J'accuse

To accompany the Dada exhibit currently being shown at the National Gallery of Art, the museum had a showing of the 1919 silent film, J'accuse. Director and writer, Abel Gance, created a masterpiece which beautifully conveys his anti-war message. The Dada movement began as a response to the horrors and inhumanity of World War I. Artists such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Hans Arp, Otto Dix and Hannah Hoch created works of art that they felt went against the classic art forms. In their opinion, how could a world so occupied with death and destruction have any need for any sort of classic art. Their idea was to go against the idea of art and the results produced an assortment of paintings, sculpture, and graphic works, among other things, that is emotional, beautiful and political. J'accuse is a love story set during World War I. The three main characters, Edith, Jean and Francois, form a sort of bizarre love triangle against the backdrop of the evils of the war. Edith, played by actress Maryse Dauvray, is torn between Jean, her poet lover and Francois, her uncaring and often cruel husband. Francois is sent off to war and Jean is soon to follow. The men form a sort of bond due mainly to the fact that they are both in love with the same woman. The film follows the lives of these characters throughout the war and the film's ending is one which is truly unforgettable. This film is a beautiful piece of art as well as a commentary on the unnecessary horrors of war.

Marcel Duchamp's readymades

Because I've been thinking a lot about the Dada show at the National Gallery, I've decided to post this, one of Marcel Duchamp's readymades. I would love to hear some thoughts and opinions on this piece and the idea of the readymades.

Lee Krasner

Lee Krasner
Gothic Lanscape, 1961

Sonia Delaunay

A quick painting

Last night, I started and finished a painting. It was a quick painting and when I finally sat back to look at it when I was finished, I said out loud, that's not a bad little painting. And the morning after I completed it, I am still tremendously happy with the results. I took the basic idea from a painting I did in college. I have worked with roses and their form for years now and the idea never ceases to inspire me. The rose paintings began out of a few things, but mainly Islamic art. I am fascinated with the idea of the spiral the rose creates as well as the flower's changes as it opens up. In this painting, I chose to show the rose at three different stages, ending with the full blossoming of the flower. I feel that I am beginning to think more about brush stroke and different ways of applying the paint. I feel that this painting, done in acrylic, gave me some sort of freedom. Perhaps the fact that it was a fast painting also played a part. Typically, I work in oils and although I love the look and feel of the oils, the acrylic is much lighter and more transparent. I feel that this painting brought me to a different sort of place with my painting and I like that very much.

Kurt Schwitters

I went to see the Dada exhibit again this past weekend.
Above is a collage piece by Kurt Schwitters, one of the artists featured in the show.

Pierre Bonnard

Nude in the Bath and Small Dog
1941-46
oil on canvas
48 x 59 1/2 "











Pierre Bonnard painted the magical in the everyday. His paintings are windows into a world that seems only likely to exist in the imagination. The nude is a recurring subject for Bonnard, especially those painted in the bathtub. In the painting, Nude in the Bath and Small Dog, above, the bathtub melts into the wall, which melts into the floor which all swirl around Marthe, Bonnard’s wife and model, resting peacefully in a small sea of water. The pattern of the tile on the floor becomes the pattern of the larger tile on the wall. The dog, resting on the small square rug in front of the tub acts as an entrance to the painting, all while echoing the pattern of the tile on the wall behind the tub. Bonnard has a gift to give us and that gift is space. He challenges our ideas about it while creating a dream-world we wish we were capable of moving through, even if the world is as ordinary as a bathroom.

Cezanne

Cezanne paints his apples the moment before they roll off the table. Or at least that is what he would like us to believe. His tables are uneven. Either his floors are extremely slanted or his tables have been curiously made with back legs higher than the front. His fabric sometimes spirals, often becoming a geometric form. My first study by a master painter was a Cezanne. A still life bursting with apples and cloth. The painting is abstract, I thought as I drew out my diagonals. Triangles, created by the folds in the cloth, the placement of the apples, the wall behind the table, work together to form the painting as a whole. A painting that is alive with color, rhythm, push and pull. Cezanne in Provence, the exhibit currently showing at The National Gallery in Washington DC, is mainly a landscape show, focusing on Cezanne’s native Aix and the nearby areas of Provence. His landscape palette, which is consistent throughout most of the works, is an array of browns, blues and greens. The landscapes are interesting but the few still lifes in the show have a different feel to them, a warmth that the landscapes sometimes lack, perhaps due to a sort of repition. Each still life seems to create its own landscape where fabric folds act as mountains and roads, apples and jugs pepper the landscape as if mimicking buildings. At times this landscape is flat against the picture plane and at times it retreats in space, creating depth and shadows. Cezanne’s still lifes are in a category all their own. Well before cubism erupted, he saw objects for not merely what they were but for the magic that could be found hidden in their colors and shapes.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp

I’ve never thought too much about Dada. My training in painting focused more on individual artists than movements. In my opinion, Duchamp was always thought of as the leader of that movement and I never felt much for him. I understood what he was doing. I understood the ready-mades but my training was based more in “classical” modern art among other things. Form. Color. Line. My paintings have always been based on these ideas so you can imagine how an artist like Duchamp wouldn’t mean much to me, but last weekend I took part in a guided tour of the Dada exhibit at the National Gallery. The exhibit was divided into different rooms, each focusing on a different city where Dada was being created. The exhibit began with Zurich. The first pieces of art that met my eye were created by Sophie Taeber-Arp. I have long admired Taeber-Arp and have had little direct exposure to her pieces. I was thrilled, even though the gallery was packed with a Saturday afternoon crowd, to just be in the same room as her pieces. It was difficult to get close to some of the works but I listened intently as our knowledgeable guide spoke about her artwork and her relationship to Dada. There it all was. Form. Color. Line. Her work exploring these themes is beautiful, thoughtful and real. We moved through the rest of the exhibition, viewing works by Kurt Schwitters, Otto Dix, Max Ernst and Man Ray. The rest of the exhibit was interesting but I would have been content to stay in the first room with Taeuber-Arp’s work for hours. I left the exhibit with a better understanding of Dada, the thoughts and emotions behind it, the anger many of the Dada artists had towards the first world war but nothing I learned that day struck me as much as being in that first room.