Jean-Auguste Ingres e Francis Bacon lado a lado no Museu Berardo

Em 1983, Francis Bacon (1909-1992) inspirou-se numa composição do famoso pintor francês Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) sobre o tema mitológico do diálogo entre Édipo e a Esfinge. O empréstimo excepcional do Musée du Louvre tornará possível a confrontação entre a obra de Ingres, Oedipus and the Sphynx (iniciada em 1808 mas alterada para ser exposta no Salon em 1827) e a obra de Francis Bacon – Oedipus and the Sphinx (after Ingres) – 1983, que pertence à Colecção Berardo.

Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres – Oedipus and the Sphynx, 1808-25 – Oil on canvas, 189 x 144 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Em Oedipus Tyrannus de Sófocles,  Édipo foi ter com a Esfinge que bloqueava a estrada para Tebas e desafiava qualquer viajante a responder a um enigma ou a morrer. Édipo conseguiu resolver o enigma…

François I recoit les derniers soupirs de Leonard de Vinci, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

I was checking out some of Ingres’s work just now when I ran across this painting, and I thought, well, that’s something you probably wouldn’t see painted today!

First off, there’s the idea of one man inhaling in another man’s soul while he dies. (Apparently, this scene couldn’t have happened in real life since, according to one random site I looked at, Francois I was in a different place when Leonardo died.)

The concept is quite traditional, though I don’t think many people have heard of it today. It shows up now and then in early modern playwrights like Shakespeare and his contemporaries. (Frequently, the soul was thought to be conveyed through a kiss, specifically.) In Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy, one dying friend, Amintor, tells his best friend, Melantius, “My senses fade, let me give up my soul / Into thy bosom.” They didn’t use stage directions as frequently back then, so there would not necessarily have been a stage direction for a kiss if that was the practice.

Then there’s the pink. Ah, François! It’s not just the pink on his doublet and sleeves but the slippers! I can think of half a dozen little girls who would adore those slippers.

Anyhow, autre temps, autre vêtements. Pink carried a different (less feminine) cultural connotation back then.

It looks like there’s a priest there for last rites, with an illuminated Bible on the bedside table, both signalling the presumed state of his soul, I take it.

I don’t know who the other people in the painting are, but the appearance of the child at the bedside of a dying man reminds me yet again how different our practices are today. (I’m trying hard to to read the child’s expression as boredom, but part of me thinks that kids’ characters haven’t actually changed…) And that’s some purse — or, I think, murse — that kid has.

I particularly don’t know who the guy in the background behind the bed is. I’m starting to think that my next project is going to be doing follow-up posts on all of the ones I’ve done so far where I actually, you know, try to find out stuff about them instead of just say what I think.

Lastly, the chair. It’s yet more furniture I’m glad I didn’t inherit and feel an emotional obligation to keep, but it is kind of funky. For some reason, that right angle between the back and the arm of the chair is so sharp that it’s surprising me; I thought the angles would be less sharp.

Overall assessment: Wow. Different.

Last couple days I’ve sent myself back to school, making drawings after various old masters (mostly Ingres, as in this case).  I suppose this might be viewed as the “artist’s vacation.”  A few days spent leisurely drawing, a change of pace, a change of media, a change of subject matter.  As with some of the other drawings I’ve posted lately, this drawing is one I did with my left hand.  Using my left hand slows me down.  I cannot possibly draw fast, and I feel as if I notice more.  Whether I actually do or not, I can’t judge.  But even the sensation that time is passing more slowly is delightful. 

Of course, one copies an old master to learn.  So this “slowing down” is also time spent with the artist being studied.  Looking so intently at Ingres’s painting (as reproduced in a book), I find myself marvelling at the extraordinary richness of Ingres’s world.  The way he sees even just the woman’s hair, for instance, is just amazing.  He has turned her curls into the most intriguing structures which he reproduces with a great and loving sensitivity.

In making a copy, you experience the painting you study so much more deeply.  And it is as though the master tells you, “oh, look at this!”  and “what about that!”  and thus you have a silent conversation in the pure language of images.

Okay, I suppose it’s possible to do a kind of quick drawing with one’s left hand (talking to right-handed artists here).  And I did do this next drawing in a fairly short time, in a sketchy way (though most my left hand drawings look a little sketchy no matter how carefully I make them).

I made this first left hand drawing of the Ingres woman in a rather quick, summary way.  It’s a “getting acquainted” kind of sketch.  Then I did the longer drawing at the top of the post. 

The two drawings have a slightly different character and mood.  And thus one can make many versions of a single subject, even when copying.

As previous posts explain, I have been doing left-handed drawings after Ingres.  It’s become an unofficial Ingres Day around here.  And it’s not even his birthday.  (That’s August 29th.)  This drawing is taken from a very un-Ingreist portrait, the Young Man with an Earring, 1804 of the Musee Ingres, Montauban.  The young man looks rough and rude, and Ingres’s treatment is dark and smudgy, not the superlinearity that we customarily expect.

And my version is … well … my version.  Some details below.

I can’t help it.  I love close-ups.

The shading all runs the “other” direction because this is my left-hand’s shading.

My daughter asked me today if I could have a meeting of my favorite artists in heaven, who would I invite?

Hmm.  Had to think a moment.  Ingres, of course.  Rubens, Durer (my candidates for three of the greatest draughtsmen of history).   Would have to include Degas.  I cut my teeth on Degas, and he’s a great admirer of Ingres and even met Ingres.  Since I invited Rubens, how can I not invite Rembrandt?  Duh.  And I thought I should invite Hokusai, too (the old man mad about drawing) even if he’d have the most difficult time conversing with the others, being Japanese.  Van Gogh.  And last but not least, Winslow Homer. 

Homer made lots of drawings, but is not known very much for “finished drawings,” having given up anything remotely like that when he stopped being an illustrator.  But I’ll take even a scribble by Homer any day.

I figured that English, French and Latin connections would be enough to allow most everyone to talk to most everyone else (with others doing a bit of translation).  And Hokusai, all he’d have to do is start drawing and everyone would stop talking and just do some jaw dropping and watch, before picking up their own drawing tools.

With this lovely question for inspiration, I have been drawing today with my left hand again, which I do for amusement and freedom.  Decided to make some drawings after our heavenly hero Ingres, taking images from my copy of the book Ingres by George Vigne. (And no, I didn’t pay the price they’re asking for the book now.)  My copy is made from the Head of Boileau, 1827 (Musee Ingres, Montauban).  You can see Boileau in the completed Apotheosis of Homer here (he appears in the lower right corner of this detail).

So, we won’t all be playing harps, I think, when the role is called up yonder.  Some of us, I wager, will be drawing!

BAIN TURK by Bob Kessel after Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Bob Kessel has created a new art series titled, “ROMANTICISM” featuring the works of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres pictured above. The pictures are available as limited edition fine art prints, signed and numbered by the artist. Contact Bob Kessel for prices and availability.

Romanticism was an early 19th century, pan-European movement in the arts and philosophy. The term derives from the Romances of the Middle Ages, and refers to an idealization of reality. In the late 18th century, it came to mean anti-Classical and represented a trend towards the picturesque and the Gothic, and a love of nostalgia, mystery and drama.

LUIGI CHERUBINI (1760-1842), Italian composer
Portrait: Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Det är kul att börja bena i den där fisken, om vilken aktör genom vår världsomspännande konsthistoria som egentligen var den förste utövaren av modern konst. Eller vem som stod för startskottet, alltså pionjären – han eller de som lade grunden.

Själv tillhör jag den sortens personlighet att jag gärna vill ha ett bra svar på det här. Eller i brist på det, i alla fall veta hur det ligger till och vilken målare som inspirerades av vem. Ett svar på den här frågan, i alla fall ett definitivt sådant, är nog omöjligt. Självklart är det så, eftersom ingen ens vet vad modern konst är för något, mer än att det är konst som började figurera någonstans där startskottet gick för den industriella revolutionen. Och givetvis är det helt omöjligt att nämna enbart en konstnär som stamfader, de var flera. Samt lika självklart måste man ta i beaktande olika rörelser och i så fall varifrån dessa hämtade sina idéer.

Men, man kan ju givetvis spekulera lite. Om vi för stunden lägger redaymades, installationer och performances åt sidan och ägnar oss åt bildkonst, då främst måleri - då blir det lite lättare. Duchamp lär vända sig i graven då jag förutom nu, inte tänker yttra ett ord om hans pissoar.

Paul Cézanne

Och intressantare än så blir det. Om vi tar den generella sanningen att det skulle vara Cézanne och Van Gogh som stod för modernt måleri så är vi ute på rätt spår i alla fall ett sammanhang. Båda dessa var missförstådda i olika grader, och det är modernt så det förslår. Men givetvis kan man inte blunda för att Van Gogh kanske var den första riktiga expressionisten och där jämte befann sig Cézanne som troligtvis var den första att syssla med något som kunda liknas vid kubism. De båda nämns även som impressionister, eller post-impressionister. Och backar man lite, eller åtminstone flyttar sig åt sidan, så finnes en rad aktörer som stod på samma plattform eftersom vi befinner oss i den första moderna konströrelsen överhuvudtaget, impressionismen.

Impressionismen är tveklöst startskottet för all form av modernt måleri. Utan att spekulera i upphovsmännen till denna rörelse tycker jag man kan hårdra lite och säga att Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro och Edgar Degas stod i främre raden för det som Édouard Manet (till vänster) nånstans var med om att starta.

Man skulle då kort kunna säga att Édouard Manet var den förste impressionisten och att verket Frukost i det gröna var det första moderna konstverket. Men, det var inte riktigt så eftersom impressionismen under tiden för det här verket ännu inte var myntat som namn. Då är i så fall Monet’s verk Impression: Sunrise det allra första impressionistiska verket då namnet impressionism härrör från just den här tavlan;

Men det här är lite smått självklart, även för den mindre påläste konstvetaren.

Eugéne Delacroix

Visst kan man backa ytterliggare. Två aktörer som ofta nämns som nyklassicismens Nemesis är Eugéne Delacroix och Gustave Courbet. Man ska komma ihåg att impressionismen inte enbart var ett sorts byte av bildspråk, utan även en omfokusering av motiv. Gustave Courbet hade i stor mån samma bildspråk som exempelvis Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres om man bortser från Ingres något mer kulörrika och noggranna färgpalett, men det är i stort realistiskt klassisk måleri vi pratar om. Vad som skiljde Courbet från de andra var just själva motiven, där historieskildringar lös med sin frånvaro och där nutiden fick spela ut sin roll totalt. Eugéne Delacroix på sitt håll hade däremot just historiebeskrivning som motiv för sina verk, men ett slarvigt impressionistiskt bildspråk som föregick och inspirerade det som senare skulle bli impressionismen.

Men, det här vet ni också. Varför inte backa ytterliggare? Eller sia lite. Kan man anta att just slarvigt, vardagligt nutidsmåleri är impressionism i sin kärna? Skulle man kunna säga att realistiskt måleri gjort i skissartad manér skulle vara impressionism? Det kan man säkert en grå måndag, men impressionismen är mycket mer än så. Att man överhuvudtaget döpte en rörelse så som impressionisterna gjorde är troligtvis det första steget mot modernism vi sett. Att rörelsens namn kom ifrån ett ironiskt iakttagande av journalisten Louis Leroy gör det hela än mer intressant då man per automatik blev en sorts motståndsrörelse mot vad som hängde i fina konsthallar. Och det i sig är mer modernt som nyck, än just själva måleriet och bildspråket. 

Det har funnits stora likheter med impressionismen sätt att måla, och framförallt vara tidigare. Rembrandts sista verk samt hans någorlunda samtida konstnärskollega Frans Hals inspirerade impressionisterna. Spanske Diego Velazques var en förebild för många impressionisterna, och även Francisco Goya. Att bildspråket som impressionismen förespråkade var såpass kontroversiellt beror egentligen på att nyklassicismen var det föregående kapitlet i fransk, då främst parisisk konsthistoria, och denna stilart upplevdes då inte bara som torr, overklig och borgerlig – den var i sig mer unik än impressionismen, även historiskt sett. Om man bortser från tidigt grekiskt och romerskt måleri, vill säga. Nyklassicismen var dömd att försvinna då den bars upp av makten. Konstinriktningar som hör adeln och makten till kommer alltid få maka på sig, antingen på grund av revolution eller folkets motvilja.

Att impressionisterna blev den moderna rörelsens startskott beror inte rent historiskt på att de gjorde något nytt – det beror på att skillnaden mellan den rådande nyklassicismen och folket var alltför stor och därmed skapades en konflikt. Konflikten i sig, rörelsen impressionism – var det som senare skulle bli modernt måleri. Inte nödvändigtvis verken och bildspråket i sig.

Jag har tidigare skrivit om Joseph Mallord William Turner. Lite okunnigt kan denne engelska landskapsmålare beskrivas som impressionist, men likheterna fanns där bara i hans senare bilder då hans landskap och historieskildringar blev alltmer expressiva. Men, vilka likheter. Jag vill på många sätt påstå att även om J.M.W Turner upplevde sina första blygsamma framgångar redan på 1700-talet, var han mer modern än många av de karaktäristiska impressionisterna i det senare skedet av sitt liv. Ta den här bilden till exempel;

Venetian Festival, målad så tidigt som 1845. Han inte bara föregick impressionismen, han målade abstrakt expressionistisk konst, vilket skulle dröja nästan hundra år innan New York-målarna konkurrerade ut Paris som konsthuvudstad med just denna stilart, abstrakt expressionism. Men det visste ingen på 1800-talet, allra minst Turner själv. Han är förvisso ingen förfader för denna stilart och nämns sällan i andra sammanhang än klassiskt engelsk landskapsmåleri, men han är definitivt ett unikum som figurerade överst på den klassiska konstscenen och som i nutid beskrivs som pionjär av modernt måleri.

Impressionisterna, framförallt Monet, högaktade självfallet J.M.W Turner. Kanske för att han under varnishing days - alltså de tre dagar då Englands främsta konstnärer färdigställde och signerade sina verk inför den kungliga utställningen - inte bara färdigställde utan påbörjade och slutförde stora oljemålningar. Kaxigt så det förslår. Nånting som utövarna inom slow art-rörelsen kan fundera över.

Det fanns fler konstnärer som föregick, eller gick vid sidan av impressionisterna givetvis, även under sin levnadstid. Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes var beundrad av såväl Van Gogh, Gauguin och även pointilisten Seurat. 

Etsning av Goya

Ej heller ska vi inte förglömma den kanske allra störste inom klassisk måleri, Francisco Goya, vars verk helt säkert inspirerade, och fortfarande inspirerar många konstnärer. Och inte bara genom hans klassiska politiska måleri. Hans svarta målningar och etsningar har inspirerat såväl Monet som den norske Edvard Munch.

Målningen The third of May 1808 är troligtvis en av historiens allra kändaste målningar. Picassos berömda tavla Guernica, hans skildring av när tyskarna 1937 bombade den spanska staden med samma namn, kom att bli kanske 1900-talets mest kända målning, och den var i sin tur direkt inspirerad av just Goya’s The third of May 1808. Han gjorde en andra version 1951, Massacre of Korea som är en mer direkt tolkning av Goyas målning.

I FN:s högkvarter i New York finns en reproduktion av Picassos målning Guernica, och 2003 när USAs dåvarande utrikesminister Colin Power skulle hålla presskonferens just där, insisterade Bush-administrationen på att den skulle täckas över. Så sägs det, och övertäckt var den.

Andra som gjort versioner av Goyas målning är bland annat Robert Ballagh, Sir Roy Calne men även konstnärer som verkade innan 1900-talet såsom Edgar Degas gjorde en version av The Third of May 1808.

Trots att Goyas bildspråk talade för impressionism, att hans motiv och idéer var ganska ensamma på den rådande konstscenen på 1800-talet, tycker jag nästan att det är aningen orättvis att direkt titulera honom som modern, likaväl som att titulera J.M.W Turner som modern. De var båda sin tids främsta moderna konstnärer och moderniteten i båda deras fall ligger i inget annat än att de stod ut i sin samtid. De tillhör fortfarande den klassiska scenen, men det blir extra intressant i diskussionen modernt måleri versus klassiskt dito. Det finns ingen direkt skiljegräns, ingen konstnär som hoppat fram ur ingenstans och på en femtioöring omvänt konsthistorien. Man kan bara filosofera i vilket håll det lutar åt. Om vi totalt suddar ut gränsen blir diskussionen inte helt oväntat vilken konstnär som inspirerades av vem och man finner inte helt oväntat att de klassiska konstnärer vi diskuterar idag i termer som de största, är de konstnärer som även i sin samtid var pionjärer.

Jag vill gärna omvända diskussionen och snabbt spola framåt för att se vilken konstnär som idag, 2009, kommer stå ut som pionjär inom konsten. Men det får bli ett senare blogginlägg för nu ska det ölas med goda vänner!

Print by Bob Kessel from the art series "ART HISTORY"

Many famous artists are depicted in the Bob Kessel Art History Series, a few of them are: Giovanni Bellinii, Pietro Berninii, Pierre Bonnard, Sandro Botticelli, François Boucher, William Bouguereau, Caravaggio, Marc Chagall, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Courbet, Jacques-Louis David, Eugene Delacroix, Otto Dix, Paul Gauguin, Hendrick Goltzius, Francisco de Goya, Francesco Hayez, Erich Heckel, Ando Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, Pieter de Hooch, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Jan van Kessel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gustav Klimt, Willem de Kooning, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Ferdinand Leger, Frederic Lord Leighton, Edouard Mant, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Jean Francois Millet, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Nicolas Poussin, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Karl Schmidt-Rottloff, Peter Paul Rubens, Georges Seurat, Georges de La Tour, Titian, Kitagawa Utamaro, Diego Velazquez, Jan Vermeer, and Max Weber.

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Maturity

Delacroix’s painting of the Massacre at Chios (also called Massacre at Scio, French: Scènes des massacres de Scio), shows sick, dying Greek civilians about to be slaughtered by the Turks.Baronesss Betty de Rothschild.
A Summer Night Collectively the five restituted paintings, including aforementioned landscapes, netted over $327.
On trips to the countryside, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres students drew from life, particularly.

In 1862 Delacroix participated in the creation of the The Vow of Louis XIII Nationale des. During his stay here the clinic and its garden became his main subject. In 1492 the model was completed, and Leonardo was making detailed plans for its casting. He completed a sequence of three rooms, each with paintings on each wall and often the ceilings too, increasingly leaving the work of painting from his detailed drawings to the large and skilled workshop team he had acquired, who added a fourth room, probably only including some elements designed by Raphael, after his early death in 1520.
In the long afternoons Blake spent Ines Moitessier I in the Abbey, he.

Marco Vecellio, called Marco di Tiziano, Titian’s nephew, born in 1545, was constantly with the master in his old age, and, learned his methods of work. They had a second son, Michel, on March 17, 1878, (Jean was born in 1867).

Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924)
Maurice Prendergast was born in St.
Van Gogh produced all of his work (some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings) during a period of only 10 years before he succumbed to mental illness (possibly bipolar disorder) and committed suicide. His models were routinely available to him to pose in Sloop, Bermuda.

The seven watercolors that were included in the celebrated Armory Show in 1913 revealed Prendergast as a major figure in American painting, probably the greatest of his generation. However, the word seventy fits into the rhyme of the poem better than would have a longer and more complex age, so it is possible that Pucci used artistic license. She later said,

was no teaching at the Academy. When the disgraced Joachim returns sadly to the hillside, the two young shepherds look sideways at each other. One of his finest early pieces is The Stonemason’s Yard

.

Artistic style
Degas Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres often identified as an Impressionist, an understandable but insufficient. They provide Ingres lot of insight into the life of the. His father, August Friedrich Hermann Macke (1845-1904), was a building contractor and his mother, Maria Florentine, née Adolph, (1848-1922), came from a farming family in Germany’s Sauerland region. Art Renewal Center

Titian had from the beginning of his career shown himself to be The Martyrdom of St. Symphorian. He was dismissed after 6 months and continued without pay. in a most

manner.
These included the portraits of Dr. The Venetian artist Jacopo de Barbari, Ingres Napoleon as Jupiter Enthroned Durer had met in. Unlike many young artists, Klimt accepted the principles of conservative Academic training.
On a visit to Lyme Regis, in Dorset, England, he painted a stormy scene (now in the Cincinnati Art Museum).
The government supported their efforts and gave them a lease on public land to erect an exhibition hall.

In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with the old masters.
But this period of Study for The Martyrdom of St. Symphorien master’s work is still represented by.

George Richmond gives the following account of Blake’s death in a letter to Samuel Palmer:
He died . Born as the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant girl, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. At his own request, he was given a Ingres Napoleon Enthroned burial service,. This was the most important period in his artistic development.
www.Google.com Jordeans was born on May 19, 1593, the first of eleven.

La grande odalisque

Odalisque à l’esclave

Roger délivrant Angélique

La source

Venus Anadyomène

La grande baigneuse

Le Bain Turc

Perseus et Andromeda

The Dream Of Ossian

This will be the last essay devoted to the subject of little squares for a while.  One hopes that the Ellsworth Kelly audience is paying attention, though I fear that this group of readers has not ventured any further than the original post I wrote in which I bad-mouthed the currently fashionable (and now also rather elderly) artist.  I will not have scratched the surface, really, of the full significance of boxes as a form in art.  However, one needs to move on.  For whomever might be interested in the saga from beginning to denouement, it began with a post called Less than Perfect.

Above is an amazing and strange drawing by the great French artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.  He made the drawing as a study for his famous portrait of Mme. Moitessier (now in London).  Though the real Mrs. Moitessier never posed nude for the portrait, the artist realized this drawing either by working from memory — or, as is more likely — having a studio model assume the pose so that he could better study the structure of his pictorial idea.

What is most strange, however, is not the nudity of the model but the strange conjunction of the figure with a grid of squares.  Even if Ingres had intended to use this grid to firm up his drawing as he transferred the idea from drawing to canvas or from one study to another study,  this grid is not even placed over most of the figure.  Indeed the focal point of the grid (assuming that the middle position relates to the focus) is located approximately at the model’s left elbow.

Seeing the drawing in reproduction, I can’t detect whether the grid or the drawing was made first.  Either alternative presents questions.  If he made the drawing first and the grid after, one wonders what purpose the grid serves.  If he made the grid first and then the drawing, one wonders why he didn’t choose a plain sheet for such an elegant study.  As things stand, though, with model and grid both occupying prominent places on this sheet, we find a drawing of sinuous organic lines contrasted with a delicate, spider’s web of incisive geometric boxes. 

When the whole appears to be more than the sum of the parts, as here, one can only speculate that perhaps for an enigmatic reason that we can only feel without quite understanding, the figure drawing and the mathematical grid both enliven each other.

For me it demonstrates that in true art, a complex psychology lives.  It resides inside certain images, giving them a force and resonance that speak to the heart and the mind in the silent language of sight.  Certainly, this life of little squares possesses more ingenuity and more poignancy and more insistence than do Mr. Kelly’s very less ambitious images.

I may not have persuaded his fans, though.  Alas.  Thus it is still true that you can bring a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.
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Ingres recebeu a sua primeira formação de seu pai, pintor e miniaturista – que o ensinou a tocar violino – depois completou-a na Academia Real de Toulouse.
Chegou a Paris em 1797, entrou no ateliê de Jacques-Louis David, absorvendo, durante vários anos, uma atmosfera clássica, que foi determinante para a continuação da sua carreira.
Residente na Villa Medici, de 1806 a 1810, realizou, nessa época, as suas primeiras banhistas.
As odaliscas, auge da sua arte do arabesco, foram igualmente realizadas em Roma, onde ele havia prolongado a sua estada.
Partilhando, então, a sua vida ente Paris e Itália, precedia os seus quadros de vários estudos desenhados, sempre em busca da linha precisa, da verdade do momento, recomendando, também, aos seus alunos, que adotassem uma certa ingenuidade para melhor afirmarem o caráter do seu modelo.

Deixe seu comentário:

Qual a fase de Ingres que você prefere?  As odaliscas ou as banhistas?

A paintings is not completely finished until the artist has separated the spirit from body . — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Happy Birthday Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Born in Montauban on 29 August, 1780, the son of an unsuccessful sculptor and painter. Ingres studied at the art academy in Toulouse before joining the studio of Jacques-Louis David in 1797. Ingres, who was David’s best student, began his career in obscurity. Though he personally disliked the Academy and avoided the Salon, Ingres has come to be identified with its goals and viewed as an artistic conservative. But, despite his allegiance to clear and precise form, balanced compositions, and idealised beauty, he shared much of the same interest in exotic and erotic subject matter that had attracted the Romantics.
Ingres was a sensitive and painstaking draughtsman. For him, drawing was the very heart of painting, and he drew and redrew whatever he was to paint until he understood all its elements and their subtlest interrelations. Though he valued history painting above all else, he also often produced portraits, some of the best of which are drawings. Having been awarded the Prix de Rome by the Academy for his painting The Envoys from Agamemnon, which included a stay in Rome, Ingres decided to remain there after his stipend ended in 1810. Ingres remained in Rome from 1806 to 1820, and it was there that he developed his extraordinary gifts for drawing and design. He helped support himself by making portrait drawings of visitors to Rome. These drawings are skilful, concise masterpieces. Ingres’s outstanding evocation of place, light, and character in these seemingly casual portrait drawings established him as one of the most revered draughtsmen in art history.

Even in his portraits Ingres exhibited a sensual feeling that was more often expressed in the nudes that preoccupied him as he got older and his style developed. His Turkish Women at the Bath, produced at 82 years of age, is the culmination of his portrayals of female nudes.

Leaving Rome in 1820, Ingress went to Florence for 4 years. Returning to Paris in 1824, he was applauded for his painting The Vow of Louis XIII, exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1824. He accepted the directorship of the French Academy of Rome in 1834, and at the end of his 7-year term he returned again to Paris and was welcomed enthusiastically as one of the greatest painters in France. His reputation was established and his works commanded high prices. He was given the rank of commander of the Legion of Honour in 1845. At the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1855 he was awarded a gold medal (as was Delacroix, leader of the Romantic Movement).

Ingres died in Paris on 14 January, 1867

http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=b&ID=28

With a question mark, here I am.  I took this photo to create a drapery I could draw à l’Ingres.  My being present technically makes this a self-portrait.  But I’m really just along for the ride.  The drapery is the star.  Beginning artists should make lots of drapery studies.  The old masters started the idea, and it holds more weight than at first one supposes.  Drapery in portraiture defines the figure.  Of course, times were better for artists when flowing robes were the fashion!  Ever since the decline of Athens, artists have fallen on hard times.  Praxiteles, we miss you!  I jest, of course.

Drapery is also this very pliable thing.  Look what crazy Gothic artists did with drapery.  Drapery is an inanimate subject whose amorphous forms can adapt very readily to whatever subliminal messages an artist — or a whole society– is trying to express.  It is very “true” and “realistic” and yet it is thoroughly “abstract” and sometimes conventional.

Drawing drapery leads one naturally into landscape or figure or still life.  It’s an artistic Rorschach test, a mirror of the psyche.  You draw the drapery and reveal — yikes! — the self.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to get back to you when I’ve done my drawings from this photo. 

[Top of the post:  Drapery study, by Aletha Kuschan, digital photo]

I don’t look like this, yet in some crazy way this is my portrait.  I made this whimsical pen drawing after Ingres’s magnificient Portrait of Mme Moitessier that lives in the National Gallery, London.  I saw the painting when it was loaned to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for an Ingres exhibit a few years ago, but made this drawing from a reproduction.  While searching the net for an image of the painting to show readers, I also found this surprising appearance of the grand lady.  (She gets around more than I supposed!)  Actually the real painting is much larger than the reproduction of her that gazes out upon the pedestrians.  The real MacCoy measures 120 x 92.1 cm (about 60 x 38 inches).  Some of the real Mme Moitessier’s story is available  here.

I realize that lots of people care about celebrities.  There wouldn’t be celebrities, I mean, such category of persons would not exist, were there not a “demand” for them.  It’s not a sentiment that I share.  Of course, I can identify some of the currently famous actresses of the present because like everyone I enjoy eating, and consequently find myself shopping fairly regularly for groceries.  And the ubiquitous check out tabloids stare out at you and greet everyone and update the world of the latest misadventures of the famous “beautiful people.” 

Well, that kind of thing holds no appeal for me.  Most of the famously photographed people could arrive at my doorstep, and finding them outside their grocery store check-out line context, I wouldn’t know who they are.  But — if Mme Moitessier ever showed up…. Holy cow!  Wouldn’t that be the day!  I’d certainly recognize her.  And she’d be a stand out in any group wearing the fabulous dress she wears in Ingres’s portrait.

Of course, Mme Moitessier is unfortunately quite long dead.  Moreover, she probably did not thoroughly resemble the woman in her picture.  Or let’s just say, it was mighty convenient of her to happen to look so much like the Roman fresco goddess that Ingres worshipped, into whose pose Ingres put her.  The dress may be partly Ingres’s invention. So, one might as well expect a fictional character to arrive at one’s door.  The odds that Britney Spears’s car would break down in front of the house, and she require the use of some of our wrenches and other car tools is far more likely than that anyone vaguely resembling Mme Moitessier should arrive.  And, really, it’s a shame.

[Top of the post:  Me as Mme Moitessier, sort of... by Aletha Kuschan]

El sueño de Ossian
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

INGRES, Jean-Auguste-Dominique. Retrato de Mademoiselle Rivière. Óleo sobre tela, 1805. Paris, Louvre

Este retrato, é uma obra do início da carreira de Ingres, pintado em Paris, que bem mostra o estilo da moda Napoleônica.   As mulheres usavam luvas longas e os vestidos Império chegavam à altura das canelas, deixando à mostra os pés calçados por sapatos baixos.  Os decotes quadrados ou em V, deixavam o colo todo em evidência. 

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Na década de 70, usou-se muito vestidos em estilo Império.  A diferença é que estes eram micro ou minis.  O que você acha desse revival da moda?