Month: May 2015

Emile Joseph Carlier

Emile Joseph Carlier, “Gilliat Struggling with the Octopus”, 1880-90, Marble, Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, France

Emile Joseph Carlier was born in Cambrai, France in 1849. He was a student in a monk’s school and then attended the Municipal School where he was taught drawint by the Bergers, both father and son. At the age of fifteen, Carlier joined the studio of ornamental sculptor Lecaron in Cambrai. He traveled to Paris, attending the Universal Exhibition which confirmed his desire to be an artist.

Returning to Cambrai, Carlier followed a course of academic study in the workshop of René Fache. Receiving a scholarship from the city of Cambrai in 1869, he returned to Paris, entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and joined the workshop of academic sculptor Pierre-Jules Caveliwer.

In 1874, Carlier exhibited for the first time at the Salon in Paris, entering works in the following years. He exhibited “Gilliat Struggling with the Octopus” in 1879, which earned him a second prize. This work was inspired by the book “Les Travilleurs de la Mer (Workers of the Sea)” by Victor Hugo. In 1889 after winning his gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, he decided to transform his “Gilliat” sculpture and exhibited it at the Salon in 1889. The work was purchased by the state for the Musée du Luxembourg.

Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet, “The Desperate Man”, 1844-45, Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection

Gustave Courbet, a French Realist painter, strived to be independent from the public’s taste and constantly challenged convention by his emphatically realistic renderings of scenes from the daily life. Courbet was not depicting beauty using graceful poses and impressive colors;  he was depicting truth. This uncompromising artistic sincerity made him stand out from all other artists working at that time in Paris and often forced him to exhibit his work independently from the Salon.

“The Desperate Man” is among the earliest works by the artist that he completed in 1845. With his eyes wide-open, Courbet is staring straight at you and tearing his hair. Popular at the time, the Romantic approach to portraiture was concerned with expressing emotional and psychological states of the individual. However, Courbet is seldom recognized as being connected to the themes and ideologies of the Romantics, who enjoyed the apex of their success around the time of Courbet’s birth in 1819.

Courbet found his career in a transitional period that saw Romanticism coming to a close and subsequently, the birth of realism and modernism in European visual culture. “The Desperate Man’ was produced at the apex of the artist’s melancholy and Romantic disillusionment. It proved to be a key work in his life, and it remained in his studio until his death in 1877.

 

Jared French

Top Image: Jared French, “Evasion”, 1947, Tempera on Canvas Mounted to Panel, 54.5 x 29.2 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art

Bottom Image: Jared French, “Learning”, 1946, Egg Tempera on Gesso Panel, 61.6 x 58.4 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

French was well regarded during the 1940s and 1950s as one of the most accomplished and fascinating magic realist painters. A still understudied group of artists, the magic realists revived painstaking old master techniques to make convincing their enigmatic images that address a wide range of personal and social concerns. Part of a series of works French made to chronicle the human condition, “Evasion” symbolizes an individual’s attempt to deny the physical self. As such, the painting manifests tensions regarding sexual mores in mid 20th-century America. While it is reductive to attribute French’s iconographic interest in “Evasion” solely to his bisexuality, the fact remains that French was one of the first American artists whose same-sex desires were recognized and acknowledged by contemporaries who viewed his work.

Note: For those interested in more information on Jared French, I recommend Emily Sachar’s “Jared French’s State Park: A Contextual Study”, which was submitted for he Master of Arts degree. It includes a chapter of French’s artistic circle of friends, including his freindship with Paul Cadmus, as well as several images of French’s most notable works. The article can be found at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1289&context=hc_sas_etds

Mark Beard

Paintings by Mark Beard

Working in the 1920s style of his imaginary gay great-uncle Bruce Sargeant, Mark Beard creates images of athletes in various stages of dress and undress. This archly homoerotic, exquisitely rendered body of work is rounded out with paintings by Bruce’s circle of friends and associates: his Classicist teacher, Modernist lesbian best friend, and Abstract Expressionist art-school rival. Critical essays, remembrances from New York society members, and other ephemera from this lively quartet of fictional characters create an enticing journey into history, literature, and art.

The Kabuto

Art in Armor: The Kabuto

Kabuto (兜, 冑) is a type of helmet first used by ancient Japanese warriors, and in later periods, they became an important part of the traditional Japanese armour worn by the samurai class and their retainers in feudal Japan.

Kabuto are often adorned with crests called datemono or tatemono; the four types of decorations were the maedate (frontal decoration), wakidate (side decorations), kashiradate (top decoration), and ushirodate (rear decoration). These can be family crests (mon), or flat or sculptural objects representing animals, mythical entities, prayers or other symbols. Horns are particularly common, and many kabuto incorporate kuwagata, stylized deer horns.

André Durand

Paintings by André Durand

Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1947, André Durand is a Canadian photographer and painter who works within the European Hermetic tradition. Through its history, Hermeticism was closely associated with the idea of a primeval, divine wisdom that was revealed to ancient sages. Hermeticism remains influential within esoteric Christianity, particularly in the  Christian mystical tradition of Maartinism. The anonymously written 1967 French tome “Meditations on the Tarot”, later edited and published by Robert Powell in 1980, summarizes the theory and practices of Christian Hermeticism.

Best known for his allegorical portraits of such figures as Princess Diane, Durand’s mythologically inspired paintings are the foundation of his work. These pieces display his deep understanding of the rituals and myths of both Christian and Classical traditions. Influenced by Michelangelo, Rubens and Titian, Durand tries to unite his religion with his art; however, he approaches the subject with the objective and philosophical criteria of a Neo-modernist. 

In 1970 André Durand painted a series of images inspired by the dancers of the British Royal Ballet. His 1972 portrait of Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, whose work often bears heavily on the psychology of its characters, is housed in London’s National Portrait Gallery. Durand  has also received international acclaim for his official portraits of Pope John Paul II and the fourteenth Dalai Lama.

In 2000, Durand became artist in residence at London’s Kingston Upon Thames University. A major exhibition in 2006, entitled “Durand Wholly Pictures” and which covered six years of work, was displayed in churches and cathedrals in the county of Sussex. These works depicted devotional Christian narratives set in traditional  Sussex landscapes. In November of 2007, André Durand produced his oil on linen “Daniel in the Lions’ Den”; the sale of the painting and its limited edition prints benefited the Demelza Hospice Care for Children, a charity in Kent that provides support to life-limited children and their families.

After his return to Italy, André Durand visited the commune of Torre del Greco in Naples and the coastal town of Sperlonga, known for its sculptures and Roman sea grotto at the Villa of Tiberius. At the invitation of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Sperlonga, he opened a studio at the museum as artist in residence for two years. From 2010 to 2012, Durand began a series of round formal paintings on the subject of the Stations of the Resurrection, many of which contain the Grotto of Tiberius in the background.

Durand published several art photography volumes of his work in 2012. Most notable among them is the “Fotograf ando Statue per Anno”, an image collection of the statuary in Sperlonga’s National Archeological Museum. Containing text co-written by the museum’s director Marisa de’Spagnolls, this volume of sculptural work is the only comprehensive photographic archive of the museum’s collection. 

André Durand’s work has been featured in many solo exhibitions in Italy and England. These include, among others, “Frammenti Classici” in 1995 at London’s Archeus Fine Art; the 2000 “Soggetti Italianizzati” at the Galleria Albemarle in London; and “Via Lucis e Lagrime di San Pietro” at Galleria Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Durand’s work is in many private collections  the permanent collections of the Scottish National Gallery and London’s National Portrait Gallery. He currently lives and works in Sperlonga, Italy.

Note: Additional images and information can be found on this site in the July 2022 archive.