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Soutine in Paris: Order and Chaos at l'Orangerie

10/21/2012

9 Comments

 
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Chaim Soutine (1893-1943)
I hadn’t planned on seeing much in the way of modern art in Paris while I was there with my Cathedrals tour, but Thursday morning after the group left, I hurried down to the Orangerie Museum at the Tuileries to catch Chaim Soutine: Order out of Chaos (L'Ordre du Chaos). I was especially curious about what was left after Dr. Barnes snapped up everything not nailed down in Soutine’s studio in 1923. Like all art in the Barnes Collection galleries the Soutines don’t travel, so it was a chance to look at other works by this intriguing artist, who is fast moving up in the art history ranks from lesser known to widely celebrated.

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The Little Pastry Chef 1919
Before Dr. Barnes’s visit Soutine had been just another artist émigré scrambling for a place among the many struggling artists of Montparnasse. Although he was living hand to mouth, he wasn’t doing badly, judging by the distance he’d already come from a village childhood in Lithuania. By 1923 he had a solid body of paintings, a dealer, a couple of glamorous patrons, and a circle of kindred spirits, especially his friend Modigliani, who lived and worked in the same ramshackle artist building. Barnes first met Soutine in post-WWI Paris through art dealer Paul Guillaume, whose collection forms the core of the holdings in the Orangerie Museum. The first work to catch Barnes’s adventurous eye was The Little Pastry Chef, one of a series of trades people and artisans painted by Soutine.

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Garcon d'Etage 1927
He bought it on the spot and then showed up at Soutine’s studio cash in hand to clean him out. It wasn't a whole lot of money for Barnes but it was the earth, moon, and stars to Soutine, and it set him on a path to a solidly successful career. The Little Pastry Chef is safely in place in Philadelphia, but other portraits in the series were on display in Paris. It is said that Soutine distorted (a word that Soutine’s work invariably invokes) the outward appearance of his sitters in order to show the truth of their personalities. I don’t know if I buy that completely, but he certainly conveys a sense of the personal quirkiness lurking behind the social veneer of any individual. Garcon d’Etage (Room Service Waiter) is a perfect example of Soutine’s lush, charming, slightly maniacal portraits. The man (not a boy - no one uses the word 'garcon' for waiters any longer) with his sharp-elbowed pose makes it clear that he is serious about his job, if a bit timid, perhaps about losing it. Soutine blocks out the color - red, black, white, dark greenish blue - and sparks the composition to life with the frenetic pace of his brushstrokes and the serio-comic expression on the man's face.


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Portrait of Mme Castaing 1929
The Metropolitan Museum loaned several works, in particular the spectacular 1929 portrait of Mme Castaing, whose pouty red lips and envelope of glossy black fur are slathered on the canvas with Soutine’s characteristic jerky energy and infusions of spots and dashes of color.  The show includes a video interview with Mme Castaing, a glamorous designer who, with her husband, was an important patron and friend, sharing her reflections on Soutine’s personality and way of working some years after the artist’s death in 1943. One instantly sees the portrait in the older, slightly coquettish woman.

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Jean Fouquet Charles VII 1447
Given his highly personal style, Soutine’s choice of models is intriguing. He copied classics at the Louvre like many artists; for him Jean Fouquet’s stiff formal 1447 Portrait of Charles VII was ‘perfect’ and he based several compositions on it. His admiration for Rembrandt, in particular his 1655 painting Carcass of Beef, led to his well known series of big bloody beef carcasses and works showing dead rabbits, some skinned, some not. The exhibition contains superb examples of each.

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Rembrandt Carcass of Beef 1655

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Soutine Carcass of Beef 1925
Soutine's version (one of many) - note how he zooms in to fill the frame, removing the distance between the viewer and the gory fact of the carcass.

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The Rabbit 1923-24
The subject is perfectly suited to Soutine - he keeps the gruesomeness but adds so much flair and joy in the painting of these dead husks that your visual experience bounces back and forth between repulsion and pure pleasure.  The fur of one of the rabbits was a  small masterpiece, a dizzying, gleeful calligraphic dance of yellow against a darker gold.

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Portrait of the Sculptor, Oscar Miestchaninoff 1923
It was interesting to see that many of the strongest paintings were on loan from American museums. The curator of the show, Marie-Paul Vial (Director of L’Orangerie) admits that Soutine is ‘difficult to comprehend and little understood in France’ - the exhibition certainly seems to underline the idea that Americans ‘got’ Soutine first. 

This portrait of a fellow artist was based on the 15th century painting of King Charles VII (see above.) Note how the composition echoes the broad spread of the shoulders to fill the space.


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The Houses 1923-24
Soutine’s world was always in motion if we believe the evidence of his work. Houses sway and move with the rhythm of conga dancers, trees swirl and twist, flowers wave, people spin out in streams and splotches of color.  There’s more than a bit of Van Gogh’s nervous expressionist energy in Soutine; he picks up the beat, turns up the music, and brings the dance into a deeper, darker, still very joyous place of human soul and spirit.

Chaim Soutine: L'Ordre du Chaos (the Order of Chaos)
Oct 3, 2012-Jan 21, 2013

http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/pages/page_id19505_u1l2.htm (in French)

I will be teaching a 4 week class about the artists of the Barnes Collection, including Soutine, from October 23 - Nov 13. The class will be held in Chestnut Hill (Philadelphia) If you'd like more information contact me through my contact form.

9 Comments

Two Good Stories: Soutine and Dr. Barnes

5/3/2012

1 Comment

 
Picture
Landscape at Cagnes 1923 (Columbus Museum of Art)
I'm now teaching a class I'm calling 'Midnights in Paris' (thanks to Woody Allen for the idea) which looks at 5 'fantasy' eras of French art and history. The first in the series, the early 20th century, includes an artist we'll be seeing more of once the Barnes Collection reopens later this month. Chaim Soutine is the artist, and his story with Dr. Barnes makes a good headline: Starving Russian Artist Saved from Misery and Oblivion by famed American Millionaire Art Collector. The full story, of course, has a bit more to it.

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The Pastry Chef 1919 (The Barnes Collection)
Soutine, born in a small Russian village in 1893, was beaten up at age 13 for breaking strict Jewish rules by drawing his rabbi - after weeks in the hospital he took the 25 rubles awarded as damages and got out of town - first to art classes in Minsk, and then to the art mecca of the time - Paris. For 10 years he lived hand to mouth in a series of creaky artist studios in Montparnasse where he became close friends with other artists, especially Modigliani. His first art dealer, Leopold Zborowski, supported him after a fashion without much real success in selling his work - until the fateful day in 1922, when Dr. Barnes walked into the gallery run by Paul Guillaume (a garage mechanic who rose to be a celebrated art dealer and collector) and noticed a small painting of an unlikely subject - a pastry cook.

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Madame Castaing 1929 (Metropolitan Museum)
An introduction to Zborowski, a trip to Soutine's studio, and Barnes snaps up the whole lot of Soutine's work - some say 60 paintings, some say 100 - for a total of $3000. As far as Soutine was concerned, this was the treasury of Midas - as soon as Barnes left the premises, Soutine closed the door, hailed a cab and had the driver take him to Nice on the French Riviera, 200 miles away. It was a true turning point - the infusion of cash and belief in his work may even have saved a starving artist's life. Soutine returned to Paris and built on his success; his work began selling, he acquired a new apartment and studio, nice clothes (it is said that he became a 'dandy' in elegant shirts and silk ties) and wealthy patrons.

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Carcass of Beef 1925 (Albright Knox Gallery)
Rollercoaster years followed, with health problems and an ornery disposition causing problems - and then came the Nazi occupation of Paris. Soutine, a Jew, fled Paris and when he tried to return was refused. He made it back at the very end of his life, assisted by Marie-Berthe Aurenche, the ex-wife of Max Ernst, and died in a Paris hospital. His 1943 funeral at the Montparnasse cemetery - 'on a sunny day' according to Marie-Berthe - was small and quiet, but Picasso was there to pay his last respects.

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The Table 1919 (Orangerie, Paris)
The US, thanks to Dr. Barnes, is the place to see the best of Soutine's work. Though sometimes classed as an Expressionist, Soutine's quirky, animated swirly style is unique. The charming and the grotesque balance precariously in his color saturated compositions, whether the subject is landscape or still life, raw carcasses (a favorite theme) or portraits of friends and patrons. Barnes's recognition of the unknown Soutine is, for me, one of the signatures of his own extraordinary story: the confidence and exceptional eye signaled by that 1922 purchase make this landmark collection significant for more than the fantastic array of works alone. It marks a symbiosis between art and collector that is rare at any age.
In 2006 one of Soutine's carcass paintings, 'La Boeuf Ecorche,' sold for $13.8 Million.
Paintings shown are representative of Soutine's work but not necessarily in the Barnes Collection.
http://www.barnesfoundation.org/collections/art-collection/artist/51/chaim-soutine

1 Comment

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