Dali House

Despite the smog, red tide, cheating at fireworks, fake ethnic minorities, a perfect child lip-synching, Spielberg’s absence and the blood of millions of Burmese and Africans on the wrong side of the Chinese payroll, Beijing put on a pretty good show with the Olympics, I thought.

The one Chinese out of three billion who may not have enjoyed the fortnight is Zhang Hongtu, whose painting “Bird’s Nest, in the Cubist Style” was blocked from exhibition at the German Embassy in the Chinese capital and from its planned reproduction in Chinese Vogue. It was “too political”, as opposed to “not pretty enough”, like the little girl who really did sing the anthem at the Games’ opening ceremony.

Zhang’s depiction of the National Stadium includes bits of the Bird’s Nest structure, the words “Sacred Olympic Torch”, “One World, One Dream” and “Family, Joy, Happiness” in Chinese, the numeral “8″ and, uh-oh, the words “Tibet” and “human right” in English.

Well, I mean, no wonder.

So Zhang and his painting sat out the Games back home in New York, where the Gansu native has lived since 1982. By way of compensation he’s got Sotheby’s “Contemporary Art Asia” auction coming up in the Big Apple on September 17, and a pair of his “traditional Chinese landscapes” rendered in the styles of Van Gogh and Cézanne are expected to bring as much as $60,000 each. See the rest.

“The Burden (The Laundress)”, circa 1850-53

Born 200 years ago this year, Honoré Daumier endowed caricature with art and art with humanity. But where was he 166 years ago today, August 27? He was starting a jail term for being a wise guy.

Too much of the sweet life only leaves you with wisdomless molars in agony, and where is Daumier when you need him? “Have a toothache? See Daumier!” Van Gogh wrote to Theo. He’d seen a Daumier drawing called “The Excursion Train” and forgot all about his rotting bite.

You would think Honoré Daumier would be everywhere in this bicentennial of his birthday. There have indeed been a string of exhibitions in Germany, and according to Wikipedia, Asia and Australia dusted him off for his 200th, but for the most part it seems that the French keep him pretty much to themselves, amid couched allusions to his whereabouts.

Where is this “Villa Daumier” where he died early in 1879, blind and destitute and dependent upon the kindness of better-off painters? Was the little house that Corot bought for him in Valmondois or Auvers? Online sources can’t seem to agree, though surely the website of Valmondois itself, from which this photo came, can be trusted when it says it’s there … but where? It offers no address, just a “Come and see the latest of the exhibitions by other artists that we put on at the villa.”

It’s on Chemin Bescherelle, another source says, but try finding the great lexicographer’s name anywhere in the vicinity. Instead, others insist, it’s right on the main drag, and since a Place Honoré Daumier adjoins it, the house must be there, right? Here’s Google Earth’s view of the neighbourhood.

That’s presumably the town square just beyond Place Honoré Daumier in this shot, where there’s a bust of Daumier by Adolphe-Victor Geoffroy-Dechaume.

Valmondois says online it installed the sculpture in 1909, the centenary of Honoré’s birth in far-off Marseilles.

When Daumier died his body was carted over the the town cemetery, but it didn’t stay there long, as we shall see in a moment.

Not far from Place Honoré Daumier are Allée Maurice de Vlaminck and Rue Dorée. Vlaminck certainly spent time in Valmondois, well after Daumier’s day, but I’m not sure about Gustave Dorée. France has a tendency to honour its artists this way in any old town, no matter where they hung out. Charles-François Daubigny is said to have been a resident of Valmondois, but his famously decorated house is in Auvers, adding to the muddle.

Where is the house of Théodore Rousseau in Barbizon, where Daumier spent his summer vacation in 1865? Barbizon has a Rue Théodore Rousseau — you can see it shouldering off from the main street in the image below. Interestingly, that road is crossed by little Allée John Constable, just in case the English forgot to pay tribute to their landscape maestro.

Daumier’s final and forever address is easier to find. He’s here amid Death’s busy clutter in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, his friend Corot within eternal reach. Daumier’s admirers decided a year or so after he died that he deserved to be among the greats in Paris’ best-known graveyard, so they disengaged him from Valmondois’ clutch.

See the rest.

A piece that would like to have a moment of your time, if you don’t mind, “The Painter” by Giacomo Favretto was up for sale in June in Milan. Sotheby’s was hoping to get as much as €25,000 for it, but I don’t know how they made out.

There’s not a lot to be discovered about Favretto online, despite the fact that he’s got his own website, which is pretty good considering he’s been dead for 121 years. Neither his site nor Wikipedia Italy have much to say about him, though, and the few images of his paintings on offer aren’t large or particularly well reproduced.

He was Venetian, born 1849, died 1887. Some of his paintings are strikingly photographic without even trying to be realistic, a trick of colour and texture. In “The Painter”, the question is, “What is he painting?” Was Favretto deliberately invoking cave art?

References to him keep mentioning his “Anatomy Lesson” as some sort of key work, but I haven’t been granted a good enough look at it to make a call. These others are nice, though: “Portrait of a Relation of the Artist” and, below, “The Artist’s Father and Sister — My Beloved”. A real family man!

This is my “version” of a video created and posted on YouTube by entropious88 here. I don’t wish to take anything away from his terrific original, but the resolution was breaking up on playback, so I layered over some fresh effects (and added a picture of Dali with Eno at the end).

If the video doesn’t play properly here, try here.

Entropious used time-lapse photography to shoot a view across the Thames River in Komoka Provincial Park, west of London, Ontario, Canada (not far from where I grew up, actually). He’s done several others, all quite compelling, using other Eno tracks.

Here are the lyrics to this song, “This”, which comes from the 2005 album “Another Day On Earth”:

A final, intriguing piece from the Sotheby’s auctions of Russian art on June 10 and 12: “The Painter” by Pavel Dmitrievich Shmarov (1874-1955). The oil was done in 1940 and was expected to bring between £10,000 and £15,000.

I’d say it’s a fair stab at a Monet with a little Degas drama in the lighting, but there’s more. The artist in the woods seems to be returning our gaze, and what are we doing?

* Getting a load of his models — four of them ready to go, like an assembly line?

* Wondering if we should call the cops?

* Or painting him and his harem?

It’s all so delightfully sordid.