Category Archives: Art

Art

Otto Dix’s Metropolis Tryptych (1928)

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The period, in Germany, between the end of World War I in 1918 and Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 is a fascinating one: there was a rapid emergence of innovation in the arts and sciences, embodied in the term “Weimar culture” (after the Weimar Republic, which was the unofficial designation for the German state at that time).

Luminaries in the sciences during the period included Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and Max Born; Walter Gropius was busy inventing modern architecture and design with the Bauhaus movement; Ludwig Prandtl was pioneering aeronautical engineering. In the arts, German Expressionism was reaching its peak: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis expressed the public’s fascination with futurism and technology; concert halls were beginning to hear the atonal, modern experimental music of Kurt Weill and Arnold Schoenberg, whilst Bertolt Brecht was shaking up the theatre.

However, 1920s Berlin also had a dark underbelly and a reputation for decadence. There was a significant rise in prostitution, drug use, and crime. The cabaret scene, as documented by Britain’s Christopher Isherwood in his novel Goodbye to Berlin (which was eventually adapted into the musical movie, Cabaret), was emblematic of Berlin’s decadence. Many of the painters, sculptors, composers, architects, playwrights, and filmmakers associated with the time would be the same ones whose art would later be denounced as “degenerate art” (Entartete Kunst) by Adolf Hitler.

A new cultural movement started around this time, however – named New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit). Its members turned away from the romantic ideals of German Expressionism and adopted instead an unsentimental perspective on the harsh realities of German society. A leading member of this movement was Otto Dix, and it is his paintings – satirical and at times savage – that I’m showcasing here. He wished to portray the decay of the post-war life; thus, frequent themes include the prostitutes and downtrodden of Berlin, their defects exaggerated to the point of caricature. He also painted many of the prominent characters from his milieu, in a style influenced by the dadaism and cubism art movements.

Here is a small selection of his art from the Weimar years, beginning with his 1928 tryptych, Metropolis (Großstadt), which incorporated crippled war veterans, prostitutes, musicians, dancers, and night club revellers into its three-panel indictment of contemporary Berlin life. Incidentally, when the Nazis came to power, Dix had to promise to paint only inoffensive landscapes: that must have been excruciating for him!

Metropolis
Otto Dix
Art

Tipu’s Tiger (c. 1790)

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Between 1767 and 1799 there was a series of wars fought between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore, all part of the ongoing struggle of the British to consolidate dominion in the Indian subcontinent and lay the ground for what would become the British Empire. The Fourth, and last, Anglo-Mysore War culminated in 1799 with the decisive defeat and death of Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Mysoreans, at the siege of his capital, Seringapatam.

During the subsequent plunder of Tipu’s palace, East India Company troops came across an unusual and intriguing mechanical toy in a room given over to musical instruments. It was a carved and painted wooden tiger savaging a near life-size European man. Concealed inside the tiger’s body, behind a hinged flap, was an organ which could be operated by the turning of a handle next to it. This simultaneously made the man’s arm lift up and down and produced noises intended to imitate his dying moans and the growls of the tiger. A piece more emblematic of the Sultan’s antipathy towards the British would be hard to find!

The Governors of the East India Company sent the interesting object back to London, where, after a few years in storage, it was displayed in the reading-room of the East India Company Museum and Library at East India House in Leadenhall Street. It proved to be a very popular exhibit and the public could not only view Tipu’s Tiger, but crank its handle and operate its machinery at will. This they did on a regular basis, apparently, to the deep annoyance of students trying to study there. No surprise then, that at some point the handle disappeared, and the periodical The Athenaeum reported that:

“Luckily, a kind fate has deprived him of his handle… and we do sincerely hope he will remain so, to be seen and admired but to be heard no more”

In 1880, the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired the piece, and it remains there to this day (the handle has of course been replaced, though not for the public to crank). Tipu was big into his tigers: he had jewelled, golden tiger heads as finials on his throne, tiger stripes stamped onto his coinage, and tigers incorporated into the Mysorean swords, guns, and mortars. However, this wonderfully painted piece is certainly the most unusual! Do call into the V&A if you get the opportunity.

 
Tipu’s Tiger
Art

Giovanni Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons (1761)

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Venice had been one of the great trading powers of medieval and Renaissance Europe, but by the 18th-century its political dominion was waning. Although past its heyday, the republic still possessed great appeal to the emerging tourist market; it was a preeminent destination for the thousands of prominent young adult males embarking on the “Grand Tour”. Capitalising on the tourists’ desire to secure a memento, there developed the genre of view painting, spawning a plethora of paintings of the Rialto Bridge, the Grand Canal and St Mark’s Square, by the likes of Canaletto, Bellotto, and the Guardi brothers.

As well as real city views, the artists sometimes liked to let their fancy fly and paint imaginary views (capricci) that placed buildings, archaeological ruins and other architectural elements together in fictional and often fantastical combinations. The name of one such artist, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, is not particularly well-known these days but nonetheless left to history a series of etchings whose influence is felt to this day: the so-called Imaginary Prisons (Le Carceri).

These prisons of Piranesi’s imagination were dark, labyrinthine depictions of a nightmare world. Ever since they were published – the first edition in the late 1740s, the second, even darker one in 1761 – Piranesi’s images have inspired designers, writers and architects alike. We can see elements of them in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and in Michael Radford’s adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. The etchings foreshadow M C Escher’s playful explorations of perspective, and we can even see their influence in the moving staircases at Hogwarts.

Piranesi’s prison interiors have no outer walls; each vista is cut off only by the frame of the image itself. The spaces are large and continuous: they may not even be interiors; this may be a city that has grown into a world, where interior and exterior are no longer definable. We see strange devices suggestive of torture: wheels with spikes, pulleys, baskets big enough to contain a person. You don’t quite know how they work, or what the thinking could be behind them. Prisoners undergo mysterious torments, chained to posts, whilst high above them spectators gather on a vertiginous walkway. It is impossible to tell at times who is a prisoner, who a guard, who a visitor, and in the end you suspect that everyone in this place is a prisoner.

Art

Mary Cassatt’s Young Mother Sewing (1900)

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When we think of the Impressionists, we tend to think about Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne…and quite rightly, because they were titans of their art. However, less well-known to us (always the way, unfortunately, eh ladies?) were “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism, namely Marie Bracquemond, Berthe Morisot and the subject of today’s blog, Mary Cassatt. These women more than held their own amongst their male counterparts; all three produced wonderful art and exhibited successfully at the Paris Salons.

Mary Cassatt was a young American artist who arrived in Paris in 1866, having quit the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts back home, due to the lack of inspiration and patronising attitude of the male students and teachers there. Although we associate the birth of feminism with the early 1900s, the first wave of feminism began as early as the 1840s, and some doors were opened to women, particularly in cosmopolitan Paris, to which Mary was drawn.

Not all doors were opened, however: women still couldn’t study art at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts so Cassatt signed up for private study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, (the Orientalist I wrote about back in March) and she became an advocate for women’s equality all her life. She became a friend and collaborator of Edgar Degas, too. They had studios a five-minute stroll apart, and Degas would regularly look in at Mary’s studio, offering advice and helping find models.

Cassatt’s art centred on the lives of women, and in particular she painted many works depicting the intimate bond between mother and child. It is that aspect I am showcasing here, with a gallery of pieces featuring some often touching depictions of mother and child, beginning with Young Mother Sewing, painted in 1900 and purchased a year later by influential art collector and feminist Louisine Havemeyer, who fittingly used it to raise money for the women’s suffrage cause.

Mary Cassatt
Art

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Carpet Merchant (1887)

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In July of 1798, Napoleon marched into Egypt and defeated the Turks at the Battle of the Pyramids, weakening past breaking point the waning Ottoman Empire. He was driven out a year later by the British, but in that small amount of time he had already changed everything: because following him came first a trickle and then a torrent of westerners into the Near and Middle East. They came and they journeyed through Turkey, Iraq, Persia, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Arabia and North Africa. Many of them wrote about their experiences, sparking a deep fascination with these exotic, mysterious lands.

The artists came too, and they painted what they saw: bazaars and souks; robed and moustachioed Arabs smoking hookah pipes; mosques and minarets; Turkish baths and harems. With time this became an art movement and today we call it Orientalist art. I love it for the way it conjures up the exotic, and although it is clear that some artists let their imaginations get the better of them (I’m thinking of the harems, which no artist can have actually seen), their depictions of these lands must have inspired many a beating heart to visit.

One such Orientalist was French painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1856, he visited Egypt for the first time and followed the classic grand tour of a typical occidental visitor to the Orient: up the Nile to Cairo, then to Abu Simbel, across the Sinai Peninsula and through the Wadi el-Araba to the Holy Land, Jerusalem and finally to Damascus. He gathered themes, artefacts and costumes for his oriental scenes, and then set to work, soon establishing a reputation back home which saw him become honorary President of the French Society of Orientalist Painters.

There’s a gallery, below, of several of his Orientalist works, giving a good flavour of what he was about, and below that my favourite piece of the lot, The Carpet Merchant. I have travelled quite extensively myself in these lands, from Istanbul, Beirut and Damascus to Marrakesh, Petra and Cairo; and nothing quite beats the simple pleasure of wandering the snaking alleyways and souks of an old quarter, and taking in the sights, sounds and smells of life there. The Carpet Merchant captures that feeling perfectly.

Jean-Léon Gérôme

 

Art

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (1884)

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One of my favourite artists is John Singer Sargent, the great Edwardian-era portrait painter. Born in Florence to American parents, he lived an itinerant early life in Europe, his parents moving regularly between sea and mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland (alright for some). Sargent’s early signs of artistic talent led the family to Paris where he gained admission to the École des Beaux-Arts and studied with the noted French portraitist, Carolus-Duran.

In 1879, at the age of 23, Sargent painted a portrait of Carolus-Duran and exhibited it at the Paris Salon. It met with such public approval that his future direction was sealed. He quickly accumulated commissions for portraits and his fame spread. He painted commissioned portraits right up until his death in 1925, but in between commissions he would paint friends and colleagues for fun. It was one such non-commissioned painting, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, that grabbed my attention at the Tate Britain and turned me into an instant fan. However, the subject of today’s blog is the painting that became Sargent’s headline-grabber, Portrait of Madame X.

Just as we saw when I blogged about Edouard Manet, Sargent’s successful career was not without scandal. In 1884 he submitted Portrait of Madame X to the Paris Salon. “Madame X” was “professional beauty” and socialite, Virginie Gautreau, the American wife of a French banker. Sargent actually pursued her to paint her, rather than the other way round. It’s a deeply alluring piece, with the sitter standing in profile, and the deep black of her dress emphasising the “aristocratic pallor” of her skin. With cinched waist, the elegant bone structure, and with one shoulder strap seemingly about to fall off the shoulder, the image could only suggest one thing – the erotic – and it was this, inevitably (for the time), that precipitated the scandal at the Salon. It was only a temporary setback (and Sargent responded by repainting the shoulder strap in a “safer” position), and I don’t suppose a little bit of scandal is too harmful to the career of a gifted artist, after all.

In June of 1999, Nicole Kidman was the cover girl of Vogue, and in her cover story, she posed for photographs in a number of John Singer Sargent re-imaginings (including Madame X) by the photographer, Steven Meisel. The photogenic Kidman suits these pictures perfectly so I thought it well worth showcasing them here, alongside their originals…starting with the beguiling Madame X.

Madame X
Lady Agnew
Mrs George Swinton
Mrs Charles E Inches
John Singer Sargent
Art

Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson Of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632)

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Given all the standard genres of painting open to an artist in 17th century Amsterdam – landscape, portraiture, still life, history, religious – you could be forgiven for assuming that the subject of today’s blog, Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, was something of a one-off. It has a seemingly very specific and niche subject: that of an anatomy lesson involving the dissection of a cadaver! In fact, though, at the time of Rembrandt’s work in 1632, there was already a strong tradition of Dutch “guild portraiture” (group portraits commissioned by a professional association such as the Guild of Surgeons) and many of these involved dissection scenes, so Rembrandt’s subject was far from unique for the time.

This was the Dutch Golden Age. Compared to most other countries of 17th century Europe, the Netherlands was positively progressive in its model of government. Since the formation of the Dutch republic in 1581, the Netherlands had experienced the emergence of a national and cultural identity, and both religious freedom and open trade were highly valued. With a burgeoning economy and the rise of the middle classes, it was a place where Dutch scientists – and Dutch artists – were able to experiment without fear of papal censure. Guild portraiture was therefore an expression of Dutch progressivism.

The practice of dissection, prior to the Dutch republic, had been morally questionable: in fact, the Church had officially condemned it, and even post-republic it was still a grey area. However, it was recognised that dissection was part and parcel of scientific advancement, and so Amsterdam’s now-Protestant city council sanctioned the practice on the condition that only the corpses of criminals were used. Anatomic dissections soon became highly popular public events, lasting for several days (and for that reason carried out in the winter, to retard the decay of the cadavers) and generating a substantial income from paying observers.

Artists were thus commissioned to capture the scene and guild members would have paid a pretty sum to be featured in it. What differentiates this painting from all the others was the fact that this was Rembrandt, the most gifted and prolific artist of his age, and typically he undertook to reject the traditional composition of Dutch guild portraiture and instead he adopted a more visceral style. Rembrandt puts the corpse at the centre of the scene and portrays it in full length, in Christ-like repose. It turns a group vanitas portrait into a quite dramatic and arresting image.

The corpse, incidentally, was one Adriaan Adriaanszoon, who was convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death by hanging (which occurred on the very morning of the dissection). Perhaps not the most illustrious reason to be captured on canvas for posterity, but hey ho!

Art

Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)

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Édouard Manet is thought of as a leading light of the Impressionists, but actually, although he was associated with them and was admired by Monet and Renoir, he never actually exhibited at any of the Impressionist Exhibitions in Paris. He was more of a precursor to the new era of artistic impressionism, and still had a foot planted firmly in realism. His early work was, however, controversial, and he scandalised critics and public alike, most notably with Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Olympia (both 1863), but even these were modelled on old classical masterpieces: Giorgione’s Pastoral Concert (1509) and Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) respectively. Let’s have a quick look and see if you can spot, in the mind of a nineteenth century purist, the elements of Manet’s work that transformed elegant classicism into lewd modernism:

However, the subject of this blog is actually the Manet that is arguably the most recognisable…the celebrated A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. The Folies Bergère was the most famous of Paris’s café-concert halls and was noted at this time for its new-fangled electric lights. We see the frontal image of a barmaid looking out at us from behind her counter, and behind her a huge mirror in which we see reflected the back of the barmaid along with the scene that she herself is observing. There are the members of the audience, watching the show, and indeed an element of the show itself: the legs of the trapeze artist which appear in the very top-left corner of the picture.

The woman behind the bar was actually a real person, known as Suzon, who worked at the Folies Bergère during the early 1880s, and whom Manet painted in his studio. The gentleman at the bar was Manet’s neighbour. The bottles, fruit and vase of flowers arranged on the counter are replicated with all the precision of a still life painting, and interesting to note – for such a French-feeling painting – the bottles of British beer: yes, Bass Pale Ale of all things! The loose British connection is maintained: this famous painting is held not in Paris but at the Courtauld Gallery, London.

Édouard Manet

Art

Tamara de Lempicka’s Young Lady with Gloves (1930)

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Art Deco was one of the first truly international styles, influencing the design of just about everything from buildings to furniture, jewellery to fashion, and art to everyday objects like radios and vacuum cleaners. It took its name (short for Arts Décoratifs) from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes Arts which was held in Paris in 1925, and which serves as a fair starting point to credit for the birth of a movement. We are slap-bang in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, the era of the Jazz Age and of flappers, of motion pictures and the Charleston, of The Great Gatsby and Radio City Music Hall, and whilst this representative list smacks of the United States, the cultural vibe was no less felt in Berlin, Paris, London and Sydney. It was an era of economic prosperity and cultural dynamism and as such, don’t be surprised to see this blog return to this period in the future.

Art Deco drew its inspiration from such art movements as Cubism, Futurism, and the influence of the Bauhaus. It played with geometric motifs and bright, bold colours, and of all the artists pursuing this style, one of the most memorable and interesting was Tamara de Lempicka.

Born in Poland in 1898, she lived, after her parents divorced, with her wealthy grandmother, who spoiled her with clothes and travel. By age 14 she was attending school in Lausanne, and holidaying in St Petersburg. All this high living gave the young girl an idea of how she wanted to live and what her future should be. Thus, when she found she had a talent for art, she took herself to Paris to live among the bourgeois and bohemian of the Left Bank (where else?). Between the wars, she painted portraits of the great and the good, and many of Eastern Europe’s exiled nobility, bringing her critical acclaim, social celebrity and considerable wealth. She was also well-known for her highly stylised nudes.

Her iconic work exuded a confidence that epitomised the era (see her Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti, for instance). But let’s look at her Young Lady with Gloves (AKA Girl in the Green Dress), typical of her style. It has streamlined, geometric shapes and clean, metallic surfaces depicting a beautiful, sophisticated woman. She exudes a detached aura of superiority, and there is a visually striking interplay of compositional effects, angular lines, and shading. The unabashed sensualism of those nipples and that navel visible through the fabric is pure de Lempicka. Small wonder that one of her high-profile collectors is international superstar, Madonna, who has featured some of de Lempicka’s works in her own videos, notably Vogue. Pushing the boundaries as a fearless female artist, she was perhaps the Madonna of her day.

 

 

Tamara de Lempicka

Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Le déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party) wowed the critics at the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882 and remains one of the greats of Impressionism. It depicts a convivial bunch of diners enjoying a summertime meal alfresco at the Maison Fournaise, overlooking the Seine on the Île de Chatou, just west of Paris. This is the heart of Impressionist leisure land, and to this day the restaurant exists, on what is now dubbed L’île des Impressionnistes.

The diners are all friends or colleagues of Renoir. In the foreground, seated lower-right, is his fellow artist Gustave Caillebotte, who is gazing at Renoir’s future wife, seamstress Aline Charigot, sitting opposite and cooing at her dog. Next to Caillebotte is actress Angèle Legault and, standing above her, Italian journalist Adrien Maggiolo. At the back, wearing a top hat, art historian and collector Charles Ephrussi speaks with poet and critic, Jules Laforgue.

Leaning against the railing are Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise, the daughter of the restaurant’s proprietor, and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise Jr, who handled the boat rentals. Rowing was the main attraction at Chatou, and Renoir’s diners wear the straw hats and blue dresses that were the fashionable boating attire of middle-class Parisian daytrippers.

Renoir spent months making numerous changes to his canvas, painting the individual figures when his models were available (there is correspondence from Renoir moaning about models failing to turn up). Nonetheless, Renoir captures the freshness of his vision splendidly, and we can allow ourselves to be fooled that he has spontaneously captured a moment in time. It is a vibrant work of art celebrating good company and good dining, and it certainly gives us the impression of a very pleasant and carefree afternoon.

Details of the party-goers