Manet's Dance in Spain

In the late 19th century in Paris, Spain and dancing became two subjects that fascinated artists and especially the work of Velasquez, which they began to see at the Louvre. His lights and darks and rendering of real characters captivated them.

This work, Lola de Valence, now in the Musee d'Orsay, was painted in Manet's Spanish Year, 1862, when all of his favorite models were rendered a l'espagnole. (The Luncheon on the Grass, soon after, was to take it all off!)

Manet did not visit Spain until 1965. And then his work became even more imbued with Velasquez. But Victor Hugo had written Hernani, set in Spain. Delacroix had already been. When Manet finally got to Spain, to the Prado, his obsession with Velasquez was confirmed. He wrote to Baudelaire telling him he thought he was the 'greatest artist there had ever been...I discovered in his work the fulfillment of my own ideals....and the sight of these masterpieces gave me enormous courage and hope. " Baudelaire, in turn, wrote this:

Lola de Valence
Entre tant de beautés que partout on peut voir, Je contemple bien, amis, que le désir balance; Mais on voit scintiller en Lola de Valence Le charme inattendu d’un bijou rose et noir.
— Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal (1868)

Among such beauties as one can see everywhere I understand, my friends, that desire hesitates; But one sees sparkling in Lola of Valencia The unexpected charm of a black and rose jewel.

William Lam, on the Lam

This painting by Wilfredo Lam from 1947, Tropic, came at a time when Lam, an outlier among the last group of Surrealists as an emigre from Cuba, had returned to his homeland and the region and had newly become engaged with the traditions of Afro-Cuban divinities and spirituality.

Lam had gone to Paris in 1938 after living in Spain and fought in the Spanish Civil War and been taken up by Picasso by whom he was much influenced and who helped him get his first show. He was also the Surrealist who made primitive and ethnic sources central to his art. You can still see the influence of Picasso in this painting in the new Modern hang at Lacma but there is also a whiff of voodoo and masks. Lam was itinerant and much married, shuttling around Europe and the Carribbean during the war years literally, on the lam from the Nazis.

When I finally got to see the beautiful small Centro Wilfredo Lam devoted to his work in Havana however, it all came together for me. It’s so sad to hear about what is happening to Cuban artists today.

Victor Brauner's Troubles

In 1930, the same year that Victor Brauner moved to Paris from Romania and painted Suicide at Dawn, a fairly recent addition to the Lacma Modern collection, Max Ernst was beginning a new collage novel, and Bunuel and Dali showed their film L'Age D'Or which provoked a violent riot where ink was thrown at the screen, seats were destroyed and the Surrealist paintings in the entrance hall to the Studio 28 were destroyed. The film was banned.

Brauner's second trip to the city (he would eventually end up living there) was eye opening. He befriended Brancusi (a compatriot), Giancometti and Tanguy. But his imagery, though foundational to the mystical precepts and juxtapositions of Surrealism, was particularly violent. Some scholars consider him the most talented recruit of the middle thirties, though his name is not as well known as his confreres.

During WW 2, he was in hiding in Switzerland and unable to get materials so he used candle wax.

This disturbing image of suicide provokes many questions and made me wonder if this transition to Paris was not as smooth as it may have appeared. The factions of the Surrealists who prized poetry and myth bordered on gang warfare at times, so passionate were its adherents. In fact Brauner did not really enter fully into their group until 1933, so this image well predates that time. His work influenced Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

One of the first things he worked on with the Surrealists was a booklet which commemorated the Trial of Violette Nozieres who had murdered her father (and tried to also poison her mother, though she survived) because he had been raping her for the past six years. He had his first solo show in Paris in 1934 which contained, prophetically, images of figures with mutilated eyes; he lost his own eye when he got in the middle of a fight between the Spanish surrealists in 1938. Artists!

Idyllic Summer Through The Eyes of Picasso

As summer comes along and I get a few minutes on a beach, invariably I think back to Picasso. For a while I was so immersed in his life and family working on a documentary, I wasn't able to fully sort out my feelings about the many women in his life whom he had tortured to one extent or another.

In 1920, he found the Villa Sables in Juan-les-Pins near Antibes, then a backwater, and he brought his very pregnant wife Olga with him to spend the summer. He took a lot of photographs of the two of them, mostly naked. Picasso found in the combination of sun and sand an aphrodisiac both for life and for painting for the next 50 years.

The nudes found their way into this contre-plaque (oil on wood) with its bathing beauties and odd perspectives. (PS Picasso could not swim! You always see him wading in the many photographs on the beach over the years)

This idyllic summer seems to have been a high point of his relationship with Olga. (Picasso loved his women most when they were pregnant. It proved his virility.) According to his biographer John Richardson, just before they went down south, he was likely visiting whorehouses in Paris (we can always tell by the art, he gave himself away over and over again). And when they returned to Paris, he completely neglected her and hid away many of the [works] he had done during the summer, almost as if to obliterate them from his memory. Olga was blindsided a few years later after the birth of their son Paulo by the advent of Marie-Therese (Picasso’s women are so famous they are known diminutively by their first names. He, of course, is always Picasso)

Baigneuses regardant un avion, 1920, Musee Picasso, Paris

A spectacular Parisian vegetarian restaurant of the fifties

This is what a Parisian vegetarian restaurant looked like in 1954.  La Saladiere--even the name was chic and prescient--was designed by Mathieu Matzot, now memorialized in a book by Patrick Favardin. How typically French to glam up even if you were just eating what then passed for vegetarian menu options: boiled veggies and various lettuces.  Not surprisingly, the concept did not take hold with the French who were still under the thrall of boeuf bourguinon and the restaurant closed in a few years. 

Images courtesy Matthieu Richard Gallery.

Le Corbusier's boat on the Seine in Paris

Did you know there was a Le Corbusier designed barge docked on the Seine in Paris? The boat was a project of the Comtesse Polignac and her friend Madame Zillhardt who gave the funds to the Salvation Army so they could better house the homeless. Corbu added pilotis, ribbon windows and a roof terrace. I'm not sure if our various agencies have ever considered refurbishing old boats as a solution to the homeless housing problem, but Corbu engaged in many socially conscious initiatives that had implications for the general population. The boat is currently being refurbished by a Franco-Japanese partnership after having sunk in 2018 when the Seine flooded. Quelle bonne idee!

The Luxembourg Gardens host a temporary day care

The Luxembourg Gardens hold a special place in my heart. During my junior year abroad I had to cross the gardens on my way back and forth to the Rue Vavin every day, generally munching a croissant, in one direction, a chausson aux pommes in the other. The gardens are royal, the palace with its military guards is often the locus of art exhibitions, and are extremely well maintained. You can play tennis, or jog, or just take in the flowers and statuary on chairs and benches which are not fixed, moving them around as you like. There is never any trash on the ground.  Now, a temporary nursery by Djuric Tardio Architects built with the modular concepts of Jean Prouve has been built in the gardens apparently to accommodate children whose own nurseries are under construction by the city of Paris. Though this feels odd in the midst of this royal splendor, all credit must be given to the French for prioritizing 'creche's' as the day cares are known, as they always do. The French are protesting losing their benefits which far exceed those of the US but in this case even a royal garden is enjoined in the quest for making the working lives of families possible. The building will stay in the Gardens for two years and then be moved to the 13th arrondissement. It took 5 months to build and cost around 2 million euros. Vive la France.

Pierre Cardin at the Brooklyn Museum

“Buy belt at Pierre Cardin.”

 This short phrase comes from a list I made my junior year abroad in Paris. It was, however, loaded with complexity. I thought of Pierre Cardin as the very height of chic but I wore jeans, and only jeans at the time, and considered anything north of jeans a betrayal of the political principles I had silently sworn to uphold. I had gone to Biba and Mary Quant, but that was swingin’ London and somehow this was different. It was Paris and Ready to Wear. As a result, it stayed on the list for quite some time, as I had to get up my nerve to actually go to the right bank and into the very chic boutique. My aunt’s birthday was the excuse I needed to cross this Rubicon.

Cardin had opened the futuristic Espace Cardin near the American Embassy. He was inspired by NASA uniforms. The clothes were sculpted and space age, some with cut outs or with checkerboard patterns that made you dizzy just to look at them. A salesgirl wearing a black and white geometric print and white booties glided over to me. “I’m looking for a belt,” I said, somewhat defiantly into outer space lest I get vertigo from the op art of her dress.  “It’s a present,” I stated loudly for the record since I wanted everyone to know I thought anyone who owned a dress just for cocktails was hopelessly bourgeois.  

I looked around while she was wrapping the present. I desperately wanted to be able to afford one of these beauties and have the courage to wear it too. Truthfully I was tired of marching and the Revolution. I loved clothes and fashion.  

 Like Mary Quant and Rudi Gernreich, Cardin wanted to democratize fashion. He was interested in theater and design in general. At 97, he can be considered one of the last survivors of this era of fashion, which was largely a reaction to the stuffiness of previous decades, e.g. tight wasp waists, full skirts and nipped in jackets or ruffled gowns. 

 A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum has brought this all back to me.  I’m very much looking forward to seeing it.  

 Images courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.