My Kid Could Paint That

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1888

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

Max Ernst, Loplop Introduces Loplop, 1930

Louis Anquetin, Gust of Wind, 1889

Synthetism was a movement started after some disgruntled artists decided they were tired of all things Impressionist. In order to move past the famous period, the artists of the Synthetism movement painted not what they saw, but what they remembered seeing, and took total control of their scenes. The leaders of the Synthetism movement were known for solid color blocks, shapes outined in black, and little perception of depth. Anquetin was no different. Anquetin, along with Emile Bernard, headed a movement within Synthetism called Cloisonnism, named after it's similar appearance to the form of mosaic which used melted metal in the between the shapes. This technique was frequently noted as looking somewhat like stain glass windows, and is what Anquetin became famous for.

This painting takes place over the Seine River in France. Although little is known about the details of the painting, it serves as a good representation of what Synthetism was all about. It is quite possible that the scene is something that Anquetin saw one day and decided to recreate at a later time, as many of his fellow artists did. The scene clearly differs from the Impressionists because the scene lacks the realistic qualities that they strived for. The horses, buildings, and woman are all outlined in black, which was traditional of Sythetism. In addition, the colors are clearly not as Anquetin really saw them, and the clouds did not really look that way, but in typical Synthetism fashion, the general idea of the scene is portrayed. 

I picked this painting because I really like the way Anquetin paints the scene. I like that the colors are blocks, but there are some variations of the colors. I also like that the painting has some motion without the use of shading or color mixing. For me, the scarf is what makes the title of the painting make sense. Although there is some movement in the horses manes, the scarf's swirling qualities draw attention to the chaos that Anquetin felt in the scene. Despite how uncharacteristic the swirling scarf is for the movement, I liked it because it draws attention to how motionless the rest of the scene is.

John Singer Sargent, Two Girls with Parasols, 1889.

In John Singer Sargent's career he painted over 900 oil paintings and 2,000 watercolors, which doesn't even include the endless sketches and charcoal drawings. After the scandal of Madame X, Sargent's portrait career ended in Paris but eventually grew in Britain and America. Sargent painted Two Girls with Parasols five years after his strapless gal got him in hot water. The tree and the woman in the center create a barrier from the lush green on the right and the rough browns on the left. The contrast of the colors is not harsh, instead it flows.

Albert Gleizes, Symphony in Violet, 1931

Hannah Höch, Fashion Show, 1925

If Hannah Hoch lived in 2014, I would imagine her art would look pretty much the same as it did during her lifetime from 1889 to 1978. She thrived under the influences of Dada in Germany during (and after) World War I. As a woman, her perspective on Dada was different than that of the hyper-political George Grosz or Marcel Duchamp. In German society, and even within Dada, Hoch faced discrimination due to her gender. For the first time, women’s culture was put in the limelight with the emergence of the fashion industry and mass media aimed at women’s beauty standards. Having worked for a fashion magazine under the Ullstein Verlag publishing company in Berlin, Hoch new firsthand the impact the fashion and advertising industry had on society, and she hated it. Her art was inspired by an acerbic disproval of the fashion industry and society’s obsession with women’s beauty. Rather than sit at a vanity pondering over an assortment of creams like the archetypal woman of the time, Hoch turned to Dada to criticize society and express her views of women’s liberation. Hoch’s rejection of media’s portrayal of women led her to create art that combined different media to satirize the values that women seemed to venerate.

Hoch used an art form called photomontage for most of her work. She popularized the method and it easily complimented her dada style. Photomontage involves piecing together different parts of photographs to make seamless illusions. In Fashion Show, which Hoch created in 1925, the main focus is the three female forms in a line in the center of the canvas. Each form is dressed exactly alike, however where a face should be, instead are pieces of different faces molded together. The “faces” are disturbing at best, with parts of mouth, distorted eyes, and mismatched expressions. And the name, Fashion Show, could not be any more spot-on.

I said I imagined Hoch’s art would look the same in the modern times as it did 80 years ago, and here’s why: Between Photoshop scandals, ridiculous fashion trends, and every pretentious fashion blog out there, the fashion industry is just as distorted and absurd as it was in Hoch’s time. The trends have changed, as well as the designers, but the monotony and corruption remain the same. 

John Singer Sargent. Albert de Belleroche. 1883.

The way John Singer Sargent and Albert de Belleroche met was the prelude to a beautiful bromance. Belleroche, then a student at Carolus-Duran’s studio, happened into Sargent’s favorite restaurant one night in 1882. The two had met briefly once at a dinner honoring their mentor Carolus-Duran, but they did not know each other then. On that night at L’Avenue, Sargent was so captivated by Belleruche’s slender figure and exaggerated features that he sketched Belleroche without him knowing it. Later Belleruche was overjoyed to find his portrait in the restaurant’s album. He tore the page out and took it home. 

John Singer Sargent. Head in Profile of a Young Man. 1883.

The two quickly began friends, sharing a studio space in Paris where they sketched and painted each other. Sargent painted Belleroche in more thirty works of various poses and costumes, ranging from a medieval courtier to a Spanish aristocrat. Even when Sargent focused on his masterpiece of Madame Gautreau, he was thinking about Belleroche. Sargent’s drawing, most commonly thought of as a sketch for Madame Gautreau Drinking a Toast, has been proposed by art historians that Sargent merged Madame Gautreau and Belleruche into one image. The “brooding and romantic quality” in these works, argues Deborah Davis, suggests a relationship went beyond friendship or mentorship.

Sargent had started to draw Amelie but transformed her into Belleroche, an indication of his emotional confusion in that summer of 1883. Some even go as far to say only when Sargent confirmed his desire towards Belleroche had he lifted his artist’s block and allowed himself to concentrate on Madame Gautreau. Could the peripatetic lifestyle and loneliness in Sargent’s early life make him afraid of “otherness?” After all, as an expatriate, otherness was a feeling Sargent knew all too well. Other than his works, however, there is little evidence about the artist’s private life. But if he was gay, does it matter? On the bright side, this speculation gives Sargent scholarship a new direction. Until recently, Sargent was seen as a slick, superficial society painter. Discussions about his sexuality, whether relevant to the art, forces people think about implications of sexuality.

John Singer Sargent, Mrs. Henry White, 1883

Painted just before Sargent's famous Madame X, Mrs. Henry White was painted in a fashion that was perhaps more of what Virginie Gautreau had in mind. Mrs. Henry White, otherwise known as Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White, was of similar social standing to Madame X. Margaret was the wife of Henry White, a wealthy US diplomat, and the daughter of wealthy parents. Like Madame X, Sargent's painting was supposed to immortalize the fame of the socialite. Not only was this a way of maintaining her status, but it would help to get her well known quickly amongst high society by being captured by the next big artist.

Unlike their similar lifestyles, there were some major differences between Sargent's portrayal of Mrs. White and Madame X. Mrs. White is elaborate but modest, clean, well put together, and clearly very wealthy. Although the background of the painting is relatively plain, the red and gold chair certainly make a statement. Mrs. White's dress is also elaborate, covered in draping and ruffles, unlike Madame X's famous garb. At first the painting was not overly well received, as it seemed to be nothing special according to the critics, but at least her painting had the lasting effect she was looking for.

This painting is one of many that gained Sargent the fame necessary to be chosen by Madame X for a portrait. I chose this painting because I couldn't help but wonder how the lives of Madame X and Sargent would have been different, had Madame X's portrait been more like Mrs. Henry White. Would Sargent have been even remotely as famous as he is? And would Virginie Gautreau's fame have dissolved just as Margaret White's?

Sargent, A Gust of Wind, 1886

While working on Madame X in Brittany, Sargent painted Judith Gautier. I choose this painting of Sargent's because Judith is absolutely fascinating to me, and Sargent paints her in a way that perfectly describes the person I would imagine Judith Gautier to be.

She grew up thrown into the arts by her father, Theophile Gautier. As a writer he pushed Judith to read outside the box, and she become accustomed to a bohemian lifestyle that she took on "with a vengeance" (Davis 114). Her father asserted his independence and non-conformity by never marrying her mother, which might have something to do with Judith's controversial marriage herself. She married super star bachelor, Catulle Mendes, who was a writer like her father. They climbed into the elite social arts groups together. Because of her desire to climb the ladders, Judith turned the other cheek to her husbands quite public infidelity. Victor Hugo and Richard Wagner helped Judith to realize that she could still stand in social graces on her own as her marriage finally ended in 1874. Relationships with the men she met with her husband quickly turned into flirtations and Judith became the ultimate fan of the arts. As the number one groupie, "she convinced them that she alone understood art and its importance" (Davis 115).

To me she has a lifestyle that has taken her quite a long way, but is she really an independent superstar riding on the backs of these talented artists? If her goal was to become an independent women I'm not so sure because using Hugo for government pension so she can keep living the high life doesn't sound too independent to me. She is definitely one of a kind, and I believe Sargent's painting of her here shows just that. She was known for embracing Asian culture and wore kimonos often - as seen here and alone in the open - and he has painted one of his magnificent portraits in true Sargent fashion.    
 

John Singer Sargent, Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife, 1885

It is sometimes little uncanny to discover the most unexpected things could somehow intertwine. Couple weeks ago I saw this Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife in the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. And now I’m writing about this portrait of certain Stevenson who turns out to be the author of one of my childhood favorites, Treasure Island. A little different from how I imagined him I have to say.

After the scandal of Madame X in Paris, Sargent retreated to England and had a hard time getting commissions. He depended on his friends for a while and painted them in their everyday life. Sargent met Stevenson in Paris in 1874 and remained friends for the rest of their lives. And it is here on this canvas that the artist captured a colleague in his most intimate and least self-conscious moment as he looks intensely into the viewer while dwelling deeply in his work.

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Frances Sherbourne Ridley Watts, 1877

Sargent painted this portrait of Frances Watts, affectionately called Fanny, in 1877. She was a childhood friend, perhaps even a romantic interest; however more so than that, she was his ticket into the art world. At only 21 years old, Sargent and his portrait were accepted into the Salon and thrown into a world of fame and recognition. Judges and critics loved the portrait, calling it “charming” and “promising.”

John Singer Sargent, Madame Gautreau Drinking A Toast, 1882-3

Preceding his famously controversial portrait of Madame X, John Singer Sargent painted this far more intimate and gentle piece as a gift to Madame Gautreau's mother. One of my favorite parts of this piece is what Sargent coins, "the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gautreau." This work was actually a simplistic sketch for quite a while, but Sargent decided to finish it and add more life to his subject.

It's a delicate piece. Gautreau's skin seems to glow against her dark background, the lines of her dress and body not completely clear; instead smokily fading into the darkness. She cheers either to herself or someone separate from the scene; separate from her hazy nonchalance.

El Jaleo, John Singer Sargent, 1882

There are only a handful of words able to describe the feeling of watching a well-trained dancer, nimble, graceful even cunning, and Sargent finds a way to extract life from paint- an ability to create a moment. Born into an era where art was “great” made finding a particular facet of the discipline very difficult and somewhat daunting. Should one take the naturalist approach of those in the Rococo? Or stray towards the realism of Courbet.

John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882

Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656