On 13th June on a weekend visit to Copenhagen with friends I took the opportunity to visit a gallery. I would have preferred the gallery of contemporary art at Louisiana which was holding an exhibition of the work of Hilma af Klint but time was limited and Louisiana unfortunately was about an hour away from the city so I had to be content with the Carlsberg Glyptotec which is museum based around the personal collection of the founder of the Carlsberg brewery. I had to me selective in what I viewed owing to time constraints so I made my way first of all to the collection of French painting.
The Wet Nurse 1880 (Oil on Canvas)
Composition is such that the gaze of the nurse draws the eye to the focal point of the baby. The baby gazes into the distance creating a sort of circular movement around the painting with the lines of the nurse's dress drawing the eye back in and her hand stopping the eye from exiting at the right hand side of the picture plane. I love the fact that the facial expressions are rendered with minimal detail and the sketchy nature of the marks on the fabric that still clearly capture the fall of light on the folds. Also a limited palate with mainly greenish greys and flesh tones with just a few touches of red which stand out adding visual interest. and aid the movement of the eye lying as they do in an almost diagonal arrangement
Woman Hanging Out the Washing 1881 (Oil on Canvas) Depicts a woman going about her everyday activities - the everyday is a common subject for impressionist painters. Here the impressionistic marks and the play of light and visible brushstrokes add to the sense of movement as the woman reaches up. This mundane activity fills the foreground of the painting while the landscape in darker blueish greens recedes behind her so there is no doubt that the woman is the focus of the painting.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was one of the very few female impressionists. Her everyday subjects are generally women. In that period it was not considered a good thing for a bourgeois woman to works so she was unusual in that the exhibited her work at the Salon and at the impressionist exhibitions. However, she would have been constrained by prevailing attitudes to her gender role not to paint outdoors in urban public spaces. Hence her domestic scenes which depict her friends and family.
Toilette After the Bath 1888-89 (Pastel on Paper)
Once again, this is an impressionist work depicting everyday activities. In this case a woman getting out of the bath to be dried by the maid. The composition cuts across the woman's body so we do not see her face. The stance is awkward/ungainly. She seems to be lumbering out of the bath in a not too graceful manner. The maid's eyes are turner downwards - is this respectful aversion of the gaze from her naked mistress? No, I don't think so, to me she seems to be giving the woman a sidelong disdainful glance almost a sneer. Perhaps she is judging the other woman's body and apparent lack of grace? Maybe she could be judging the morality of the other woman (Degas famously painted prostitutes). I like this it is intriguing and focuses me on the attitude of the maid which is not overtly stated but remains somewhat ambiguous. Degas employs a limited palette of blues and greens and captures the luminosity of the flesh and the folds of white fabric against this dark background. He uses pastels in a very painterly way building up strokes of colour like brush strokes on a canvas.
Arabesque - Third Position (Bronze) I selected this postcard, not because the statue in the museum made a great impression on me but rather because I like the way the image is cropped. The cropping converts the sculpture of a ballet dancer into something else. She could be saluting, giving a political gesture ('power to the people', 'heil Hitler') or waving. Shoe could be signalling 'stop' with her palm outstretched or beseeching or begging to avoid cruelty or subjugation. So many possibilities come to mind with this cropped image which don't occur when looking at the original statue. T
The other aspect of this cropped image that attracts me is the close up of the face. It shows that little detail is needed on the contours for it to read effectively as a face.
Self Portrait (1850-53) Oil on Canvas
This caught my eye simply because it followed on from my previous research on self portraits. I immediately recognised Courbet's face from across the room. He painted so many self portraits during his career due to a wide streak of narcissism in his character. He looks similar to this in many of them regardless of the age at which he painted them. He portrays himself as young, robust and handsome, immersed in the greenery of nature and looking boldly and knowingly out of the canvas.
Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884)
The Beggar (1880) Oil on Canvas.
Realism influenced by Courbet. Depicts a lowly character rather than one of the upper classes (? a genre piece). The beggar shuffles away from the door. He is stooped. The woman in the interior does not pay him any attention. The little girl has a gaze which suggests empathy. Has she given him something which he is putting into his bag or has he simply been turned away? Realism in painting is not a genre that I am usually attracted to but I have chosen this piece because it provoked discussion with the friends I was with. The expressions are beautifully rendered. The girl's facial expression communicates particularly well.
The Absinthe Drinker (1859)
This is considered to be one of the major masterpieces of the collection. At first glance the man looks like an aristocrat in his top hat and cloak but on closer inspection, he's actually wrapped in a ratty old blanket or shawl. The palette is very dark. He may be in a back street or alleyway. The greenish tones bring to mind the colour of absinthe to me. There is a glass of drink (absinthe) on the ledge next to him and a discarded bottle at his feet. There are visible brush strokes - is this perhaps to reflect the rough nature of the drink and of the drinker's existence (or am I being overly simplistic?). There is something not quite right about his legs. I can't put my finger on what it is but the position of them doesn't seem to quite match with his upper body. Maybe this reflects the awkward ungainliness of the drunk?
Paul Gaugin (1848-1903)
Woman with Flower (1893) Oil on Canvas.
Gaugin was fascinated by 'the primitive'. This may be lie behind his choice of a palette of bold primary colours. However, this Tahitian woman is dressed demurely and posed in the same way as many classic portraits such as in renaissance portraiture which creates an intriguing mismatch of styles. I like the intensity of her gaze which suggests melancholy but this offset by the bright palette which lifts the mood of the painting for me. Gaugin has treated the woman's features sensitively and she is quite beautiful (although he apparently said of the model, "She was not handsome by our aesthetic standards". This is apparently a rare sensitive treatment for Gaugin as he was reputedly very self absorbed and criticised for rendering the Tahitian women in a generic manner without thought to their individual characters.
Pierre Bonnard ( 1867- 1947) The Milliner (1907) Oil on Canvas
The composition of this painting is unusual. The woman is the focal point. She is crammed into the lower part of the canvas. She doesn't engage the viewer- her face is turned away from us. She is looking out of the frame towards the left. This gives a degree of mystery = What is happening there? Who is she talking to? There is a hat on the chair in front of her. Has she briefly paused in her work because something has caught her attention or is she just having a rest and staring absently into space?
The artist doesn't concentrate on depth and recession. The background chair seems almost superimposed on the women's head. . The use of surface patterning is typical of Bonnard but this is less busy than many of his works.
Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940)
Lunch (1909) Tempera on Paper
The composition of this piece is such that the eye follows the woman's arm up from the lower left corner to her face then her gaze directs us down towards the small girl in a sort of circular motion. The faces are rendered in a cursory way but expression is captured well. Vuillard is very interested in patterns - the pattern of the woman's dress, the fireplace and the plate are quite dominant.
Both the Bonnard and the Vuillard look like snapshots of an unguarded moment - almost like candid photography. The beauty in the mundane
I spent about an hour in the winter garden of the Glyptotec which is a large airy atrium at the centre of the ground floor filled with plants and statues. I drew a few sketches of Rodin's the kiss and enjoyed trying to progressively simplify my approach. I also enjoyed using my ney ink brush pen. I was particularly attracted (or repulsed) by the statue which has a central place in the winte garden by Kai Nielsen (1822 - 1924) entitled 'Watermother' (1919- 1920 - reproduced 2003-2004). This white alabaster statue depicts a nude woman reclining on a plinth in a pond. Out of the water are climbing numerous babies some are latched on to her breasts and feeding. Another sits bizarrely upright on her arm. The material and the smoothness of the stone suggest calm but the image I find quite disturbing - to woman is inundated, stormed over and potentially sucked dry by the swarm of babies which to me would be terrifying but she appears serene. I drew several sketches of the statue. I have not captured the likeness of the statue very well or the smoothness of the stone but I think my use of black ink actually is more in keeping with my emotional response the sculpture.
No comments:
Post a Comment