Belmiro de Almeida: I hate that sadness in your eyes, but Angie, ain’t it time we said goodbye?

“I hate that sadness in your eyes
But Angie, Angie
Ain’t it time we said goodbye?“

Belmiro de Almeida, Bad News, 1897

Brasilian painter Belmiro de Almeida is an artist that I have recently discovered and a few of his paintings I found particularly interesting these days and they are also thematically connected. Belmiro de Almeida was born in Serra in 1858 and studied in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, but later travelled to Europe where he studied in the Academie Julian in Paris. He loved Paris so much that for the rest of his life he would live half in Brasil and half in Paris. His perhaps most famous painting is “The Spat” from 1887, which I’ll show bellow, but the one that is the most interesting to me is the one above called “Bad News”, painted in 1897. The painting shows a woman alone in a room. She is leaning over the sofa and hiding her crying face. The space around her is empty save for some furniture in the background. The circle shape of the painting is especially interesting to me, it looks as if we are gazing at her through a keyhole. This is a very intimate scene because we are seeing the delicate, vulnerable side of the woman, the side that she would otherwise hide from everyone. But she is not wearing her mask now. No, her eyes are probably puffy and her cheeks flushed, her hair disarrayed. Oh, if someone walked in on her now, the tragedy would be all hers. This intimate, informal, secretive almost mood is further accentuated by the garments that she is wearing and her long and gorgeous hair flowing freely down her back. She is alone in the room, alone with the letter which is obviously the source of all her anguish. Oh Angie, don’t you weep! How many paintings there are in art history where a single (love) letter can completely set the tone and the mood for the painting? In the paintings of Vermeer and Fragonard for example, a love letter can send one flying or can throw one into the deepest, darkest abyss. The “Bad News” from the painting’s title refers to the letter on the floor. What is in the letter? We can never know for sure, but we can guess… Perhaps the letter says:

“Angie, Angie
When will those clouds all disappear?
Angie, Angie
Where will it lead us from here?
With no lovin’ in our souls
And no money in our coats
You can’t say we’re satisfied
Angie, Angie
You can’t say we never tried
Angie, you’re beautiful, yeah
But ain’t it time we said goodbye?
Angie, I still love you
Remember all those nights we cried?
All the dreams were held so close
Seemed to all go up in smoke
Let me whisper in your ear
Angie, Angie
Where will it lead us from here
Oh, Angie, don’t you weep
Oh, your kisses still taste sweet
I hate that sadness in your eyes
But Angie, Angie
Ain’t it time we said goodbye? Yeah“

Belmiro de Almeida, The Spat, 1887

Painting “The Spat” shows an argument between a bourgeous couple. While the woman is shown leaning over the sofa and weeping, the man is smoking a pipe and has the most disinterested look on his face. You can almost hear the woman asking the man “Do my tears mean nothing to you, do they not pull at your heart’s strings?”, and I can imagine the man saying, “No, my darling, they do not.” He just seems so disinterested and lacking any emotion. He probably finds her crying more tedious than touching. There is an emotional distance between them and the woman pose, her turning her back on him, is not only a way of hiding her face but also perhaps a body language. There is a pink rose on the carpet on the floor, some of its petals scattered about, and the rose here, just like the letter in the previous painting, brings a sad touch to it.

Van Gogh and Hiroshige: Plum Blossoms and Pink Skies

“Just think of that; isn’t it almost a new religion that these Japanese teach us, who are so simple and live in nature as if they themselves were flowers? And we wouldn’t be able to study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming much happier and more cheerful, and it makes us return to nature, despite our education and our work in a world of convention.”

Hiroshige, Plum Park in Kameido, 1857

This beautiful scene of an orchard in bloom, “Plum Park in Kameido”, is probably the most famous print made by the Japanese Ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige in 1857. It is the thirtieth print from the collection of 119 ukiyo-e prints “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” which were mostly done by Hiroshige and, after Hiroshige’s death in 1858, the rest of the prints were done by his successor Hiroshige II. Around ten thousand copies were made of each of these prints and after Japan reopened to the West in 1853 these prints travelled even to France where painters such as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and many, many other painters got their hands on them and used them as inspiration. Vincent van Gogh not only took inspiration from these prints, but also made copies. In many of his letters, Vincent mentions his love for Japan and ukiyo-e prints, here is an example, from a letter to his brother Theo, 23 or 24 September 1888:

“If we study Japanese art, then we see a man, undoubtedly wise and a philosopher and intelligent, who spends his time — on what? — studying the distance from the earth to the moon? — no; studying Bismarck’s politics? — no, he studies a single blade of grass.

But this blade of grass leads him to draw all the plants — then the seasons, the broad features of landscapes, finally animals, and then the human figure. He spends his life like that, and life is too short to do everything.

Just think of that; isn’t it almost a new religion that these Japanese teach us, who are so simple and live in nature as if they themselves were flowers?

And we wouldn’t be able to study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming much happier and more cheerful, and it makes us return to nature, despite our education and our work in a world of convention. (…) I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity that everything in their work has. It’s never dull, and never appears to be done too hastily. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure with a few confident strokes with the same ease as if it was as simple as buttoning your waistcoat. Ah, I must manage to do a figure with a few strokes. That will keep me busy all winter. Once I have that, I’ll be able to do people strolling along the boulevards, the streets, a host of new subjects.”

Vincent van Gogh, Flowering Plum Tree (after Hiroshige), 1887

Since we are now in the time of the year when the white and pink blossoms are starting to adorn the sad and bare three branches, these paintings have been on my mind. Van Gogh painted a copy of Hiroshige’s “Plum Park in Kameido” sometime in September or October 1887 whilst he was still in Paris. As you can see, Hiroshige used a very interesting perspective here and the entire plum orchard in bloom is seen through the tree branches of the plum tree in the foreground. The plum tree in the foreground is very cheekily obscuring our view, as if we are gazing at something forbidden, something mysterious on the other side of the fence. In the background, many plum trees in bloom are painted. In Van Gogh’s copy the tree tops of those plum trees in the background are especially dreamy, they look like soft, yellowish clouds, and the gradation of that yellowish-white colour to the red of the sky is quite exquisite. The grass of the orchard is a flat green surface with almost no visible brushstrokes. Van Gogh usually loved layers of colour and rough brushstrokes, but here he was inspired by the flatness of Hiroshige’s print and tried to mimic it.

Vincent van Gogh, View of Arles with Trees in Blossom (Orchard in Bloom with View of Arles), 1889

Vincent van Gogh, The Flowering Orchard, 1888

And to end, here are two more van Gogh’s paintings of orchards in a Japanese style and another excerpt from Vincent’s letter, this time to Emile Bernard, which mentions his love for Japanese art, written in Arles, on Sunday 18 March 1888:

“My dear Bernard,

Having promised to write to you, I want to begin by telling you that this part of the world seems to me as beautiful as Japan for the clearness of the atmosphere and the gay colour effects. The stretches of water make patches of a beautiful emerald and a rich blue in the landscapes, as we see it in the Japanese prints. Pale orange sunsets making the fields look blue — glorious yellow suns. (…) Perhaps there’d be a real advantage in emigrating to the south for many artists in love with sunshine and colour. The Japanese may not be making progress in their country, but there’s no doubt that their art is being carried on in France.“

William Quiller Orchardson – Le mariage de convenance

“Mariage de Convenance” and “The First Cloud” are two out of three painting that William Quiller Orchardson painted on the subject of an unhappy marriage.

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, Mariage de Convenance, 1884

A quiet family drama is taking place in these sumptuous Victorian interiors. Nothing is as it seems in the posh circles of the two-faced Victorian society. Secrets are hidden behind the red-brick facades, glass windows and thick crimson red damask curtains. A rich and disillusioned old husband is sitting at the head of the table in an elegant dining room. His bored and miserable young wife is sitting across the table. While the servant is serving the husband, the wife seems uninterested in the dinner. Her pose makes her seem wistful and emotionally distant and her thoughts are far away from the content of that fancy porcelain plate. The table is filled with food and drink, she is dressed in the latest fashion, her husband is clearly wealthy and she could have anything her hearts desires, but she is not happy. No laughter or chatter colour the evening, no smiles or traces of intimacy. Boredom is hanging like a cloud over their dining room table and neither of the two know how to connect with the other.

The allegorical cloud I just mentioned shows up in the title of the next painting, “The First Cloud”, painted in 1887. Once again we see the perfectly elegant and sumptuous Victorian interior with two elegant figures; the husband and his young wife. But the evening must be a miserable one indeed, for they are as distant emotionally as they are on the canvas. He is standing on the carpet by the fireplace, gazing out longingly at her, as if he is hopeful for some kind of connection, a glance from her pretty eyes, a sweet word or two. But the lady in an elegant evening gown isn’t the least bit interested in him; she is standing by the window and looking out, at the world, at the bustle of the streets, at the passing carriages, for everything is more interesting than day to day life with her husband. Her silhouette in that pale pink gown looks graceful, but instead of a sensual mood she seems cold. The fancy chambers feel like silk cages and a captive bird does not sing.

It’s hard not to sense a certain tension and unease between the pair. The dull palette of beige, rusty red and brown colours seems to mirror the dullness of their lives, and the vastness of their elegantly decorated rooms and the empty space between them is purposefully here to accentuate the loneliness and distrust that has grown and is growing between them. Orchardson used his friend, a fellow artist, Tom Graham, for the figure of the man. Orchardson painted many scenes set in Regency era and some previous eras, but the canvases on which he depicted his own time have proved to be his most popular works because they reflect the spirit of the times and the contrast between the outward appearance of things and the true essence; loveless marriages and unhappiness behind a facade of wealth.

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, The First Cloud, 1887

Happy Birthday, Marc Chagall!

A dreamer amongst artists, a poet of colours, a kind soul with a psychedelic imagination: Marc Chagall, was born on 7th July 1887. Let us dive into the beauty of his art, be high as kites for a while, and then close our eyes and become a part of his world of love, dreams, flowers and the rapturous ecstatic blue colour.

Marc Chagall, Bouquet près de la fenêtre, 1959-60

I think this is a good moment to read about Chagall’s years in Paris and the whimsicality of his art. If you are perhaps interested in the mystery behind his birthdate and the symbolism of number seven in his art, you can read about it here. And this is a post I wrote about Chagall last February:

Marc Chagall – The Paris Years (1910-1914)

‘At that time I had grasped that I had to go to Paris. The soil that had nourished my art was Vitebsk; but my art needed Paris as much as a tree needs water. I had no other reason for leaving my homeland, and I believe that in my paintings I have always remained true to it.’ (Marc Chagall, My Life)

Marc Chagall, Paris Through the Window, 1913

It’s 1910 and Marc Chagall has just arrived in Paris. After a four day journey by railway from Saint Petersburg, he settled in the first available atelier. Paris was the Mecca for young artists; dominant art form at the time was Cubism, all sorts of avant-garde movement, both in painting and poetry, were emerging and art circles of Paris had just began migrating from Montmartre to a chic area called Montparnasse which would remain a home to many artists in the years that followed.

Chagall visited ‘Salon des Indépendants’ (Society of Independent Artists), just a day after he arrived in the ‘capital of arts’. He visited Louvre as well. He realised there, in front of the canvases by Manet, Monet, Pissaro and Millet, why for all those years Russian art seemed foreign to him, why he couldn’t connect with it. Language of his paintings was foreign and bizarre to Russian artists. Chagall soon enrolled at Academie de La Palette, an avant-garde art school. Other notable pupils of the school were: Sonia Delaunay, Roger de La Fresnaye and Lyubov Popova.

Marc Chagall, Still-life (Nature morte), 1912

Still, not everything was as rose-tinted as it may seem. In addition to being penniless and not speaking French, Chagall was very lonely and often his thoughts wandered back to his home in Vitebsk, his Hasidic experiences, Russian folklore, and his beloved Bella. ‘All that prevented me from returning immediately was the distance between Paris and my home town’, he wrote in his autobiography My Life.

After living in a small atelier in Montmarte, Chagall moved into one of the studios in artist’s residence called ‘La Ruche’ (literary Bee Hive, named after the shape of the building), in Montparnasse. This atelier was more spacious than the previous one, which meant he was able to use larger canvases. Night after night he painted until dawn. Sometimes he used cut-out sheets and his nightshirts instead of proper canvases. His atelier was often disorderly; eggshells and tins of cheap soup could be found lying around. On the wooden table reproductions of El Greco and Cezanne’s painting laid scattered around. Sometimes, after a night spent painting furiously, he thought of buying warm croissants on the loan, but went to bed instead. In the market, he could only afford to buy a cucumber, as he once said. Other mornings, he hoped his friend Blaise Cendrars would come around and take him to breakfast. Also, Chagall painted naked because he despised being dressed, and he had poor taste when it came to clothing. One of his neighbours in La Ruche was Chaim Soutine, a ‘wilful and grouchy eccentric’ and a fellow Eastern Jew.

Various sounds could be heard coming from the ateliers: humiliated models wept in Russian studios, Italian ateliers echoed with songs, romance and sounds of guitar, in Jewish – discussions and quarrels, while Chagall painted in solitude and silence.

Marc Chagall, The Fiddler, 1912

Chagall couldn’t have chosen a better moment to come to Paris. Russian artists were welcomed with great enthusiasm. Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, formed in 1909, sparked a passion for all things Russian and exotic. Diaghilev brought together dancers, choreographers, musicians, writers and painters. Ballets such as Scheherazade, Les Orientales and Stravinsky’s The Firebird caused sensation. Exotic mood, colourful costumes, emphasis on the individual dancer and expressive dance movements changed public’s notion of ballet, and opened doors for many young artists to express themselves. Leon Bakst, Chagall’s former teacher in Saint Petersburg, came to Paris and worked as a scene-painter for Russian Ballet.

Chagall once visited Diaghilev’s ballet, hoping to encounter Bakst and Nijinsky. Behind the scenes he stumbled upon rosy-cheeked and red-haired Bakst who smiled to him. Then Nijinsky came along, but quickly returned to the stage where he performed a dance from the ballet ‘Le spectre de la rose’ with Tamara Karsavina. Italian poet Gabrielle D’Annuzio was flirting with Ida Rubinstein. Bakst considered hiring Chagall as his helper in scene-painting, but he quickly dismissed the idea when he saw how unskilled Chagall was.

Marc Chagall, Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers, 1913

Interestingly, Marc Chagall’s circle of friends in Paris was mostly comprised of poets and writers, not merely painters. His closest friends were Guillaume Apollinaire, poet, novelist and art critic whom Chagall called ‘gentle Zeus’, and Swiss-born poet and novelist Blaise Cendrars, whom many considered as Rimbaud’s direct heir in poetry style. Sonia and Robert Delaunay were one of his painter-friends. Chagall was drawn to Sonia for various reasons: they were almost the same age, both grew up in Jewish homes and both had studied art in St. Petersburg.

Unlike Sonia, who fully delved into Orphism along with her husband Robert, Chagall’s paintings from ‘The Paris Years’ burst with motifs reminiscent of his childhood in Vitebsk. Painting ‘I and the Village’, a psychedelic Cubist fairytale, with soft, velvety colour transitions, is a whimsical kaleidoscope of colourful houses painted upside-down, Ortodox church, man’s face with a green mask, upside-down female violin-player, man carrying a scythe, and a Jewish element – The Tree of Life. Chagall’s style is unlike anything else in art history, and just like Modigliani, he is a painter whose art cannot be placed in a specific art movement. Nourishment of his art was childhood memories and imagination. This painting is a visual representation of his thought ‘The soil that had nourished my art was Vitebsk; but my art needed Paris as much as a tree needs water.‘

Marc Chagall, I and the Village, 1911

I just finished reading his autobiography ‘My Life’, and I can’t express how much I’m enchanted with his art and him as a person. His humanity is what I admire the most. To me, he is an embodiment of Terence’s quote ‘I am human, and nothing of that which is human is alien to me.’ (Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.)

Marc Chagall, The Drunkard (Le saoul), 1911-12

MARC CHAGALL (poem by Blaise Cendrars)

He is asleep

Now he is awake

And suddenly he is painting

He reaches for a church paints with a church

He reaches for a cow and paints with a cow

With a sardine

With skulls hands knives

Paint with a nerve of an ox

All the besmirched sufferings of little

Jewish towns

Tormented by burning love from the depth

of Russia

For France

Death heart and desires

He paints with his thighs

Has his eyes in his behind

There it is your face

It is You dear reader

It is I

It is he

His own betrothed

The grocer on the corner

The milkmaid

Midwife

Newborn babies are being washed in

buckets of blood

Heavenly madness

Mouths gush forth fashions

The Eiffel Tower is like a corkscrew

Hands heaped on each other

Christ

He himself Jesus Christ

He lived a long youth on the cross

Every new day another suicide

And suddenly he is no longer painting

He was awake

Now he is asleep

Strangles himself with a tie

Chagall astonished

Born on my immortality.’

Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in a Nightclub

Nightclub in Paris. 1887. Absinthe. Garish lightning. Harmony of orange, yellow and indigo. Clinking sound of glasses. Distant laugh. Air is heavy with smell of cigarettes, perfume and sweat. Twenty-three years old Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Across him sits thirty-four years old Vincent. A few light, sensitive strokes in pastel and Henri creates the most lyrical and most emotional portrait of van Gogh ever.

Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1887

Henri and Vincent met in February 1886, soon after Vincent arrived from Antwerpen where he stayed with his brother Theo, and despite their different temperaments and origins, they soon befriended. Both of them attended painting course in studio of Ferdinand Cormon and both of them were outsiders. As soon as talkative Henri noticed Vincent’s strange and wistful personality, he approached him and undoubtedly helped him to make friends with other young painters at the studio, such as Emile Bernard, Charles Laval, Eugene Boch and Louis Anquetin who soon became Vincent’s friends as well.

One evening in 1887, Henri and Vincent were sitting in a nightclub, probably the last ones to stay out drinking. With only few pastel strokes on cardboard, Henri captured the manic and passionate personality of this interesting red-haired stranger. This portrait, impressionistic but not quite, is the most emotionally charged portrait of van Gogh, and it managed to capture something that Vincent himself never did; physical accuracy. Henri precisely drew Vincent’s hooked nose and thin, light, almost nonexistent eyebrows: traits common in van Gogh’s family. At the same time he captured his rich inner life, his intensity, excitement and anxiety, his outsider chic. Intense yellow and purple-blue colours and striking brushstroke, as if they were taken in a hurry, all bring intensity to van Gogh’s appearance and his very position in that nightclub, dressed in battered clothes, sitting in silence, with a glass of absinthe in front of him. Henri drew Vincent as everyone saw his; as a wild animal waiting to jump at every second.

As I am writing this, a picture of David Bowie and Iggy Pop in a nightclub in Berlin in the late 1970s comes to my mind. Iggy is to be blamed though, and his song ‘Nightclubbing‘ from the album The Idiot (1977):

”Nightclubbing we’re nightclubbing
We’re what’s happening
Nightclubbing we’re nightclubbing
We’re an ice machine
We see people brand new people
They’re something to see
When we’re nightclubbing
Bright-white clubbing
Oh isn’t it wild?”