The Churches at Moret

Alfred Sisley

Alfred Sisley, The Church of Moret, 1893
I never had any strong feelings for or against Mr. Alfred Sisley. Actually, whenever I heard his name I assumed I should be a bit more... excited than I acted. One word came to mind when I heard his name, and that was "landscape." Boy, oh boy, were there landscapes. Actually, there were over 900 landscapes. He spent his entire life painting them, with what I'm guessing is a dozen or fewer works of any other genre to his name.

But then, I stumbled upon The Church of Moret, the namesake and inspiration for a series of no less than six pieces all of the same church, even at the same angle. The incredible thing he does is make one building seem like it's in a whole different world. His landscapes clearly demonstrate technique and skill, but this series of paintings, specifically Rainy Morning, shows that Sisley may have had a lot more up his sleeves than just landscapes. These are some of his latest attributed pieces and the viewer can notice his changed style, especially in the harsher brushstrokes and deeper contrasts in this second piece.

After seeing this series of paintings, I found plenty of the appreciation for Sisley that I thought I should have had in the first place. It may have come from a different place, but I have found that the artists I enjoy the most have revealed themselves to me in that way. I always enjoyed Van Gogh, but I did not rave about him until I luckily stumbled upon the right piece. With Sisley, I was clearly lucky in that way as well.

Alfred Sisley, The Church at Moret, Rainy Morning, 1893
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Little Girl in a Blue Armchair

Lauren Sandness
Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878

 It's not your traditional children's portrait. Instead, Mary Cassatt's Little Girl in a Blue Armchair depicts a more realistic alternative to a traditional portrait. Sitting still for more than thirty minutes is a serious challenge for anyone, especially children, thus sitting as still as a statue for hours must have seemed ridiculous. This makes for a stiff portraiture, one that's boring for both the subject and the viewer. Cassatt, instead, decides to paint her subject as she really was: a normal kid.

Mary Cassatt was born into a upper-middle class American family in Pennsylvania. She traveled often, living in France for most of her life, and was a well-educated and well-rounded individual. It was more than likely that Cassatt herself knew exactly how her subject felt. Painting, for women, the upper class especially, was intended as nothing more than a hobby to make them appear more attractive to suitors. It was something to be flaunted, just as this portrait would have been something the little girl's parents could flaunt. She almost seems swallowed up by the large, blue armchair, her existence synonymous with that of the furniture.

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The Conversation

Becky Reilly
Henri Matisse, The Conversation, 1909

The Conversation has a simple title for such a complex work. Matisse juxtaposes the lush, lazy repose of the outdoors with stark confrontation, warmth with cold. The lack of defined facial expressions complicates the emotions, emphasizing other details of the two primary figures' appearances. Everything that can be different between them is different. Their sex, clothing color and quality, tension, and even their detail levels sharply oppose each other. As the painting supposedly reveals the relationship between the artist and his wife, perhaps the best way to begin to understand the painting is to learn about its maker.

 Henri Matisse was born in a small town in France. He had a strict upbringing, and his parents expected him to become a successful lawyer. Matisse traveled to Paris for law school and passed the bar but soon decided to instead pursue art. Although he had initial difficulties with his dream (as he failed his first entrance exam for the national Ã‰cole des Beaux-Arts), he eventually entered into higher art schooling and explored many different styles, winning commissions. In 1898 he married his wife, a forward-thinking, economically-advantaged woman with whom he had little in common but a love of art. Matisse created The Conversation at the request of a Russian client, although the new owner's house was sacked during the Russian Revolution and the painting now hangs in the Hermitage.

 The painting can be classified as a part of the Fauve movement, characterized by bold colors and broad brush strokes and movement that show a self-consciousness as a painting, independent from other mediums. This style gives Matisse leeway to explore different shapes and compositions while retaining unity throughout by controlling hues and textures.

Some art historians regard the seated woman as exemplary of old-fashioned portraiture, while Matisse appears more modern and geometric in form. Their lifestyles conflict more deeply than their appearances, a difference between wealthy elegance and lower class aspirations. And yet, neither Matisse nor his wife seems out of place in the piece. This painting represents unity between opposing lifestyles through a common love of art, the relieving of tensions in the pursuit of creative purpose.
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The Duck Pond

Emily Thompson
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Duck Pond, 1873

After being drafted to fight in the war against Germany, Renoir went back to painting in 1871. Before Renoir solidified his go to subjects (city scenes, clothed women, and naked women), he spent some time exploring landscape throughout France. Some of the time Renoir spent exploring France was with his artist friends, yet this painting has no copies done by other artists. This painting can obviously be identified as one of Renoir's earlier works by its subject and the brushstrokes. The stokes are short and choppy, creating an image that seems natural. The movement Renoir gave to the plants and to the water truly gives the impression of a moment being captured in its raw state. As Renoir's career matured, he transitioned to capturing people, and his scenes became less natural.

I think the first thing that drew me to this painting was the colors. I liked the vibrant orange roof and how it contrasted with the dark blue Renoir scattered in the water. The blue is important because it gives an early glimpse at something that Renoir would one day become well known for. I like that the ducks grabbed my attention, yet faded into the background once I noticed the movement of the landscape surrounding them. The line of the ducks grabs the viewers attention, pushing the eyes to the middle of the painting and changing the focus to the movement of the trees.

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Metropolis

Camille O'Leary
Paul Citroën, Metropolis, 1923

 What will the future look like?

The spread and dissemination of images across the globe seems normal to us now, even commonplace. Photographs and artwork bombard us constantly in the modern age, in advertising, media, and every facet of our everyday life. But when photography was just beginning to establish itself as an art form, it changed the consumption of media drastically. Images of cities, of artworks, of nature, and yes, of naked ladies could be taken, reproduced, and spread over vast distances. This meant that it was easier for artists to obtain reference material, but also that new art could be created by combining and collaging the old.

Paul Citroën, along with a small group of colleagues, worked to synthesize images of the modern world into a vision of the potential future. In Metropolis, he fills the entire space with photographs of the city of Paris. The dizzying repetition of shapes, rigid lines, and the contradictory angles (some buildings are viewed from above, others head-on) draws the viewer into an imagined cityscape completely divested from reality or nature. In an interview, he explained, “if you would paste pictures of buildings on a large sheet, it should give an impression of the way many cities looked like. It was a view into the future. It was certainly not just a silly idea." He lived and worked nearly a hundred years ago. I’ll leave it to you to judge - does his work still capture the spirit of a modern, even futuristic city?
Editor's Note: To answer Camille's question: Yes.

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Morning In Paris

Morning In Paris
Pierre Bonnard, Morning In Paris, 1911

Born in upper-middle class family, Bonnard studied and worked in law as he was told to do at the beginning of his life. He has also, of course, taken art classes on the side and soon decided to take off with his painting and become an artist. He first was shown in an independent exhibition and continued to show in random exhibitions. He became known for his wild use of color and his wicked brush stroke technique using said color. Also, he would draw the pieces he wished to make or even photograph them, make note of the color he wished to use, and then begin painting. He painted a wide variety of themes -  kitchens, bathtubs, or nudes using his wife, or street scenes, landscapes, and still lifes.

This piece, Morning in Paris, shows his Impressionist technique in the movement of the piece and stays true to his own delicate strokes for the detail in the background with the tree and the buildings as well. I really enjoy his use of colors, and feel warm when I look at it on a clearly cold day by the bare trees and the bundled characters. But when you look at the faces, sure they are brushed like any impressionist would do at the time, no one is looking up or appearing happy. The three girls to the left are looking down and sideways and the center one looks quite sad to me. This also matches the expression to the woman on the right. Even the little girl in the center looks left behind or stranded. So I guess you could say Bonnard tricked me. Even though I love his sky and the piece looks full of life, none of these characters appear much like morning people to me.

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Night Effect

Anders Zorn
Anders Zorn, Night Effect, 1895

I always think of Anders Zorn, a mostly unknown Swedish painter, as the weird uncle version of John Singer Sargent. His brushstrokes are looser, his lighting less pronounced, and his subjects more nude than not. Where Sargent paints beautiful, elegant women, Zorn chooses to paint an inebriated prostitute. Zorn's subject leans against a tree, as if she is incapable of standing on her own. Her face is flushed and set in an unattractive expression. Although some could see this as Zorn mocking the dignified women Sargent paints, I view this piece as comical. Her dress, bright red as an indication towards her profession, is not revealing. In fact, she's rather well covered for a prostitute (disclaimer: I'm no expert on prostitute fashion, they could wear parkas and long johns for all I know). The exposed lacey hem of her underskirt is, perhaps, the most provocative aspect of her outfit.

Zorn creates tension in the painting via the background lighting. The cafe's lights are bright and intense, illuminating our "lady of the night," but they suddenly break off and become inky black. It took me a while to actually notice that there's a man in that darkness. All that can be seen is a vague profile of his face and clothing. To me, the painting seems rushed, especially the background. It's as if Zorn added in the background as an afterthought. The dark and the light push against each other, separated only by the scarlet woman. Zorn's brush strokes are hurried and blurred, as if the viewers own vision is hazy. That always leads me to imagine that when I look at this painting I immediately step into the role of her drinking buddy, stumbling home after last call. Where Sargent takes the viewer into the lives of the bourgeoisie, Zorn takes you to the streets and out for a drink with some rather rough customers.

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The Fifer

Impressionism
Edouard Manet, The Fifer, 1866

A whopping 161 x 97 cm in size, just to portray an ordinary boy, presumably of the military marching band, playing a fife—in his early work The Fifer, Manet here takes a truly modern, unconventional stand that was not particularly appreciated by his contemporaries. One would find it puzzling about what had prompted Manet to pay such close attention to a nameless boy and to paint this sizeable work against the popular taste without seeing Velasquez’s earlier work Pablo de Valladolid. Following a trip to Spain, Manet found himself deeply interested in the style of Spanish painters. Similar to Velasquez’s Pablo de Valladolid, Manet places the boy in a plain, stark setting, surrounded only by the thin air. He employs the impasto technique—the solid black jacket, the thick red pants with a black contour line, and a little shadow—to create a flatness that was unprecedented to French critics. Further more, devoting the entire canvas to a working class boy upset the established “hierarchy of representation.”  The painting was rejected by the Salon of 1866 despite Zola’s strong support. Zola, in his L’Evenement, defended that he sensed a “truly modern feeling” in the work of this early impressionist giant.
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Regatta at Sainte-Adresse

Claude Monet
Claude Monet, Regatta at Sainte-Adresse, 1867

Ah, to be a gentlemen of leisure (pronounced as if it rhymes with pleasure). To take pride in your conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption, making sure everyone knows you take pride in doing practically nothing. Nothing doesn’t mean just sitting on the couch all day, although I’m sure that would have been acceptable; rather, it means to take part in activities that seem to suggest there is no need to work, and no need, or time for that matter, to make more money. Such activities include: collecting priceless wine (which you store in your expansive wine cellar), collecting British paintings of hunt scenes complete with hounds and a man in tall boots carrying a rifle, most likely having at least one painting done of yourself or your wife, having a wife whose job it is to look as expensive as possible to support your image of boundless wealth, and, of course, owning a yacht, which you use to travel the world. Now, the key to being a successful gentleman of leisure is making sure everyone around you knows what you do, or what you don’t do. How do you achieve this? By either inviting others to join you on your extravagant activities, hosting parties, inviting people to your summer estate, or immersing yourself into a crowd of other gentlemen of leisure. Essentially, to be a gentleman of leisure, one must participate in unproductive activities and make sure everyone knows about it.

 The theory of conspicuous leisure and consumption was coined by American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen in 1899 when he published his book The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. Although the date on Monet’s painting does not coincide with the publication of Veblen’s book, Monet’s Regatta at Sainte-Adresse portrays a scene of conspicuous leisure and gentlemen of leisure. A major aspect of Veblen’s gentlemen of leisure is their clothing. Veblen explains, “expenditure on dress has this advantage over most other methods, that our apparel is always in evidence and affords an indication of our pecuniary standing to all observers at the first glance… Our dress, therefore, in order to serve its purpose effectually, should not only be expensive, but it should also make plain to all observers that the wearer is not engaged in any kind of productive labor.” Dressed in well-fitted suits and restrictive dresses, the gentlemen of leisure and their respective companions seem out of place, not meant to be resting on the seaside. Their dress seems to suggest a stroll through the city, possibly to meet other gentlemen of leisure for brunch, not an afternoon watching boat races while sitting in the sand. The people stand out, as if they are in the wrong place, but, then again, that is the whole point of conspicuous consumption and leisure. Everyone passing by the beach would notice the well-dressed men and women who seem to have no worry about getting sand and water on their clothes. If their clothes do end up getting tarnished from this outing, they will just buy more expensive and showy clothes. The men and women appear to be completely at ease with their parasols and top hats, living the blissful life of leisure while spending their time on the shore, doing anything but work, and making sure everyone is aware of their conspicuous presence.

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Young Boy With Cat

Arsam Yazdani
Young Boy With Cat, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1868

After browsing through many of Renoir’s works, I originally thought this piece had been attributed to him by mistake. By far the strangest looking piece I have seen, especially by him, it resembles none of his previous works, yet tells the most about the artist. It is striking, glowing with purity and beauty while the highly sexualized scene is diffused by the presence of the lone feline.

The sexuality of this piece reaches out and grabs your attention, his posture and gaze almost trap the viewer. It’s refreshingly intense. In the Baroque style, the similarities between Young Boy with Cat and Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit are striking. The highly-eroticised figure bears a basket of fruit while fixating on the viewer with the same mischievous stare. The tension in the stance, the lighting on the body, so similar to the provocative nature of Caravaggio’s boy displaying his bare shoulders. For an “Impressionist” painting, this piece is painted in great detail, especially the pattern of the sheet is incredibly fine and skillful, demonstrating a disciplined stroke.

The lewd tension in this piece is inescapable, but what does the cat in his arms suggest? Looking to other pieces, cats are symbolic of piety and cleanliness, often times the presence of nature and mystery. The pale, stylistic affectation of the boy comes from Renoir sharing a studio with Frederic Bazille, and his obsession with Edouard Manet. The diverse masculinity found in Renoir’s other works is absent here, giving a glimpse into Renoir’s private life with Bazille, that privacy embodied by the cat. Shortly after this piece emerged, Renoir was forced to become a more serious artist after the birth of his first child, leaving this piece - and its meaning - in his past.

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