Passion for French art bridges the east-west divide – DW – 02/04/2022

Before Paul Gauguin decided to become a painter, he spent his time cruising on the world’s oceans and working as an investment banker at the Paris Bourse. He earned quite a lot of money and founded a family with five children. The impressionists, holding his amateur paintings in great esteem, encouraged him to present them in their exhibititions – and that’s when his social decline began.

At the age of 35, Gauguin radically changes his entire life by turning his hobby into a career. Culture and nature, mysticism and eroticism, dream and reality are the subjects which he tries to tackle in his paintings. Typical for his style are bold colors, large stretches of color, clear contours and lines and rather simplified designs.

Gauguin flees from civilization, at first to Brittany where he studies traditional costumes and customs, combining a simple lifestyle with Bible stories. In “The Vision of the Sermon” (1888) he tries to depict the supernatural. The women farmers look at Jacob and an angel struggling with each other. But the scene is not real – it rather takes place in their imagination.

In the artist village of Pont-Aven, Gauguin is admired for his post-impressionist works. Following a trip to Panama and Martinique, he reluctantly accepts an invitation from Vincent van Gogh to live with him in an artist community in Arles. However, the trip ends in a disaster. Gauguin feels a higher calling: he himself makes an appearance as Jesus Christ in “Christ on the Mount of Olives” (1889).

Gauguin’s next destination is Tahiti where he hopes to find freedom at last. But following an invasion of Europeans, the island hardly proves idyllic. The painter laments the “grotesque imitation of our customs, fashions, vices and ridiculous aspects of cultural life.” Nevertheless, Gauguin’s paintings, much glorifying idleness, show Tahiti as a paradise.

The Tahitians have lost their original instincts, and yet have stayed as beautiful as works of art, Gauguin notes. His paintings satisfy the needs of Europeans longing for exotic beauty and purity. Although exoticism is in high demand in Europe, and few desire Gauguin’s art. He continues to live in poverty. His wife has left him and moved to Denmark with their children.

Impoverished, he returns to France two years later: “wilder than when I left – and yet more knowledgeable.” Success continues to elude him, so he returns to Tahiti – fed up with life. Even his suicide attempt fails. He continues to paint. He also writes for satirical magazines confronting the colonial administration and the Catholic Church.

He pulls himself together once again, producing his most monumental work: “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going to?” (1897). It shows the cycle of life – from birth to death, with all the fears and joys between. He finally receives the recognition he has so longed for: the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard offers to support Gauguin financially.

Alcohol, frail health and ongoing disputes with the colonial administration wear down the painter who produces less and less. At the age of 55, he dies on the Marquesas island of La Dominique where he had produced “Barbaric Tales” (1902). Behind the natives squats a European – the Dutch painter Meyer de Haan, whom Gauguin once met in Brittany.

Paul Gauguin himself had always been confident of his ability, but only after his death collectors and museums started to show more interest in his art. Today he is one of the most famous representatives of European painting.

Like many other of Claude Monet’s works, this 1882 painting depicting a cottage is dominated by water. The sea is rough, and the wind blows through the bushes surrounding the modest hut. The colors are earthy and heavy. But Monet’s brush works quickly, eternalizing a fleeting moment in nature.

Claude Monet, born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, already started at an early age to work with light and color. Concrete themes increasingly lost importance giving way to abstract images. He got together with other artists and set up his brush and easel in open spaces. In 1865, he was permitted to show his first painting in the Salon de Paris, which was a great honor.

In the 19th century, Bordighera in Liguria was highly poular among artists. Like many others, Claude Monet traveled to the town on the Italian Mediterranean in 1884 to spend three months there. “One would need a palette of diamonds and jewels. As far as blue and pink go – they exist here,” he wrote about his stay, during which he created numerous paintings, among them “Vue de Bordighera” (1884).

In this painting (“Sunset on the Seine in Winter”) the light above the River Seine slowly vanishes and the sun appears as a tiny orange ball on the horizon. The weather and its effects on nature is a prominent theme of Monet’s. Over and over again, he studied the changes of light on plants and water. The reflections of a sunset on the Seine bring about a romantic atmosphere.

Monet’s stepdaughters Germaine, Suzanne und Blanche are seen fishing on a glassy lake. Due to the wood it was made from, their boat was called a “norvégienne” – which also lent the painting its title, “In the Norvégienne.” The borders between colors and motives blend, and the foreground and background vanish into each other. The painting was praised for its tranquillity and beauty.

Monet creates magical landscapes that depict motives like flowery meadows, haystacks, cathedrals and bridges in the mist – like here where the Charing Cross Bridge crosses the River Thames in London. Monet wanted to eternalize his own feelings during a given moment in his work. The location itself seems to disintegrate.

Monet painted the Houses of Parliament Westminster while sitting on the terrace of St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. By depicting the changing light and the fog, he conveyed a mysterious aura on the imposing structure. Once again, the river and the fog are conveyed as a blurred shadow of color.

Here, the motif vanishes altogether. The borders between trees, clouds and their reflection in the water are no longer discernible. Monet painted this view of the Seine island Orties in Giverny in 1897. That’s where he owned an estate with the famous pond covered with lilies. He rowed to the middle of the Seine where he worked on up to 14 canvasses at once, studying the different times of the day.

Until 1874 French artists only had one way to present their art to a wide audience: by submitting works to the “Salon de Paris.” A jury would then decide which pieces were approved, and which weren’t. After having their work continually rejected, a group of 30 artists – including Renoir, Monet, Cézanne and Sisley – broke away and organized their own exhibition.

The group organized eight independent exhibitions up to 1886, where many artworks were sold. The young artists hoped to free themselves and their work from France’s state-controlled art market. The exhibitions were major events in the rapidly-changing metropolis of Paris, then the center of the art world.

The impressionists were landscape painters. To transfer their impressions as true as possible to canvas and to exactly replicate natural light conditions, they painted directly in nature. One popular spot and motif for these young painters – including Claude Monet – was Fontainebleau forest, south of Paris.

The artists developed an entirely new understanding and concept of art. In a departure from classicism, they treated color and light with greater importance than line and symmetry. In his painting “The Peach Glass” from 1866, Monet explores the various effects of fruit: in a glass jar, on a marble tabletop and in the reflection.

Although Édouard Manet’s works were never included in the popular impressionist exhibitions, his influence on the artists – especially on Monet – is indisputable. Manet befriended the impressionists but didn’t include himself in their ranks. Eight years older than Monet, he created a number of motifs that the younger artist used as models.

Considered the young Monet’s most significant work, “The Luncheon” was a scandal. It was more than two meters high, a format traditionally reserved for historical painting. And it depicted an everyday scene that included Monet’s girlfriend Camille and their illegitimate son – an unapologetic affront in the bourgeois France of 1869.

At first glance, smoke is the only thing one can discern here. Monet’s “Saint-Lazare Station” shows industrial change in the 19th century. Rather than using mythological or religious motifs, impressionists sourced their subjects from their immediate environment. Their motifs center on nature and everyday life.

Not all impressionist painters focused exclusively on landscapes or the industrial revolution in big cities. Auguste Renoir’s paintings showed life in high society and the privileged existence of the upper class: ladies in orchestra pits and theater boxes, or – here – simply strolling gracefully with an umbrella in the garden.

The importance of the subject diminishes further with Monet over the years – instead he emphasizes the atmosphere of a particular scene. The Saint-Lazare train station seems to almost disappear in this painting of 1877. Instead, fog and smoke red and blue hues dominate Monet’s impression of the station building.

The Städel Museum was the first in Germany to purchase French impressionist art and has built up an impressive collection since 1899. The current exhibition displays around 100 works from museums around the world, including Pissaro’s “Rue de Gisors.” The exhibition runs until June 21, 2015.

Rodin’s renowned sculpture depicts the poet Dante, pondering over his latest work. Created by Rodin between 1881 and 1883, the iconic sculpture also had a great influence on 20th century art. Beside it, a sculpture by Georg Baselitz can be seen — although the modern version is outfitted with platform shoes.

During the siege of Calais in 1347, British King Edward III is said to have demanded that the city’s most respected citizens surrender themselves to free the city. The city in northern France commissioned Rodin to create the monument, “The Burghers of Calais,” in 1884. The original bronze cast of the six figures stands in front of the Calais town hall.

“The Kiss,” from the 1880s, is one of Rodin’s best-known and most popular sculptures. It shows an intimate couple so intertwined that the viewer becomes, as it were, a voyeur. Originally titled “Francesca da Rimini,” the sculpture portrays the tragic relationship between Paolo and Francesco at the Gates of Hell (as described in Dante’s “Inferno”). Such naked passion broke with taboos of the time.

Rodin was a master of depicting incomplete subjects. In his time, presenting fragments of finished sculptures was revolutionary. With this preliminary version of his work “The Walking Man,” Rodin opposed the smooth surfaces preferred by art academies in the second half of the 19th century.

Four sculptures, four different eras, four different artists: Ossip Zadkine, Georg Kolbe Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Rodin. Each subject stretches its arms as if hit by lightning or anticipating help from God. These pained figures were influenced by Rodin’s 1905 sculpture (at right), “The Prodigal Son.”

Rodin was the second sculptor to receive a commission from the writer’s association “Societe des Gens de Lettres” to create a monument to honor the great French author, Honore de Balzac. Rodin concentrated on the “shape of the mind,” and thus on thought. But the plaster model triggered a scandal in 1898. It wasn’t until 1939 that a bronze statue was created and placed at an intersection in Paris.

Rodin’s “Sleep” portrays the beauty of a sleeping woman whose facial features are soft and subtle. She radiates deep peace and tranquility but also solitude. Rodin excelled at expressing such extreme emotions in his works.

Rodin’s striking giant bronze figure “The Walking Man” (at right) is surrounded here by works of art that refer to this masterpiece, or have been directly influenced by it. Created in the style of classical Greek or Roman statues, most especially “Venus de Milo,” “The Walking Man” shows the decapitated figure of John the Baptist who is also mutilated, with Rodin leaving off his arms.

“Auguste Rodin: The Cathedrals of France” is Anselm Kiefer’s striking painting, seen here at the Musée Rodin. Pictured are gigantic church towers, which Kiefer created with lead, among other things. Works by Kiefer and Rodin were juxtaposed for the first time at the Grand Palais show. In all their contrasting layers, they combine the search for a new approach to both materials and stories.

“Lust for Life,” directed by Vincente Minnelli, showed how the life of the famous Dutch painter combined creative genius with a mysterious mental illness. Kirk Douglas offered a critically acclaimed performance as van Gogh, and Anthony Quinn (right) won the Oscar for best supporting actor in the role of Paul Gauguin.

Nearly a decade later, Charlton Heston took on the role of Michelangelo in British director Carol Reed’s equally dramatic artist film “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” The actor portrayed the artist’s struggle for his likely most famous work: the ceiling painting in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Heston’s performance was entirely typical for him — full of pathos and drama.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s the three-hour epic “Andrei Rublev” portrays episodes in the life of Rublev, the famous medieval Russian icon painter born in the 1360s. The film offers a meditation on religion and creative expression; making art under a repressive regime is another one of its themes. Tarkovsky’s own work as a director was restricted by Soviet authorities.

Julian Schnabel was already a star of the art world in the mid-1990s when he released his acclaimed film debut. “Basquiat” tells the story of the life and suffering of Jean-Michel Basquiat, an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent born in 1960. Jeffrey Wright portrayed the young graffiti and neo-expressionist artist who died of a heroin overdose at his art studio at the age of 27.

Filmmaker Mike Leigh’s take on the English Romantic painter William Turner (1775–1851) is a brilliant portrayal of the radical, revolutionary artist. Timothy Spall’s performance in the title role deservedly won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival; the work also obtained several nominations at the Oscars and the British Academy Film Awards.

Art history has always been dominated by male artists. By conquering the art world in the 1920s, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo significantly contributed to a shift of perspective, allowing more female artists’ careers to take off. Salma Hayek brilliantly portrayed the iconic artist in the film “Frida” from 2002.

The life of French painter Séraphine Louis (1864–1942) was portrayed in this biopic directed by Martin Provost. Working as a cleaning lady, Séraphine (portrayed by Yolande Moreau) was discovered and promoted by German art collector Wilhelm Ude (Ulrich Tukur) and later became a famous representative of the Naïve art movement with her works featuring intensely repeated floral arrangements.

The Canadian-Irish feature film “Maudie” portrays another artist who lived most of her life in poverty, but whose work finally obtained recognition. Maud Lewis (1903-1970), like Séraphine, also made history as a master of naive art. In the biopic directed by Aisling Walsh, Sally Hawkins played the role of the charismatic folk art painter who started suffering from arthritis at a young age.

French filmmaker Jacques Rivette directed one of the most beautiful and intense films about art ever made. Based on the short story “The Unknown Masterpiece” by Honoré de Balzac, it portrays the relationship between a (fictive) painter and his nude model. Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart’s performances show in more than one way how a work of art is created.

Another Vincent van Gogh movie to complete this list: In “Loving Vincent,” the director duo Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman used real actors but turned them into animated figures. The animation reproduced the style of the Dutch painter, a first of its kind. The technique literally gave life to van Gogh’s paintings.