The Runners.

I was doing some 'Cave Paintings' today in #Apple #iWork #Pages. It's called 'The Runners'. The background here is a gradient of real human skin colours that I picked off a photo.

See more on my computer blog I Work in Pages.

Maugham's Chardin: Eureka.

Please read 'What's in a still life' on the same subject.

In W. Somerset Maugham’s novel Christmas Holiday (1939), Charley and Lydia, the two main characters, discuss a still life by Jean-Siméon Chardin in the Louvre. Charley, who had thought of himself as an expert, suddenly discovers a whole new dimension to Fine Art, that until then he hadn't been aware of.

Maugham in 1933, with a flagon of wine.

Maugham is at his best in this scene. He gives a wonderful philosophical interpretation of a simple arrangement of a loaf of bread and a flagon of wine. Read the excerpt from the novel in my previous post.  I tried to identify which of Chardin’s many still lifes they were talking about, but couldn't.  

Some are close to Maugham’s description but don't quite fit. There is a festive one, with a twig of fleur d’orange in a brioche in the Louvre and there is another, where wine and bread are next to a plate of leftovers from a poor man’s meal. The second one is not in the Louvre but in the Lille museum of Fine Art. And neither corresponds exactly to what the characters are talking about, bread and wine as the flesh and blood of the common folk, despised and rejected.

In desperation I appealed to friends on social networks — and it worked!

First, an old colleague of mine, journalist Vladimir Solntsev suggested that a completely different picture, not in a French collection but in the National Gallery in London, best fitted the description. I looked at it in disbelief — it did. 

Then came the final breakthrough. Natalia Fedorchenko found an old article in Life magazine, by none other but Maugham himself, confirming that it was indeed the picture in the novel. In that article, published in December 1941, he also repeats, practically word for word, the interpretation he put in the mouth of his character and explains how he used ‘novelist’s licence’ to move Chardin’s still life, for the story’s purposes, from the National Gallery to the Louvre. 

‘Some time ago I wrote a novel in which I had occasion to make a character, a Russian refugee, speak of a particular picture of Chardin’s,—writes Maugham,—it happened to be the picture in the National Gallery in London [...], but that did not suit me and so, taking the novelist’s license, I feigned that it was in the Louvre.’

There is a small disappointment, however. The National Gallery website states that the painting is now considered to be not by Chardin but by a later, 19th Century imitator. Apparently, at the time Maugham was writing, it was still attributed to Chardin.

My thanks go to Natalia and Vladimir who helped solve the mystery that wouldn’t let me sleep in peace for many a night.  

And what a wonderful trick by the old master, one of the best interpretators of art in the past century.

The portrait above is by Maugham’s friend Sir Gerard Kelly (wiki article), who painted at least eight portraits of the writer and appeared, under different names, in several of his novels. The picture accompanies the Life article, but there is no indication of the source or the copyright status of the work. I couldn’t find it anywhere else on the web and publish it now on ‘fair usage’ basis but please let me know if you know who owns it and I will put a proper attribution. 

Here is an excerpt from the Life article, ‘Paintings I have liked. A great novelist tells of his experiences with another art,’ from Life,  December 1, 1941.

"

I saunter on, looking for my favorite Chardin, but I know I shall nor find it, for it is not in the Louvre, but in the National Gallery in London. Chardin by many people is looked upon as one of the lesser masters. I do not think he is. For one thing he was eminently skilful. He had a wonderful talent for putting onto canvas the play of light and the savor of color and because he liked to do this he preferred to paint still life which he could arrange as he chose. He was a very even painter and I cannot think of a single one of his pictures in which he falls more than a little below his own high level.

Now and then he painted domestic scenes, women at heir chores, because he had to sell to eat, and it appears that people would not buy his still lifes. The patrons of his day asked for the human interest; it is strange that they did not see that the significance of his still lifes consists not only in their lovely harmonies and in their exquisite delicacy but precisely in their human interest; for Chardin’s peculiar virtue is that he was able to see the beauty and the throbbing life that there is in humble ordinary things like pots and pans. You cannot believe he painted them merely because he could make a decorative arrangement of them and a delicate harmony of color; had that been all, he could hardly have painted them with such tenderness, and you cannot resist the conviction that they were to him somehow symbols of the pathos and the pity, the courage, the endurance, the goodwill and the honesty of the common people.

Some time ago I wrote a novel in which I had occasion to make a character, a Russian refugee, speak of a particular picture of Chardin’s; it happened to be the picture in the National Gallery in London which I have just mentioned, but that did not suit me and so, taking the novelist’ license, I feigned that it was in the Louvre. I put into as apt words as I could exactly the feeling it gave me and since I can express no better what I look upon as Chardin’s deep significance I shall take leave now to repeat them. 

ART IS A CLUE TO MYSTERY OF BEING

It is a tiny canvas on which are painted a loaf of bread and a flagon of wine. And isn’t it wonderful, I make my character say, that with those simple objects, with his painter’s exquisite sensibility, moved by the charity in his heart, that funny, dear old man should have made something so beautiful that it breaks you? It was as though, unconsciously perhaps, hardly knowing what he was doing, he wanted to show you that if you only have enough love, if you only have enough sympathy, out of pain and distrust and unkindliness, out of all the evil of the world, you can create beauty.

It’s not only a loaf of bread and a flagon of wine; it’s the bread of life and the blood of Christ, but not held back from those who starve and thirst for them, and doled out by priests on stated occasions; it’s the daily fare of suffering men and women. It’s so humble, so natural, so friendly, it’s the bread and wine of the poor who ask no more than that they should be left in peace, allowed to work and eat their simple food in freedom. It’s the cry of the despised and rejected. It tells you that whatever their sins men at heart are good. That loaf of bread and that flagon of wine are symbols of the joys and sorrows of the lowly and meek. They ask for your mercy and your affection; they tell you that they’re of the same flesh and blood as you; they tell you that life is short and hard and the grave is cold and lonely. It’s not only a loaf of bread and a flagon of wine; it’s the mystery of man’s lot on earth, his craving for a little friendship and a little love and the humility of his resignation when he sees that even they must be denied him.

"

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After the Battle. Stalingrad References.

This large canvas is called ‘After Igor Svyatoslavitch’s fighting with the Polovtsy’, or simply ‘After the Battle’. 

It is the 1880 work of Viktor Vasnetsov, the Russian painter who produced a number of popular historical and folklore paintings. They became popular in Imperial Russia and, with their patriotic message, stayed so during the Soviet period. 'After the Battle' is exhibited in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

‘After the Battle’ draws on the imagery of the Tale of Igor’s Campaign, the medieval Russian poem (late 12th Century), about the 1185 raid of Prince Igor against Polovtsy, the nomadic raiders of the steppes in the Don region. He was defeated and taken prisoner. Alexander Borodin based the opera Prince Igor (1890) on the Tale of Igor’s Campaign. The famous Polovetsian Dances (link to wiki) is from that opera.

In books, visual references are often lost simply because an image instantly recognisable in one generation, or in one culture, is completely lost in the general consciousness of the next generation, or another culture. A popular picture, a poster, an ad, or a cinema episode may go out of circulation. 

This is especially true of translated books. Different cultures have different sets of cultural references. And that includes images. 

It is seventy years since the great battle of Stalingrad (July 1942-February 1943), when the nazi army was crushed on the river Volga deep in the steppes of Russia. The battle was the turning point in the second world war.

Vassily Grossman’s epic novel ‘Life and Fate’ (1959) has Stalingrad as its background. In the following passage, the Red Army is amassing troops and armour to the North and South of the besieged city to go on the counter-offensive and encircle a vast German army. As preparations are under way, officers and soldiers have a few pensive moments when they link their war to wars of the past. And Vasnetsov’s painting, that was in all Russian history textbooks, on postcards and posters, and in reproductions that hung in public places, springs up. 

This extract is from Part Two, Chapter 58 of Life and Fate, English translation by Robert Chandler:

«

The camels passed by, leaving a smell of hay in the frosty air. The same huge moon — more black than red — had shone over the deserted fields where Prince Igor was to give battle. The same moon had shone when the Persian hosts marched into Greece, when the Roman legions invaded the German forests, when the battalions of the first consul had watched night fall over the pyramids...

...

Darensky, his head sunk into his shoulders, was sitting on a box of shells and listening to two soldiers who lay stretched out under their greatcoats beside the guns. ... The soldiers puffed blissfull at the cigarettes they had rolled, letting out clouds of smoke. ...

'Just look at the night! You know, I once saw a picture like this when I was at school: a full moon over a field and dead warriors lying on the ground.'

'That doesn't sound much like us,' said the other with a laugh. 'We're not warriors. We're more like sparrows.'

»

This an other images by Viktor Vasnetsov can be found on Wikipedia. 

This video is of the Petersburg Kirov (Mariyinsky) performance: 

What's in a still life?

Chardin. 

Les apprêts d'un déjeuner

A friend of mine, an art critic and historian, once told me: "These days it's not fashionable to read in". Meaning, critics try not to dwell on or decipher the symbolism of the subject matter.

Somerset Maugam, the English novelist, has pages and pages where he 'reads into' art, music and literature. They show how much we've lost when it became 'unfashionable'.

Here is a wonderful passage from Christmas Holiday, a 1939 novel, in which an Englishman, who thinks of himself as an expert in art, is given a lesson in how to really appreciate paintings by a young Russian emigré.

There is a mystery here. Chardin's still life (above, reproduction from here) fits the text of the novel best but the original painting is in the Lille museum of fine art, not in Paris. The only still life in the Louvre (below, from here), that I could find, doesn't quite fit the bill.

If you know of other still lifes by Chardin that fit Maugham's description, please let me know.

Chardin.
La Brioche.

The full text of Christmas Holiday is here. And here's the passage:

“

"All right. You take me and show me the pictures you like." 

The position was reversed. It was not he, as he had expected, who was leading the way and with such information as would add interest to the respective canvases, sympathetically drawing her attention to the great masterpieces he had always cared for; but it was she who was conducting him. Very well. He was quite ready to put himself in her hands and see what it was all about.

"Of course," he said to himself, "she's Russian. One has to make allowances for that." 

They trudged past acres of canvas, through one room after another, for Lydia had some difficulty in finding her way; but finally she stopped him in front of a small picture that you might easily have missed if you had not been looking for it. 

"Chardin," he said. "Yes, I've seen that before." 

"But have you ever looked at it?" 

"Oh, yes. Chardin wasn't half a bad painter in his way. My mother thinks a lot of him. I've always rather liked his still lifes myself." 

"Is that all it means to you? It breaks my heart." 

"That?" cried Charley with astonishment. "A loaf of bread and a flagon of wine? Of course it's very well painted." 

"Yes, you're right; it's very well painted; it's painted with pity and love. It's not only a loaf of bread and a flagon of wine; it's the bread of life and the blood of Christ, but not held back from those who starve and thirst for them and doled out by priests on stated occasions; it's the daily fare of suffering men and women. It's so humble, so natural, so friendly; it's the bread and wine of the poor who ask no more than that they should be left in peace, allowed to work and eat their simple food in freedom. It's the cry of the despised and rejected. It tells you that whatever their sins men at heart are good. That loaf of bread and that flagon of wine are symbols of the joys and sorrows of the meek and lowly. They ask for your mercy and your affection; they tell you that they're of the same flesh and blood as you. They tell you that life is short and hard and the grave is cold and lonely. It's not only a loaf of bread and a flagon of wine; it's the mystery of man's lot on earth, his craving for a little friendship and a little love, the humility of his resignation when he sees that even they must be denied him." 

Lydia's voice was tremulous and now the tears flowed from her eyes. She brushed them away impatiently. 

"And isn't it wonderful that with those simple objects, with his painter's exquisite sensibility, moved by the charity in his heart, that funny, dear old man should have made something so beautiful that it breaks you? It was as though, unconsciously perhaps, hardly knowing what he was doing, he wanted to show you that if you only have enough love, if you only have enough sympathy, out of pain and distress and unkindness, out of all the evil of the world, you can create beauty." 

She was silent and for long stood looking at the little picture. Charley looked at it too, but with perplexity. It was a very good picture; he hadn't really given it more than a glance before, and he was glad Lydia had drawn his attention to it; in some odd way it was rather moving; but of course he could never have seen in it all she saw. Strange, unstable woman! It was rather embarrassing that she should cry in a public gallery; they did put you in an awkward position, these Russians; but who would have thought a picture could affect anyone like that? He remembered his mother's story of how a student friend of his grandfather's had fainted when he first saw the Odalisque of Ingres; but that was away back in the nineteenth century, they were very romantic and emotional in those days. Lydia turned to him with a sunny smile on her lips. It disconcerted him to see with what suddenness she could go from tears to laughter. 

"Shall we go now?" she said. 

"But don't you want to see any more pictures?" 

"Why? I've seen one. I feel happy and peaceful. What could I get if I saw another?" 

"Oh, all right." 

It seemed a very odd way of doing a picture gallery.
"

Pushkin's Nails

This is a detail from Portrait of Alexander Pushkin (1827) by Orest Kiprensky (1782-1836), o/c, 63cm x 54cm (24 3/4 x 21 1/4), Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Exquisite manicure was a fashion among men in the age of dandies. And even then it was criticised as a mark of shallowness.

Pushkin referred to the criticism in his classic novel in verse Eugene Onegin

A man who’s active and incisive

can yet keep nail-care much in mind: 

why fight what’s known to be decisive? 

custom is despot of mankind.

(in Russian: "быть можно дельным человеком и думать о красе ногтей")

The verse is often quoted to say: don't judge people by their appearance. 

from Eugene Onegin, Chapter 1, XXV.

Translated by Charles Johnston.

At the Feet of Tolstoy

(detail)

This is my favourite portrait of Lev Tolstoy, the great Russian writer.

It is different from others first of all because Tolstoy is barefoot in it. He is standing, in a pensive mood, on a path in the woods, probably at his estate Yasnaya Polyana (which means Clear Glade or Bright Clearing) as though drawing power from Mother Earth.

The portrait was done when Tolstoy was at the peak of his world-wide fame as a writer and thinker. His social philosophy became known as Tolsltoyism or Christian Anarchism. Tolstoy's word had more power in Russia than that of the tsarist government. His theory of non-violent public disobedience influenced such figures of the 20th Century as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

On an official visit to Russia Prime Minister Indira Gandhi went to see Tolstoy's home. As a sign of respect for the man whose ideas helped India gain independence she walked barefoot where Tolstoy stood being sketched for that portrait.

Picture: Tolstoy Barefoot, 1901, by Ilya Repin, o/c, 207 x 73 cm, Russian State Museum, St.Petersburg. Photo file from here.    

Prophet Muhammad in Art

Let's all upload our favourite image of the Prophet.

Pakistan's government ordered Internet service providers to block Facebook on Wednesday amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The page on the social networking site has generated criticism in Pakistan and elsewhere because Islam prohibits any images of the prophet. The government took action after a group of Islamic lawyers won a court order Wednesday requiring officials to block Facebook until May 31. (AP)

Picture: Muhammad Preaching, by the Prince Grigory Gagarin, 1840

See also this post on I Work in Pages

William the Conqueror, Close-Up

I was working on a post for another of my blogs when it suddenly struck me how sophisticated the faces are in the 12th century Bayeux tapesty, a propaganda comics depicting the Norman conquest of England.

I visited the Tapestry museum  many times on my own and with friends and never noticed it. When you walk hurriedly along the 50 metre piece of cloth with multitudes of images the artistic value of each somehow gets lost. Looking at them close-up and separately, you get a very different impression - awesome.

Below is the part of the tapestry with William whose face I have enlarged above.

V.I.Lenin. 140th Anniversary: from Petrov-Vodkin to Andy Warhol

   
Lenin is one of the most widely imaged person of 20th century, from Petrov-Vodkin to Andy Warhol. Today is his 140th anniversary. Above is my favourite image of Lenin, a photo taken in 1920 or 1921 at the end of the Civil War. At one point I had it above my desk, next to Hemingway and Kissinger.

Lenin looks pensive, almost disillusioned. In a few months he would turn around Soviet Russia from 'military communism' with its requisitions, no-money-just-direct-distribution primitivism to a rather sophisticated NEP - new economic policy allowing small and medium sized private enterprise, introducing liberal tax regime and solid financial policy which made the ruble with its gold standard one of the strongest currencies in the world. To Lenin NEP was a 'serious and long term' policy, but Stalin later looked at it it is a 'temporary retreat'.

Lenin by Nathan Altman, drawn from life at a communist conference

Lenin by Petrov-Vodkin

Andy Warhol did a series of Lenin portraits in 1980s. Have a look here - not Merilyn or Campbell's soup, but a pop-icon for sure.

Photo from Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)

Tea Party in Mytishi, Russia. Seen them in Washington?

The Tea Party gathering in Washington on Saturday, reports say, turned nasty. Rightists opposing President Obama's health reform shouted abuse and threatened passing Congressmen.

This well known Russian painting by Vassily Perov (1862), I thought, is a perfect visual expression of  what the Tea Party movement  stands for.

Picture: Having Tea in Mytishi, Near Moscow (Чаепитие в Мытищах, близ Москвы), 1862, oil on canvas, 43.5 x 47.3 cm, Tretyakov Gallery.

And read more on the samovars and the Moscow tea party for Obama here on my Russian blog

Monet's Sunrise. Is it a bird?

I thought I knew this Monet picture well (Impression, soleil levant, 1872). Painted in Le Havre in Normandy, it is sometimes described as the ultimate impressionist statement, it's iconic representation.

Now that I live in Normandy I understand better how much unique Norman light influenced the impressionist vision.

But something started bothering me about this picture. Why there are no birds in it? There is always a bird somewhere in a Norman sky. Then, at the bottom right corner of the painting, I noticed what seems like a bird, flapping frantically in the air.

Is it?

A Cossack Companion

While posting about the 'Cossacks letter to the Sultan' I noticed this dog, listening with a rather irritated expression on his face, to the banter at the table. 

I haven't noticed him before. What is he there for? Is it a symbol, a metaphor, or just a colourful detail? Maybe it's a reference to the terrible Sultan himself?

And what breed is he? Doesn't look like a sheep dog (where is the flock?) or a guard dog (who is there to guard in the middle of the cossack town?).  Could it be their idea of a companion dog?

Nudes and monumental propaganda

In a previous post I showed a beautiful example of nude sculpture in bronze, even though it's used for propaganda purposes. Here is the full view of the monumental group in Flers, Normandy. You can see more on the Normandy photo journal. 

Monumental propaganda was a concept developed in the early days of the Soviet Union by Lenin and other bolsheviks, who suggested knocking down monuments dedicated to tsars and replacing them by sculptures glorifying revolutionary figures and working class heroes. Here is a concise description of this idea.

Russia and Ukraine: Cossacks writing a letter to the Turkish Sultan

'Zaporozhians', the huge painting (2.03 × 3.58 m) by Ilya Repin, first exhibited in 1891, almost instantly became an iconic representation of  Russia and Russians throughout the world, even though the cossacks in the picture are very Ukrainian.

Russians of that period (1676) wore beards and long hair.  But the cossacks in the picture are all cleanly shaven, beards and heads, with just the moustaches and the khokhols, locks of hair on top of their heads. That is what Ukrainians did and it was one striking difference between the two people. And that is why their Russian nickname - khokhly.

It hardly mattered at the time when Repin painted - Russia and Ukraine were one country. It does now.  Even attitudes to khokhol as a nickname vary wildly and are often very emotional.  Russians rarely put any derision in the word, but Ukrainians sometimes feel it is pejorative.

It seems to me that Ukrainians living among Russians or close to Russia are happy with the word (e.g. East Ukrainians, East meaning to the East of the Dnieper river). They happily tell khokhol jokes, whith the хохол cleverly tricking the Russian, but also with a self-mocking attitude. Think Irish jokes. The main character in The Ninth Company, a Soviet army seargeant in Afghanistan, is called Khokhol by his multiethnic unit and is happy wearing the nickname. 
On the other hand, West Ukrainians (zapadnetsy - западнецы) are more sensitive to the term and often do see it as pejorative. 


The difference seems to stem from that the хохол appeared as a Russian exoethnonym for Ukrainians as a reference to their tradition of shaving beards and heads, leaving moustaches and topknots (khokhol, or chub or oseledets), while Russians were wearing beards. Happy co-existence lead to adoption of the exonym for self-identification (East), strife lead to negative attitudes to the term (West). 


It's difficult to understand these subtleties if you are outside the 'soup' where nationalistic emotions brew. Repin was indeed criticised for not being 'historically accurate' and started painting a new version of the picture - where cossacks all have beards! Curiously, the two 'Ukrainian' versions are now in the two top Russian museums - Russky Muzey in Petersburg and Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, but the 'Russian' version is in Kharkov, Ukraine.  

'Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire' (1893, unfinished):

Links: The  story behind the picture and Ilya Repin's bio.

Russian storm coming

I grew up with this picture. I have always looked at it as a symbol of peace, strength, plenty and safety of my Motherland.

I have never - never until very very recently noticed the two little swallows skimming the ground right at the bottom centre of this big painting (3.5 feet by 6 feet). Any Russian would tell you what swallows skimming the ground mean: a storm is coming. It's not just granny's tales — it is a natural phenomenon. Birds can tell weather, and old folk knew how to tell weather by watching birds.

Shishkin, Rye, 1878, o/c, 104 cm x 1887 cm

It doesn't puzzle me why President Putin (or his advisers) chose this picture as a background to a photo of him. Because few people notice the worried little swallows, a little detail in the big picture. Most look at the great pines and the sea of ripe rye, and think - what a beautiful, rich and strong world.

Storm? What storm?

Check this previous article:
Putin's Pines

Bronzed nudes

This is a beautiful example of a patinated bronze nude. Marble is often thought of as the material for nude sculpture. However bronze is often more expressive. Look how the patina diffuses soft winter sunlight giving life to the sculpture.

The French republican 'monumental propaganda' paradoxically employed many compositional features of Christianity. The naked young woman, presumably Marianne, the symbol of France, veneratingly raises her arms towards - who? the God Almighty?

Full picture in next post.

A Perfect Woman

Zinaida Serebryakova, 1909
Self-Portrait (Morning, brushing)

This picture should be on the bed-side table of every feminist...

Serebryakova, a junior member of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) Russian artistic grouping of the fin de siècle, was the first woman artist to gain world fame and recognition. Never before, and, arguably, never after a painting expressed so forcefully the feminine normality, the joy of being here and the full acceptance and enjoyment of one's own sexuality.

This one picture, first exhibited in 1910 with paintings of other contemporary Russian modernists, killed any remaining influence of decadent generation of the two preceding decades, and established a new healthy life outlook, which even today is not fully comprehended.

Coco Chanel
Somerset Maugham
D H Lawrence

Yes, Prime Minister, and Putin's Pines in the Rye

 

Jim, the Prime Minister, was struggling with his first television address. His advisers told him to use Stravinsky's music and put an abstract painting in the background if he had little to say...

I remembered this when I saw a photo of Russia's President Putin, sitting pensively with a painting dear to every Russian heart, 'The Rye' by Ivan Shishkin behind him on his right, and the Presidential Standard on his left.

It is fascinating to see how an old landscape could still be used as a sophisticated
tool of political propaganda. While the Literary Gazette ("Литературная газета"), a shadow of
what it was in the 60-s and 70-s, provided no text for the photo, placing it alongside an analysis of the results of a presidential election) the message is
transparent.

Shishkin ('The Rye', 1878, oil on canvas, 187 cm x 107 cm) was one of the best landscape artist of the 19th Century. To Russian painters art has been often a means
of expressing their political and ethical views. Shishkin's landscapes shine with powerful patriotism, an unequivocal belief in the strength of the country and the people. And generations of Russians, like myself, grew up associating Shishkin's art with exactly that. The endless sea of golden rye ready for happy harvest and the mighty pine trees standing like sentries guarding it, with a farm track winding through the plentiful fields, leading somewhere, where there is peace and everything is clear and safe, — this is, supposedly, the subtle symbol of Putin's presidency, that his team, his own Sir Humphrey, are trying to
convey.

There is also, I think, a secondary, less obvious, allusion to the military, specifically
the naval might, that the President is trying to associate himself with: the mighty pines in a Northern Russian woodland, in another famous painting by Shishkin, 'The Mast Forest', are shown as the building material for the navy. Over the years the two paintings have blended into one unified image.