"Posing Modernity" Expanded to "Le Modèle Noir" at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904)

Study for a the woman in Slave Market in Cairo, ca. 1872

Oil on canvas, 48 × 38 cm

Private Collection

© Photo courtoisie Galerie Jean-François Heim – Bâle

Another French Revolution has taken Paris by storm in, of all places, the elegant Musée d’Orsay, a tourists’ favorite because of its enormous collection of great nineteenth-century masterpieces, from academic to avant-garde, from Thomas Couture’s lascivious Decadence of the Romans (1847) to Boleslas Biegas’s brooding proto-Cubist Sphinx (1902). The best known among “the Moderns” Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) shook the foundations of traditional French “received ideas” for art at the Salon of 1865 and continues to challenge our “received ideas” 154 years later, this time through the eyes of an American curator, Dr. Denise Murrell, the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Wallach Art Gallery on Columbia University’s new Manhattanville, situated near the Hudson River side of Harlem. 

Edouard Manet (1832-1883)

Olympia, 1863

First exhibited in the Salon de 1865

Oil on canvas, 130.5 X 191 cm

Paris, Musée d’Orsay, RF 644

Photo © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

Dr. Murrell’s doctoral dissertation on Manet’s model Laure became the exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today on view at the Wallach Art Gallery from October 24, 2018 through February 10, 2019.  Through her beautifully organized selections of art and documentation, she invited “the viewer to reconsider Olympia as a painting that is about two women, one black and one white, who are both essential to achieving a full understanding of this work. . . [because] our understanding of Western modern art cannot be complete without taking into account the vital role of the black female figure, from Laure of Manet to her legacy for successive generations of artists.” Posing Modernity grew from 140 objects to over 300 in the Musée d’Orsay’s Le Modèle Noire de Géricault à Matisse [The Black Model from Géricault to Matisse], including 73 paintings, 81 photographs, 17 sculptures, 60 prints and drawings, 1 photographic installation, and 70 auxiliary documentation (books, magazines, posters, letters, etc.) that populate several galleries.   The New York show started in the mid-19^th century and ended with post-modern art.  The Paris show starts in the late 18^th century and ends with Glenn Ligon’s Some Black French People/Des Parisiens Noirs (2019), a work especially created for the cavernous great hall in the middle of the Musée d’Orsay.

Read more on Bonjour Paris -https://bonjourparis.com 

Best wishes for the weekend,
Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.
Director and owner
New York Arts Exchange LLC
and
staff writer, Bonjour Paris

Last Call: Suzanne Duchamp Drawings at Francis Naumann Fine Art through March 6th

Suzanne Duchamp, Untitled (Red Flowers), ca. 1933

Watercolor and gouache on paper, 16 3/8 x 24 3/8 inches

Hark, Feministas and Feministos - We forgot to include Suzanne Duchamp in the women artists canon of modern art!   How did this happen?

I checked through Linda Nochlin and Anne Sutherland Harris' catalog for Women Artists, 1550-1950 (LA County Museum, 1976); Wendy Slatkin's Women Artists in History: From Antiquity to the Present (most recent edition 2000); Nancy Heller's Women Artists: An Illustrated History (most recent edition 2000) and  Whitney Chadwick's Women, Art and Society (most recent edition 2012). Only Gill Perry in her Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde : Modernism and "Feminine" Art, from 1900 to the 1920s (1996) lists Suzanne Duchamp among other Cubist women artists, but adds in a footnote; "Although Suzanne Duchamp was associated with the Section d'Or exhibition [1912], she went on to work with the Dada group, hence her exclusion from the group of 'femmes peintres" featured in this book." (p. 80).  Hmmm - not "femme" enough, eh?   Well, I disagree.  Based on the current mini-retrospective at Francis Naumann Fine Art, we see plenty of "feminine" delicacy in her still life and landscape drawings and paintings - rather School of Paris-esque following her eccentric Dada and Tabu Dada periods.  

Feminist art historians take note: we must redress this egregious omission.

          

Suzanne Duchamp, Self-Portrait, ca. 1920    

 ink on paper, 14 x 9 7/8 inches     

Man Ray, Suzanne Duchamp, 1920

Centre Pompidou, Man Ray Trust

   Artists Right Society (ARS)/ADAGP. Paris 2014

To that end, may I introduce to you: Suzanne Marie Germaine Duchamp (1889-1963) the fourth sibling among the very talented six Duchamp-Villon children.  She was born on October 20, 1889, the first daughter after three sons Jacques Villon [Guston Ducamp], 1875-1963; Raymond Duchamp-Villon, 1876-1918; and Marcel Duchamp, 1887-1968,  and the oldest among the sisters, Suzanne, Marie Madeleine Yvonne,1895-1969, and Marie-Thérèse Magdeleine, 1898-1979 (the latter two were not professional artists). 

Suzanne Duchamp, Untitled (Landscape with Cubist Tree), ca. 1945

Watercolor and pencil on paper 23 1/8 x 30 7/8 inches

Academically trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rouen (beginning in 1905), Suzanne lived among the most avant-garde groups as a teenager.  Her much-older brothers Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon actively participated in the burgeoning Cubist movement.  The third, and much younger, brother Marcel Duchamp shocked New York with his famous Nude Descending Stairs (1912) in the legendary Armory Show of 1913, before he became part of the Dada movement. These familial connections brought her membership in the Société  Normande de Peinture Moderne in Rouen.

Suzanne Duchamp, Untitled (Flowers), 1946

Crayon and ink on paper, 15 1/2 x 19 inches

In 1911 she married pharmacist Charles Victor Rene Demares in Rouen and divorced him in 1914. Suzanne moved to Paris and into her brother Marcel's flat on the rue de Condamine.  During World War I she worked as a nurse in the Hôtel des Invalides (while Marcel was in New York). Through the Dada network, she met Jean Crotti (1878-1958), a Swiss Dada artist, in 1916 and married him in 1919.  The two artists created their own movement, Tabu (based on the word "tabou") Dada, which expressed a life-giving force with mystery and spirituality - contrasting with Dada's nihilism.  Its first exhibition took place in April 1921, at Galerie Montaigne in Paris 

Suzanne Duchamp, Untitled (Interior au Gueridon), 1948

Watercolor and ink on paper, 24 1/2 x 19 1/4 inches

In the 1930s through the late 1950s, Suzanne embraced the popular charm of the School of Paris, concentrating on landscapes and still lifes radiant with color.  In his memoirs, Souvenir sans fin, André Salmon mentioned that she was very ill and could drink only pure milk, which Jean Crotti purchased in a specific dairy in Neuilly. Perhaps this period restricted her production, requiring only modest undertakings as an artist.

In 1958, Jean Crotti passed away and shortly afterward Suzanne turned to abstraction, expressing an energy and innovation that lasted to the very end of her life, September 11, 1963.  Her late work is a revelation.

Suzanne Duchamp Works on Paper seems to augur the return of spring.  These lively paintings and drawings will warm the cockles of your heart.   

Three more weeks of winter!

Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director, New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com 

Diane Radycki to sign her Paula Modersohn-Becker monograph on Tuesday, September 10th in Rizzoli's on 57th St, 5:30 - 7 pm

Please celebrate the publication of Paula Modernsohn-Becker: The First Modern Women Artist with its author Diane Radycki, director of the Payne Gallery and Associate Professor of Art History at Moravian College, on Tuesday, September 10th.  Professor Radycki will sign her fabulous book at Rizzoli Bookstore, 31 West 57th Street, from 5:30 pm to 7 pm.  (Click on this link to watch Professor Radycki lecture on Paula Modersohn-Becker's work.)

This new monograph is Radcyki's second book Modersohn-Becker.  Her first was the translation and annotation of PMB's letters. Four years ago Radycki published an article "Pictures of Flesh: Paula Modersohn-Becker and the Nude," in Women's Art Journal (Fall/Winter 2009), which now seems to be a preview of things to come.

Born on February 9, 1876 in Dresden, Paula Modersohn-Becker was the third child of seven born to the son of a university professor and the daughter of aristocrats. Her father worked for the railroad. In 1888, she moved with her family to Bremen, and in 1892, she took her first art lessons while visiting with an aunt in London.

After her trip to London, she completed her teacher-training studies and kept up with her art through private lessons (1893 to 1895). In 1896, she joined the Union of Berlin Women Artists. Two years later her life changed significantly. She moved in with a group of artists who resided in Worpswede, an artists' colony outside of Bremen. There she socialized with Fritz Mackensen (1866-1953), Henrich Vogeler (1872-1942) and Otto Modersohn (1865-1943). The sculptor Clara Westhoff (1875-1954) joined the group in 1899, and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) joined in 1900.

Paula and Clara became close friends. In 1900 they spent the first six months of the year together in Paris. Modersohn-Becker studied art at the Académie Colarossi and anatomy at the École des Beaux-Art. Westhoff studied sculpture with the great master Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Then they spent the summer together in Berlin.

Clara married Rainer on April 29, 1901; Paula married Otto on May 25, 1901. The Rilkes' only child, Ruth, was born in December 1901.

After a short period of estrangement, Paula and Clara reconciled in 1903, perhaps when Modernsohn-Becker spent February and March in Paris. Paula returned to Paris in 1905, again in February and March, and studied at the Académie Julian.

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace, 1906

oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches

Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen, Germany

In February 1906, Modersohn-Becker packed her bags in Worpsweder and stole out of the house, much like Nora Helmer in Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879), to start her new life outside of her nuclear family.  Filled with ambition (rather than Nora's shame), Paula wanted to establish her own identity. Her Self-Portrait with Amber Necklace (1906) is among the few nude self-portraits that would set her apart from her female contemporaries. Painting the self nude was unusual among male artists, but among women artists almost unheard of (even though the female nude dominated art from the Renaissance forward).  

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Otto Modersohn Sleeping, 1906.

Diane Radycki writes that the sexual relationship between Modersohn-Becker and her husband was not consummated until five years after their wedding day - just before Modersohn-Becker took off for Paris. The marriage might be considered one of convenience for Otto Modersohn, who had become a widow shortly after the birth of his daughter Elsbeth.  Once married to Paula, Otto would have a mother for his child and a wife to serve his needs.  Eventually, Paula wanted out.

In June 1906, Otto Modersohn spends a week in Paris to plead for his wife's return to Worpswede. They lived together in Paris in September, in October  and the winter of 1907.  In March Paula knew she was pregnant. In April she was back in Worpswede. Paula Modersohn-Becker gave birth to her daughter Matilde on November 2.  Eighteen days later, the artist died of an embolism.  She was 31 years old.

Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Requiem for a Friend," written one year after Modersohn-Becker's death, expresses his grief. Perhaps Rilke was in love with Modersohn-Becker and his wife Clara Westhoff.

Modersohn-Becker's daughter Matilde (Tillie) established the Paula Modersohn-Becker Foundation in 1978.  Matilde passed away twenty years later. The Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum was opened in Bremen in 1927. In May 2005, Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) installed For Paula Modersohn-Becker in the museum. The Otto Modersohn Museum is located in Fischerhude.

Radycki's book Paula Modersohn-Becker: The First Woman Artist is breathtakingly beautiful from cover to cover, enhanced by this art historian's engaging prose which draws us into the world of modern art at the turn of the twentieth century.  Radycki speculates that Modersohn-Becker might have met Picasso at the artist Ignacio Zuloaga's studio at a party in late April 1906 (p. 144). We imagine PMB in Montmartre and Montparnasse, at the avant-garde salons and among her friends in rural Germany - bristling with radical notions of the "new art."

I cannot imagine that this heartbreaking story will bypass Hollywood.  With the right actress and screenplay, PMB's star will most certainly rise again - and soon.

Best wishes for the new year - l'chaim,

Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com