Last Day for Bouguereau

What could be better than slides of Bouguereau with violins in accompaniment? Perhaps cello, viola and bass or maybe piano. Art and music were definitely different in the 19th century. If you wanted to hear music, you played an instrument. Groups of friends would get together and play. Maybe not concert quality, but they would play. No records, no cds, no iTunes, no mp3 or 4. We were all a bit more talented, not as passive at art and music. Since I'm a full fledged member of the 20th and 21st centuries and am a listener, here are slides of Bouguereau with piano and violin accompaniment composed by Ren.

Art by Bouguereau

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True to Life

Looking at an artist's works, what may be the most true to life, drawings or paintings? An important question, especially when considering the late 19th century academic artists like Bouguereau. Spending much of his life creating works such as Pieta only to have it repudiated as too much like Michelangelo, Bouguereau seems to have turned to idealized peasant life –– paintings that would sell and also keep his work accepted by the Academy. His paintings are beautiful, extraordinary views of a life that others could choose to hang in their homes. Can we look to his drawings and see how he might have chosen to paint if he weren't painting to a paying clientele? You be the judge, what happened between his drawing and painting? 

A Girl in Peasant Costume, Seated ca. 1875         La Petite Tricoteuse, 1875

Graphite on Paper  (click for larger image)                  Oil on Canvas (click for larger image)

                                                            

Rambling Thought

Today I am running from one commitment to the next. Wake up, walk the dog, off to docent training, then on to work, to the cleaners and the grocery store, home again, make dinner, and don't forget to post on the blog.

Luckily LaValle, Roger, and I had five peaceful minutes with Nature's Fan between my two tours of the European galleries. These five minutes were spent contemplating the girl's inward and contemplative expression, the baby's grubby paws, the painting as a scene of a simpler life, patrons of these pieces as nouveau riche Americans, and who is this guy who spends his whole life painting little girls? This man who lost his wife and hoped to remarry, but listened to his mother. Think Moonlighting. This gifted man who had so many children to feed and lived on commissions. Would he have chosen other subjects if he hadn't needed money?

Would I? Today I wanted to crawl into that scene. I wanted to take off my shoes, grab some leaves, tickle that little baby, let him kick me if that's what his floating foot is all about. I want to be as impersonal and off in la la land as that nanny peasant girl. It isn't so much that the grass is greener, but that there is grass at all.

Another Nature's Fan

“You become responsible for what you see... The surroundings are relative to your engagement.” So saith Olafur Eliasson, the Icelandic artist whose retrospective toured the United States with shows in New York, San Francisco, Dallas and other places. The Ventilator was part of this exhibit in which Eliasson exhorted visitors to Take Your Time, the name of the exhibit. His works make the viewer use all of their senses and most of the time not in their traditional ways. The docent in New York spoke of the fan in the lobby bringing the "wind" inside. As it whirled around the lobby, you felt it and heard it and saw its source. Outside you would feel the wind and hear it and see its effects. There are many articles on the "internets" about this exhibit; I've linked to one from Dallas.

Taking to heart Take Your Time, we should all take time looking at Bouguereau.

Mary Oliver, Nature's greatest Fan

Mary Oliver's poem speaks of the kind of light that Bouguereau captured with paint, the kind that "shines like a miracle and floats above everything." Not only that, but this poem feels especially friendly to me today.








Poppies

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward-
of course
loss is a great lesson.

But also I say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight-

and what are you going to do-
what can you do
about it-
deep, blue night?

Fractured French and an Opportunity to Draw

Knowing I'd have to tell people about the art work of the week "Nature's Fan" and who painted it, I decided to learn how to pronounce Bouguereau's name. That turned into quite a search on the "internets".

Many web sites set out to help all of us non-French speakers learn to pronounce the eleven letters in his name.
Portrait Artist Forum has a great discussion on pronunciation of both Bouguereau and chiaroscuro.
"Boo-jer-oh"
"Booj-row"
"Bu-jer-o"
"Boo-garo"
"Boo-ger-ew"
"Bo-ger-o"
"Bo-ger-ew"

Pronounce It Right even has an audio. If I were to do a phonetic, it would look like...
"Boo grow"
or as others have written...
"boo ger oh.."

And from the Concept Art Forum any number of people weigh in but this one comment caught my eye:
Rebecca is close, even if the "gue" is the most difficult part, due to the way French people pronounciate the "E". Said quickly, his name sound close to "'Boo-gro" as said by Midnight. Maybe the most natural way for be understood by French people ?

While checking other sites for pronunciation tips, I ended up finding out how people are approaching their art studies. On WetCanvas, CareyG announced that she had decided to copy some of the great masters to improve her skills. Her first choice was Van Gogh (that name is certainly pronounced many different ways by many different people) and her second was Bouguereau. I find it fascinating how artists learn by imitating. That reminds me that second Sunday is coming up. The Portland Art Museum offers drawing classes before the museum opens. The public can learn techniques from an instructor and "discover the age-old tradition of drawing from masterworks".

My husband and I started to laugh when discussing Boo gro and he remembered a Steve Martin truism...

On the French:
"In French, oeuf means egg, cheese is fromage... it's like those French have a different word for everything."

12.24.09

n.b. Voice from the Couch wishes to clarify that he is the "husband" mentioned here.

William Adolph Bouguereau

One night in college I sat on my bed under a poster of Satyr and the Nymphs by William Bouguereau and experienced the magic. For the rest of my life I wont forget what it was like to watch that poster come to life. Nymphs began to circle that horned sheep man, Satyr, in a dance of twirling nudity. The murky water they pulled him into, the light shining on their skin, him pulling back on hooved feet, vulnerable and weak against the mob. The whole scene began to move in the most delightful way.
I was an art history major and wrote my final paper on the 1873 painting. Most of the other young women in my class chose female, contemporary, or local artists. The few men in my class chose Chagall and Picasso. I had chosen what seemed to be a sell-out, old-school academic who would have railed against the artists my classmates had chosen. I second guessed myself. These finals included oral reports. I compared my work to others and felt embarrassed and alone.
I've grown to realize how worthy of appreciation he is. There are few artists who compare to Bougeureau's precision. It's no mystery I was so impressed. I loved the print the first time I saw it, and I love it still. Recently walking through the Portland Art Museum I stopped to admire Nature's Fan, our piece of the week. It is stunning. It takes me to a wooded forest with a fat baby and his young mother.

I transport, as I had so long ago, in another state of mind, in another place and time.