ART “4”
“2”-DAY 10 July
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>Born on 10 July 1928: Bernard
Buffet, French painter, etcher, lithographer, designer,
and occasional sculptor, who died on 04 October 1999. — (not to
be confused with Jean
Philippe Arthur Dubuffet [31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985]) —
{Neither specialized in buffet tables, nor in still-lifes set on buffet
tables.} |
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Born on 10 July 1888: Giorgio de Chirico,
in Greece. He will grow up to be an Italian Surrealist
painter and sculptor, who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi,
founds the pittura metafisica style of painting. De Chirico died on 19 November
1978. — Brother of Alberto
Savinio. — De Chirico, born in Volos, Greece, to Italian parents, studied art in Athens, Munich and Paris before moving back to Italy where, together with Carlo Carrà, he created the Pittura Metafisica (metaphysical painting). The Pittura Metafisica was centered on stark views of semi-abstract figures, a deserted collection of distorted mannequins and solitary easels made even more menacing by harsh light effects and oblique perspective. The new style was supposed to overcome the limitations of Cubism, which de Chirico had experienced in Paris, where he had met Picasso. Among de Chirico's best works from the period are The Nostalgia of the Infinite and Mystery and Melancholy of a Street . The movement, however, was shortlived, coming to an end in the early 1920s, when de Chirico and Carrà has a dispute over who had invented the concept of metaphysical painting. In the 1930s, de Chirico abandoned Modernism - which by now he despised - to rediscover the techniques and materials of the Old Masters. The enigmatic dreamscapes of the early 20s gave way to portraits and studies of fruit against the backdrop of a landscape. — Giorgio de Chirico was born to Italian parents in Vólos, Greece. In 1900 he began studies at the Athens Polytechnic Institute and attended evening classes in drawing from the nude. About 1906 he moved to Munich, where he attended the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. At this time he became interested in the art of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger and the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. De Chirico moved to Milan in 1909, to Florence in 1910, and to Paris in 1911. In Paris he was included in the Salon d’Automne in 1912 and 1913 and in the Salon des Indépendants in 1913 and 1914. As a frequent visitor to Guillaume Apollinaire’s weekly gatherings, he met Constantin Brancusi, André Derain , Max Jacob, and others. Because of the war, in 1915 de Chirico returned to Italy, where he met Filippo de Pisis in 1916 and Carlo Carrà in 1917; they formed the group that was later called the Scuola Metafisica. De Chirico moved to Rome in 1918, and was given his first solo exhibition at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in that city in the winter of 1918–19. In this period he was one of the leaders of the Gruppo Valori Plastici, with whom he showed at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. From 1920 to 1924 he divided his time between Rome and Florence. A solo exhibition of de Chirico’s work was held at the Galleria Arte in Milan in 1921, and he participated in the Venice Biennale for the first time in 1924. In 1925 the artist returned to Paris, where he exhibited that year at Léonce Rosenberg’s Galerie l’Effort Moderne. In Paris his work was shown at the Galerie Paul Guillaume in 1926 and 1927 and at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in 1927. In 1928 he was given solo shows at the Arthur Tooth Gallery in London and the Valentine Gallery in New York. In 1929 de Chirico designed scenery and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s production of the ballet Le Bal, and his book Hebdomeros was published. The artist designed for the ballet and opera in subsequent years, and continued to exhibit in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan. In 1945 the first part of his book Memorie della mia vita appeared. De Chirico died in Rome, his residence for over thirty years. — In 1906 de Chirico entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His early style was influenced by the paintings of Arnold Böcklin [16 Oct 1827 – 16 Jan 1901] and Max Klinger, which juxtapose the fantastic with the commonplace. By 1910 he was living in Florence, where he began painting a unique series of landscapes such as The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910), in which the long, sinister, and illogical shadows cast by unseen objects onto empty city spaces contrast starkly with the bright, clear light, which is rendered in brooding green tonalities. Moving to Paris in 1911, de Chirico gained the admiration of Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire with his ambiguously ominous scenes of deserted piazzas with classical statues, dark arcades, and small, isolated figures overpowered by their own shadows and by severe, oppressive architecture. Such works are exemplified by The Soothsayer's Recompense (1913) and The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914). At Ferrara, in 1915, de Chirico practiced a modification of his earlier manner, marked by more compact groupings of incongruous objects. In paintings of this period, such as the Grand Metaphysical Interior (1917) and The Seer (1915), the colors are brighter, and dressmakers' mannequins, draftsmen's compasses, biscuits, and paintings on easels assume a mysterious significance within enigmatic perspectival landscapes or interiors. The element of mystery in de Chirico's paintings dwindled after 1919, when he became interested in the technical methods of the Italian classical tradition. He eventually began painting in a more realistic and academic style, and by the 1930s he had broken with his avant-garde colleagues and had disclaimed his earlier works. De Chirico's Metaphysical paintings exercised a profound influence on the painters of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s. — Nel 1899 ad Atene inizia gli studi al Politecnico e segue un corso di pittura. Giorgio de Chirico inizia a frequentare l'Accademia di Belle Arti e studia assiduamente nei musei l'opera di Boecklin e Klinger soprattutto. Ritornato in Italia nel 1910, l'anno successivo decide di raggiungere il fratello a Parigi. Nel corso del 1910 dipinge ritratti e autoritratti, ed è proprio durante il soggiorno fiorentino che maturano le opere del periodo metafisico, esposti per la prima volta a Parigi al Salon d'Automne nel 1912. Nel 1913 espone al Salon des Indépendants, si lega agli artisti della avanguardia cubista e surrealista. Espone nel 1919 alla Casa d'Arte di Anton Giulio Bragaglia a Roma. Stringe amicizia con Mario Broglio e collabora a "Valori Plastici". Nel 1924 espone per la prima volta alla Biennale di Venezia e a Parigi in autunno realizza le scene e i costumi del balletto La giara, tratto da Pirandello. Nel 1925 si trasferisce a Parigi, ove resterà sino al 1931. Nel 1929 de Chirico pubblica il "romanzo" autobiografico Hebdomeros. Per i Balletti Russi di Diaghilev esegue nel 1930 le scene e i costumi del balletto Le Bal. Nel 1932 ritorna in Italia e inizia una fertile stagione come scenografo, partecipa alla Biennale di Venezia e alla V Triennale di Milano, nel 1933 alla Sindacale di Firenze, nel 1935 la II Quadriennale di Roma. Nel 1936 è a New York, dove resterà sino a 1938. Nel 1944 si trasferisce definitivamente a Roma. Nel 1949 e nel 1952 e 1954 organizza rispettivamente a Londra e a Venezia delle esposizioni personali. Seguono in Italia numerose mostre e de Chirico riceve, importanti riconoscimenti soprattutto all'estero. — LINKS –- Autoritratto (1919, 62x49cm; 2070x1646pix, 161kb) _ In 1919, de Chirico with seven years of astonishing creative activity to his credit, was still a young man. As much as any other 20th century artist with the possible exception of Max Beckmann, de Chirico has been fascinated by his own visage and has recorded it at frequent intervals. Beginning in 1911 with Portrait de l'artiste par lui-même (Et Quid Amabo Nisi Quod Aenigma Est), de Chirico depicted his own unmistakable features on numerous occasions, particularly between 1919 and the end of 1924 when he painted no less than twenty-five self-portraits from a total of approximately 120 works. In many of these he identified himself with figures from the ancient world, including Mercury, Euripides, Heraclitus, and Euripides but in the present work he depicts himself in a narrow space between a shelf in the foreground and an open window framing his head, as in portraits of the Renaissance. With his hand on a book, he represents himself as he might have been portrayed by Raphael or Poussin. — Autoritratto (1949, 20x14cm; 800x587pix, 117kb) with white hair, head only — Autoritratto with white hair, head and shoulders — Autoritratto with white hair, half length — Autoritratto in undershorts, standing full length — Autoritratto in undershorts, sitting 3/4 length — Autoritratto wearing 17th century red clothes, full length — Autoritratto wearing 17th century blue clothes, 2/3 length — Autoritratto wearing black clothes — Autoritratto in the Paris studio — Autoritratto (1920, 40x30cm; 300x220pix, 26kb) — Autoritratto (1937, 40x30cm; 312x220pix, 11kb) _ You've had enough of Autoritratti? OK, let's go on to another Chirico obsession: –- Piazza d'Italia (1915, 59x49cm; 713x583pix, 41kb) _ /S#*>Piazza d'Italia (1961, 80x60cm; 900x1211pix, 155kb) _ /S#*>Piazza d'Italia (1136x900pix, 169kb) _ /S#*>Piazza d'Italia con Arianna (1974, 70x100cm; 900x1304pix, 143kb) _ .Piazza d'Italia (1320x1575pix, 142kb) _ Piazza d'Italia (1913; 547x781pix, 43kb) _ Piazza d'Italia (426x800pix, 75kb) _ Piazza d'Italia with equestrian statue (1936, 60x50cm; 800x661pix, 151kb) _ Piazza d'Italia with monument to the poet (1969, 80x60cm; 800x595pix, 140kb) _ Piazza d'Italia with red tower (1943, 50x40cm; 800x644pix, 119kb) _ This, one of the most characteristic images of De Chirico’s art, of which he painted numerous versions, depicts an enigmatic, desolate urban setting, its eerie quality characteristic of his metaphysical paintings. Born in Volos, Greece from Italian parents, Giorgio de Chirico was surrounded by images of the antique world since early childhood. Classical mythology, history and architecture provided an endless source of inspiration for him, who often combined these subjects with a contemporary setting. In this painting, he combined the statue from classical antiquity, and what resembles Renaissance architecture, with a contemporary city scene, creating an image of a mystical and nostalgic quality. Piazza d’Italia belongs to a series of De Chirico’s paintings of Italian city squares, most of which are conspicuously devoid of human presence. In this painting, two men are seen towards the background, but with their bodies oddly scaled-down (especially in the 1915 version) in comparison to the architecture and to the large statue, the painting retains the majestically quiet, enigmatic mood and timeless quality. In the 1915 version, among others, the center of the square is occupied by the statue of a sleeping, draped woman on a large pedestal, its long, dramatic shadow dominating the human figures (in the 1961 and some other versions the statue is that of a standing man, a Greek philosopher?). This image was inspired by the antique sculpture of Ariadne, most probably one of the Roman copies of the lost Hellenistic statue, that the artist would have seen in Florence or in the Vatican. Asleep on the island of Naxos, where she had been abandoned by Theseus, Ariadne instils the entire composition with a dream-like atmosphere. This general premise of melancholy, central to De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, was derived from the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche. As to the derivation of the Italian squares or ‘memories of Italy,’ the artist gives due credit to Nietzsche by describing in his autobiography what seems to him to have been the German philosopher’s most remarkable innovation: ‘This innovation is a strange and profound poetry, infinitely mysterious and solitary, based on Stimmung (which might be translated … as atmosphere), based, I say, on the Stimmung of an autumn afternoon when the weather is clear and the shadows are longer than in summer, for the sun is beginning to be lower.’ There is no reason to doubt that Nietzsche’s prose played a key part in stimulating the painter’s interest in creating a poetic reconstruction of the dream-lit piazzas of Italy. _ As if Chirico had not painted enough versions of this picture, the pseudonymous Georges Quirivache has transformed one of them into the intrically detailed symmetrical abstraction Pizza di Taglia d'Italia aka Debt Bed (2006; screen filling, 319kb _ ZOOM to 1864x2636pix, 2704kb). — Dream Metamorphosis (600x1510pix; 243kb _ ZOOM to 1400x3523pix) — The Disturbing Muses (1916; 600x420pix _ ZOOM to 1400x980pix) — The mute Orpheus (1971; 600x596pix _ ZOOM to 1400x1391pix) — Due Cavalli (853x1181pix, 730kb) — The Uncertainty of the Poet (1913) — Love Song (1914) — The Philosopher's Conquest (1914) — Il grande metafisico (1926; 600x416pix) — Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1914) _ detail — Le Cerveau de l'Enfant (1914, 80x63cm) (pas d'enfant, mais, entouré de bâtiments, un homme à grande moustache et minuscule barbichette, les yeux fermés, face à un livre fermé sur un signet) — Sole sul cavalletto (1972) — The Profit — Geometrical Composition with Factory Landscape (800x543pix, 75kb) and with a corner of a building from Piazza d'Italia. — 201 images at Ciudad de la Pintura —(091103) |
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On 10 July 2002: $76.7 MILLION PAID FOR A MASSACRE. No it is not the amount of punitive damages assessed by a war crimes tribunal. Nor is it what the war criminals paid their agents. A recently rediscovered painting by Rubens [28 Jun 1577 – 30 May 1640] that had been hanging in the dark hallway of a monastery in Austria is sold at an evening auction at The Massacre of the Innocents (1611, 142x182cm) [image below] is a large, biblically inspired painting depicting the massacre of newborn boys ordered by King Herod. Sam Fogg, a London manuscripts dealer, was the winning bidder. Three dealers and one telephone bidder were willing to spend more than $55 million. Mr. Fogg was bidding for David Thomson, a Canadian collector and the son of Lord Thomson of Fleet, former owner of The Times of London. Mr. Thomson is thought to have outbid several museums, including the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The seller, an unidentified 89-year-old Austrian woman, so disliked the painting after she inherited it in 1923 that she lent it to Stift Reichersberg, a monastery in upper Austria. It was thought to be by Jan van den Hoecke [04 Aug 1611 – 1651], an assistant to Rubens, until George Gordon, an expert in Flemish and Dutch paintings at Sotheby's in London, received an e-mailed picture of it from Sotheby's office in Amsterdam, which had been approached by the seller. Simply by looking at the image on a computer, he had a hunch it might be something else, so he went to the monastery to see the work. The back hallway where the painting hung was so dark he had to do his examination with flashlights. What convinced Mr. Gordon that the painting was by the Flemish master was how much it had in common with Rubens's Samson and Delilah. The two works date from almost the same point in Rubens's career and have the same characteristics. When Gordon was convinced that the painting was indeed a Rubens he had leading Rubens scholars from London, Oxford and Antwerp examine it. All agreed with him. However others, after today's sale, insist that the painting has a pigment never used elsewhere by Rubens and that dating of the wood in the panel indicates that it is very probably posterior to 1611, too late to be by Rubens, who by then no longer painted in this purist classical style. The $76.7 million far surpasses the $35 million paid for Pontormo's portrait of a young man, which the Getty bought at Christie's in 1989 for $35.2 million, then a record for an old master painting. It is also the third-highest price ever paid for a painting at auction. Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890, 67x56cm) brought $82.5 million at Christie's, and Renoir's Au Moulin de la Galette (1876, 131x175cm) sold for $78.1 million at Sotheby's, both in May 1990 in New York. The family who owned The Massacre of the Innocents tried to sell it in the 1930's, officials at Sotheby's said, but couldn't find a buyer. — Learning that his mother was ill, Rubens returned from Italy to Antwerp in the autumn of 1608. By the time he reached Antwerp on 11 December, she was already dead. Rubens had no intention of staying in the north to start with, and his letters show how much he was missing Italy, but he was deluged with commissions, and stayed in Antwerp, eventually relinquishing any intention of returning south and marrying his first wife, Isabella Brandt. At some point in the three years or so after his return he painted this The Massacre of the Innocents. Such a picture must have had an extraordinary impact upon the Flemish public, in comparison to what was familiar to them. In pictures such as this Rubens brings the full-blown Baroque to the north; to a public largely unprepared for it. This is a brutal, unrestrained depiction of an horrific subject, but Rubens, a deeply religious man, would not have seen any reason for toning down the horror of one of the most appalling incidents in the Bible, one which has blackened the name of Herod for all time. The manner of its execution matches the subject: the long strokes of the fully-laden brush are bold and confident; there is no hesitancy in any part of this picture, which is painted with an immediacy and power that is itself overwhelming. Underlying the savage energy of this picture is a remarkably complex composition. The central figure group, though technically unstable, is visually held together by the centrifugal force of the flattened circle formed by the heads of the leading figures, by the alternating tension and compression of the figures whose limbs stretch and press, and by the interlocking network of triangles that unite the figures in different ways. Though the central figure group occupies a remarkably compact space, within their interlocking forms is an intricate series of receding layers – seen most clearly in the sword, limbs, heads and torsos to the left of the armoured soldier. This picture is full of what Rubens saw in Italy. To depict three of Herod’s soldiers, engaged in an orgy of butchery, in the nude, or barely draped in the manner of an Antique marble, is to place an immeasurable distance between this picture and Pieter Bruegel’s contemporary soldiery unemotionally impaling babies in a quotidian act of cruelty (The Slaughter of the Innocents, 1566, 111x160cm), which by the early 17th century was the standard manner of treating this subject in Flanders. Nonetheless, Rubens has adapted and concealed his Classical sources, so that what we see, though unimaginable without a deep understanding of Antique sculpture of all sorts, remains the unadulterated product of his own imagination. In this he has outshone so many later, and some earlier, artists of all schools, who risk descending into pedantry and stylization when drawing on Classical sources. Rubens is the antithesis of our popular conception of the great artist as a precocious genius. In this he stands in stark contrast to his own student, Van Dyck, and to Rembrandt. Rubens was well into his thirties by the time he painted this picture. Very little of his work before he departed for Italy at the age of 23 is known, and though his surviving paintings from his Italian period reveal an artist of enormous talent, and the equal of the best of his Italian contemporaries, it is not until immediately after his return to Antwerp that he suddenly starts to produce pictures that reveal the true depth of his genius. These are hyperbolic phrases, but in pictures such as Samson and Delilah in London, Susanna and the Elders in Madrid, The Raising of the Cross (1611, 462x341cm) in Antwerp cathedral, and in the present extraordinarily well-preserved Massacre of the Innocents, we sense that Rubens finally becomes aware of what he is capable of and understands the full extent of his own powers. That this picture should have remained unrecognized since 1767, when it was first mis-catalogued in Vincenzio Fanti’s inventory of the Liechtenstein collection, until late 2001 when identified by Sotheby’s, is extraordinary, though the London Samson and Delilah, painted at about the same time, and also in the Liechtenstein collection for nearly two centuries, suffered the same fate. It may have something to do with a partial misunderstanding, until the second half of the 20th century, of the nature of Rubens’ style immediately after his return to Italy, since by 1613 his style had moved on, and he was painting pictures that are closer to our familiar conception of his work. Such misunderstanding is not new, since correspondence between the Forchondt family discussing their attempts to persuade the Prince Johann Adam Andreas I of Liechtenstein to buy this picture in 1698 reveal a difference of opinion over what constitutes Rubens’ first style. They clearly overcame his objections, since to our knowledge no pictures were bought by the Liechtensteins between his death in 1712 and 1733, the year when a wax seal was applied to all Liechtenstein pictures, including this one. It remained in their collection until 1920 when it was sold to the father of today's seller. There is another The Massacre of the Innocents by Rubens, painted in 1621. |
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