"Vermilion in the orange shadows": Bonnard's Late Painting

I've taken on a rather large subject but I promise not for too long but my topic today is Bonar and modernism so I think we can begin it has been 60 years since Pierre Bonnard was buried in a quiet Cemetery a few hundred yards from his beloved house in lacunae 60 years during which this most elusive of artists has been the subject of critical appraisal and reappraisal we continue to rediscover Carbone our art history texts have simply Anor ignored his place in modernism as Jack flam eloquently argues in his catalogue essay boner just didn't fit into the master narrative of revolutionary movements in French art Fauvism cubism surrealism and early conceptualism editing him from that rest of dialog in the early decades of the 20th century was the obvious solution and yet the development of that dialogue was not seamless there were excursions great artists whose aesthetics deviated from the mainstream and bone ours trajectory was on one such lateral path the closest Bonar would come to a place in history among the avant-garde was of course as a member of the nabhi a short-lived association of Parisian artists who emulated the revolutionary Goga embraced the decorative and painting and shunned academics ISM Bonar spent several productive years in the orbit of the nabhi achieving success as a printmaker illustrator and draftsman and as the recipient of important decorative commissions for illustrious collectors as far afield as Moscow indeed Boehner's foray into book illustration produced one of the most arresting leave Japan resonating to this day for its daring lithographic evocations of contemporary French verse in page after page he wraps the eroticism of varlas parallel ma in seductive illustration fully disregarding any expectation of graphic boundary Bonar would do the same 38 years later when the publisher Terry odd invited him to design the cover of his art magazine Verve the only lithograph this is the only lithograph in our current exhibition boehner has once again integrated lettering and imagery his look and a dining room table appears upended as in so many of the late paintings its objects want to leave our field of vision while the letters ve RVE takes center stage Bonar is using the very same pictorial devices in lithography that he does in paintings of the later period the nabi artists went their separate ways around 1900 Bonar was only 33 years old he would spend the next 47 years searching for the right expression as a painter Pierre Bonnard was by nature quiet taciturn and always modest self-promotion was just not in his genes he had a steadily remunerative relationship with his Paris gallery baron Heim shun but he was perfectly content to let them handle matters of Commerce and while he may not have been in the forefront of new painting in the early decades of the 20th century far from it in fact he nevertheless had a steady following of collectors some of whom bought his pictures in great numbers Duncan Phillips the American collector whose collection of courses now represents the is now represented by the Phillips Collection in Washington discovered Bonar in 1925 and in the decades to come he would collect some 17 paintings and just as many works on paper for his own private collection noting later in life quote our very personal collection of bone ours work is in itself a recognized memorial to his genius with us Banaras at home Phillips spoke these affectionate words to the president of the Royal Academy in London in 1964 where two years later Bonar would be the subject of a grand and expensive exhibition Bernards critical acclamation in a mirror I saw no parallel in Paris Paris was caught up with Braque and Picasso with a deconstruction of the pictorial image through synthetic and analytic cubism with art that sparked discourse and controversy with guillaume apollinaire and Andre Breton with an aesthetic often politically and satirically charged bone ARS preoccupation with the slow process of painting and his choice of a subject matter drawn from daily life cast him as a conservative his work an anachronism consider the fact that when Bonar was born in 1867 oh goodness I didn't show you these earlier I'm so sorry neglected to show you a an iconic Picasso and that's it that's a brach and that's a Picasso consider the fact that when Bonar was born in 1867 Bouguereau and cabin owl were the darlings of the French salon for centuries art have been accountable to a rigidly upheld formal evaluation accountable to the vaunted legacy of the French académie impressionist plein air painting and bravura brushwork were seen as radical and unprecedented the artists of Impressionism were repeatedly snubbed in the public arena eight years later at the close of Bernards long career the narrative of French art had vastly elasticized by this I mean that artists and writers poets and filmmakers had joined the modernist debate on terms philosophical aesthetic and polemical French culture basked in the irreverence of a new generation which brazenly bursts the boundaries of Convention whether with paint on canvas verse on letterpress paper or even celluloid in film in the ferment of Parisian art circles Pablo Picasso was the most powerful voice no other artists would have had such a problem no other artist would have such a profound influence on the course of modernism together with Georges Braque his cubist paintings and collage introduced a wholly new visual language to the narrative of French art resonating everywhere in Paris and indeed elsewhere in there at the Western world Picasso was the measure by which contemporary critics gauged and ever-changing fast-paced cultural climate his narrative paintings pulsed with political symbolism he was deeply engaged in contemporary life and his paintings gave piercing expression to his role as a crusading force against fascism Guernica represented Picasso's vilification of Franco and the devastations of war while Picasso was readying Guernica for exhibition in the Spanish pavilion of the 1937 expositional Universal in Paris Pierre Bonnard was quietly discovering the mysteries of layering color pigments on canvas as metaphors for his sensations Bonar may have been socially and aesthetically removed from the vanguard painters circling Picasso but he was known by no means blind to their powers of invention he is quoted as having said that cubism left him hanging in mid-air he quietly wondered whether the art of painting would survive the polemicist of contemporary art universally admired Pablo Picasso was fully aware of the impact of his voice both as a painter and as a critic of his own generation never content to rest on his powers he inveighed against contemporaries whose art was anathema to his own way of painting that's not painting what he does he said of Pierre Bonnard using passionate language and categorical arguments Picasso seized every opportunity to discredit Bonar as a painter even in posterity Picasso disseminated critic criticism through Francois Zelos 1964 publication life with Picasso to G lo he elaborated his opinions Bonar never goes beyond his own sensibilities Picasso said he doesn't know how to choose when Bonar paints the sky perhaps he first paints it blue more or less the way it looks then he looks a little longer and he sees some movin it so he adds a touch or two of move just a hedge then he decides that maybe it's a little pink too so that's so there's no reason not to add some pink the result is a potpourri of indecision if he if he looks long enough he winds up adding a little yellow instead of making up his mind what the sky really ought to be painting cannot be done that way painting isn't a question of sensibility it's a matter of seizing the power taking over from nature not expecting her to supply you with information and good advice well to those of you who know Bonar and the slow idiosyncratic process by which he came to achieve his paintings you will recognize that Picasso was dead wrong color in Bernards late painting is not about painting a sky blue or move prompted by information from nature color in a labor nar is not keyed to the advice of nature using Picasso's own words color in a late Bonar is not bound by the palette of the literal world color in a late Bonar is not tied to the chromatic relationships that capture the eye at the motif what Picasso mocked mocked as a potpourri of indecision was for Bonar quote the logic of color bone are searched for color echoes throughout the rectangle of his canvas relating the red pink of the interior to the red pink of the sky the yellow of the wall to the yellow of an arm the purple of a shadow to the purple of a model's face the entire surface of a Bonar painting is animated by these color relationships dialogues in paint that one can only trace through prolonged looking Bonar spoke of color as logic and drawing as sensation reversing their Association for Suzanne and the Impressionists for whom color emerges from the senses while drawing is an intellectual pursuit in an interview in 1945 Bonar spoke very candidly of color and painting when one covers one one covers a surface with colors one should be able to try any number of new approaches find a never-ending supply of new combinations of forms and colors which satisfy emotional needs boehner resisted working from direct observation declaring that painting from the object was too distracting he spoke of floundering before the object of surrendering to the subject and of losing his original thoughts painting directly from life after all denied bond are the intrusion of memory and time and it was the memory of that experience filtered through time that fueled his inventive powers when our turn to drawings as the laboratory for his investigations of imagery on small sheets of paper some no larger than a few inches tall he laid out for himself in graphic marks the grids of his rectangles the colors of his palette the pose of his models many of those investigations were encompassed in the Dyer istic layout of tiny pocket day books four of which are in the current exhibition that this artist could transform the tiny pencil marks in his diary into large complex canvases of sumptuous and surprising color is truly extraordinary it is possible that Boehner's pencil marks the zigs and zags flecks and scribbles represented some sort of very personal typology key to color hues this shorthand lexicon triggered the memory of color as a template for the laying in of paint on canvas bone are often conflated imagery from several drawings in a painting he kept his working drawings with him all his life the timing of a drawing had little bearing on when it might be used in a painting the artists also inscribed color notes in the Diaries and elsewhere on larger studies drawings were so important to bond our afore they enabled the translation of his experience of his subject into color if we observe in Bonar a spectrum of hues evocative of the experience of color yet separated in time we begin to understand the importance of color as a metaphor for past sensations memory imagination invention and distance all contribute to the process of painting in Bonar studio he tacked his unstretched canvasses to its large wall interiors still lifes bathers and landscapes all side by side he worked very slowly often advancing several canvases at once Bonar never felt comfortable closing a picture there was always some small revision that prolonged the process if we think of the omnipresent Picasso as an artist of intense emotion allottee and theatricality an artist's who brought his paintings to complete resolution through a language of signs and symbols both complex and highly linear an artist who cared less for color relationships than its tonal extremes an artist for whom form and color carried narrative value well then we come to understand his difficulties with bond are and yet Picasso's miss reading of Bonar was so clearly articulated and so emphatically delivered that one can only wonder whether Picasso felt some kind of rivalry at a very visceral level Bonar might have fared better had Picasso saved his contemptuous remarks for Francois Zelos memoirs such was not the case all of Paris heard Picasso and critics marched to his word one of the most damning critiques of Bonar was published by Picasso's good friend Christians air vos in his magazine Chi Adar shortly after Bo nars death in 1947 its title read how to explain the growing reputation of bone ours work the answer followed in the text when carefully examined it is obvious that this reverence is shared by men who know nothing about the grave difficulties of art and cling above all to what is facile and agreeable all Rima tees took umbrage and sent an angry rebuttal to Ziva scribbled on the cover of the magazine quote yes I certify that paraben R is a great painter today and assuredly in the future not satisfied with his first offensive Bonar Matisse went wrote to Zaire boss again I cannot understand why you went after bone our I know bone R I have been watching him for half a century I was never able to discover the depths of his expression even though it is constructed from materials I know well while this deeply felt emotion may have been prompted in part by the affection Matisse felt for bone are the remark has had lasting effect and it is often cited in any discussion of bone R and French modernism in fact bone R and Matisse grew very close during the war years when France was occupied in food rationed they exchanged touching letters beautifully translated by the poet Richard Howard our third speaker today Matisse was a resident of the hotel Regina in Nice while Bonar lived alone in lacunae he wrote to Matisse of his loneliness without marked his companion of 50 years who died in 1942 Matisse earns urged Bernard to join him at the hotel but Bonar couldn't imagine leaving his own surroundings his own reality the interiors of that pink house on the hill down which olive orange and almond trees cascaded in terraces to the Mediterranean Bonar and Matisse exchanged paintings in the spring of 1946 Matisse lent bond lent Bonar to full-figured females in response bond I wrote to him your two pictures decorate yes that's the word decorate my dining room against an ochre background that becomes them especially the woman with the necklace the read there is wonderful late in the afternoon by day it is blue that takes the lead what an intense light the colors have and how they vary with the light I make discoveries every day bone are said in bone ours raining years there was a resurgence of interest both in his art and in his quiet noble persona the world must have known that he was slipping away the great photographers are me Cartier Bresson and breasts I traveled Toluca a from Paris to photograph him at his house Lavoisier prominent French magazines devoted entire issues to his art commissioning writers friends and critics to offer a final tribute to an honorable life of painting even Clement Greenberg here in New York published an article in the nation in January 1947 only days before the artist died he seems to have understood Bernards quiet investigations he wrote Bonar for his part has worked toward the abstract in a slower and in a sense more organic way than did the Cubist's it is precisely this concentration on his stuff on juice and matter that seems to have led Bernard to paint more and more abstractly the greater the attention to pigment and brushstroke the less becomes the concern with the original data of the subject in nature and quote for all those who appreciated Bonar there were louder echoes of dissent to many he was just a hedonist his reputation would never shake its association with the joie de vivre qualities of Impressionism the preface to a baron homes on sale catalogue of 1946 described how one feels while looking at Boehner's paintings we feel a delicious slow rhythm of life an abandon of all ambition an acceptance of the ephemeral and things lessons of humility and of happiness well if Bernards gallery of 46 years chose to market him as a painter of facile charm and careless abandon offering up narratives of comfort and happiness and sweet ephemera then we understand a bit better why the narrative of modernism found no room for his art clearly Baron Heim John pitched to an audience of well-to-do French many of whom bought what they viewed as simply decorative and colorful writing in 1949 for a Zurich publication the art historian Jean la Marie spoke of Banaras showcasing the best of Impressionism that creative instinct while in nature he wrote John Rewald called Bonar the successor and the last survivor of Impressionism in MoMA's 1948 exhibition catalog rear auld wrote that if one could speak of quote the exquisite nosov banality end quote Boehner's paintings would embody it even the artists family talked of the comforting qualities of his paintings writing in 1953 his nephew Charles Terrace noted the salutary effect of those pleasurable paintings on a war ravaged Europe perhaps all these links to Impressionism wouldn't seem so vexing were it not for the fact that true Impressionism groundbreaking Impressionism predated by 50 years bone ARS investigations of color and light to have called him a latter-day Impressionists was certainly by implication disdainful for it was stated in reaction to an endorsement of contemporary conceptual styles in a word Bonar had missed the boat bone ours own personal rapport with Impressionism is a complicated one he once described himself to Matisse as the last of the Impressionists while in some respects there was a commonality of instinct and purpose in the end Boehner's process of brushing colored oils on canvas was wholly his own and the chromatic results were infinitely more daring than the tonal painting of Impressionism quote when my friends and I wanted to pursue the researches of the impressionist Bonar said we sought to surpass them in their naturalistic impressions of color he continued art is not nature there was also there was there was there was also much more to be had from color as a means of expression end quote the symbolist poet Millar may spoken miring Lee of MANET and the Impressionists is having the ability to convey in paint the delight one experiences upon seeing an everyday object for the very first time keeping the same objects in a continual state of flux is analogous to what malar may does with words bone artoo was drawn to the momentary two objects in flux to that first visual experience in an often quoted remark and one so so apt in the context of our present exhibition he freely confessed that he hoped to capture in his paintings what one sees on entering a room all of a sudden one sees everything Bonar said and at the same time nothing and yet while the impressionist sought to capture their own sensations in paint at the very moment of experiencing imagery sur la motif Bonar as I have mentioned resisted working directly from observation he relied instead on a collection of drawings stored in the studio drawing played a more profound role in the process of painting for Bonar than it did say for Monet or Cecily whose landscapes divots landscapes developed from actual contact there are wonderfully evocative tales of the adventures of impressionist painters as they endeavored to paint from nature to paint women in the to paint women in the garden Monet jerry-rigged a studio outdoors in his words I really painted this work on the spot and after nature an unusual process at the time I had to dig a hole in the ground a sort of ditch to gradually lower my canvas Dobin ii charles francois jogini fashioned a floating studio for river excursions the sin following his lead mone did the same as we come to a better understanding of Boehner's technique as a painter we realized that he moved well beyond Impressionism in his color experiments the impressions painted tonally straight from optical data bone are working from imagination and the memory of imagery gave color a far greater role in his paintings one could even argue that for bone our color and its color harmonies throughout the rectangle of the canvas became the overriding metaphor for the expression of his experience color in his late paintings transcends the descriptive content of Suzanne it moves well away from the local color that we see in a Suzanne still life in the late masterpieces of our present exhibition color becomes the subject the vehicle of light and the means by which we enter the paintings with our eyes using hot and cold hues bonnard guides the eye very deliberately on a path through the positive and negative spaces of his complex canvases one cannot stress enough how important it was for the artist to find the image in paint and to find the boundaries of his rectangle his process was very slow he worked on several paintings at once as I have said tacking unstretched canvases to the studio wall it is also this very idiosyncratic very personal approach to painting that separates him from the great Giants of Impressionism in fact bone ours approach comes closer to artists who followed him in the great narrative of modernism then to those who paved the way for its many permutations we now know that in the narrative of mid twentieth century modernism bone ours legacy resonated broadly he was an influence in our country on the painters of Abstract Expressionism his color his surfaces and the overall treatment of his canvases found expression in the work of Rothko clifford still and later Diebenkorn and Gustin if bone art took everyday objects in familiar surroundings and found ways through a language of color and light to reinvent their presence in paint then Rothko lept on his legacy freeing color from image and subject and figuration Rothko's canvases of plainer color and light and their vibrant interrelationships Oh a liberating debt to bond our Rothko to pulls light from color and the physicality of paint light emerges from color sensations from color memory just as bone are often painted deeper colors over lighter ones so too did Rothko introduce these value relationships to imply like bone are a pulsing light beneath the surface in Diebenkorn we recognize the Kindred use of bone ours irregular spatial roots the use of the edge of the rectangle and a wide range of painterly gestures and marks describing forms and Diebenkorn early abstractions as in Rothko's paintings color bars and rounded rectangles of different sizes permeate the composition a debt to bone are also appears in the figurative works of Diebenkorn when Diebenkorn introduces figures into his richly painted canvasses he melds the figure with its environment still allowing his model to carry an emotional content the reworking of Diebenkorn x' images within the rectangle reminds us of bone our search for proportions in his late interiors when one looks at the chunky big forms of bone are of when one looks of the chunky big forms of bone ours fruit or models heads when one looks at the way he stacks form against form when one thinks of the anthropomorphic nature of his objects Philip Guston comes to mind Dustin's late paintings are richly colored colored often using whites and blacks with reds and greens evoking late Bonar gustin's painterly approach and his self referentiality echo Boehner's visions in conclusion returning to bone ours own later years it is truly remarkable that an artist surrounded by war caring for a sick wife and facing his own mortality could make his pleasures as a painter so extraordinary living with the day-to-day problems of ordinary life he transforms his world into the enlightenment of color which in turn becomes the light of possibilities thank you you you

Channel: The Met

Views: 43,016

Keywords: Metropolitan, Museum, of, art, mma_exhibition, mma_events, mma_lectures, european_paintings, pierre, bonnard, french, modernism, interiors, pablo, picasso, memory, imagination, color, impressionism, dita, amory

Id: pmrpwbEJYts

Length: 27min 13sec (1633 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 08 2009