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.

Gauguin and Laval cultivated their friendship at another artists’ colony – Pont-Aven, in northwest France – during the summer of 1886. Still Life with Profile of Laval probably dates to Gauguin’s residency in Paris the following winter. Here, he worked in close proximity to Laval in an intimate studio on rue Lecourbe. (Laval’s own studio was located at 150 boulevard Pereire.) Through his work with Gauguin, Laval shed the practices of his formal instruction under Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) and Fernand Cormon (1845-1924), and took up Impressionism. Still Life with Profile of Laval depicts the eponymous figure examining an amorphous vase. The stoneware vase (now lost), fired by Ernest Chaplet (1835-1909), is the handiwork of Gauguin. He may have even conceived of the vase as a symbolic self-portrait. Gauguin’s Self-Portrait Vase with a Severed Head (1889; Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen) would create a literal association between creator and object some three years later. If read in this way, Still Life with Profile of Laval functions as a double portrait.

Paul Gauguin, "Self-Portrait Vase in the Form of a Severed Head," 1889. Stoneware ceramic. Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen. (via http://blog.tate.org.uk/?attachment_id=1955)

In Gauguin’s painting, the bespectacled figure also scrutinizes an assortment of produce, which may allude to the Impressionists’ regard for visual perception. Still Life with Profile of Laval does not endorse the mere transcription of nature; in fact, the work subverts the established emphasis on verisimilitude in art. Portraits of artists in their studios, such as Christen Købke’s (1810-1848) Portrait of Landscape Painter Frederik Sødring (1832; Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen), traditionally include a mirror – a reference to the Platonic conception of art as a reflection of nature. (A point underscored in the viewer’s glimpse of one of Sødring’s landscapes, hanging opposite the mirror.)

Christen Købke, "Portrait of Landscape Painter Frederik Sødring," 1832. Oil on canvas, 42.2 x 37.9 cm. The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen. (via http://www.hirschsprung.dk/Image.aspx?id=24&col=5)

In contrast, Gauguin purposely obscures a form (the mysterious blue rectangle at center) that might be read as a mirror. He was particularly inspired by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), who employed new compositional strategies to interpret his subject matter. The brushstrokes and mottled fruit in Still Life with Profile of Laval reference Cézanne’s still lifes. Gauguin’s Landscape near Arles (1888; IMA), executed upon his arrival at van Gogh’s atelier du Midi, exhibits a lingering debt to Cézanne. Edgar Degas (1834-1917), another artist he admired immensely, is honored in the unusual cropping of Still Life with Profile of Laval. This painting, as a Freundschaftsbild, demonstrates shared artistic ideology, derived from the experiments of Cézanne and Degas. Two years later, Gauguin would dispense with naturalism altogether, concentrating on interior vision instead. It is at this time that he formulated the artistic language of Synthetism with Bernard in Fall 1888. At the request of van Gogh, he painted another Freundschaftsbild – Self-Portrait: Les Misérables – to commemorate this shift in their artistic aims.

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.

Maxime Maufra, "The Wave," 1894, etching and aquatint, Gift of Samuel Josefowitz in tribute to Bret Waller and Ellen Lee, 1998.273

While Synthetist paintings utilize color to establish compositional harmony and rhythm, in printmaking the artists turned to the use of line and wash to create the desired effects of decorative patterning and ambiguous space.

Armand Seguin, "Firs above the River," about 1892, etching and aquatint, Gift of Samuel Josefowitz in tribute to Bret Waller and Ellen Lee, 1998.218

The Synthetists embraced traditional printmaking techniques that had fallen out of favor with artists due to the recent mechanical nature of print production. Synthetist printmakers countered this critique by emphasizing the hand-crafted aspects of printmaking, experimenting with the possibilities presented by different materials and techniques. In fact, many of the prints of the Pont-Aven School are extremely rare, printed in only a few proofs. Focusing on the technical possibilities of the medium, the printmakers explored the full range of expressive potential in lithography, zincography, etching, aquatint, and woodcuts.

Armand Seguin, "Breton Decoration– Breton Women by the Sea," about 1894, etching, aquatint, and sugar-lift aquatint, Gift of Samuel Josefowitz in tribute to Bret Waller and Ellen Lee, 1998.242

The prints included in Nature and Abstraction reveal the Synthetist printmakers’ experimentation with formal abstraction as a means of moving away from the traditional naturalistic depictions of landscape. They focus on the landscape of Brittany, not to evoke the exotic and picturesque aspects that initially attracted the artists to the region, but to explore the expressive forms that were possible in the medium of printmaking. Synthetist art does not reach the extent of fully abandoning the representational subject, but rather embraces abstraction in a manner that simplifies the subject.

Nature and Abstraction in Pont-Aven School Prints contains works from the Samuel Josefowitz Collection of the School of Pont-Aven in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It is on view in the Jane H. Fortune Gallery through February, 2012.

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.

Some of my favorite works of art, both in this museum and elsewhere, feature fruit prominently. I suppose this could be attributed to “celebrating the stuff of the world,” as Mark Doty said. Undeniably, there is a universal connection between the human experience and the pleasure of eating good food. Artists have used food extensively as symbols in their work throughout the history of painting. For me, it has to do with the beauty of so many things we eat. I am amazed by the endless interpretation of something as simplistic as a bowl of apples.

Here are a few of my favorite food-related works of art from around the country.

I saw this painting in a Gauguin exhibition at the Met. It’s one of my favorites of Gauguin’s, both in style and subject, and I came to appreciate it more after I learned about his body of work and influence on the painters of his time in Gauguin and the Generation of the 1890s.

Two Tahitian Women with Mangoes by Paul Gauguin

I originally was introduced to the work of Ellsworth Kelly by way of his color field paintings. But the images I can’t get out of my head are his simple line drawings of fruit.

Apples by Ellsworth Kelly

And finally, for something completely different, there is something so jubilant and inviting about the cherry perched atop the spoon in this famous sculpture from Minneapolis.

Spoonbridge and Cherry, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Needless to say, I also loved listening to Alice Waters of Chez Panisse speak about food and nutrition when she was here last year.

What works of art with food do you love?