Soutine in Paris: Order and Chaos at l'Orangerie

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.

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