L'indolente
We visited the National Gallery against all advice not to attempt it during week-end. We arrived about 11.30 and the queue overhead the roadway did not look promising. We clambered up some stairs amongst the rubble of a large extension, plywood panelling on both sides with scaffolding. Upstairs and outside under a tent-like galley we joined a queue. There was some queue confusion when it became clear you first had to get tickets. We joined a new one, bought our tickets and returned to the original file. Towards the entrance the line of keen art appreciators was compressed into a zig-zag line-up, giving hope and revival of spirits to all and sundry.
It was moving along nicely and we were finely ticketed inside and moved into room NR 1. It was well worth it and the crowd was filing pensively past each and every painting.
George Seurat’s three little paintings of his frontal nude girlfriend in room NR 2 were outstanding . I took note that she appeared underage but it must have past the classification board at that time.
In room NR 3 was a large painting by Gustave Geffroy of a man in front of a large bookcase. I did not realise that penguins were already available then. Please also notice the Dutch tulips with the plasma telly just above them.
Cezanne certainly loved his onions with beautifully coloured plates of fruit as well. A beautiful monochrome coloured painting by Edouard Vuillard was outstanding.
Gustave Geffroy
A crackerjack painting of a fat cracking portrayal of a mouthwatering and beautiful sprawled on bed nude was Pierre Bonnards ” woman dozing on a bed” with the very suitable French title L’indolente, was in my opinion the most outstanding of the lot.
This is a must see exhibitions. Come on piglets. Go and see it, even on a Saturday.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Yes Franz, I heard you shouting.
Vincent understood your world so well I feel you could almost be brothers. I suppose those statements of your writings were the blobs of paint applied to canvas by him. All the same and same to all.
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.
Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.
Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.
See ye.
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In response to many requests, let me answer Rasputin’s first.
Of course, Monsieur Meissonier’s paintings can be admired and I am not saying they should not.
But, what is your admiration based on? If on his superb skill in presenting a story with consumate skill, I agree. Superb. One can almost hear the horses neighing and the guns booming, swords clanging.
Ask yourself though. Is he saying something new? Is he repeating himself?
The problem I have is that, no matter how long I stand in front of his work, I am left unsatisfied. Sure, there is harmonious colouring and the composition is well centred. The eye is not challenged by much but it is all rather pleasing and concurs with our sensiblities of what a good painting ought to look like.
Now look at Bonnard’s work. A breath of fresh air, a breaking away from the past. A re-newing and all done by expressing feeling rather than rowing within the safe harbour of convention.
Does this answer it Rasputin?
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I feel the same as you, Gerard, about paintings. There has to be a new way of looking at, of seeing things, a new way of painting…
Hopefully Rasputin agrees. Do you, Rasputin?
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Of course the painted foot of the model was just proof of the enormity of change that was being forged in the art world. The revolt against the academic and the tradition of romanticism was in full swing at the time Bonnard painted L’indolente with the gnarled toe (in extase) curled up against the lovely thigh.
It’s not as if Bonnard could not paint the foot in all its detail, veins and all. He was not interested in the anatomy of feet and the skill in depicting it.
There were a bunch of blokes like him that were breaking the mould of repetition that the likes of Ernie Meissonier and many had established for decades, with fame and fortune for their taking.
Meissonier had established himself as a very successful painter and was part of Napoleon’s III entourage. He painted many scenes of his heroic battles, stroking Napoleon’s ego at the same time. The Siege of Paris is one of his best known.
He was famous, rich, and part of the ‘Societe Nationale des Beaux- Arts. His work was also boring and unrelentingly repetitive. He is now a mere historical figure with his work getting dusted off occasionally. This will never happen to the impressionists or any artist that create, make new.
I suppose in our neck of the woods it was Dobell who broke the mould of stuffy painters and I remember seeing a huge painting by John Olson in our Sydney gallery being exhibited in the early sixties. It was a bombshell and people could not walk past it fast enough. But it did set tongues wagging and made painting pictures flourish as never before. Fred Williams, S.Nolan and the mythical works of Ian Fairweather to name a few.
Years ago. In the late fifties, I hope some of you will remember! There was a film shown of an explicit nature. It was so hot that separated audience could only see it. Even days boys, uneven days girls. I went to see it.
The hammond organ rose majestically up from the bowels of the auditorium. A man with black trousers and white jacket spoke a few words of caution, calming rising expectations and giving the show an air of governmental approval.
The film started and it was full of arrows and ovulation with drawings of sperms , ducts and medical terms. The audience started dribbling to the exit. One bloke, and I’ll never forgot this, at the back of the cinema, shouted out, ” has anyone cracket a fat yet”?
A statement so apt, you could hang your coat from it. But is it art?
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Wow, Gerard, I just noticed that this morning’s Top Searches (for Pig’s Arms) are:
chocked gorilla, farrah fawcett majors, lydian empire, gerard oosterman, sagittarius word tattoos 🙂
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Sorry Piglets, no pearls for you after all; I seem to have lost my hastily scribbled notes about these wonderful artworks…
🙂
Why is it that there is always some fat lady or a broad-shouldered tall bloke at these exhibitions, who think that these paintings have been sent just for them all way from France.
They will not budge, and I’m not strong or rude enough to try and push them away to take a little peep of Van Gough’s bedroom, or to study Georges Seurat’s mistress just a little bit closer…
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Foot like a hand though, that left foot, don’t you think? Whaddayarekkon G? Give us the benefit of your extensive knowledge of art appreciation.
That foot; deformity or just lack of time or technique?
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Thanks a lot for your lovely article Gez. You must have been impressed by it all!
Hey Mirriyuula,
I reckon the left foot tells us a lot. She is obviously enjoying being painted that way and when she curled her toe over her right thigh, what with her hand caressing her right breast and l’artiste looking on holding his palet, I reckon she was having un moment of extase while beckoning and teasing him sacre bleu rigide, non?
I would not be at all surprised if old Pierre flung his palet and easel in the corner of his atelier and tried his oevre at something a bit more urgent.
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There’s nothing in this world to match having a “urgent oevre in the atelier”. I’ve always said so; and do you know, no-ones ever told me it’s not so.
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yo
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I’ll talk about my favourites later on…
Best to see it during the week, still very busy.
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“fat cracking”? You’re a crack up G!
We shall all dutifully troop off to the nations capital and take our dose of KULCHA. However, I’ve been warned; and I for one will be wearing a sturdy “anti-fat” undergarment to save me from an embarrassing bulge during viewing.
All jokes aside, “L’indolente” is just beautiful. The late afternoon light flowing over the disarrayed bed, “L’indolente”, her head turned from the light but looking directly at the viewer, her thick dark hair falling all around, the coy modesty of her left breast crooked in her left elbow while her hand cups her right breast, none the less coquettishly exposing her vulva, the languid torpid pose of her body, counterpointed by the twisting tension of the left leg and the whole thing held in dynamic stasis by her right leg hanging over the side of the bed, her right foot on the floor. So much for the architecture
How many of us have seen the one we love in just such a scene, such a pose, and had our hearts melt. Perhaps we were younger but the impossible beauty of those moments never loses its conjuring power. Bonnard has encapsulated the feel, physicality and emotion of the moment supremely. I can almost smell the sweat and hear the people down in the street.
The only thing puzzling me is the identity of “L’indolente”. Somehow I’d feel better about this painting if the model was his wife Marthe. She features in a series of exquisite “toilet scenes” and other works. Bonnard apparently loved his wife, which fact alone makes him unusual amongst French artists, but I can’t discover who the model was so I’ll have to go on wondering.
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Bingo!
Apparently it is Marthe, but she was his “companion” not his wife. Very “moderne; and further; it was not painted from life but rather after a number of casual “snapshots” taken with a Kodak portable camera.
“Using a portable Kodak camera, he further realized a series of nude photographs of Marthe in his apartment, rue de Douai, capturing in a casual snapshot style, with informal framing, what would become the sketchy freedom of the Parallèlement illustrations.”
“L’indolente” was painted as part of this ongoing project between Verlaine and Bonnard where Bonnard would try to realise in paint what Verlaine was writing in his poetry.
Thanks once again G for this injection of fine arts sensibility.
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Beautiful bit of writing there WM (sorry HOO, for copying you), that brought the painting back to me most vividly…
Yes, pity about the lovely Marthe not being Bonnard’s missus. So much passion wasted on a mere companion! 🙂
Did Seurat have a wife. Too early in the day to be bothered to find out…
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Passion is never wasted H, though it is sometimes misplaced.
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WM, I must remember to put a smiley ikon after most of my statements here and UL, someone might take me seriously one of these days…
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