Sibling Nastiness; Salvador and Ana Maria Dali

I’ve discovered that Salvador Dali and Vincent Van Gogh have something in common, apart from being artists of course.  They were both born shortly after the deaths of an infant brother.  Both inherited the same Christian name as their deceased sibling and whether this accounts for their bizarre behaviour is open to conjecture, but it has been argued that Vincent was raised by a grieving mother.

In Dali’s case, the family, particularly his mother, grandmother and aunt, doted on him, wrapping him in affection and allowing him every indulgence.  Dali soon learned how to turn this situation to his advantage by regularly throwing tantrums in order to get his own way.

Dali had a particularly close attachment to his mother Felipa Domènech, an artist who drew competently and crafted exquisite wax figurines out of coloured candles.  Felipa’s death in 1921 when Dali was 16, and his disciplinarian father’s subsequent marriage to his aunt had a devastating effect on him and he looked to his younger sister, Ana Maria as the pivotal female figure and mother substitute in his life.

Figure At The Window (1925), oil on papier mache, 105 cm x 74.5 cm

Dali was 21 when he painted this scene and Ana Maria (three years his junior) was Dali’s only model until his future wife, Gala arrived on the scene. I love the cool light pervading this scene as well as the superb draftsmanship.  Ana Maria claimed that she didn’t mind sitting for hours for her brother and the experience gave her an appreciation of landscape.

Figura De Perfil (Figure In Profile) 1925, Oil on cardboard, 74 x 50 cm

Dali had been showing signs mental illness by 1929 and it was in this context that he first met Helena Diakanoff Devulina (Gala) who was a Russian immigrant, 10 years older than he and well known to the surrealists, and who became Dali’s lifelong partner until her death at the age of 88.  She became his muse, wife and (supposedly) business manager.  Both Ana Maria and their father detested her.  The fact that Gala was somewhat older and already married when she met Salvador was probably the main issue here.  According to The Guardian, during the Spanish civil war, Ana Maria was briefly arrested and imprisoned by the Republican forces and she believed Gala had denounced her falsely as having fascist sympathies.  The irony is that Salvador appeared to be one of Franco’s most enthusiastic supporters.

She also took issue with one of her brother’s notoriously unreliable memoirs where he wrote of a troubled childhood and a tormented relationship with their father.  She in turn published her own memoir in 1949 Salvador Dali As Seen By His Sister which left him enraged by her portrayal of his childhood as normal and happy.

Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized By The Horns Of Her Own Chastity, 1954, oil on canvas, 40.5 x 30.5 cm

This was Dali’s response to his sister’s memoir and is thought to be inspired by an image in a pornographic magazine. This time we see Ana Maria being assaulted by flying phalluses.

Dali survived for seven frail, miserable years following the death of Gala in 1982.  He was isolated (it’s claimed he drove away most of his friends) and was almost penniless.  He and Gala were spendthrifts with the concept of investing being foreign to them.  It was thought that fame, not money, was Dali’s primary motivation.  There are doubts as to the authenticity of many of his prints due to his habit of signing blank sheets of printing paper in his final years.

Salvador and Gala, Dali Museum

After decades of zero contact between them, Ana Maria visited her brother in hospital on what was thought to be his death bed in 1984.  The result was a raging argument between the two of them with Dali having her kicked out of the room.  They never met again and Dali died of heart failure in his home at Figueres in 1989.  Ana Maria survived him by five months. 

References;

BBC Omnibus

National Gallery of Victoria Educational Resource

The Guardian

The Forgotten Alexander Colquhoun

One Australian artist who appears to have slipped under the radar of many historians is Alexander Colquhoun (1862 – 1941), who was born in Glasgow and arrived with his family in Melbourne in 1876.  Some time back, I posted about the landmark exhibition “Golden Summers” held at the National Gallery of Victoria in the mid 80’s which featured the Heidelberg School artists.  Colquhoun wasn’t in it, even though he studied under Thomas Clark just like Fred McCubbin who was one of the ‘stars’ of the exhibition.  And again just like McCubbin, Colquhoun was a member of the Buonarotti Club which was an artistic-musical-literary society in the 1880’s.

Portrait of Colquhoun by John Longstaff

I wasn’t even aware of Colquhoun until I saw an exhibition of his work at the Castlemaine Art Gallery in 2004.  According to the gallery, this was the first significant exhibition of his work since his death. “As a writer and critic he did much to record the art history of his time and place. His writing, in books and in articles for periodicals and newspapers (including the Melbourne Herald and The Age), shows him to be a cultured man possessing a wide acquaintance with classical and general literature.”

Colquhoun - The Old St James Church 36 x 25 cm n.d.

Colquhoun took private students as well as teaching drawing at the Working Men’s College (later RMIT) from 1910.  Later he taught art at Toorak College until 1930, as well as exhibiting regularly at venues including the Victorian Artists Society.

Colquhoun - A Spring Morning, 71 x 96 cm n.d.

He is not an easy artist to track down and some of his works are undated. He usually painted from nature using a sombre palette with some impressionistic accents, and most of his works are in oils either on wood panels or on canvas.  Frederick Follingsby’s influence is apparent in Colquhoun’s early work.  In later years he became friends with, was influenced by, Max Meldrum.  His painting A Spring Morning has fetched the highest  price of any of his works - $10,862USD in 2015.

Colquhoun - Figure In Interior, c1920

So why is Colquhoun so obscure?  Possibly because he didn’t produce any blockbuster works such as Robert’s Shearing The Rams or McCubbin’s The Pioneers or Streeton’s Golden Summers.  I think we can associate his darker tonal works to a later period when he fell under the spell of Meldrum.  Some of his interior scenes remind me of nineteenth century social realist paintings by Jozef Israels and Honore Daumier but without the pathos.  There is a calm domesticity, even intimacy in Colquhoun’s interiors.

Colquhoun - title and date unknown

In 1936 Colquhoun was appointed a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria. He died in East Malvern in 1941, survived by his wife and three of their four children.

Members of the Buonarotti Club in 1885. From left, back row; John Longstaff, Llewelyn Jones, Colquhoun, E. Phillips-Fox, Fred McCubbin. Middle row; Tudor St George Tucker, Julian Gibbs, David Davies, Fred Williams. Seated at the front is Aby Alston.

Jane Sutherland was one of the first women to be invited into the Buonarotti Club.

References;

The Australian Dictionary of Biography

Castlemaine Art Gallery

The Heidelberg School – William Splatt and Dugald McLennan

Suzanne Valadon - Feisty, Determined & Talented

“I had great masters.  I took the best of them, of their teachings, of their examples.  I found myself, I made myself and I said what I had to say.” Suzanne Valadon

The illegitimate daughter of a drunken laundress, artist Suzanne Valadon (1865 – 1938) overcame her poor background to forge a career in a man’s world.  Contrasts are drawn with Valadon’s contemporaries Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt who both came from wealthy families and were thus thought to be restricted in their subjects and outlook.  Raised on the streets, Valadon had seen it all and this gave her the confidence to be independent and paint challenging subjects.  It’s worth noting that both Morisot and Cassatt eventually bought paintings by Valadon.

When she was in her teens, Valadon worked as a bare-back rider in the circus.  But after injuring her back in a fall, she became a model for artists – supposedly one of the few professions available at the time to young, beautiful women from poor backgrounds.  During her modelling career, Valadon cleverly cultivated contacts, gleaning techniques and ideas.  She made up stories about her background – raising or lowering her age depending on the circumstances.  She became the lover of many notable artists such as Renoir who painted possibly the best known image of her.

Renoir Dance At Bougival 1883. The male figure is Renoir’s brother.

Henry Toulouse-Lautrec met Valadon when she lived just next door to him in Paris and she became his mistress and muse for about two years.  One of the most moving of all depictions of Valadon is “A Grenelle” painted by Toulouse-Lautrec and based on a song of the same title sung by the sad balladeer Aristide Bruant.

Toulouse-Lautrec ‘A Grenelle

Unlike most of Valadon’s artist contacts, Toulouse-Lautrec took her artistic ambitions seriously.  It was he who convinced Valadon to change her name from Marie-Clementine to Suzanne, claiming no one would take her seriously if she was named after a fruit.  

In 1896, she got involved with well-to-do lawyer Paul Mousis and with financial security behind her, she was able to focus full time on her art.  Mousis purchased a house for her, her mother and son (thought to be Renoir’s, but he denied this).  The marriage didn’t last and her son, the artist Maurice Utrillo was having problems of his own.  Yet through all this and beyond, her career flourished.

Without any formal training Valadon developed a technique of her own with bold heavy strokes and a very direct style, laced with emotion.  Her nudes were considered very sincere and intense.

Valadon Reclining Nude 1928 Oil On Canvas

Valadon met the artist Andre Utter through Maurice and she became transfixed by him.  She was still living with Paul at the time.

Valadon Adam and Eve 1909 Oil on canvas

The figures (believed to be Valadon and Utter) are almost life size and this is the first painting by a woman depicting a nude male and female – so it created quite a stir.  The leaves covering Utter’s genitals were a later addition to enable the exhibition of this work at the 1920 salon.  The painting is audacious as there is no idealization here, instead there is a raw fleshiness in the presentation of the bodies already entwined as Eve (Valadon) picks the forbidden fruit.  It’s thought that Valadon was referencing her relationship with Utter – an older woman with a much younger man.

Valadon  The Joy of Life  1911 Oil on canvas

This is a familiar subject painted by Cezanne, Matisse and Gauguin among others but for one major feature – the presence of the male nude modelled by Utter again.  In previous paintings of this genre, the female figures are presented as languidly displaying themselves with no suggestion of where this might lead.  But with Valadon, there is again a demystifying of the scene and a clear pointer to desire and sexual gratification.

Art historian Gill Perry writes of the female figures being strangely separated from each other, from the male viewer and from nature that surrounds them….there is no evoking of the harmony between women and nature as suggested by Matisse or Gauguin.  She puts this down to Valadon’s “robust and sharply outlined” style.  Not surprisingly, Valadon’s “marriage” to Mousis ended. 

Such was the growth in her reputation that in 1923 the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery signed an unprecedented contract with Valadon worth 1m francs per year just to have her on a retainer.

References: 

Through The Eyes Of An Artist; Suzanne Valadon – Youtube

Toulouse-Lautrec, The Full Story – ZCZ Films 2006

Suzanne Valadon – The Art Story 2019

Fred McCubbin; A Story Of Evolution

A recent article published online by the National Gallery of Victoria discussing Australian artist Fred McCubbin got me thinking about a memorable exhibition from the mid 1980’s.  “Golden Summers” was held at the NGV from October 1985 until January 1986 and it was the exhibition that left me convinced that my future would be an artistic one.  (At the time I was studying for my Associate Diploma in Cartography – GROAN!!). I can remember taking a day off work to visit the exhibition thinking the crowds would be modest – wrong!  Hell, it wasn’t even raining which is when many people think of visiting galleries.

The Golden Summers catalogue - a wonderful resource

The late 19th Century saw a blossoming of Australian landscape painting in and around Melbourne, and later, at Sydney Harbour which was part of a nationalistic fervour that was developing at the time.  This was not a uniquely Australian phenomenon, there were similar movements happening in the Barbizon School in France and in Russian landscape painting at the time.

Walking around the NGV show, I could almost taste the dust and feel the heat emanating out of these works, constantly asking myself “how did they do it?”  One of my favourite artists of this period has been Fred McCubbin whose work showed great development during his career.  While, for me, the work of Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts seemed to plateau early on in their careers.

Fred McCubbin (arrowed) with his students at the National Gallery School, 1893. Note the large number of female students. A study in art was considered part of a woman’s deportment at the time.

McCubbin, or The Prof as friends liked to call him (he was an avid reader), was born in West Melbourne in 1855. The son of a baker, his mother encouraged his fondness for drawing while a local pastor lent him Cunningham’s Lives Of The Most Eminent British Painters to read and a set of landscape prints to copy.  In 1869, McCubbin enrolled at the Artisans School of Design at the Trades Hall in Carlton and paid 2 shillings per term to study figure drawing under Thomas Clark.  Fellow students included his close friend Louis Abraham and Charles D Richardson.  According to McCubbin, “Clark was partly paralysed, he could only speak in the faintest whisper and was so feeble that he could hardly hold a crayon – so we youngsters did what we pretty well pleased.”

Among the artists he most admired early in his career was Louis Buvelot (1814 -1888), arguably the first artist to portray the Australian landscape as it really was rather than viewing it through European eyes.  In 1871 McCubbin enrolled at the National Gallery School where he remained a student for 15 years before being appointed drawing master there – a post he held (much loved, apparently) until his death in 1917.

Home Again, 1884, oil on canvas, 85 x 123 cm. This early work shows the strong influence on McCubbin of his teacher G F Folingsby.

McCubbin married in 1889 and the following year he named his first son Louis, after his close friend Louis Abraham.  Abraham reciprocated by naming his son Frederick.  Abraham had shown great promise as a painter and founded, along with McCubbin and Tom Roberts, an artist’s camp at Box Hill in 1885, but he had to devote more time to managing his father’s cigar manufacturing business.  During the 1890’s he became increasingly depressed, once writing to Roberts in Sydney of his lost artistic career.  He committed suicide in the cellar of the factory in 1903.

A Bush Burial, 1890, oil on canvas, 123 x 225 cm

Whilst at Box Hill, McCubbin painted A Bush Burial in 1890.  He dug the grave in his own backyard and the female figure is his wife, Anne.  He initially intended to title the work Last Of The Pioneers, as by the 1880’s a nostalgic reverence for the pioneering early days of settlement was already widespread in the now largely urban community.

It’s instructive to contrast this painting with one of his later works, Autumn Morning, South Yarra from 1916.  Over the decades, commentators have tended to focus on the narrative aspects of McCubbin’s work, yet in his own writings McCubbin discussed the craft of painting and his fascination with the painted surface together with the use of different materials and techniques.

Autumn Morning, South Yarra, 1916, oil on canvas, 68 cm x 135 cm

It is argued in the NGV article that the apparent spontaneity of Autumn Morning is misleading and the work is actually just as technically complex and fastidiously constructed as his early work.  He would apply the paint layer, let it dry and then rub it back to reveal the layers underneath.  He would manipulate the paint using palette knives, brush handles and even cloth.  “Experimentation with the construction of the painting was clearly of far greater interest to McCubbin than was the subject itself”.

McCubbin’s preferences in supports changed over time as well as his technique.  In Lost 1886, the paint is applied thinly over a finely woven canvas.  However in Lost 1907, McCubbin used a much courser canvas to assist in the development of texture of the painted surface.  In his early paintings, he concentrated on careful modelling of forms using predominately brushes and playing down the surface.  Later in his career, he focussed on the development of the surface using a variety of techniques.

What The Girl Saw In The Bush, 1904, oil on canvas (private collection)

In What The Girl Saw In The Bush 1904, McCubbin appears to have applied the paint directly onto a cotton surface without any preparation of sizing and priming.  This is thought to be bad practise and yet the painting has survived well.  This highlights McCubbin’s keenness for experimentation.

So why the transformation in McCubbin’s technique, you may be wondering?  I always thought it was his trip to Europe in 1907 which was the catalyst for change.  But as I have discovered in this NGV article, his technique was undergoing transformation long before this which makes it all the more remarkable.  It is his desire for innovation that stands McCubbin apart from almost all of his contemporaries.

The Pool Heidelberg, 1910 oil on canvas, 50 x 75 cm

For me, it is something of a relief to learn that McCubbin’s later work was not as spontaneous as it seems, that he worked and reworked the surface to get the effect he wanted.  Patience, perseverance and a willingness to experiment is just as important in an artist’s armoury as raw talent.

References;

Golden Summers - exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Victoria, 1985

The Art of Frederick McCubbin, His Materials and Techniques - NGV Art Journal 33

The Woman Who Conquered Marcel Duchamp

In the final 20 years of his life, Marcel Duchamp secretly carried out work on an installation piece that none of his friends were aware of at all.  Quite an achievement for one of the 20th Century’s most famous artists. He gave explicit instructions that it was not to be displayed to the public until after his death which was in 1968, and the work had puzzled and intrigued friends and art critics alike for more than 30 years since.  It had been assumed that Duchamp had given up producing art decades before – but not so.

Marcel Duchamp, ‘Etant Donnes’ (Given), 1948-68, mixed media

The personal drama that inspired this masterpiece is as fascinating as the piece itself.  Born in 1887, Duchamp was a French painter, sculptor, chess player and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, conceptualism, whatever took his fancy at the time.  Early in his career he experimented with various painting styles which he later referred to as his swimming lessons.  Having become proficient in a particular style, he got bored with it and moved on to the next.  The final painting during this restless period was the now famous Nude Descending A Staircase which was regarded by Cubists of the period as an affront to their genre.

Marcel Duchamp, ‘Nude Descending A Staircase’, 1912 oil on canvas, 147 cm x 89 cm

As a consequence, Duchamp removed himself from the Cubist coterie and never worked within a group again.  He said he was never comfortable being in a group because he always wanted to make a personal contribution.

He then decided to subvert centuries of art history with his readymades, everyday objects which he turned into art simply by adding his signature.  The most notorious being a urinal he submitted to an exhibition in 1917.   He once said he didn’t care for the word “art”, it’s been so discredited. And after being reminded that he had contributed to this discrediting himself, he agreed but also referred to the ‘unnecessary adoration’ of art today.  “But this is hard for me because I have been in it all my life and yet I want to get rid of it”.  A conflicted individual, perhaps?

One of his more perplexing works was “Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even” or “Large Glass” which was thought to reflect his inability to combine sexual and emotional involvement.  It is an etching in glass which he worked on for 8 years from 1915.

Marcel Duchamp, ‘Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even”

The top glass is thought to contain the bride whilst below her are nine bachelors seeking to be united with her but are locked in an endless cycle of frustration.  The remarkable American artist Beatrice Wood (1892 – 1998) fell in love with Duchamp in 1916, but found him perplexing and emotionally detached.  He was regarded by his friends as the king of the bachelors, but then along came Maria Martins.

Martins was the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to the United States.  They arrived in New York in 1939.  Early in her life in Brazil it was thought that she would become a professional musician, instead she became a very accomplished sculptor. After her first marriage ended she moved to France where she met and then married the diplomat Carlos Martins Pereira e Souza, and through his various postings, she learnt a variety of styles from woodcarving, ceramics to bronze carving  which would become her medium of choice.

Maria Martins, ‘The Impossible’ 1946, Bronze

Not long after arriving in New York she fell in with a group of surrealist exiles which included André Breton, Max Ernst, André Masson and inevitably Marcel Duchamp.  The surrealists had an impact on her work which became more complex, organic and plant like but still drew on Amazonian folklore.  The female figure was always central to her work.

Maria Martins, ‘However II’ 1948, Bronze

Martins began her passionate affair with Duchamp in 1946.  Her daughter, Nora Martins Lobo thought it was extraordinary that they could get involved given that they were so different – he, a cold, withdrawn intellectual and she a passionate person who loved and hated violently.  At this time her life alternated between the diplomatic circle in Washington and a more bohemian life in New York.  He was fascinated by her and she found him a challenge and according to her daughter, Maria loved challenges.

Duchamp’s biographer, Calvin Tomkins, believes this relationship opened him up emotionally in ways that had never happened before.  He was unable to maintain the emotional detachment that had characterised so much of his life.  In 1947 Duchamp produced an erotic sketch of her that confirms Maria was the model for the Etant Donnes.

During their 2 year affair Duchamp encouraged Maria’s development as a sculptor, spending many hours in her studio and helping to organise exhibitions of her work.  But in 1948, her husband was posted overseas – and off she went.  This left Duchamp devastated and he wrote a series of despairing letters begging her to return whilst working on the Etant Donnes.

In an interview, Nora Martins Lobo draws attention to the sculpture ‘However II’ (above) and how the figure has her feet firmly on the ground – and that was her mother.  She knew she had to stop flying and come back to earth.  Maria and Duchamp met briefly in 1951 and he resigned himself to the fact that it was over.  “I feel happy when I think of you”, he wrote.

Duchamp was briefly married in 1927, but in 1954 he married Alexina Matisse (Teeny), daughter in-law of Henri.  They had a happy marriage and she helped him construct the Etant Donnes.  Late in the development, he changed the colour of the hair in the model to match Teeny’s, not Maria’s. In accordance with his wishes, the Etant Donnes was installed in a room next to the Large Glass at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Initially the public is confronted by a large wooden door that Duchamp found in Spain and had transported back to New York.  Through 2 peep holes, the viewer can see a body moulded in plaster and pig skin sprawled out on grass and twigs (first image).

When it was revealed to the public, the work came as a shock to those who thought they knew him as it seemed a denial and contradiction of everything he stood for.

In 1966 a major retrospective of Duchamp’s work was being installed in London by artist Richard Hamilton.  Shortly before the exhibition opened a mysterious package arrived from Brazil which contained the picture below.  The sender was Maria Martins.  Hamilton spoke of taking Duchamp on an inspection of the show just before the opening and when they came to this picture, Duchamp seemed initially shocked and then clammed up, not wanting to talk about it.

Maria Martins died in 1973 at the age of 78 and spent her last few years holding occasional exhibitions before turning to writing essays on poetry.

Maria Martins, ‘Night Chant’ 1968, (her last sculpture), gold bronze

References;

The Secret of Marcel Duchamp – BBC/RM Arts, 1997

www.awarewomenartists.com

Calm In A Crisis

At times like these when we are reeling from the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic, not to mention last summer’s bushfires, we can become so pumped up with anxiety and dread that we can forget to keep an appointment with someone very important - our inner selves.

We might have intimations of it whilst driving on a quiet freeway or when contemplating a sunset or dawn.  I can remember when I was a kid the beautiful aroma of eucalypt forests that would waft across the suburbs of Melbourne first thing on a hot summer’s day, before the traffic pollution and rising heat obliterated it. 

Author Alain de Botton argues that we should bring a little perspective back to our needlessly tense and preciously brief lives.  I think the operative words here are “preciously brief”, and this brings me to a regular theme of his at the School of Life – the concept of a higher consciousness.  For much of our lives we have no choice but to live in a state of lower consciousness – we must in order to attend to practical everyday matters.  But taken to an extreme, this can lead to us over reacting to insults, blaming others and developing an exalted sense of who we are, our beliefs, and our place in the world.

Alone In The Marches, oil on canvas, 71 cm x 100 cm

Achieving a higher state of consciousness involves loosening our hold over our own egos and rising to a less biased perspective of the world.  Our mind moves beyond self-interest and cravings and we are able to relate more to our natural environment, wind, cloud, trees or even the aroma of a distant forest.  We may even start to have a little more compassion for our fellow human beings.  Periods of higher consciousness can be desperately short lived, but the idea is to harvest their insights for the panicky periods when we need them most.  This is not easy to achieve and I am still working on it.

Art has a role to play here as you will see from the following;

Jacob Van Ruisdael, ‘Wheat Fields’, ca 1670, oil on canvas

A man with a traveller’s pack approaches a woman and child in a cultivated landscape.  There is a glimpse of boats at sea on the far left.  But it’s clear the viewers’ eye is directed to the dominant sky which takes us to another level of consciousness, and thus the encounter below is rendered insignificant.

Caspar David Friedrich, ‘Monk By The Sea’, 1809, oil on canvas

This painting was daring in its originality when exhibited at the Berlin Academy in 1810.  It’s not strictly a landscape or a seascape, so what is it?  Friedrich once said a painter should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within himself.  This could involve making a conversion from the material world into the spiritual world.  At a time when most artists were producing images of an idealized or corporeal world, Friedrich presented viewers with a void.  Or is it?  The presence of a figure who appears to confront the unknowable void before him adds a poignancy to the work and gives it an emotional power.  Critic Robert Rosenblum argues this painting prefigures the work of Turner and Rothko who sought to escape from the material world by distilling the mysteries of nature and spirit in veils of atmospheric colour.

Antoine Chintreuil, ‘Expanse’, 1869, oil on canvas

As the realities of the industrial revolution began to hit home, with grueling and often dangerous factory work replacing traditional farm labour, there grew a demand for images of a disappearing rural Arcadia.  People were flocking to the cities to find work and just survive.

Many artists of the mid-19th century began to focus on nature’s awesome immensity as, perhaps, a form of meditation including Antoine Chintreuil with this painting that made quite an impact at the Paris Salon of 1869.  There is a rural setting in the foreground but this is reduced to insignificance by the vast horizon and the sky above.  The scene is peaceful and the sunrise “suggests a benevolent deity presiding over the verdant land below.” ROSENBLUM

‘Arctic Summer’, oil on canvas, 77 cm x 92 cm

Places like these really do exist and we need to acknowledge them.  They can bring a context to our own existence in the overall scheme of things.  Our relationship with the natural world is a contract.  If we respect the laws of nature, we will reap the benefits.  If not, we will be punished - as is becoming increasingly apparent.

‘Hopetoun Lawn’, oil on canvas on board, 61 cm x 72 cm

When I paint a scene I try to imagine being there, how I am feeling in that scene – perhaps serene or a little melancholy but not anxious.  It helps me create a mood so that these scenes are intended to be more than just a record of what’s there.  I guess you could argue that I’m trying to access a state of higher consciousness.

References;

Alain De Botton - The School Of Life

Robert Rosenblum - Paintings In The Musee D’orsay

Robert Rosenblum & H. W. Janson - Art Of The Nineteenth Century, Painting and Sculpture

A Real Artist Murdered By A Failed One

The failed artist is, of course, Adolf Hitler who showed his contempt for the arts establishment by holding his “Exhibition of Degenerate Art” in 1937.  This was payback time, his revenge on all those who had the temerity to reject him as an art student.

Friedl Dicker devoted her life to art and art education – even in a Nazi concentration camp she used art to offer the children “a little bit of normality.”

She was born in Vienna in 1898 and her mother died when she was four.  She was raised alone by her father who was an assistant in a stationary store and it was in here she found all the material she needed to give full reign to her imagination.  When she was in her mid-teens she studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and earned money on the side at the theatre, where she organised props, made costumes, performed on stage and wrote plays.

Dicker eventually studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar and found like minded students who shared her interest in the functions of objects.  She produced marionettes for a state fair in Weimar which drew and captivated children.  She also studied textiles and the lithographic process and when her favourite painter Paul Klee arrived at the Bauhaus, she attended his lectures on the nature of art and the childlike imagination.

Friedl Dicker, Design for a recital evening at the Bauhaus

Dicker became involved in a theatre troupe along with Franz Singer with whom she had a long-standing relationship which continued even after Singer got married.  She fell pregnant to him several times, but at Singer’s insistence, she had several abortions. 

In 1923 the two of them founded the 'Werkstätten Bildender Kunst' (Workshops for visual art), which produced toys, jewellery, textiles and bookbindings, graphic designs and theatre sets.  Thus they travelled regularly between several European cities.  They later set up an architecture office and won several awards.  Their relationship ended when Singer’s son died.

Friedl Brandeis, Begonias At The Window, 1936, Tempera on paper

In 1931 Friedl Dicker opened up a new chapter in her life when she ran courses for kindergarten teachers.  The focus was on art and sensitizing adults to recognise the children’s personalities and artistic abilities, and to encourage the children to concentrate on a creative process.

Dicker became an active member of the Communist Party and when Hitler came to power in 1933, the party went underground.  Dicker’s studio was searched and when forged identity papers were found, she was jailed.  On the testimony of Singer, she was later released and then fled to Prague.  It was here where she married Pavel Brandeis in 1936 whilst working on renovating homes and developing textile designs.

Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Friedl’s friends pleaded with her to emigrate but she refused to leave her husband who by now could not get a visa.  Meanwhile the art dealer Paul Weingraf was exhibiting some of Friedl’s paintings in the Arcadia Gallery in London.

Friedl Brandeis, View Of Theresienstadt, 1944 , Pastel

In 1942 she and Pavel were transported to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt where she became a carer in one of the girls’ homes.  She taught them painting and drawing with the intention of publishing (after the war) her own study on art therapy for children.  Theatre became part of the lessons and the students painted stage sets and dressed up in costumes.  With her work as a carer and Pavel’s work as a carpenter, they began to decorate the children’s’ homes thus making life a little more bearable in a bleak environment.

Display at the Museum Of Tolerance, Los Angeles, 2004

In the autumn of 1944, Friedl and Pavel Brandeis were transported by rail to Auschwitz concentration camp.  Shortly before leaving, Friedl packed a suitcase full of the children’s drawings and they were hidden before being delivered to the Jewish community in Prague in August 1945.  Pavel survived Auschwitz.  Friedl didn’t.  She died on 9th October 1944, childless and just one day after arriving at Auschwitz.

Source: American PBS

Bauhaus100.com

Art After Dark

Night time has been described as the time when reality disappears and imaginings begin.  People somehow seem less sane at night, according to Mark Twain.  Shakespeare described night as the witching time and the night seems to have been a particularly productive time for many artists, particularly those interested in images of drama, mystery and perhaps even madness.

Georges Del La Tour, Magdalen With A Smoking Flame, circa 1640

“If you are trying to image things rather than look at them, to see them with your mind’s eye, then darkness comes into its own, and the night becomes your ally.  The dark brought drama to our divine imaginings and made them feel real.” WALDEMAR jANUSZCZAK

Ippolito Caffi, Serenade In St Marks Place

Italian artist Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866) seems to have had a particularly intense relationship with the night. His daytime scenes of Venice are superb but it’s his night time scenes that are relevant here, and he is a difficult artist to find any substantial information on.

Ippolito Caffi, Marketplace in Venice by Moonlight

At an exhibition of his work, held at the Museo Correr in Venice in 2016, (what I would have given to see it) the catalogue describes Caffi as a restless observer of society and a convinced patriot.  “Venice was the city that Caffi loved most, whose freedom he fought for and whose spectacular beauty he translated into painting, employing a capacity for synthesis unequaled during the entire nineteenth century.”

Ippolito Caffi, The Pantheon By Moonlight

His patriotism drove him to become the first painter to record an Italian naval engagement, but his efforts came to nothing.  The Re d' Italia, on which he traveled was destroyed on July 20, 1866, by the Austro-Venetian fleet at the Battle of Lissa, drowning him along with his comrades.

Ippolito Caffi, Solar Eclipse Over Venice 1842

Caffi was also a fine chronicler of unusual events. Here is his depiction of a solar eclipse. One wonders how many of these people lost their sight whilst witnessing this event.

Johann Christian Claussen Dahl, Dresden In The Moonlight, 1839

There’s a gorgeous serenity in Johann Christian Dahl’s moonlit scenes of Dresden.  They take me to another level of consciousness, whereas I suspect a daytime view would not have the same effect.  The candle lit rooms across the river and the flares on the river bank contrast beautifully with the cold light of the moon.

Edward Hopper, The Nighthawks, 1943

Film directors love the paintings of American artist Edward Hopper. There are so many questions being posed here. What is the relationship between the couple on the right? What about the menacing figure of the guy with the powerful shoulders who has his back to us? No one has been able to precisely locate where this scene is, perhaps a deliberate ploy by Hopper to increase the mystery of the scene.

Moonlight Near Roxby Downs, 2014, Oil On Canvas, 101 cm x 142 cm

Roxby Downs is located in outback South Australia and this painting was inspired by a photo I saw of a lightning strike in the area, and I was particularly interested in the sheen on the water created by the lightning fork.  So I decided to turn the scene into a moonlit night time image, partly because of the challenge it presented and partly to highlight the isolation of the scene. And yet, the cold moonlight perhaps gives the scene a softness and harmony that may not be present during the daytime when you could image the appalling heat during the summer months.