Vilko Gecan – The Cynic

“Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist.”

(George Carlin)

Vilko Gecan, The Cynic (Cinik), 1921

Painting “The Cynic” is a self-portrait with an interesting and thought-provoking title. Gecan was twenty-seven years old when he painted it and yet the title doesn’t match the ardour of youth, the optimism and a sense of endless possibilities that we might usually tie with that phase of life. The man in the painting looks tired, old and worn-out. His hair, little of what is left, is combed in a strange way, adding to his dishelved appearance. The look on his face is close to a grimace; we can read the turmoil on his face. His lips are sealed tight; he is not the type who would spill his heart out to a stranger in a bar, he is closed-off from the space around him and yet, despite the wall of silence and moodiness he had built, we can sense that this man with an elegant bow-tie is a fragile, sickly and deeply lonely individual. His twisted fingers bring to mind the way Viennese Expressionists such as Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl would paint the hand. The pose in which he is sitting at the table is contorted and strange as well, certainly looks uncomfortable and agitated. Carefully crafted sense of depth in the painting is reminiscent of many Expressionist paintings and films. You can see from the sketch bellow how Gecan built the sense of depth. The figure of the Cynic takes up most of the canvas and the space around him feels crammed and too small. A feeling of uncertainty and dread hang in the air.

The heavy and muted earthy tones are pulling us down into the abyss along with the Cynic who is cynically reading his newspapers and sitting in his armchair. The manner in which the space around him is painted certainly speaks of Gecan’s knowledge of Cezanne’s art and Cubism, but the overall mood and energy speaks of other, more disturbing currents in art at the time; expressionism, which sought to portray the inner world of the sitter. Gecan’s self-portrait and the space in which he is seated speak volumes about the state of his mind. Furthermore, the newspapers he is reading are called “Der Sturm” and were known for promoting Expressionist art. “The Cynic” is Gecan’s best work and one of the best examples of the Expressionism in Croatian art.

Gecan was, unfortunately, drafted in the First World War, captured in July 1915 and spent the rest of the war in captivity in Sicily. After the war, in 1919, he moved to Prague with his fellow-artist and life-long friend Milivoj Uzelac. Two other artists had been living and working there since the war had started; Vladimir Varlaj and Marijan Trepša. The four artists; Gecan, Uzelac, Varlaj and Trepša make the “Group of Four”; a group of artists who worked in Prague at the same time and returned to Croatia soon after the war. Each artist soaked in the artistic influences in his own way and upon returning home they were a wind of change for the Croatian art scene. In 1921 Gecan held his first solo art exhibition in Zagreb, and in 1922 he already, restless and eager for experiences, found himself in Berlin.

Gecan was described by people who knew him as a gentle, slightly aloof, tidy and elegant man so his perception and portrayal of himself as a cynic may imply less a personality trait and more an acquired realisation of the way the world and society is. This was the man who had experienced the horrors of war and the following disillusionment with everything he believed in, it brings to mind the well-known saying of George Carlin: “Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist.” And it also makes me think of Georg Grosz’s portrayal of the world and that of other Neue Sachlichkeit painters. Gecan’s slightly deformed figure and face are perhaps a mirror to the degeneracy of the society around him. Nothing is the same for him. Having once tastes the bitter taste of disappointment on his tongue he cannot go back to painting idyllic landscapes and classical beauty.

Vilko Gecan, The Cynic, sketch from the Zenit magazine

A sketch for this painting appeared in the avant-garde Dadaist magazine called “Zenit” which was published in Zagreb (1921-1924) and then in Belgrade (1924-1926). The magazine promoted the newest and most rebellious art from all over Europe as well as a concept of the Balkan’s barbaric-genius painter. They emphasised the power of dreams, spontaneity, and subconciousness, in contrast to the cold and rational academic art.

Marie Laurencin: Wistful Waifs in Pink and Greys

“Why should I paint dead fish, onions and beer glasses? Girls are so much prettier.“

(Marie Laurencin)

Marie Laurencin, Woman with dog and cat (Femme au chien et au chat), 1916

As it is usually the case with female artists, Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) was partly forgotten and partly misremembered. She is mostly remembered as a part of the French avant-garde, muse to Guillaume Apollinaire who poetically bestowed the name “Our Lady of Cubism” upon her. A female Cubist, a muse, just another figure in the modernist Parisian art circles. But all of these titles, as flattering as they sound, do not do the justice to the lyrical, gentle beauty of Laurencin’s paintings. Born on the last day of October in Paris in 1883, Laurencin moved to Sèvres at the age of eighteen to study porcelain painting. After that, she returned to Paris and pursued studying oil painting at the Académie Humbert. Her work stretched from the early twentieth century up until her death. She was especially successful in the 1920s, but in 1930s, due to the economic crash, besides painting she also worked as an art instructor in a private school. While it is easy to noticed the changes and developments of her style and themes, her paintings always have that certain beautiful quality that makes them so wonderful and unique, and it makes you think that no one else could have painted them but Marie Laurencin herself.

These days I am particularly captivated by the beautiful harmony of pinks and greys in Laurencin’s paintings. So many enchanting shades of grey! Grey like the sky on an autumn day, grey like the fluffy lead-coloured springs clouds full of rain, grey like a soft bunny’s fur, grey like the waters of Seine that Apollinaire mentions in one of his poem called “Marie” written for Laurencin, grey as something gentle, fading and romantical.

“I was walking along the Seine

An old book under my arm

The river is like my sorrow

It flows and does not end

So when will the week be done.“

(last stanza from “Marie” by Apollinaire, translation found here.)

Marie Laurencin, The Fan, 1919

“The masks are silent

And the music so distant

That it seems descended from heaven

 Yes, I want to love you, but love you barely

And my disease is delicious.”

(“Marie”, Apollinaire, found here.)

All the feminine gentleness of Laurencin’s work lies in those soft shades of grey. The girls in all these paintings, dreamy Parisian waifs, with elongated, thin, mask-like faces bring to mind the slender, gaudy ladies from Kees van Dongen’s canvases. Their skin is grey, their eyes large, silent, poetic and deep, their gazes wistful and inviting. Strange doll-like stillness, paleness, quietness lingers through these canvases. And when the soft grey shades meet the more vibrant, almost garish shades of pink, purple, blue, turquoise, then the true magic occurs. Softness, gentleness, sweetness prevail in these portraits, these girls in pinks and greys are girls seen through the feminine lens of a female painter. To call Laurencin “a female Cubist” is almost an insult to these charming, delicate paintings which posses none of the mathematical, objective, steel-coldness of the Cubist artworks. Laurencin’s portraits are like pages from a young girl’s diary, lyrical and coated in sweetness, but not shallow or sentimental because they have that something, a touch of mystery, secrecy and silent which makes one wonder. She even said herself: “Cubism has poisoned three years of my life, preventing me from doing any work. I never understood it. I get from Cubism the same feeling that a book on philosophy and mathematics gives me. Aesthetic problems always make me shiver. As long as I was influenced by the great men surrounding me I could do nothing.”

Laurencin was a part of the Cubist circles but her work is certianly not. Her exploration of colours is, to me, more reminiscent of Fauvism. Look at that turquoise and bright pink the painting “Woman with Dog and Cat”! I don’t understand why the feminine element is often overlooked in her art. She is not less of an artist if she painted pretty girls in pastel colours. She is mostly remembered as just a Cubist muse, but at the same time Picasso’s Cubist guitars and violins, broken to pieces canvases, that is seen as avant-garde and revolutionary, and I don’t see why. Laurencin said something interesting about women and painting: “I conceive of a woman’s role to be of a different nature: painting to be essentially a “job” for a woman (one who sits so long quiet on a chair); and a painter’s inspiration to be life and that of natural sensibility rather than the outcome of intellect or reason. There is something incongruous to me in the vision of a strong man sitting all day… manipulating small paint brushes, something essentially effeminate.”

Marie Laurencin, Femme à la colombe (Marie Laurencin et Nicole Groult), 1919

Marie Laurencin, Woman with Dog (La femme au chien), c. 1924

Marie Laurencin, The Kiss, 1927

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.

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

Marc Chagall – Painting a Dream

‘All colours are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.’

Though he was born in a Jewish family in great Russian Empire, Marc Chagall experienced modernism’s Golden age in Paris. He moved to Paris in 1910. to develop his artistic style. When Chagall arrived in Paris, Cubism was the dominant art form and overall art scene was still greatly dominated by materialistic outlook of the 19th century. When he first arrived in Paris, Cubism was at its peak, but Chagall’s ideas were quite the opposite. Even his thoughts about art were the revers of what Cubists had in mind, Chagall considered art “emerging from the internal being outward, from the seen object to the psychic outpouring.”

His first days in Paris were far from being easy; he wandered lonely through Parisian boulevards, barely speaking French, thinking about what he had left behind. While he painted, Chagall daydreamed about the richness of Russian folklore, his Hasidic experiences, his family and Bella with whom he fell in love the moment he first saw her. However, Chagall’s dream of a big city; city of light, freedom and art, came true.

Chagall really enjoyed being in Paris, strolling around and just breathing Parisian air. He often visited Montmartre and Latin Quarter. Baal-Teshuva described Chagall’s feelings for Paris.

”Chagall was exhilarated, intoxicated, as he strolled through the streets and along the banks of the Seine. Everything about the French capital excited him: the shops, the smell of fresh bread in the morning, the markets with their fresh fruit and vegetables, the wide boulevards, the cafés and restaurants, and above all the Eiffel Tower.

Another completely new world that opened up for him was the kaleidoscope of colours and forms in the works of French artists. Chagall enthusiastically reviewed their many different tendencies, having to rethink his position as an artist and decide what creative avenue he wanted to pursue.”

Artists Chagall admired at that time were Rembrandt, van Gogh, Renoir, Pissaro, Matisse, Gauguin, Courbet, Monet, Manet and Delacroix. Still, Chagall was constantly thinking about his home in Vitebsk as Paris at that time was a home to many other artists, dancers, poets and writers from Russian Empire. ‘My homeland exists only in my soul.’ he once said, as he painted the scenes he remembered from his childhood, incorporating both Jewish themes and Parisian landscapes. Throughout all of is life, the memories of his childhood and Russian folklore mingled with Jewish tradition haunted him and he painted the scenes he remembered in an unrealistic, dreamy, childlike and idealistic way.

Even though he experimented with different perspectives, his grand passion was for colour. He loved colours; using them, mixing them, observing their quality and behavior. “Colour is all. When colour is right, form is right. Colour is everything, colour is vibration like music; everything is vibration.” Very passionate about colours, Chagall painted in dreamy blues, vivid reds, mystic greens and cheerful yellows. His paintings that are mainly blue-coloured are the most appealing to me out of all; they remind me of a dream, all of Chagall’s paintings do. The characters on his paintings, the settings, the poses, wild mix of colours; mystic and tempting with childlike cheerfulness, dreamy atmosphere emerges from his paintings.

“In our life there is a single colour, as on an artist palette which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love.”

“I have always painted pictures where human love floods my colours.”

“I had only to open my bedroom window, and blue air, love, and flowers entered with her.”

Marc Chagall remains the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century having contributed to the development of Modernism. In the 1950s Pablo Picasso made a remark which shows how important Chagall was and what sensation and joy he found in colours ‘When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is.’