well beyond literature to include collaborations in opera, ballet and more, and her influence as a style-maker, art collector and networker was considerable.
Gustave Caillebotte, patron, painter, 'The Unknown Impressionist', 1848-94
When Impressionism is mentioned, Monet, Renoir, Degas come to mind, but less frequently among the names is that of Gustave Caillebotte (French 1848–1894). Yet, he was very much their equal and a skilled and prolific painter. Wealthy, he had no need to sell his art. He supported his friends by buying their art, financing the Impressionist shows –considered radical in his day– and in the case of Monet, frequently paying his rent. Moreover, Caillebotte was a lawyer; a philatelist whose stamp collection is in the British Museum; a town councilman; a nautical engineer and famed yachtsman. Rarely seen together, the Brooklyn Museum re-acquaints us with Caillebotte’s work after a 30-year absence from its galleries. An intellectual and a modern man, with the means to support his focused passions, he bequeathed his substantial collection to his country—presciently saving much of Impressionist art for France.
Caillebotte, Man on the Balcony 2, 1880
Caillebotte was born eldest of three sons of a twice-widowed father and his third wife, into the grand bourgeoisie, whose family fortune stemmed from cloth supplied to the French military. He began drawing and painting at age twelve, served in the National Guard and was released in 1871, right before the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune ended. He turned to art, passing the exam for L’Ecole des Beaux Art in 1873. He soon became a member of a fringe art circle, the works of which were textured, loose and colorful in style, earning them the critically derisive term, Impressionism.
Caillebotte, The Oarsmen, 1877
The Brooklyn Museum has assembled a number of his works for the exhibit, drawn from private and museum collections in Europe and the U.S. Technically brilliant works like, “Floor Scrapers” and “House Painters” were rejected by tradition-bound venues of the day as “vulgar” and “too working class.” His renderings of Paris street scenes, the moods of the rivers, rowing shells and the muscular men who powered them, all done en plein air, reveal his mastery of light and the human form. His clever use of the perspective in his compositions, such as placing the Parisian streets at an angle while coming directly towards the viewer in works like “The Pont de l’Europe ” and “Man on the Balcony” ( left), creates a sense of immediacy and intimacy—as if we are standing there on the bridge or at the balcony overlooking the boulevard in 19th Century Paris—sharing the drama to the moment in the scene. Likewise, in the “Oarsmen Rowing on the Yerres” (above), Caillebotte’s perspective puts us there in the same boat, sitting on our side of canvas, being transported by the oarsmen and basking in the same sun whose light rests on their out-stretched muscular arms.
Despite his other ardent pursuits, Caillebotte continued to paint, even after the Impressionists dispersed and up to his sudden death at 45. The “Unknown Impressionist” has secured a place in the pantheon of great painters of his day.
(At the Brooklyn Museum, through July 5, 2009)
by Linda Y. Peng, Contributing Writer- The Artful Traveler
During the Holiday season, it was inevitable to compare and contrast the titans of the 20th Century, French modernism, Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), far left, and Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) left.
