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Charles Amable Lenoir, Rêverie, collection particulière.
Copyright Mille/realis. |
I love concept
exhibitions. They always bring together the unexpected. A couple of
years ago Crime et châtiment at
Orsay lined up Degas' dancer sculpture between a guillotine and
France's first crime scene photographs. I'm still wondering if that
combination wasn't a product of my wildest dreams. And what about Art
Nouveau, revival in which Guimard
leads to Gaudi leads to Dali leads to ... Grateful Dead concert
posters? Surprising, but it WORKS!
I
love this kind of exhibition so much that I
couldn't contain myself when I saw the metro posters for the Grand
Palais' Bohemias.
This theme hits home for a lot of us, invoking memories of romantic,
adolescent dreams : life as a starving artist in a smarmy Paris hotel
room, with a bed, a table, a silk kimono, pen and paper and a bottle
of cheap wine. If you are like me, and grew up loving Puccini and
Carmen
(or in the 90's Rent),
don't miss this exhibition that combines the spirit of them all
showing the changing perception of the gypsy in art from the
Renaissance to Nazi Germany.
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| Georges de la Tour, The Fortune Teller, Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
The
exhibition is thought provoking. On the ground floor, you observe
the figure of the gypsy in art
as it transforms through time. Several 17th century paintings of
gentlefolk being bamboozled by Gypsies are displayed, the most
renowned being Georges de la Tour's The
Fortune Teller, on loan from the Met.
Her majesty Elizabeth II has sent over a beautiful caricature by
Leonardo da Vinci presenting a Roman
citizen hounded by gypsies. I was surprised by several paintings of
the Virgin in Gypsy garb. In the 16th and 17th centuries gypsies were
believed to be from Egypt so certain painters presented Mary with a
large round hat that was part of the Gypsy costume in renditions of
the Holy Family in Egypt. In the 19th century, the gypsy was adopted
as a symbol of artistic rebellion by artists, in particular Courbet.
In his 1854 painting, La rencontre, ou
Bonjour Monsieur Courbet, the artist
presents himself dressed as a travelling man, an image that is all
the more poignant as it contrasts with the gentlemanly clothing
of the other two men in the painting.
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Portrait d'un artiste dans son atelier,
attributed to Théodore Géricault,
Musée du Louvre. |
In
the second part of the exhibition, the gypsy and the artist have
become one : the bohemian is born. This part opens with a portrait of
Liszt, who wrote a treaty on Gypsy music,
although he never truly adopted the image of the bohemian for
himself. With Carmen and
La Bohème playing
in the background the visitor meanders through portraits of artists,
such as this painting by Géricault on loan from the Louvre, or a
self-portrait painted by young Delacroix and paintings of groups of
artists in their ateliers. The literary world is included: an entire
room is dedicated to the correspondence between Verlaine and Rimbaud
and citations from Balzac and Baudelaire pop up all along the way. We
enjoy a jaunt through a small-scale replica of Montmartre and music
is referenced via a portrait of Satie by Ramon Casas dated 1891. In
it we are invited to make the connection between the bohemian and the
dandy - Satie is wearing a top hat and a monocle, but the background
is a windmill on the Montmartre hills.
After
a room full of paintings showing the joys, debauchery and solitude of
late nineteenth century cafes, the exhibition comes to an abrupt and
brutal close with a series of colorful lithographs presenting
Tsiganes,
signed Otto Mueller and exhibited at the Degenerate Art exhibition
organized by the Nazi regime in 1937 in order to further marginalize
this artist (amongst others)
and his subject.
Edward Hopper is apparently THE exhibition to see this season in Paris. I'll admit that my rebellious side actually cringed at the thought of going to see yet another exhibition cataloguing the works of a very famous artist, but I didn't regret it. And although you might think that
Hopper and
Bohemias have nothing in common outside of sharing the Grand Palais as a venue this season, I found that seeing Hopper's paintings after thinking about marginalization and gypsies and artists made me understand Edward Hopper in a whole new way.
Let's resume the man's career : he starts out at the New York School of Art with teacher Robert Henri, spends a few years in Paris where he is influenced by the tail-end of impressionism and draws French people on cafe terraces (these drawings are mostly caricatures) he participates in The Eight rebellion/the Ashcan School led by his teacher Robert Henri and works as an illustrator until a successful exhibit of his watercolors gets him sufficient renown to become a full time painter.
Some of my favorite pieces in the first part of the exhibition are engravings on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: "Night Shadows" and "The Cat Boat" (1921 and 1922). The first has a beautiful, emotional approach through contrasts of light and darkness that create a sensation of loneliness on a dark and deserted street. The second demonstrates Hopper's seemingly effortless mastery of perspective: the sail on the cat boat is designed with photographic realism.
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Edward Hopper The Hotel Room, 1931.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation, Madrid. |
But what about the paintings? My favorite is
The Hotel Room an oil on canvas dated 1931 on loan from Madrid. The lines are clean, the colors crisp, the story clear. Hopper paints like a technical writer writes : clear and concise. And the beauty of his painting lies in this simplicity. There are no cheap paintings on the walls of the hotel. The lines of the bed are clean and the sheets are still neat and tidy. All this brings you to the shadowed face of the woman in her underclothes, sitting on the bed staring at a sideways piece of paper - a note that has announced some great deception, and brought on a wave of loneliness that is accentuated by the near emptiness of the room.
Nearly all of Hopper's paintings express a certain loneliness. There's the farmer and his wife in front of their house in the evening, the wife is looking at her dog in the foreground and the husband is watching his feet, there are the two girls having dinner in a lonely Chinatown restaurant, or the famous
Nighthawks with the lady in pink and the man in blue in a nearly empty diner in the middle of the night. Hopper paints people experiencing the loneliness of their individual life journeys. That moment when we feel ourselves to be marginals disconnected with society and joyful human contact. Separation is the common thread between the two exhibitions. The sentiment of marginality inherent in Hopper's paintings and the lifestyles of gypsies and bohemian artists that proudly reside on society's fringes.
Whether or not you consider that my comparison
tient la route, both of these exhibitions are excellent sources of intellectual stimulation. After all they are THE exhibitions of the season!
Bonne visite!
CSL
Visit Bohemias through January 14, 2013 and Edward Hopper through January 28, 2013
at the Grand Palais
Link to the Grand Palais website
At last! Snow! We knew it would fall one day, although I'll admit I was enjoying the omission until Friday morning's windstorm brought a flurry of flakes into the region. Winter is right around the corner with snow, ice and freezing temperatures. It's time to make another seasonal wardrobe change and pull out those woolen sweaters and socks, those down coats, hats and gloves that have been stowed away in the back of the cellar for the past eight months. 
