Paul Gauguin, "Still Life with Profile of Laval," (1886). Samuel Josefowitz Collection of the School of Pont-Aven, through the generosity of Lilly Endowment Inc., the Josefowitz Family, Mr. and Mrs. James M. Cornelius, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard J. Betley, Lori and Dan Efroymson, and other Friends of the Museum. 1998.167

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) presented a painting to his friend and colleague Charles Laval (1862-1894) in 1887. The work, Still Life with Profile of Laval (1886), reinvigorates the longstanding European tradition of painters exchanging Freundschaftsbilder – pictures that demonstrate friendship and, often, artistic allegiance. Yet, in the article “Japan as Primitivistic Utopia: Van Gogh’s Japonisme Portraits” (1984), Tsukasa Kōdera credited van Gogh (1853-1890) with resuscitating this practice in 1888, a year after Gauguin’s gift to Laval. Van Gogh imagined Japanese artists living and working in a fraternal community, which he sought to emulate. He envisioned developing a similar artists’ cooperative in Arles, his new home and a place he called the “atelier du Midi.” Kōdera cites correspondence between Gauguin and the Dutch artist (specifically, a letter [now lost] dated September 1888) as evidence that van Gogh proposed a portrait exchange to foster the Gemeinschaft (sense of community) between himself and fellow artists Gauguin, Laval, and Émile Bernard (1868-1941). However, Van Gogh’s role as progenitor of the modern Freundschaftsbild is debatable. His inspiration to exchange portraits was derived from a false impression that Japanese artists participated in the same activity. According to Kōdera, Self-Portrait: Les Misérables (1888; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) represents Gauguin’s first contribution to the genre. Van Gogh reciprocated the gesture with his Self-Portrait as Bonze (1888; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, Cambridge, MA).

Paul Gauguin, "Self-Portrait with Portrait of Bernard (Self-Portrait: Les Misérables)," 1888. Oil on canvas, 45 x 55 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Vincent van Gogh, "Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin (Self-Portrait as Bonze)," 1888. Oil on canvas, 59.5 x 48.3 cm. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA.

These portraits, which are rendered in new artistic idioms, announce the painters’ collective denial of naturalism and simultaneous entrée into the international Symbolist movement. Interestingly, Still Life with Profile of Laval (1886), which predates van Gogh’s request to swap portraits and Gauguin’s rejection of Impressionism, has not yet been discussed in these terms.

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Filed under: Art, The Collection

Roderic O’Conor, "Sunlight through a Cloud," 1893, etching, Gift of Samuel Josefowitz in tribute to Bret Waller and Ellen Lee, 1998.258

The Synthetist prints currently on view in Nature and Abstraction in Pont-Aven School Prints approach traditional landscape subjects with the stylistic freedom and experimentation characteristic of the innovative spirit of the Pont-Aven School. This group formed around Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard in the 1880s and 1890s in the French province of Brittany, where the rugged landscape and the colorful traditions of the people served as an inspiration. They called their style Synthetism, a term derived from the French verb synthétiser, to synthesize or combine.

The Synthetist style attempted to create a new approach that questioned traditional naturalistic representation. Synthetist artists sought to combine the appearance of natural forms with the artist’s emotional response to the subject and aesthetic considerations of line, color, and form.  Although nature served as their starting point, the artists viewed their subject through a veil of distortion in order to express a certain mood.

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Filed under: Art

I fell in love with Willem Kalf’s painting, below, after watching the ArtBabble video In the Gallery: Mark Doty. Mark is a poet who toured the gallery and talked with staff about various works in the galleries and how we see paintings. The way he described the work was particularly appealing to me.

And you can see how, I mean, it’s painted, this bravura, I mean this coil and the light and then the incredible translucency of the peeled fruit. It’s hard to imagine now how it must have looked... Well, we are always going to be looking at and celebrating that the stuff of the world, you know.

Still Life with a Chinese Porcelain Jar by Willem Kalf

Recently, this work  has caught my attention again, as I’ve had the opportunity to spend a bit of time in the galleries here at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I love the process of “getting to know” a work of art; the way it becomes like a familiar friend, and yet somehow, each time completely delightful and new.  It has me thinking about what catches my attention in each one, and some similarities between the very disparate works that I love. The first thing to come to mind? FOOD. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Art, Musings