Oct 24, 2020
Liberal Arts Blog — Orange — Variations on a Theme
Liberal Arts Blog — Friday is the Joy of Art, Architecture, Film, Design, and All Things Visual Day
Today’s Topic — Orange — Variations on a Theme
Looking east in the morning in mid-October all I see is the orange of sugar maples lit up by the rising sun. In the evening looking south and west it is the setting sun that sets the orange leaves aglow. We are now smack in the middle of the orange phase of fall in Concord, Massachusetts. It has a special magic. In its honor, a post on orange. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
PAUL GAUGUIN’S SELF-PORTRAIT (1888) — part of exchange program with Vincent Van Gogh and Emile Bernard
1. Is the color yellow or orange? or yellow-orange? To me, school buses and median double lines on asphalt are often as orange as they are yellow. The same ambiguity exists in sugar maple leaves.
2. In this self-portrait Gauguin depicts himself as t of Les Miserables (see lower right corner for the explicit reference.)
3. In the upper right corner is a portrait of his friend and fellow artist Emile Bernard (1868–1941). The painting is dedicated to Van Gogh (1853–1890). Having learned that Japanese print makers often exchanged their work, Van Gogh had suggested that the three artists trade self-portraits.
NB: In a letter to Van Gogh, Gauguin compared rebellious artists to the Jean Valjean character: “By doing him with my features, you have my individual image, as well as a portrait of us all, poor victims of society, taking our revenge on it by doing good.”
FREDERICK LEYTON (1896) — “FLAMING JUNE” — Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico
1. Leyton (1830–1896) was hugely successful in his day and was the President of the Royal Academy from 1878 to 1896. Both a painter and a sculptor, he was the first British artist to be given a peerage and represented England at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Since then, his work has been largely forgotten.
2. His most famous sculpture is “An Athlete Wrestling with a Python” — heavily influenced by Michelangelo and reminiscent of “Laocoon and his Sons.” (see link below)
3. “Flaming June” is the centerpiece of Puerto Rico’s premier art museum, known best for its collection of Pre-Raphaelites. The museum was founded by Luis Ferre, an MIT — trained mechanical engineer who became a successful industrialist, the founder of a pro-statehood party, and was elected Governor of Puerto Rico in 1968.
TOULOUSE LAUTREC (1864–1901) — Jane Avril poster, 1893
1. Toulouse Lautrec was commissioned by the “Moulin Rouge” cabaret to do a series of posters in the 1890s. The cabaret was in the Montmartre district of Paris and had a red windmill on its roof. It was famous as the birthplace of the “can can” dance.
2. Toulouse Lautrec’s first poster (1891) was of the star dancer La Goulue (stage name of Louise Weber, 1866–1929). When La Goulue left the Moulin Rouge in 1895, Jane Avril (real name: Jeanne Louise Beaudon) replaced her as lead can-can dancer. Daughter of a prostitute and an Italian aristocrat, Avril would be portrayed in the film Moulin Rouge (1952) by Zsa Zsa Gabor and in the 2001 “Moulin Rouge” by Nicole Kidman.
3. Plagued by physical deformities and ill health, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864–1901) sought solace in the company of prostitutes. He was only 4 foot 8 inches tall with an adult torso and the legs of a child. He once wrote of the brothels he frequented, “I have found girls of my own size! Nowhere else do I feel so much at home!” He would die at age 36 of “complications due to alcoholism and syphilis.”
GAUGUIN
https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0224V1962
Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables) Paul Gauguin, 1888
Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Portrait of Émile Bernard (Les misérables) — Smarthistory
LEYTON
An Athlete Wrestling with a Python
TOULOUSE LAUTREC AND JANE AVRIL
Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond The Moulin Rouge — The Courtauld Institute of Art
Click here for the last three years of posts arranged by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned recently or ever related to art, sculpture, design, architecture, film, or anything visual.
This is your chance to make some one else’s day. And to cement in your own memory something cool or important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that is close to your heart.
