Konstantin Somov – Carnival Scenes: Pierrot Saw a World of Girls, And Pierrot Loved Each One

“For Pierrot saw a world of girls,

And Pierrot loved each one,

And Pierrot thought all maidens fair

As flowers in the sun.”

Konstantin Somov, Lady and Pierrot, 1910, gouache

These days I have had a particular interest for carnival scenes and in particular I have enjoyed many such paintings by the Russian painter Konstantin Somov. One of my favourites of these carnival scenes by Somov is the gouache painting above “Lady and Pierrot”, painted in 1910. In Somov’s paintings the usually meancholy, lovelorn and sad Pierrot seems to be very lucky with the ladies and he is nearly always seen smiling, laughing at times even. At last! More than a century Pierrot had waited for some happiness in love. Just remember the sad, misfit Pierrot in an oversize white attire from Watteau’s painting, ridiculed and unwanted, his affections unrequited, for all the ladies always want the cheerful, vibrant and colourful Harlequin.

What I love in all of these carnival scenes, as you will see bellow as well, is Somov’s repetitive composition. In all these paintings there is an amorous couple, usually a lady in a wide Rococo style dress and then it’s either the figure of Pierrot or Harlequin; the setting is a park or a forest at night; in the background there are other couples, usually occupied by their own romances or they are gazing at the fireworks up in the night sky. This dynamic between the foreground and the background is very exciting, like two different worlds. And there is a sense of danger, the question of: what if..? What if Pierrot and his Rococo lady are caught sharing a kiss? What if a lady already has a husband but she cannot resist the Harlequin’s advances? This secrecy adds to the excitement and in the painting above the Pierrot and his girl are seen hiding behind a bush. Pierrot has a wide smile on his face while the lady is embracing him and seemingly pulling him closer. Now I would like to share Langston Hughes’ poem on Pierrot:

“For Pierrot loved the long white road,
And Pierrot loved the moon,
And Pierrot loved a star-filled sky,
And the breath of a rose in June.
(…)
For Pierrot saw a world of girls,
And Pierrot loved each one,
And Pierrot thought all maidens fair
As flowers in the sun.
(…)
For Pierrot played on a slim guitar,
And Pierrot loved the moon,
And Pierrot ran down the long white road
With the burgher’s wife one June.“

Konstantin Somov, Lady and Harlequin (Fireworks ), 1912, watercolour

Here is perhaps something indicative, a fragment of Somov’s letter to his friend and fellow painter Elizaveta Zvantseva, dated 14th of February 1899: “Unfortunately, I still have no romance with anyone—flirting, perhaps, but very light. But I’m tired of being without romance—it’s time, otherwise life passes by, and youth, and it becomes scary. I terribly regret that my character is heavy, tedious, gloomy. I would like to be cheerful, easy-going, amorous, a daredevil. Only such people have fun, those not afraid to live!” Perhaps, in a way, Somov found that he could relate to the character of Pierrot and wanted, at least in the world of his canvases and drawings, to create a world of playfulness, cheerfulness, frivolity, flirtations and love-games, a world indeed made for easy-going, amorous daredevils.

We could also perhaps talk about a certain Rococo-revival that was going on at the time, in the early twentieth century, in particular the 1910s. In a lot of Somov’s paintings the ladies are seen wearing those huge dresses and the men are wearing wigs, a similar theme is found in Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings, in particular his “Rape of the Lock” series, Murice Ravel’s composition “Le tombeau de Couperin” in a hommage to the eighteenth century composer Couperin. It is as if those artists yearned to revive the exuberance, the frivolity and the eroticism of the eighteenth century. Wouldn’t it be lovely indeed to flee into the worlds of love in the canvases of Watteau and Fragonard, to sit on a swing all day long, to steal kisses in lush gardens by the rose bushes and the marble statues of Venuses, to live in a place where the fountain of love flows and never ceases? I also really enjoy the was Somov painted the nature, or park setting in all of these paintings. The trees seem alive and this only adds excitement.

I really also love these paintings where the Harlequin is seducing the Lady. As you will see from the dates, ranging from 1897 to 1921, just in these examples that I have chosen to present here, this is something that has interested Somov for two decades. In the 1912 watercolour “Lady and Harlequin (Fireworks)“, the couple is standing at the entrance of the garden party, it seems, both dressed in vibrant attires. I do love her emerald yellow gown. They seem happy, as if they are smiling and waving to us, as if on some old postcard, a remembrance of a bygone era. I do love Somov’s subtle details such as the mask that she is holding in her hand, or their hands joint at her waist. In the background, painted in more muted, blue-purplish tones are the other couples. In “Confidante” the Harlequin and his Rococo Lady are seen standing behind a statue, he is gently cupping her breast and inhaling the delicate scent of her neck, secrets are being shared, gossip is being told while in the background the party continues undisturbed.

Konstantin Somov, Confidante, 1897

Konstantin Somov, Lady and Harlequin, 1921

Miroslav Kraljević – Olympia (Homage to Manet)

A few months ago I wrote a post about the Croatian painter Miroslav Kraljević’s Parisian phase (1911-12) and today let us take a look at one particular painting from that phase called “Olympia” (1912). It is a direct homage to Edouard Manet’s controversial female nude “Olympia” (1863). Decades later, a painter from a provincial Austro-Hungary (now modern Croatia) had been so inspired by Manet’s painting that he had to paint his rendition of it. This just goes to show the immense influence of Manet on modern art.

Miroslav Kraljević, (Great Female Nude) Olympia, 1912

In 1911, after having spent awhile studying abroad in Munich where he had encountered the newest trends in art, the Croatian painter Miroslav Kraljević was back home in a town called Požega. In the peaceful and idylic small-town environment, Kraljević painted many self-portraits and landscapes, but still he was restless, perhaps slightly claustrophobic as well, and there was something his heart desired, a shiny red apple of sin he wanted to grab from the branch and sink his teeth into; Paris, with its vivacity, art, and the bright lights. He turned his fantasies into a reality in September 1911 when he travelled to Paris; the it place for an artist. He had been looking forward to seeing the works of the finest French painters, especially those of Edouard Manet. Apart from museums and galleries, Kraljević visited parks, cafes, bistroes and infamous places such as Moulin Rouge. As appropriate for the city he found himself in, his favourite motif in his Parisian phase was – the woman, more often than not nude or wearing very little clothes. And of course, as a hommage to his idol, Kraljević painted his own “Olympia” in 1912.

Female nude has been a popular motif in art for a long time, but when Edouard Manet painted his nude Olympia, it was seen as brash and shocking to the audience and critics. Why? Well, firstly because Manet didn’t bother to dress his painting up in mythology and allegory, and secondly because of the manner in which he painted her; realistic rather than idealised and highly eroticised. Inspired by Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” (1532-34), Manet’s Olympia is visibly less sensuous and inviting. She looks like a dull, flat, paper doll. In fact, she looks uninterested, as if she’s saying “oh, it’s you again, ah well…” Olympia isn’t a Roman goddess that every man would desire, she is a realistic looking courtesan that was well-known to Parisian men of the upper classes. Manet stirred the waters of Parisian society by directly pointing out the hypocrisy and serving some hot realism on a platter.

Kraljević’s Olympia is equally pale and uninterested, looking directly in the viewer, without a trace of shame or shyness. She doesn’t have a waterfall of long, golden hair to sensually cover her nudity like a Baroque martyr would. Nope, she is flaunting her body, but, just like Manet’s Olympia, she is wearing dainty slippers; God forbid some madman with a foot fetish gets a thrill from looking at her feet, oh no. Kraljević painted her pale flesh in the same way he had approached his earlier portraits, with more visible brushstrokes and a sense of volume than Manet had done it. Around her are a few vibrant coloured cushions and we can see a bouquet of purple flowers on the right, echoing the flowers that the servant is presenting to Olympia, most likely a gift from a client. Colours in Kraljević’s painting are more warm and muted, which makes it seem more like a budoir scene whereas Manet’s painting shows Olympia as a doll in the shop-window. I wonder what Manet would have thought of this homage?…

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863

Giacomo Balla – Girl Running on a Balcony

Giacomo Balla, Girl Running on Balcony, 1912

I didn’t care much for Futurism before, but these days I am starting to appreciate its liveliness, energy, and the abundance of vibrant colours. Giacomo Balla’s painting “Girl Running on the Balcony” is of particular interest to me because it combines the motives of a child playing, a motif often used by the Impressionists, and the Pointilists’ method of painting in dots. This combination seems perfect because only Pointilism could capture the bubliness and joy of a child playing. Futurism was an Italian modernist art movement which embraced the speed, noise and the bright lights of the modern world. Dynamism and the movement was of a special interest to them. The girl in the painting, whose facial features we cannot even recognise, is Balla’s eight year old daughter Luce who was running up and down the balcony of the painter’s house in Rome. Giacomo Balla must have been inspired by the playfulness, dynamics and the speed of her running and playing and decided to capture it on canvas. You can only imagine how differently the same scene would have been portrait by different artists such as Renoir or Berthe Morisot who also liked painting children. Even Seurat’s pointilist paintings had a certain slowness and stillness to them, but Balla here uses the same painting method and acheives a completely different result. The repetitive figures of the girl are made up entirely out of dots and dashes in different shades of blue, beige and brown. It’s quite magical actually, when you gaze at the painting all the dots start moving and you can almost see the girl running in a slow-motion. Light and dark shades of blue on her dress really create a certain rhythm and it excites the eye. The idea behind it is brilliant and daunting too; to capture movement on a static canvas, that seems impossible and yet Futurists tried their best to convey dynamic scenes on canvas. This desire to capture movement is also partly inspired by the work of the late nineteenth century photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne Jules Marey.

Miroslav Kraljević – Paris Years (1911-1912)

Miroslav Kraljević, Rest, 1912

In September 1911 a young Croatian painter Miroslav Kraljević arrived in Paris; the city which lured artists from all over Europe and gave them all a welcoming embrace. He settled in a little studio in Montparnasse; the same place where painters such as Modigliani, Foujita, Chaim Soutine and Marc Chagall lived and worked. In his vibrant and poetic autobiography Chagall describes artists of many different nationalities and  speaking all different languages painted in studios just nearby his. Miroslav Kraljević was just another stranger in the city of art. Although his stay in Paris was very brief; he had returned to his dear homeland in November 1912, the year and two months that he spent there marked the most exciting and daring phase in his career, and also the final one. He died in April 1913 from an illness; he was only twenty-seven years old.

The paintings, watercolours and sketches he created in Paris were an explosion of his creativity and even though some of his friends in Paris, fellow Croatians, had doubts about his work being well-received in artistically conservative Croatia (still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time), the critics in Croatia praised his work for being a true testimony to the spirit of modernism in Croatia. In his short life and short career, Kraljević had gone through many art transformation and his work exhibits many different influences; from that of Edouard Manet and old Spanish painters, to that of Cezanne’s paintings made in Provence, drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, Henri Valloton, paintings of Henri Forain and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Kraljević’s pastel titled “Rest” from 1912 beautifully shows how the painter was inspired by the art of Toulouse-Lautrec. A woman is seen resting, lying on the bed with her legs in over-the-knee black stockings dangling over the bed. Her beautifully shaped body dressed in a grey dress seems almost lifeless, and her eyes, looking in a distant spot on the ceiling, add to the eeriness. Her pose and her garments are something that Toulouse-Lautrec would have certainly approved of. I love how the grey colour of her dress almost transcends into soft lavender shades. There is also an exciting contrast between the sketchy part of the drawing and the beautifully painted arms and torso where Kraljević achieved the illusion of volume.

Miroslav Kraljević, Apres, 1912

Another pastel, “Apres”, shows a very similar theme; the woman lying on the sofa, again wearing black stockings, but this time nude, is seen covering her face and perhaps her blushing cheeks. Maybe she is hiding from the painter’s gaze. Again, I love the contrast between sketchy and finished. A very different work from Paris is the watercolour “In the Cafe” which shows a man and a woman, both elegantly dressed, sitting in the Parisian cafe. The contrast of he woman’s very pale face and her dark blue coat is very striking.

Even though Kraljević’s paintings such as these were almost scandalously modern and free-spirited for the art circles of the provincial Croatia, his style was actually lagging behind the art trends. In spirit, Kraljević was a man of the fin de siecle; he loved women, female beauty and perfume, eroticism; he was moody, nervous and had frail nerves, he was an aesthete, a follower of the cult of Beauty to the very end. Even on his deathbed he asked for champagne and a comb so he could, quoting him, “die beautifully and – die beautiful”. The soft curves of the female body were dearer to him than rectangles of Cubism, the golden glow of streetlamps and carriages more appealing to him than the speed and ugliness of modern life.

His love of the very recent past (at the time) was equaled with his faithful love for his homeland, it was almost a romantic and sentimental attachment to the meadows and hillsides of his country, even the streets of Zagreb were dearer to him that those of Paris. He was a man who had narrowly missed out on the age which suited his spirit more and, disappointed like a person who’s train had just left the station without him, Kraljević worked with an almost frantic determination and neuroticism, desperately trying to make up for lost times. His fire developed quickly and was extinguished equally so. In some symbolic way, his death in 1913 is very fitting because it is the year just before the First World War had started, it marked the end of an era.

Miroslav Kraljević, In the Cafe, 1912

Alfonse van Besten: Two Girls Picking Cornflowers

Today I wanted to share a few of these wonderful, dreamy photographs by a Belgian painter Alfonse Van Besten (1865-1926) whose curious, inventive spirit prompted him to experiment with photography as well. In one of these photographs, you can see Van Besten painting in his beautiful garden full of flowers and greenery. Painting in one’s garden is the kind of idyll that Claude Monet knew all too well. These autochrome photographs are a real delight to gaze at, they are like nostalgic windows to a secret lost world of eternal spring, meadows with cornflowers and gardens in bloom, the kind of place that I often daydream about. “Two girls picking flowers” is my favourite photograph out of all these, there’s just something so innocent about it and I can imagine the mood of a warm, fragrant summer day, bees buzzing, crickets chirping, long thin stems of the cornflowers swaying in the soft southern breeze, the girls pick flowers oblivious to everything else. Only the cornflowers exist, nothing else matters.

“Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with bird calls.”

(Louise Gluck, Primavera)

Alfonse van Besten, Two girls picking cornflowers, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Young girl amidst marguerites, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Van Besten painting in his garden, 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Children at play, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Youth Idyll, 1914

Autochrome photograph by Alfonse Van Besten, “Modesty”, 1912

Alphonse van Besten, Mime in love, c 1912

Alphonse van Besten, Mime in love, c 1912

The Night When Modigliani Stole a Stone…

Amedeo Modigliani, Woman’s Head, 1912, limestone

There is a beautiful bohemian chapter in André Salmon’s book about Modigliani (original title: “La Vie passionnée de Modigliani”) where the devilishly handsome sculptor and painter Amedeo goes out one night to steal a stone that he needs for his statue. The theft wasn’t a one night thing, for Amedeo had often ventured into the blue Parisian nights to steal a stone from a store or a warehouse, guided by the light of the shining stars. He dared to steal only after midnight, and often went with a friend, usually with the fellow painter Emmanuel Gondouin. What a sight the two artists must have been, roaming the empty streets: Amedeo with his raven “hair of a rebellious angel and fiery eyes”, as Salmon describes him, and Gondouin who was of robust built and whose appearance was similar to that of Beethoven. Gondouin would help him carry the heavy stone.

But that night Modigliani was alone… It wasn’t wise to go to the stone theft alone, all sorts of thoughts roamed his pretty head… but he had to carve, he had to create, nor his hands nor his mind would be at peace if he didn’t have that stone… Perhaps the night would be peaceful and the stars forgiving at this poor melancholy angel?… And so he went – alone. “I will get caught… I will end up in prison”, he thought as the darkness of the night shrouded him softly. After he stole the beautiful piece of limestone from someone’s shed, still in a haze from the alcohol and hashish of those glorious nights of Montparnasse, he carried it out and hid around the corner trying to catch his breath. His weak body, plagued with years of alcohol and illnesses, couldn’t keep up with the blazing passion of his spirit. Amedeo, at long last beholding his beauty, glanced at the stone. The beautiful piece of white limestone answered to Amedeo’s loud heartbeats with a smile and whispered promises of inspiration. It was happy to be in loving arms, at last. Then, he heard someone’s footsteps… Could it be the police? Drops of sweat slid down his forehead… No?… Good. It was a man, an anarchist and a nocturnal wanderer who worked at the Halles market, and whose intentions have proved to be kind. He helped Amedeo with the stone and chatted until they arrived to his atelier where they parted.

Modigliani would say that it doesn’t matter if the stone is soft, as long as it gives the illusion of marble. The photo above shows one of his sculptures. It is stylistically very similar to the paintings which followed; an elongated face, long slender neck and large almond-shaped eyes; eyes that seem to gaze into eternity, a face that echoes the sadness of the world, a neck of a swan, so fragile and breakable…

Egon Schiele – Neuelengbach Affair – Martyr for the Cause of Art: Part I

This is the first out of two posts which will explore Egon Schiele’s artistic endeavours in a small town of Neulengbach and his time spent in prison for his erotic drawings.

Egon Schiele, Nude against coloured background, 1911

As I already wrote in my post about Egon Schiele’s Krumau Scenes, small towns and suburbs held a particular charm for this artist, and even before coming to Krumau in May 1910, just a month shy of his twentieth birthday, he’d dreamt of an artistic paradise in some small town where he could afford to rent a cheap studio and be surrounded by nature all day long. Also, he wanted to escape the dark city full of shadows – Vienna, or that is at least how he saw it. Krumau was the birthplace of his mother and that’s why it caught his attention. He first visited the place with his painter-friends; Anton Peschka and Ervin Osen, and then, in May 1911, he settled in a little house near the river Vltava (Moldau) with his new model, lover and a muse – Wally Neuzil. He painted her in the studio, and he also painted a lot of landscapes, capturing the densely situated colourful houses, emphasising their decaying mood, and sunflowers too.

Need I mention that the inhabitants of this little, dreamy, provincial town weren’t really pleased with having a cocky artist living in sin with his pretty little red-haired muse? Town had its charm indeed and Schiele produced some good paintings there, but their heaven came to an end sometime in July 1911, when he wrote to Roessler: “You know how much I like to be in Krumau and now life is made impossible. People boycott us simply because we’re red. Of course I could defend myself, even against all 7,000 of them, but I don’t have the time and why should I bother?” Term ‘red’ was used for a person not going to church. And so Schiele and Wally returned to Vienna.

Egon Schiele, The Self Seers (Death and Man), 1911

Schiele’s longing for a peaceful and creative mood of a small town or a village is so naive in my eyes. Yes, nature is beautiful, but the mood of a small town, the provincial claustrophobia, the judgemental and simple-minded people, there’s no beauty in that, and I should know. People of Krumau, in Schiele’s time, were a bunch of intolerant, simple-minded fools who probably couldn’t understand his art if their lives depended on it, but wait till you hear what happened in Neulengbach.

Schiele spent only a month in Vienna and already started looking for a new rural paradise where his art would thrive, and he found it very near Vienna, just 35 km away or a short train ride, a town of Neulengbach. Paintings that he made there are very interesting; dark, disturbing, painted with thick heavy brushstrokes in scarce, murky colours they are heavily influenced by the late nineteenth century Symbolist paintings. Just reading the titles of his paintings from these years, such as ‘Dead Mother’, ‘Prophet’ or ‘Pregnant Woman and Death’, gives us a sense of dark times and some serious questioning of life and meaning of existence, and while that may be true to a point, I can’t know what was in his head, his time in Neulengbach was actually a rather happy and productive time.

Painting The Self-Seers is a good example of things that he painted in Neulengbach, and it unites Schiele’s obsession with himself and his interest in morbid themes. Did I mention that he was immensely fascinated with himself? He painted many self-portraits; in some he presented himself in a wild embrace with death, in others – simply masturbating, but in this rather sinister self-portrait he painted himself with his Doppelgänger, the person’s exact double, and a very popular motif in German literature of Romanticism, but also in works of Shelley and Poe. Colours of mud, face expressions unsettling, fingers in a strange position, brushstrokes heavy; like the fingers of a corpse scratching its way from the coffin through the moist loam. While his drawings ooze lightness and colourfulness, his paintings are dark and distorted, like they grew from the muddy, scarce, infertile soil after the rain.

Egon Schiele, The Artist’s Room in Neulengbach, 1911

Perhaps the most important and most interesting of Schiele’s works created in Neulengbach is the painting The Artist’s Room in Neulengbach which obviously took inspiration from Vincent van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles painted in 1888. In both cases, artists painted the bedrooms of their artistic havens. People of Arles and Neulengbach ought to have been privileged that an artist came to live and work in their town, but needless to say that they weren’t.

We can’t help notice the sombre and claustrophobic mood of his bedroom; high viewpoint, the usual palette of browns, black, a bit of yellow and muted red, all intensify the tense and static mood of the room which doesn’t seem that much different to that of a prison cell. Schiele again presents us with his nihilistic vision of the world, and his bedroom, no matter what it looked like in reality, is presented here looking as drab and miserable as the bedroom of Gregor Samsa from Kafka’s Metamorphosis must have looked like. In comparison, Van Gogh’s bedroom bursts with colour and frenzy. Ah, you know what it’s like, bright sun of Arles and some absinthe, and the world appears before your eyes in colours of a rainbow! In van Gogh – it’s passion and vigour, in Schiele – it’s death and decay.

While van Gogh’s room is oil on canvas, Schiele’s painting was made on a smooth piece of wood with colour being applied in many thin layers producing a kind of enamel effect. He made several paintings in this technique, and he called them ‘Bretterl’ or ‘little boards’.

Vincent van Gogh, Bedroom in Arles, 1888

In the following post you’ll find out why he was imprisoned and the effect his time in prison had on his art and the cult of him as a provocative artist. To be continued 🙂

Pablo Picasso – Oh, Those Guitars!

‘Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can’t explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.‘ (Pablo Picasso)*

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Guitar, 1921

I’m not a particular fan of Picasso, but earlier this month I found myself absolutely besotted by his collages and guitars. Oh, those guitars! I was so inspired by them that I started making collages myself, with guitars and cut-out pieces of newspapers. Despite their seeming simplicity, I feel a strong creative energy from them and that’s why I like them.

Picasso’s art can be clearly divided into periods, some by colours he used, others by the specific motifs and themes he painted repeatedly: in his melancholic ‘blue phase’ he was interested in beggars, the homeless, prostitutes, drunk people, in his ‘rose period’ it was all about joy, carnivals and harlequins. Then, inspired by Cezanne’s theory that everything in nature and world around us can be divided into geometric objects, Picasso, along with Braque, delved into Analytical Cubism which resulted in rather confusing, dark and distorted paintings. Their alteration of reality is almost psychedelic, which is kind of cool. What followed is known as Synthetic Cubism or Crystal Cubism which followed the idea that a painter’s job is not to ‘copy’ world around him, but to ‘construct’, and so they did, discovering at the same time the power of collage as a technique. Instead of breaking an object into its essential pieces, they built objects using contrasting colours, pieces of newspapers, fragments of their own sketches. Picasso’s painting Guitar, Sheet Music, Glass made in autumn of 1912, is usually considered the first example of Synthetic Cubism. It’s so simple yet so striking. The background is actually a wallpaper, and then there’s a piece of blue paper, and a piece of black paper, all very simple, and then, out of nowhere, a piece of sheet music and a charcoal drawing of a glass made in the style of the previous Analitical Cubism. The most interesting of all, a cut out piece of newspaper with half a title showing ‘Le Jou’, shortened from ‘Le Journal’  meaning ‘Newspapers’. Picasso is playing a word game with us here, ‘le jou’ means ‘game’. Below that it says ‘Le Bataille s’est engage’ which means ‘The battle has begun’ alluding to the raging wars on Balkan, when Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro fought for the independence from the Ottoman Empire. However, this is usually interpreted not just as Picasso’s awareness of the political situation of Europe, but is seen as symbolic for the battle of Cubism and collage as new styles and methods in art.

I hate it when people say something like: ‘Oh, everyone could do that, what’s so revolutionary about it?’ My art teacher in grammar school had a good answer to these ignorant remarks, she said: ‘ Well, yes, everyone could cut out a piece of newspaper and glue it on paper, but the fact that no one did it before, that no artist dared to do it before, that’s what makes it avant-garde and revolutionary!’ This can well be applied to many more artists, like Matisse, Miro, Malevich, Mondrian, Rothko, even Pollock.

Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music, Glass, Paris, autumn, 1912. Papers and newsprint (Le Journal, 18 November 1912) pasted, gouache and charcoal on paper

Pablo Picasso, Musicians with masks, 1921

Pablo Picasso, The Guitar, 1916, Synthetic Cubism

Pablo Picasso, Mandolin and Guitar (Mandoline et guitare), 1924

Federico Lorca – Cordoba, Distant and Lonely

Warm earthy colours, soft silvery transitions, and hints of blue. A woman, a horse, and a vase. Broken fragments are tickling our imagination. The mood of this painting goes well with Lorca’s poem ‘The Horseman’s Song’, at least for me. Both artworks are pure avant-garde; Jean Metzinger was considered the forerunner of Cubism, and Lorca nurtured a style that combined modernistic tendencies in European poetry with tradition of his homeland Andalusia. In ‘The Horseman’s Song’, he repeats certain motifs – olives, horseman, Cordoba, Moon, wind and road – developing the mood of anxiety and mystery. Who is the horseman? And why won’t he see his beloved Cordoba again?The utter strangeness of this poem and its mood of desolation and death endlessly captivate me.

Jean Metzinger, La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a horse), 1911-12, oil on canvas

The Horseman’s Song
‘Córdoba
Distant and lonely.

Black steed, big moon,
and olives in my saddlebag.
Although I know the roads
I will never reach Córdoba.

Across the plain, through the wind
Black steed, red moon.
Death is staring at me
from the towers of Córdoba.
Oh, how long the road is!
Oh, my valiant steed!
Oh, death awaits me,
before I reach Córdoba.

Córdoba.
Distant and lonely.’

There was a full moon (in Gemini) last two nights. If you go out for a walk, or just move your curtains, say hello to the moon, and think of Lorca this evening, the strange beauty of his poetry deserves it.

City Scenes – Comparison: Impressionism and Expressionism

Diversities of people and cultures, sense of anonymity and optimistic yet fleeting feeling that everything is possible, along with vibrancy of the landscape are some of the things that attracted artists to European capitals. Specific mood and appearance of cities, in this case Paris and Berlin, affected artists who chose to either capture the city’s spirit on canvas, or express feelings which the city triggered.

Camille Pissarro, Montmartre Boulevard at Night, 1897

Although stylistically and atmospherically different, both paintings represent city scenes. Pissarro painted the ‘Montmartre Boulevard at Night’ in a true impressionistic manner with small and thin, yet visible brushstrokes, and created a sense of flickering excitement. On the other hand, painting ‘Nollendorfplatz’ is a good example of Kirchner’s typical wild, passionate, almost angry brushstrokes which are responsible for the overall feeling of dynamism. Elements on Pissarro’s painting such as carriages, trees and streetlamps make it an appealing one, specially for modern viewers and their visions of romantic Paris. Pissarro painted a lively and bustling Parisian night – lights are shining, carriages are arriving, people are having fun.

Kirchner’s painting radiates a completely different atmosphere. Starting with the unusual composition in a shape of an X, Kirchner creates a distorted and deformed space. Accentuated contour lines and dramatic choice of colours only deepen the unease a viewer can feel while looking at the painting. Elements that Kirchner chose to portray, Strassenbahns and tall, undefined buildings created a certain coldness and alienation. While Pissarro’s passers-by that occupy the pavement are barely visible, painted in soft and blurry shades of grey and purple, Kirchner’s characters resemble shadows, tall, black and deprived of any individuality, they stroll the streets of decadent Berlin, isolated from themselves and their surroundings, suffocated by the modern architecture around them. A suitable background for this painting would be the song ‘Kollaps’ by Einstürzende Neubauten.

Similarities between these two city scenes can be found in colours, but noticing this similarity again brings us to a great difference that is truly due to the art movements these two artworks belong to. Both Pissarro and Kirchner used blue and yellow in abundance. Whereas Pissarro’s blue is deep and soothing, Kirchner’s is cold, occasionally exceeding into shades of grey. Yellow that appears like a soft flickering light on Pissarro’s painting, on Kirchner’s painting it looks solid and exaggerated, its shade is almost sickly, at parts turning to bleak green shades, framed by solid brushstrokes of black. However, both paintings are ‘portraits’ of cities at a specific moment; vivacious Fin de siècle Paris and decadent catastrophic pre-Weimar Berlin. Still, as an Impressionist, Pissarro was interested in outward appearance and he captured the spirit of Paris at that specific moment, while Kirchner, as an Expressionist, presented us his own feelings and state of mind, using reality merely as an encouragement for expressing artistic experience.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Nollendorfplatz, 1912