Dali House

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.

Rik Pavlescak, the founder of the Collect Dali Yahoo Group, came up with an interesting analogy toward the end of a lively recent discussion among the members about copyright. He cited a 2006 article by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam on the debate over Roy Lichtenstein’s use of comic-book panels in his pop art.

Beam in turn pointed to the website of David Barsalou, who was then teaching art at the High School of Commerce in Springfield, Massachusetts. On Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein, Barsalou stacks more than 100 paintings by the artist next to their original comic images. He also published a book with the same title.

Even better are Barsalou’s Flickr pages, which have a lot of well-sourced background information and biographies and photos of the original comic artists, placing credit where it duly belongs.

Barsalou’s efforts demolish the common belief that Lichtenstein created entirely new images based on the look of 1950s and ’60s comics. Even the cartoons’ balloon captions were often scalped intact.

“He tried to make it seem as though he was making major compositional changes in his work, but he wasn’t,” Beam quotes Barsalou as saying. “The critics are of one mind that he made major changes, but if you look at the work, he copied them almost verbatim. Only a few were original.”

Lichtenstein Foundation executive director Jack Cowart argued that “the panels were changed in scale, colour, treatment and in their implications” and Roy never made an “exact copy”.

Amusingly, the foundation’s website can’t be visited unless you first click to agree that you won’t violate the copyright within, and the warning is illustrated with Lichtenstein’s “Grrrrrrrrrrr!!”, a painting of an angry dog that came directly from a comic strip drawn by Joe Kubert. See the rest.