My Inspirations for November II

This month I’ve read a few good books in a row, which is such a delight. So, I’ve read an avant-garde book ‘Novel with Cocaine’ by M. Ageyev, then finally Madame Bovary by Flaubert, Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, novella Asya by Turgenev and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. I’ve watched some good films too; La Verite (1960) and Love is my profession (1958); both with Brigitte Bardot, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – really, really good, loved the costumes, the setting, wow! You’ve probably all seen it, but it was totally new and fresh and exciting for me. Well, I have to say that, as December arrives, my thoughts go to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierrot and circus – that might be a hint for my following posts.

NPG x103060; Betty Lindley

English actress Jane Asher drinks from a cup whilst reading papers in her kitchen in London in 1966. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Comparison: Picasso and Kirchner

Who knew there’s a connection between Picasso and Kirchner? Even though their painting styles are rather different, on one occasion they did portray a similar subject – a subject of prostitutes, common for Kirchner, and also a theme of one of the most famous Picasso’s work – The Young Ladies of Avignon.

Five Women in the Street, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1913

These two paintings are executed in very different ways which is a result of the different art movements Kirchner and Picasso belonged to, but the subject that they portrayed so memorably is the same. Pablo Picasso’s painting The Young Ladies of Avignon is a good representation of the Cubist art movement which Picasso co-founded, whilst Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting Five Women in the Street is painted in Expressionistic manner. However, both of the paintings show prostitutes, five of them on each painting. While Picasso painted their bodies in very natural pinkish tones, and shaped them quite sharply, following Cezanne’s theory of shapes (an idea that everything in nature can be parceled into geometrical shapes). If you take a close look, you’ll notice how torsos are shaped like triangles, and their breasts like circles and quadrilaterals. Also, it’s interesting to note the unusual perspective, typical for Cubism by the way; a perspective which shows women’s eyes and nose from different angles, as if the viewer was walking around the painting. On the other hand, Kirchner painted these ‘fallen women’ in a very gothic manner; elongated, with thin, fragile bodies wrapped in dark coats, their faces pale, sickly, resembling masks. While yellow colour in Picasso’s painted exceeds into warm and safe earthly, pinkish tones, in Kirchner’s painting yellow looks feeble, grim and apocalyptic.

Refusal of the traditional conception of beauty is evident in both paintings. If we remember the ways Rubens or Titian painted their voluptuous beauties, and compare it with these part angular, part mask-like body parts, and add the other details I numbered above, it becomes clear that these two paintings are pure avant-garde. Both Picasso and Kirchner’s women appear ugly and grotesque compared to more traditional artworks, but we have to be open-minded in order to appreciate these peculiar, off-beat beauties. It is also the atmosphere of these paintings that differs them; Picasso’s painting appears stable, almost frozen in time, while Kirchner portrayed the city’s dynamics, hastiness, feeling of anxiety, fear and hopelessness – Kirchner’s women are walking up and down the streets of pre-catastrophe Berlin.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon), Pablo Picasso, 1907

Victorian Interiors in Art

1850s Preparing for a walk, Samuel Baldwin

1858. Past and Present – Augustus Egg

1859. Departing for the Promenade (Will You Go Out with Me, Fido) by Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens

1859. Lady at a Window Feeding Birds by Alfred Stevens

1861. The lesson – Jules Trayer

1866. The Contest for the Bouquet (also known as The Family of Robert Gordon in Their New York Dining-Room) Seymour Joseph Guy

1867. Auguste Toulmouche Consolation

1867. Grandmother’s Birthday (La Fête de la Grandmère), Josephus Laurentius Dyckmans

1869. James Tissot, Young Women Looking at Japanese Objects

1869. The Game of Billiards by Charles Edouard Boutibonne

1869. The Way by James Tissot

1870s An evening at home by Edward John Poynter

1872. Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Portrait of Marquesa de Manzanedo

1873. The Love Letter. Charles-Louis Baugniet (27 February 1814 Brussels – 5 July 1886 Sèvres), was a Belgian painter, lithographer and aquarellist.

1874. Alfred Stevens – After the Ball

1874. An Afternoon Idyll Auguste Toulmouche

1874. Auguste Toulmouche – The letter

1874. Before the Wedding – Firs Sergeevich Zhuravlev

1874. The Irritating Gentleman – Berthold Woltze

1874. William J. Hennessy ‘An Old Song’

1875. By The Fireplace – Jules Adolphe Goupil

1875. Lucius Rossi – Young Woman Reading

1875. Summer by John Atkinson Grimshaw

1877. Auguste Toulmouche, Sweet Doing Nothing

1877. Hide and Seek – Tissot

1880. À la toilette by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe

1880. After the Wedding – Firs Zhuravlev

1880. Gustave Courtois in his studio by Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret

1880s lady by Albert Edelfelt

1880s M. Püttner – Still Life with Chinese Vase and Fan

1880s The Heir by Adolphe Weisz

1882. The Proposal by Knut Ekwall

Harry Clarke’s Illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories (1919)