Tag: france

Madame Blanchard

Artist Unknown, “Mort de Madame Blanchard”, 1819, Newsprint Illustration

While not the first female hot air balloonist, Madame Blanchard was the most well-known: King Louis XVIII, after seeing her performance, named her the “Official Aeronaut of the Restoration”. She was the first female to pilot her own hot air balloon, and the first to make ballooning her career.

Unfortunately, several years after her husband, also a balloonist,  died in a ballooning accident, Madame Blanchard was also killed. During a demonstration for a large crowd in Tivoli Gardens, she lit several fireworks, which ignited the gasses within her craft, causing her to fall to the ground and sustain fatal injuries.

Jean-Noël Lavesvre

Sculptures of Jean-Noël Lavesvre

Jean-Noël Lavesvre is a French painter and sculptor who is living and working in Paris. He began his career as a set designer and costume designer in 1984 at the Opéra de Marseille with La Traviata. Lavesvre designed the atmospheric sets for the Canadian Opera Company’s 2012/2013 season presentation of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Il Trovatore”. 

Pierre Soulages

Pierre Soulages, “Lithograph Number 3″, 1957, 25 x 19 Inches, Museum of Modern Art, New York

As a child, Pierre Soulages was fascinated by the Celtic carvings in the local museum and the architecture of the abbey of Sainte-Foy in nearby Conques, and these early impressions would continue to surface throughout his career. In 1938, inspired by the works of Cezanne and Picasso, he enrolled in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, but he was disappointed by the traditional instruction and soon moved back to his childhood home of Rodez.

In 1946, Soulages returned to Paris and set up a small studio in Courbevoie. He began to paint in a wholly abstract style, producing canvases with overlapping black, barlike strokes on a glowing white or colored, ground, which he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1947.

Though his rejection of bright color in favor of black set him in opposition to the major trends in French abstract painting of the time, Pierre Soulages was nevertheless a prominent exemplar of the Jeune École de Paris (Young School of Paris), an umbrella term for the gestural or post-Cubist abstraction. in contrast to the gestural approach of his American counterparts, Soulages deliberately constructed his compositions to create a formal balance.

Bernard Buffet

Bernard Buffet, Illustration for “Les Chants de Maldoror”, 1952, Drypoint Etching, Edition of 125

“Les Chants de Maldoror” was published by Les Dix of Paris and was printed by Atelier Daragnes in 1952. It was presented in-folio with leaves loose in two black cases with a limited edition of 125 copies. The 125 original etchings enclosed, each in a 12 x 16 inch format, were by Bernard Buffet. “Les Chants de Maldoror” was Buffet’s first illustrated book.

Claus Sluter

Claus Sluter, “Well of Moses”, 1395-1404, Cloister of the Chartreuse de Champmol, Dijon, France

Claus Sluter was an influential master of early Netherlandish sculpture, who moved beyond the dominant French taste of the time and into highly individual monumental, naturalistic forms. The works of Claus Sluter infuse realism with spirituality and monumental grandeur.Sluter’s influence was extensive among both painters and sculptors of 15th-century northern Europe.

The six-sided “Well of Moses”, now lacking its crowning Calvary group, which made the whole a symbol of the “fountain of life,” presents six life-sized prophets holding books, scrolls, or both. The figures, beginning with Moses, proceed counterclockwise to David, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Daniel, and Isaiah. Moses was placed directly below the face of Christ, and the location of Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, was at Jesus’ back, as befits a precursor.

Zechariah looks down sadly as Daniel vigorously points to his prophecy. On the other side of Daniel, and serving to balance Daniel’s passionate temperament, is the calm reflective Isaiah. This juxtaposition reveals Sluter’s use of alternating naturalistic balances. The head and torso fragment of Christ from the Calvary reveal a power and intensity of restrained expression that conveys overwhelming grandeur. Suffering and resignation are mingled, a result of the way the brow is knitted, though the lower part of the face, narrow and emaciated, is calm and without muscular stress.

The “Well of Moses” was originally painted in several colours by Jean Malouel, painter to the duke, and gilded by Hermann of Cologne. The figures of the composition dominate the architectural framework but also reinforce the feeling of support that the structure provides through their largeness of movement.

Enki Bilal

The Artwork of Enki Bilal

Enik Bilal is a French comic book creator, comics artist and film director. At the age of fourteen, he met Rene Goscinny, a French comics editor and writer known for the comic book “Asterix”. With Goscinny’s encouragement Bilal applied his talent to the field of comics. He produced work for Goscinny’s comics magazine “Pilote” in the 1970s.

Enik Bilal is best know for the “Nikopol” trilogy which took more than a decade to complete. He wrote the script and id the artwork. The final chapter “Froid Equateur” was chosen Book of the Year by the magazine “Lire”. The third chapter of his “Quatre?” trilogy, entitled “Rendezvous a Paris” was the fifth best selling comic of 2006.

Calendar: August 19

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of August

The Musician

August 19, 1883 was the birthdate of French fashion designer Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel.

Coco Chanel began designing hats initially as a diversion that evolved into a commercial enterprise. She became a  licensed milliner in 1910 and opened a boutique at 21 Rue Cambon, Paris, named Chanel Modes. Chanel’s millinery career bloomed once theater actress Gabrielle Dorsiat wore Chanel’s hats in the 1912 play “Bel Ami”.

In 1913, Coco Chanel opened a boutique in Deauville , financed by her long-time lover Arthur Capel, where she introduced deluxe casual clothes suitable for leisure and sport, constructed from humble fabrics such as jersey and tricot, at the time primarily used for men’s underwear. The location was a prime one, in the center of town on a fashionable street. Here Chanel sold hats, jackets, sweaters, and the mariniere, the sailor blouse. Her sister Adrienne and her aunt Antoinette were recruited to model Chanel’s designs; on a daily basis the two women paraded through the town and on its boardwalks, advertising the Chanel creations.

Chanel, determined to re-create the success she had enjoyed in Deauville, opened an establishment in Biarritz in 1915. Biarritz, situated on the Côte Basque, in proximity to wealthy Spanish clients, had neutral status during World War I, allowing it to become the playground for the moneyed and those exiled from their native countries by the hostilities. The Biarritz shop was installed not as a storefront, but in a villa opposite the casino. After one year of operation, the business proved to be so lucrative that in 1916 Chanel was able to reimburse Arthur Capel his original investment.

In 1918, Chanel purchased the entire building at 31 Rue Cambon, which was situated in one of the most fashionable districts of Paris. In 1921, she opened what may be considered an early incarnation of the fashion boutique, featuring clothing, hats, and accessories, later expanded to offer jewelry and fragrance. In addition to turning out her couture collections, Chanel threw her prodigious energies into designing dance costumes for the cutting-edge Ballets Russe. Between the years 1923–1937, she collaborated on productions choreographed by Diaghilev and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, notably “Le Train Bleu” a dance-opera, “Orphee” and “Oedipe Roi”

Coco Chanel’s  design aesthetic redefined the fashionable woman for the post World War I era. Chanel’s initial triumph was the innovative use of the jersey fabric, a machine knit material manufactured for her by the firm Rodier. Prior to this, jersey tended to be used only in hosiery and for sportswear for tennis, golf and the beach. The Chanel trademark became the look of youthful ease, a liberated physicality, and unencumbered sportive confidence.

Francis Picabia

Francis Picabia, “Pierrot”, 1932-1937, Oil on Canvas, 196 x 130,5 cm, Private Collection

Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia was born in Paris to a French mother and a Cuban father of an aristocratic Spanish descent. Financially independent, Picabia studied under Fernand Cormon and others at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in the late 1890s. Fernand Cormon, one of France’s leading historical and portrait artists, took Picabia into his Atelier Cormon, where Vincent van Gough and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had also studied.

After shortly experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism at the initial stage of his career, Francis Picabia became associated with Cubism as his highly abstract compositions were colorful and rich in contrasts. He was also in his early career between 1903 to 1908 influenced by the impressionsit paintings of Alfred Sisley.

After short stints with Fauvism and Neo-Impressionism, Picabia became the major artist of the Dada movement. He was later briefly associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment as a whole. Despite the association with so many movements, Picabia managed to leave a strong mark on all of them and it is fair to say that the entire outlook of the modern art would not be quite the same if Picabia was never a part of its crucial early-twentieth century stage.

Calendar: July 31

A Year: Day to Day Men: 31st of July

Oh, Happy Day

July 31, 1901 was the birthdate of French painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet.

In 1945, Jean Dubuffet, impressed with painter Jean Fautrier’s abstract paintings, started to use thick oil paint mixed with materials such as mud, straw, pebbles, sand, plaster, and tar. He abandoned the tradition use of the brush; instead, he worked with a paste into which he could create physical marks, scratches and slashes. These impasto paintings, the ‘Hautes Pâtes’ series, he exhibited at his show in 1946 at the Galery Rene Drouin. He received some backlash from the critics but also some positive feedback as well.

Jean Dubuffet achieved rapid success in the American art market, largely due to his inclusion in the Pierre Matisse exhibition in 1946. His association with Matisse proved to be very beneficial. Dubuffet’s work was placed among the likes of Picasso, Braque, and Rouault at the gallery exhibit; he was only one of two young artists to be honored in this manner. In 1947, Dubuffet had his first solo exhibition in America, in the same gallery as the Matisse exhibition. Reviews were largely favorable, and this resulted in Dubuffet having a regularly scheduled exhibition at that gallery.

In his earlier paintings, Dubuffet dismissed the concept of perspective in favor of a more direct, two-dimensional presentation of space. Instead, Dubuffet created the illusion of perspective by crudely overlapping objects within the picture plane. Dubuffet’s “Hourloupe” style in later paintings developed from a chance doodle while he was on the telephone. The basis of it was a tangle of clean black lines that forms cells, which are sometimes filled with unmixed color. Dubuffet believed the style evoked the manner in which objects appear in the mind. This contrast between physical and mental representation later encouraged him to use the approach to create sculpture.

Between 1945 and 1947, Jean Dubuffet took three separate trips to Algeria—a French colony at the time in order to find further artistic inspiration. He was fascinated by the nomadic nature of the tribes in Algeria, particularly the ephemeral quality of their existence. The impermanence of this kind of movement attracted Dubuffet and became a facet of the new Art Brut movement.

Dubuffet coined the term art brut, meaning “raw art”, for artwork produced by non-professionals working outside aesthetic norms, such as art by psychiatric patients, prisoners, and children. He felt that the simple life of the everyday human being contained more art and poetry than did academic art, or great painting. Dubuffet found the latter to be isolating, mundane, and pretentious,  He sought to create in his own work an art free from intellectual concerns; and as a result, his work often appears primitive and childlike.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, “Romulus’ Victory Over Acron”, Detail, 1812, Oil on Canvas, Amphithéatre d’Honneur, Paris, France

Completed in 1812, Jean Auguste Ingres’ source for this subject comes from Plutarch’s “Life of Romulus”. The painting depicts the war that resulted from the Roman abduction of the young Sabine women in an effort to remedy the shortage of women in the newly founded city of Rome. In retaliation Acron, the king of the neighbouring tribe, the Caeninenses, declared war upon the Romans. Aaron and his tribesmen are mercilessly defeated and their city is sacked by the Romans.

This neoclassical painting of Jean Ingres is one of his largest, cast in the form of a long frieze, a style traditional of the ancient world. Ingres used tempera to evoke the matte quality which is consistent with the ancient Roman frescoes.

Source: hadrian6

Guy Billout

The Illustrations of Guy Billout

French artist Guy Billout’s universe of ironic illustrations has a tendency to magnify one’s anxieties, whilst offering humor and a look into a bizarro version of society. His work is overall minimal, but the subject in each piece offers scenarios that makes you think of countless outcomes and possibilities.

His work has been featured in numerous magazine publications such as Yhe New Yorker, and most recently, The Atlantic. He also writes and illustrates childrens books.

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David, “The Death of Marat”, 1793, Oil on Canvas, 65 x 50 Inches, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium

Jacques-Louis David promised his peers in the National Convention that he would later depict Marat, their murdered friend, invocatively as ‘erivant pour le bonheur du peuple’ or writing for the good of the people. “The Death of Marat” is designed to commemorate a personable hero. Although the name of Chalottte Corday, the assassin, can be seen on the paper held in Marat’s left hand, she herself is not visible. Close inspection of this painting shows Marat at his last breath, when Corday and many others were still nearby.

In this sense, for realistic as it is in its details, the painting, as a whole, from its start, is a methodical construction focusing on the victim, a striking set up regarded today by several critics as an “awful beautiful lie”— certainly not a photograph in the forensic scientific sense and barely the simple image it may seem. For instance, in the painting, the knife is not to be seen where Corday had left it impaled in Marat’s chest, but on the ground, beside the bathtub.

“The Death of Marat” has often been compared to Michelangelo’s “Pieta”, particularly  the elongated arm hanging down in both works. Jacques-Louis David admired the work of Caravaggio, especially his “Entombment of Christ” which mirrors David’s painting in drama and light. David sought to transfer the sacred qualities long associated with the monarchy and the Catholic Church to the new French Republic.

Jacques-Louis David painted Marat, martyr of the Revolution, in a style reminiscent of a Christian martyr, with the face and body bathed in a soft, glowing light. As Christian art had done from its beginning, David also played with multileveled references to classical art. Suggestions that Paris could compete with Rome as capital and mother city of the Arts and the idea of forming a kind of new Roman Empire appealed to French Revolutionaries, who often formed David’s audience.