Art Thoughts, Week 19 -- Soutine & Chaos

The Pastry Chef (Baker Boy), Chaim Soutine, (Russian, active in France, 1893—1943), c. 1919, oil on canvas, BF 442.

In the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast, the main character Belle is aided by various anthropomorphic household objects: a clock, candelabra, and others, all highly animated, helpful and effusive. They would have found a compatriot in the chair in this painting of a young pastry chef. He is a jumpy, assertive fellow; less interested in holding the sitter, than trying to gain attention from the viewers for himself; poking out around the arm of the sitter like an insistent puppy. In fact, many other parts of this picture try to assert themselves by pulling away autonomously from the expected composition: the chef’s right ear is straining to remove itself from the head; the blood-red towel in the chef’s fists is struggling to extract itself; the cream baker’s jacket is about to twist off. Even the paint layers themselves compete against each other for attention and supremacy, creating an incredibly seething matrix, even for someone like Soutine. The whole is a truly cacophonic bazaar of shouting shapes and writhing colors; all elements conspiring to get our attention, and their own way. Yet somehow Soutine – perhaps despite himself – was able to press enough stability upon this chaos to keep it recognizable, without moving fully into Mitchell or De Kooning territory.

But whence the chaos: perhaps we have it turned around? Was the tableau less the suppressed than Soutine himself? There is some evidence for this from Soutine’s life: he had troubled and destructive episodes fueled by depression, poor health and forced exile. But despite this, the evidence in this painting seems to point to suppression by the painter of not simply himself, but more pointedly his wild perceptions of scenes that doggedly pursued him; his animalistic desire to swing paint with abandon conflicting with his need for a semblance of accuracy in depiction. Obviously his technique here is belying his current psychological state and aesthetic needs. Otherwise, his other paintings wouldn’t differ much – which they do; otherwise this painting would be de rigueur – which it’s not.

One aspect of the painting’s surface which seems to support this is the series of thicker, restraining bars of paint which Soutine has laid over the more roiling soup of undercoating, pentimenti and contrasting glazes and washes. In the center of the boy’s jacket especially, more substantial bars of navy and avocado hold in the pool of violet and sea-foam underneath. Another point of suppression can be seen in the chef’s face. The one side, with the swollen ear, is vastly different than the other, more sedate side. This is more of a difference than shading, angle or composition can explain. Together, they exhibit a Jekyll and Hyde-type vacillation of mood, which is analogous, certainly, with the conflicted paint surfaces.

A final interesting note to keep in mind is that, unlike portraits by Paula Rego or Alice Neel, it’s not the gaze in Soutine’s portraits which rivet us; it’s not necessarily by any fault of the sitter that we are arrested by the picture. It’s the conflicted and affronting paint surface and application which jars and holds us, even these nearly 100 years hence. Soutine wasn’t primarily suppressing the psyches of the sitters he painted; he was busy suppressing the wild animal of abstraction convulsing inside him.

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Art Thoughts, Week 18 -- Degas & Intent

Jockeys and Horses, Edgar Degas (French, 1834—1917), c. 1890—1895, oil on panel, BF 572.

Was Degas really finished? That’s one question which came to me while pondering Jockeys and Horses in the Barnes collection. This doubt is mostly precipitated by the plethora of more taut, almost polished compositions Degas is well known for; those glowing portraits which influenced younger artists, such as Toulouse-Lautrec and William Glackens. In fact, the execution of this painting is more akin with Degas’ pastel paintings: immediate; sensitive; obviously layered and a predominantly dry application.

The other reason for asking the question is the undisguised bravura with which Degas laid down this hazy cream sky; brushing against, and in some spots covering over the jockeys’ faces and the horses’ heads; and the similarly bold layer of mossy green emanating from the land, grabbing at the horses’ flanks and hooves. The application is so bald-faced; did Degas intend this? Or, did he just become too distracted, as he once said; beginning far too many things he hadn’t time to finish?

Degas was, simply put, by the time this painting came to be, a master; both highly individualistic and influential. So, I would like to think that he fully intended to push a little at his own envelope, which he self-proclaimed to be “realism”. This painting was done when abstraction was just a twinkle in Art’s eyes, but it is, in retrospective, more thoroughly abstract than realistic. (My faithful readers will know I consider all art to be intrinsically abstract by default, even realism, but that’s another conversation). An important point to make, regardless, is that Degas, in this sassy lathering-up of sky and kicking-up of ground, seems to have acted instinctively rather than intellectually to natural stimuli. That is, instead of a Northern Renaissance artist’s need to obtain a full cogitation on sky as a platitude – carefully parsing and then reconstructing it – Degas is brushing before he thinks; or more aptly, brushing with out needing to think – i.e. instinctually. His extensive training and intensive “field experience” had equipped him to act confidently in bold gestures of competence such as this one.

So, the question of Degas’ intent remains. But what also remains is the much more mysterious, beautiful and evanescent result of whatever was going on in Degas’ head: at that particular French racetrack, that particular misty autumn morning.

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Art Thoughts, Week 17 -- Cassatt & Intimacy

Woman with Nude Boy at Her Left, Mary Cassatt (American, active in France, 1844—1926), c. 1905—1908, watercolor on paper, BF 323.


A watercolor study is a bit like a gut reaction. In a slightly scandalous continuum, they are more than a sketch, and less than an oil painting. The combination of responsive paper and willing paint creates an environment of spontaneity, and a sometimes impetuous result. Yet, as unpredictable as it can be, watercolor is also akin to the phrase sometimes heard at grade-school testing time: go with your first answer; it’s probably the one closest to being right. In other words, the immediacy of our initial synapses are often more reliable before they become increasingly weighted down with context.

Mary Cassatt’s Woman with Nude Boy at Her Left has an instantly affecting and painterly immediacy to it. The Barnes collection has two Cassatt watercolors of almost identical subjects, yet this one is the truer of the two – and the less worked, as it turns out.

There is obvious warmth between mother and child (the familiar gaze and touch seem to suggest that relationship, regardless of the innocuous title). The leaning boy is drawn in by the large, rose-colored V of the mother’s robe neckline. He is further enveloped in an opposing warm V of her skirted legs, nestling him carefully. And too, she is gently holding him there with her right arm. Thus there is a subtle mix of two elements: an encouraging-into-intimacy, and a holding-inside-of-intimacy. Her legs provide the nest of that intimacy, and her arm the adoring restraint of love. This is a decidedly pacific and nurturing take on intimacy. That is, a welcoming space is provided, and then an extremely gentle hand of guidance and restraint is used, saying, in effect, I want you here; and you need to be here. This intimacy model is opposed to the one which would turn the tables, restraining someone in a grip of intimacy, and then attempting to nurture. This of course, is necessary in discipline, and may be found in some lovemaking. Here, however, there is no overt discipline and the painting itself is not Oedipal in the least. There is only a warm, cursory instant between mother and child.

Cassatt’s painting method accentuates this intimate feel. Many thin brush lines of dark lilac and salmon puddle around the figures’ limbs, and caress them into form; the positive shapes becoming almost a negative space, materially speaking. That is, there is less paint on the figures than there is around them. This creates a sort of paint nest for the growth of bodily form inside it, conveying a delicate and spontaneous feel to the paint surface; the forms feel almost carved out of the paper with paint. And those two qualities – delicacy and spontaneity – are certainly as equally important to mothering as they are to painting with watercolors.

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