Dali House

Picture Claude Monet in a farmer’s field, not far from his home in Giverny, early in the morning, a conductor waving his oiled baton before an orchestra of canvases perched on easels.

He strolls from one to the next as the sun curls the shadows on the watching grainstack, his subject and his audience. Instructing each canvas in turn and learning as he goes, Monet has an assembly line in operation, complete with gear-laden assistants scurrying in and out of the scene.

The canvases participating in Monet’s symphony of the winter of 1890-91 found immediate fame thereafter. Durand-Ruel showed them in Paris in May ‘91, probably just after the hillocks of hay themselves had been chopped up by the threshers, and sold most of them within days, each for as much as 1,000 francs.

The one shown here, “Grainstacks (Snow Effects — Sunlight)”, found immortality, or something like it, at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

For Camille Pissarro, Monet’s haystacks “breathed contentment”. “What lies beyond progress itself” is how the art critic Octave Mirbeau described the paintings.

They did not, however, halt progress, as some actually hoped. They could not save the old ways of the countryside from the inevitable industrial onslaught. The contentment would soon disappear into the noisy maw of combine harvesters.

Wikipedia has a nice entry about the haystacks, and never to be forgotten when the subject comes up is Alan Ritch’s dream-inducing website Hay in Art. The hi-res images of the haystacks come from the wonderfully wonky Art 4 2Day.

Like Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer’s “Une Ascension en l’An VIII” from the decade previous (seen in this post), Fernand le Quesne’s 1897 painting “Allegorie de la Publicite” shows a surprisingly modern humour, or perhaps I just give too little credit to the artistic wags of the 19th century, who after all had among them the razor wit of Daumier.

Le Quesne (1856-1956) has the allegorical Advertising in Place de la Concorde, flogging every imaginable shop and attraction, from the Louvre to the department store Bon Marché, as well as “Pygmalion” at the theatre.

The competition for the consumer’s attention is fierce, with human billboards waddling about, posters crowding the walls and monuments and European and American newspapers fluttering in the wind. You’d need a drum and bugle to be heard over the rest of the touts — oh, wait, she’s got those too.

Francis Picabia’s “Monster”, from 1946.

The Chamba in Nigeria and Cameroon kept masks like this one well away from the village when not in use. The spirit depicted — and those who carried and wore the mask — were believed to lurk in the bush, ready to bring violence.

Modern art’s fascination early in the last century with so-called primitive art chagrined Salvador Dali to the tweezer-tips of his moustache. He was appalled that Picasso and the cubists and, worse, his fellow surrealists André Breton, Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon, could derive inspiration from “savage” artisans.

But he must have recognised the parallel. In their anguished and grotesque imagery, the surrealists in particular were evoking the same monsters of the subconscious that tribal shaman recruited for their ends.

At any rate, it’s a shame he couldn’t at least appreciate the fundamental beauty of the traditional craftsmanship of Africa, Oceania and the aboriginal Americas, whose face masks are as expressive as anything in modern art, as Modigliani well knew, being able to improve on them only by cocking an eyebrow here and there.

The only problem in absorbing this influence, I think, is the matter of ownership.

A Bamileke helmet mask from Cameroon, today valued at about €15,000, represents a buffalo, an animal embodying power and courage and thus aligned with the tribe’s chief.

I’m not aware of any major controversy today over the sale of antique African carvings. The current debate seems more about the market for the “craft guns” that are used in Africa’s inter-tribal conflicts.

There are quite righteous grumblings from Southeast Asia about foreigners making off with venerable sculptures, but you don’t hear about Africans objecting to the resale of 18th-century masks at the big auction houses in Paris and New York. These masks were scooped up in the thousands by rampaging colonists who history continues to excuse en masse as “explorers”.

To be fair, of course there was an educational factor, with many of the masks and other artifacts finding their place in First World museums, the better to share the culture of faraway places. These were, however, the minority of the purloined items.

A Kanak mask on the left from New Caledonia (€50,000 to €80,000), usually used in rituals mourning the death of chiefs. Representing the chief himself, it has long hair, since it was forbidden to cut one’s hair during the period of transition from life to death.

At its side is a Lu bo bie elephant mask of the Kran tribe in Liberia (€18,000). with perforations in the resin at the ends of the eyes in which seeds were fixed. Villagers who broke the law or refused to pay a debt faced this visage with the threat that if restitution wasn’t forthcoming, the elephant would destroy his house.

I own a bronze Buddha head I picked up for a couple of dollars in Cambodia, and although it’s not remotely antique — they’re mass-cast in huge quantities for tourists — I can’t control some winces of guilt.

It was the same with a large face mask I bought in Jamaica. The carver probably lacquered it the week previous, ready for the local straw market, but you still feel like you’re absconding with a chunk of sovereign culture. See the rest.

Vincent is allowed to roam around in the vicinity of the hospital, and he’s doing many paintings. He’s only occasionally depressed, and very productive, doing fine impressionistic work but with sharper colours and accented lines, and with some
extraordinary perspectives.

Everything is shipped to Théo, but he makes copies of the best so he can keep track of his own progress.

Van Gogh here portrays Aries, the constellation of his birth, with the stars uncannily placed in their near-exact positions alongside the moon and Venus. Only the prominent cypress tree, so crucial to the composition, disturbs the astronomical fidelity, separating the two stars at the lower left further than they are in reality.

At right, “Road with Cypresses and Starry Sky” again sets the heavens afire with the shimmering energy of space. “The Noon Rest”, above, is an homage to Millet, while “The Prison Courtyard”, below, gives tribute to Doré, Van Gogh repaying debts of gratitude to the masters of an earlier generation who melded expression and impression, while at the same time aiding his own recovery by re-examining the fundamentals of his art.

I was sure this was a recent painting in fin de siecle clothing when I first saw it, but it was done in 1880.

What fooled me about Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer’s “Une Ascension en l’An VIII” was the slapstick played out in the crowd, but I guess slapstick is older than I thought, and the Dutchman was merely displaying his gifts as an illustrator — and perhaps having a poke at “high” society too.

“Year VIII” was 1799 on the French republican calendar, and the Parisian scene depicted recalls the many social events that centred on balloon flights following the first one in 1783 by Jean-François Rozière and François Laurent, aboard a hot-air craft built by the celebrated Montgolfier brothers.

A century later Kaemmerer had some fun with the trendy social-climbers assembled to witness the novelty of manned flight. While the gentleman and lady rise aloft with dignity and a show of patriotism, some of their friends, seeking a higher vantage point of their own, tumble miserably low. See the rest.