Claude Monet – Irises – Japonisme

“When I am happy I paint the iris, when I am angry the bamboo.”

(Monk Jue Yin)

Claude Monet, Irises, 1914-17

Despite the popularity that Monet’s paintings of water lilies seem to enjoy, the irises were also one of his favourites flowers and they lined the pathways in his garden. During the time of the first world war Monet kept returning to the motif of irises and painted around thirty paintings, or portraits I should say, of them. Each of these paintings is very simple in terms of compositional but instead captures the vibrancy of the irises in various different moods and shades of purple and blue. This portrait of the irises above is perhaps my favourite, or at least it is my favourite at the moment, because of its intense blueness. I just cannot separate my eyes from it! The vibrancy and the depth of that blue! Oh to be a little butterfly and fly into that nocturnal blueness and linger there on and on, listening to its sweet music and inhaling the fragrance of the spring night. There are only five irises in the painting, painted in warm purple and yellow, and yet the entire painting is screaming with the colour of the iris. It is as if the blueness of the petals had spillt itself, like a bottle of ink, all over the garden. There is no boundary anymore between the flowers and the garden, the colours of the petals are spilling everywhere and posessing everything. This deep shade of blue gives the painting a mystical, almost dream-like mood, and the irises, tall and independant, each blossom growing on its own sturdy stem, are laughing and shining in that blueness like the stars. Each long thin leaf is painted in a single brushstroke which, although intensely green in colour, is fading against the dark background.

The interest in the iris was newly awoken in the late nineteenth century, especially in the context of the Art Nouveau, through the influence of the Japanese art. Aemil Fendler wrote in 1897: “We have found the way to nature again, and it lies through Japan. No longer does the living art of our time take its nurture from past styles, no longer does it seek its models in the pattern books of the Renaissance or the Rococo… The wonderful art of Japan offers a rare combination of untarnished natural freshness with the most refined decorative taste and the highest stylistic assurance: let us be grateful to it for showing us the right path to follow and for opening the eyes of those that have eyes to see.” The manner in which the Japanese artists portrayed the irises brought a freshness and enthusiasm into western art; a new way of seeing the flower, for those who have eyes to see. The iris itself is just perfectly shaped for the aesthetical exploitation, it is a flower made to be immortalised in art, it is mysterious and slightly erotic, and perfect for all sorts of arabesque-like Art Nouveau stylisations. The iris seems to embody both the masculine and the feminine traits both at once; its flower petals being shaped in such an ambiguous manner, and the stems and the leaves being vertical, tall and strong. Indeed, the iris has gone a long way, from being seen as merely ornamental and painted as such to being the shining star of the canvases such as these by Monet.

Konstantin Somov – Carnival Scenes: Pleasure is addictive, Pleasure is a dream

“Pleasure is addictive. It can have all the elements and attributes of a fever. Pleasure is a dream.”

Konstantin Somov, Italian Comedy, 1914

I had written about Konstantin Somov carnival scenes, in particular his watercolour “Lady and Pierrot” from 1910, but today let us take a look at some of his other carnival scenes filled with figures of Harlequins, Pierrots and elegant Rococo ladies. In his choice of themes Somov was greatly influenced by the eighteenth century painters and themes, in particular the elegant, fanciful world of Watteau’s art where everyone is searching love and happiness in the ambience of elegant parks with marble statues and forest groves with whispering ivy-overgrown trees. If you take a look at Somov’s paintings that I’ve chosen to present here, “The Italian Comedy”, “The Fireworks”, and even the scenes from the notorious “Book of the Marquise”, and then compare them with the paintings by Watteau, it is easy to see the similarities. Still, it is not to say that Somov’s paintings are mere copies of Watteau, not at all, for his artworks have a distinct flair and are rich in colours and a tad more flirtatious and daring than Watteau’s which I enjoy greatly. In Somov’s carnival scenes we find none of that suble yet tangible wistfulness, no sense of transience and fragility that permeates Watteau’s paintings. In Somov’s portrayal of the carnival and leisure, there is a mood of frivolity, of carelesness, of unashamed pleasure; let the champagne flow and kisses, wherever they may, fall!

I feel that Somov’s art, not just the paintings here but many of his other artworks as well, are a visual companion to the line “Pleasure is addictive, pleasure is a dream”. I mean, the figures in Somov’s art just cannot seem to get enough of it – the pleasure, in whichever form; the parties, the laughing, the dancing, the kissing, the drinking, the gambling, the staying up all night and gazing at fireworks, it’s just constant frivolity and playful decadence. In Somov’s painting “Italian Comedy”, painted in 1914, we have a playful garden scene. The smiling Pierrot takes the centre stage, but there is also a Harlequin and a lady dressed in a striped Rococo gown and a Lady Harlequin as well. Despite the setting being a garden, it feels oddly like a stage, choreographed and somewhat stiff, more so than Somov’s other carnival scenes. In the background there are fireworks; another motif seen often in these paintings by Somov.

Jean-Antoine Watteau, Harlequin and Columbine, 1716-1718

Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Italian Comedy, 1716

In Watteau’s painting “Columbine and Harlequin”, painted two hundred years before Somov’s painting, there is a similar garden-carnival scenes. The centre is occupied by a dashing, flirty Harlequin in his vibrant attire and he is trying to seduce Columbine. Look at his hand gesture, I wonder what joke is he telling her? She doesn’t seem all that amused, perhaps it is Pierrot who is on her mind… In the background there are other young people, yearning for love and fun. I do love Watteau’s paintings and now Somov’s watercolours and other paintings are giving me the same thrill. The art of the early twentieth century with its radicalism and experiementation, the harsh squares and rectangles of Cubism, the garish colours of Fauvism, the angst and horror of Expressionism, none of it was for Somov who looked back in time when seeking inspiration, who wanted to drink from the fountain of beauty and love, and not from fountain of modernity and speed.

Konstantin Somov strikes me as a man who painted what he could not live, and that is partly true as reveiled in his letter to a 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!” Also, the world that we see in both Watteau and Somov’s art is a world that… simply does not exist, and never will come a day when it will exist, only perhaps in the hearts and minds of the imaginative romantics and in these beautiful canvases that we can gaze at for hours and fantasise. For me, these paintings are a world just beyond reach and so gazing at them fills me with excitement, but also provokes inside me an inexplicable yearning that may, if I allow it, turn into a heartache.

Konstantin Somov, Fireworks, 1929

Now, again, I would love to connect these Wattea and Somov’s carnival scenes with a passage from Peter Ackroyd’s book “Venice: Pure City” because I find it fascinating:

“The Carnival was instituted at the end of the eleventh century, and has continued without interruption for almost seven hundred years. After a period of desuetude it was resurrected in the 1970s. “All the world repairs to Venice,” John Evelyn wrote in the seventeenth century, “to see the folly and madness of the Carnevall.” It was originally supposed to last for forty days, but in the eighteenth century it was sometimes conducted over six months. It began on the first Sunday of October and continued until the end of March or the beginning of Lent. This was also the theatre season. In a city that prided itself on transcending nature, it was one way of defying winter. Yet if the festivities last for half a year, does “real” life then become carnival life? It was said in fact that Venice was animated by a carnivalesque spirit for the entire year. It was no longer a serious city such as London, or a wise city such as Prague.

There were bands and orchestras in Saint Mark’s Square; there were puppet shows and masked balls and street performers. There were costume parties in the opera houses, where prizes were awarded for the best dress. There were elaborate fêtes with gilded barges, liveries of gold and crimson, gondolas heaped with flowers. The Venetians, according to William Beckford in the 1780s, were “so eager in the pursuit of amusement as hardly to allow themselves any sleep.” In this season, everyone was at liberty. Evelyn described the Carnival as the resort of “universal madnesse”.

Konstantin Somov, Book of the Marquise. Illustration 8, 1918, lithography

Konstantin Somov, Book of the Marquise, 1918, lithography

(…)There were firework displays; the Venetians were well known for their skill at pyrotechnics, with the reflection of the coloured sparks and flames glittering upon the water. There were rope-walkers and fortune-tellers and improvisatori singing to the guitar or mandolin. There were quacks and acrobats. There were wild beast shows; in 1751 the rhinoceros was first brought to Venice. There were the elements of the macabre; there were mock funeral processions and, on the last day of the Carnival, a figure disfigured by syphilitic sores was pushed around in a barrow. Here once more is the old association between festivity and the awareness of death.

Venetians dressed up as their favourite characters from the commedia dell’arte. There was Mattacino, dressed all in white except for red shoes and red laces; he wore a feathered hat, and threw eggs of scented water into the crowd. There was Pantalone, the emblem of Venice, dressed in red waistcoat and black cloak. And there was Arlecchino in his multi-coloured costume. There were masked parties and masked balls.

(…) Pleasure is addictive. It can have all the elements and attributes of a fever. Pleasure is a dream.”

Marc Chagall and Kokoschka: Flying Lovers

“But I believe in Love
And I know that you do, too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
So keep your candles burning
Make her journey bright and pure
That she’ll keep returning
Always and evermore”

(Nick Cave, Into My Arms)

Marc Chagall, Over the Town, 1913

These two paintings by Marc Chagall and Oskar Kokoschka, painted in 1913 and 1914, both show the same motif; a couple in love, and yet they are so different. Let us see why is that. Chagall’s painting “Over the Town” shows an embracing couple flying in the air, flying above the little houses of the little town which is too small now to contain the love that they feel. The houses and the landscape under them both seem faded, as if seen in a dream or in a memory, painted in shades of grey. Only that one house is red, like a pulsating red heart ready to burst. “Over the Town” is a painting which thematically and aesthetically goes hand in hand with Chagall’s painting “Birthday” painted in 1915; both paintings show lovers magically lifted from the ground by the power of life, the power against which all the mundane things in life suddently seem gray and irrelevant.

Marc Chagall, Birthday, 1915

Chagall’s beloved Bella Rosenfeld, whom he married in July 1915, wrote about this feeling which Chagall so beautifulyl portrays in his paintings: “I suddenly felt as if we were taking off. You too were poised on one leg, as if the little room could no longer contain you. You soar up to the ceiling. Your head turned down to me, and turned mine up to you… We flew over fields of flowers, shuttered houses, roofs, yards, churches.” Bella is painted in the same clothes she would have been wearing everyday and on the photos which exists of her, and the town we see is their hometown of Vitebsk in Belorus. Both of these elements bring a domestic kind of familiarity which becomes magical and sweet when Chagall portrays it. Lines “but I believe in love and I know darling that you do too” from Nick Cave’s song come to my mind as I gaze at this painting and as I think of Chagall and his beloved.

Kokoschka’s lovers are also seen flying in an undefined space, but they are not flying in the clouds of love, rather they are carried by the wind of frenzy and uncertainly and they cling to each other in despair. They are not drawn together by love like Chagall’s lovers but by fear. Lovers found in the whirlwind of political, social and personal changes, nothing to be hold onto because nothing is certain anymore. The painting allegorically represents the painter and his beloved Alma Mahler who was at the time his lover and the wife of the composer Gustav Mahler. They are carried by strong gusts of wind, but it isn’t the wind of passion that carried Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s hell, but the wind of anxiety, uncertainty and the futility of everything. Oskar Kokoschka was a representative of the Viennese Expressionism and this catastrophic vision of the world and the future is typically Expressionistic. The same dreary mood fills his portraits which all have a psychological aspect to them and look as if they were made out of mud and tears, and is similar to painting of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s paintings with urban mood of alienation and premonitions of catastrophe that the World War One was about to bring. Expressionistic art was a whirlwind of colours and screams created from the nervous energy of the antebellum period, and although many artists shared the sentiment, none experienced it so deeply and profoundly as the artists who were the closest to the fire, that is those who lived in the Austria-Hungarian Empire; Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, poets Georg Trakl and August Stramm, Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and many other across the vast decaying empire.

Oskar Kokoschka, The Bride of the Wind (The Tempest), 1914

Let us take a moment to compare how the composition, brushstrokes and colours contribute to the mood that is conveyed; in Chagall’s painting the composition brings a feeling of stability, a steadiness of love shall I say, while in Kokoschka’s painting the composition is more dynamic thus conveying uncertainty. Chagall’s brushstrokes are soft and gentle, his colour palette filled with soft shades and dreamy gues which makes it seem so peaceful and serene, while in Kokoschka’s painting we see how the wild, rough brushstrokes and stronger colours add to the mood opposite of peacefulness. While the vision of love in Chagall’s paintings is pure, idealistic and romantic, in Kokoschka’s painting it is sour as vinegar and cynical. Still, both paintings were painted around the same time which goes to show that the painter naturally expresses what is inside him; Chagall and Kokoschka’s perspectives on things were very different and it shows in their art. I find both paintings immensely interesting, but Chagall’s view of love and his dreaminess is still dearer to me and closer to my heart.

Giorgio de Chirico – Melancholy and Mystery of a Street

In this post we’ll take a look at Italian Metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico’s perhaps most well-known painting called “Melancholy and Mystery of a Street” and the way its portrayal of space and mood connect to some scenes from Vítězslav Nezval’s Surrealist novel “Valerie and her Week of Wonders”.

Giorgio de Chirico, Melancholy and Mystery of a Street, 1914

When we think of melancholy, mysterious and lonely streets and squares in art, Chirico must be the first painter to come to mind. He painted many such scenes with cold sharply precise architecture and a strange almost sinister mood, and a well known example is the painting above called “Melancholy and Mystery of a Street”. I hesitate to call it an urban scene, even though it is a city and not countryside, because it belongs completely into a world of its own, with unique logic and moods which have nothing in common with our world. At first sight, his paintings look similar to the world we live in, but then the strangeness start lurking from the shadows and we cannot help but notice the isolated and creepy mood of the street. A white building with a repetitive row of arches, disproportions, shadows… One can almost feel a deep layer of silence and then a strange giggle coming from afar, as the shadow starts growing bigger until it covers the whole square. And yet, Chirico’s paintings manage to stay lyrical despite their coldness. Another work of art which has a world of its own is Vitezslav Nezval’s novel “Valerie and her Week of Wonders” written in 1934, at the height of Surrealist movement in Czechia, and published a decade later. Partly inspired by Surrealism and the dream theory, and partly by the tradition of the Gothic novel, Nezval’s novel is a beautiful contradiction in mood and themes. While some motifs are ever so romantic and gloomy such as the vault, long corridors, crypts, burial sights, others brings an anxious mood of dreams that is more reminiscent of Chirico’s paintings, especially the beginning of the Chapter V called “Losing the Way”:

“Valerie had lost her way. For the third time, without knowing how, she had entered a deserted square that seemed to be enchanted. When she glanced at one of the locked gates, a missionary appeared to her standing in front of it. She left the square and entered the square. Her legs were tired and were leading her on her own, while her spirit wandered like that of someone sleeping. Over one doorway she noticed a cluster of grapes held in the beak of a dove. Then she was alarmed by four windows that seemed to have been forged from a storm. She thought she heard a groan. Her eyes settled on a tall gas lamp with moths fluttering around it. But the groan came again. Having circled the square, she suddenly found herself just a few steps from the lamp and saw to her amazement a terrifying image: tied to the lam’s base was a girl, emitting plaints from deep in her throat. As Valerie stepped up closer, she recognised her clothes, which were torn in several places.”

Scene from Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970)

Naturally, the small square of a picturesque Czech village that Valerie has found herself on has nothing to do architecturally with Chirico’s classical and monumental Italian squares. It’s Valerie’s inner state, her emotions, fear and curiosity which give the square a slightly nightmarish mood. It’s not what she sees in front of her, it’s how she feels within that is projected on on the outside. Space in Chirico’s paintings is illogical to the eyes of grown ups, but to Valerie it isn’t unusual because she still sees things from children’s point of view, or rather, she is in the middle; just like the girl in the painting, childhood is behind her and she is walking slowly towards the shadowy figure; the adulthood. This connects to something that Chirico himself said: “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.“

Oskar Kokoschka – The Bride of the Wind

And you held me, my love, and then went on dreaming.
Of perhaps a different kind of death.

Oskar Kokoschka, The Bride of the Wind (or The Tempest), 1914

In nervous, swirling and frantic brushstrokes Kokoschka painted two lovers lying side by side in a sad embrace. The woman is asleep, her eyes are peacefully closed and while she is sailing the seas of dreams, unaware of the shadows of reality that grow bigger with each passing hour of the night, the man is awake. His deep set eyes gaze into the void, his cheeks are hollow, his fingers ugly and twisted, his chin protruding, his skin taunted over his bones; he might as well be a skeleton already. While their bodies are painted in quick nervous strokes of white colour with dashes of yellow and blue the abstract space around them is made out of swirls of black and midnight blue. The blueness of the space around them might, in different circumstances, lead us to thoughts of something spiritual and serene, a vast blue sky or a calm sea, but his frantic brush strokes have dismissed such thoughts. It’s difficult, or rather impossible to determine the setting, for the whole space appears to us like a nihilistic swamp of darkness and despair; it’s a world from a dark dream, a nightmare, a premonition of the future, a scream from the bottom of one’s being.

The painting allegorically represents the painter and his beloved Alma Mahler who was at the time his lover and the wife of the composer Gustav Mahler. They are carried by strong gusts of wind, but it isn’t the wind of passion that carried Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s hell, but the wind of anxiety, uncertainty and the futility of everything. Oskar Kokoschka was a representative of the Viennese Expressionism and this catastrophic vision of the world and the future is typically Expressionistic. The same dreary mood fills his portraits which all have a psychological aspect to them and look as if they were made out of mud and tears, and is similar to painting of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s paintings with urban mood of alienation and premonitions of catastrophe that the World War One was about to bring. Expressionistic art was a whirlwind of colours and screams created from the nervous energy of the antebellum period, and although many artists shared the sentiment, none experienced it so deeply and profoundly as the artists who were the closest to the fire, that is those who lived in the Austria-Hungarian Empire; Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, poets Georg Trakl and August Stramm, Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and many other across the vast decaying empire.

So, the painting is infused with his personal torments or life and love, and fragile nature of both, but at the same time it hold a deeper meaning because it perfectly represents the changing times and the political and cultural changes that were taking place. The painting mirrors the uncertainties that the future beholds; both the fleeting nature of love and passion, and the political instability that affects everyone. Here is a poem called “With Your Right Hand on my Neck” by a Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti that seems to fit the mood of Kokoschka’s painting and also mingles the themes of love and death:

With your right hand on my neck, I lay next to

you last night,

and since the day’s woes still pained me, I did

not ask you to take it away,

but listened to the blood coursing through your

arteries and veins,

Then finally around twelve sleep overcame me,

as sudden and guileless as my sleep so long ago,

when in the downy time of my youth it rocked

me gently.

You tell me it was not yet three when I was

startled awake

and sat up terrified and screaming.

muttering strange and unintelligible words,

then spread out my arms like a bird ruffled with

fear

flapping its wings as a dark shadow flutters

through the garden.

Tell me, where was I going? And what kind of

death had frightened me so?

And you held me, my love, as I sat up half-asleep,

then lay back in silence, wondering what paths

and horrors awaited me.

And then went on dreaming. Of perhaps a

different kind of death.

During the process of painting this painting, the poet Georg Trakl had a habit of visiting the artist almost daily and he composed this poem called “The Night” directly inspired by the painting:

Over nocturnal dark floods
I sing my sad songs,
Songs which bleed like wounds.
However, no heart carries them to me again
Through the darkness.

Only the nocturnal dark floods
Rush, sob my songs,
Songs which bleed from wounds,
They carry them to my heart again
Through the darkness.