Thursday, March 29, 2012

"Strapless:" The Scandal that Rocked the Nineteenth Century Art World


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It was the era of the parisienne, the professional French beauty, famous world-wide for her looks. Whole lives were devoted to it. Some went so far as to have their skin painted or enameled, a practice which sometimes led to facial paralysis, blood poisoning and even death. One social observer noted, "In Paris, half the female population lives off fashion, while the other half lives for fashion."

In the late 1870s a stunningly beautiful parisienne, Amélie Gautreau, dominated the social landscape. Madame Gautreau was born Virginie Amélie Avegno in New Orleans to French Creole parents. After her father was killed in the Battle of Shiloh, Amélie's mother moved her young daughters to live in Paris. Amélie began her ascent into Parisian society after marrying the wealthy Pedro Gautreau in 1878.

Amélie captured the imagination of many young aspiring artists, chief among them John Singer Sargent, who became obsessed with the beauty and pursued her relentlessly in hopes of painting her portrait. He knew a successful portrait of Gautreau would result in future commissions from the rich and famous of Parisian society.

Deborah Davis's 2003 dual biography, Strapless, plots the course of the lives of two people whose stories will be forever woven together in this story of art, celebrity and scandal. The cast of supporting characters includes Richard and Cosima Wagner, Henry James, and Oscar Wilde. Davis vividly paints her own picture of life in nineteenth century Parisian society and the scandal that rocked that world.

After getting her to agree to sit for the portrait, Sargent struggled for months with what he called "the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gautreau." Eventually, "he condemned Amélie, who hated remaining motionless, to one of the most tortuous poses in art history. He had her stand with her right arm leaning tensely on a table that was just a little too short to be a comfortable source of support. Her face turned sideways to draw attention to her remarkable profile, while her body pointed to the front. The muscles of her neck strained to keep her head at its awkward angle."

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1884, oil on canvas, 234.95 × 109.86 cm (92.5 × 43.3 in), Metropolitan Museum of Art
Sargent finished the portrait in time for the 1884 Salon, the most important art show in the world, with thousands attending daily. He had painted the famed beauty in a chic black dress and had no idea of the scandal that was about to erupt over his depiction of a strap dangling off Madame Gautreau's bare white shoulder. 

Nudes were everywhere in the 1884 Salon: "though highly idealized, even the most 'classical' nudes must have seemed erotic to Salon audiences. Women in the nineteenth century tended to cover their flesh in public with layers of clothing, from buttoned-up gloves to floor-length hems. Salon exhibitions provided easy access to sexual images that were not part of daily life. And artist knew that their nudes, however sanitized or decorous, were titillating. they placed them liberally in their paintings, often in such settings as forests and courtrooms where it made no sense for their subjects to be naked."

So why the scandal over a mere fallen strap? According to Davis:

"The public's judgment was loud, quick, and definite. What a horror, people exclaimed. She looked monstrous and decomposed, some said. The painting was indecent. Amélie's exposed white shoulders and décolletage -- without a breast in sight -- disgusted them. And that fallen strap! Was it a prelude to, or the aftermath of, sex?"

John Singer Sargent, in his studio with his painting Portrait of Madame X, black and white photographic print, 21 x 28 cm, circa 1884, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian, photographer unknown.

Sargent's career would go on to survive the scandal, while Amélie's reputation would never fully recover -- she was no longer the "it girl." As soon as the Salon ended, Sargent took his painting back to his studio and repainted the strap in its upright position. Many years later in 1915, when Sargent sold the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he requested that Amelie's name not be associated with the portrait. That is when it officially came to be known as the infamous Portrait of Madame X.

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Upcoming at Offramp Gallery

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm

May 6 - June 3, 2012
Chuck Feesago: Retention

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm







May 6 - June 3, 2012
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm
June 24 - August 5, 2012

Lou Beach: Stories & Pictures
Opening Reception: Sunday, June 24, 2-5pm

Thursday, March 22, 2012

A Photography Book that Captures the Zeitgeist of Los Angeles

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This week I want to spotlight a book that dovetails neatly with the current zeitgeist in the Los Angeles art world, a spirit of time and place that I believe is largely a result of the Getty's city-wide Pacific Standard Time initiative. Taschen's fabulous photography book, Los Angeles, Portrait of a Cityfleshes out the cultural identity of the city, before and after the 1945-1980 focus of Pacific Standard Time, and is nothing less than a joy to own.

So get comfortable in your favorite chair and give yourself at least two hours to take in the over 500 photographs that range from the first known photograph of Los Angeles, a largely pastoral scene taken in 1862, to a portrait of the founder of Forest Lawn surrounded by prints of big-eyed Jesuses, to recent landmarks such as Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Hall.

You’ll travel through time with highlights of the city's cultural, political, industrial, and sociological history. A 1927 photograph by Cliff Wesselman shows pistol-packing police chief James “Two-Gun” Davis. The caption reads: “Adopting a tough-on-crime stance, he announced that he would ‘hold court on gunmen in the Los Angeles streets; I want them brought in dead, not alive, and will reprimand any officer who shows the least mercy to a criminal.’” Yikes!





Copyright: University of Southern California/Regional History Center
Caption: 339 Anonymous: Spectators join police at the aftermath of a shootout, 1953.

One photo shows German American Bund picnickers in 1938 raising a large 3-D swastika in La Crescenta’s Hinderburg Park. Another shows the bottom of Marilyn Monroe’s lifeless foot sticking out from a under a blanket in a morgue refrigerator. We see a young Ronald Regan modeling for a sculpture class at USC (hated his politics, but what a bod!), a group of female impersonators arrested in a raid in 1927, and Faye Dunaway posing for a post-Academy Award portrait by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel.


Copyright: Jim Heimann Collection
Caption: 271 Dick Whittington: Simon’s drive-in, Wilshire Boulevard andFairfax Avenue, c. 1939.


Architecture, from kitsch eateries to Case Study Houses, is abundantly represented. A photo of the Spruce Goose being transported to Long Beach Harbor seems a precursor to the recent media-blitz over LACMA's much ballyhooed rock. I was surprised to learn that there was once an elevated bike path that ran from Pasadena to Los Angeles (Anyone want to start a movement to bring this back? Even I would ride a bike to LA if the path were completely free of cars). 

Copyright: Getty Images
Caption: 336 Slim Aarons: Rita Aarons, wife of the photographer, swimming in a pool festooned with floating baubles
 and a decorated Christmas tree, ca 1955.

Riots, earthquakes, fires and floods, rock stars, movie stars, O.J. Simpson carrying the Olympic torch on Pacific Coast Highway, John Belushi’s lifeless body being removed from the Chateau Marmont, an Angelyne billboard (I spotted her last week in her pink Corvette in Hollywood) and Joni Mitchell leaning out the window of her Laurel Canyon home are all included. 

Essays by Kevin Star, copious captions, blurbs from books and movies about Los Angeles, and maps of the area as it grows, round out this portrait of the city. You don't have to live in Los Angeles to appreciate this book and the huge cultural impact Los Angeles has had on the rest of the world.

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Upcoming at Offramp Gallery

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm

Sunday, March 25, 3pm:
Betty Ann Brown reading & book signing

from her new book, Afternoons with June: Stories of June Wayne’s Art & Life

May 6 - June 3, 2012:
Chuck Feesago: Retention

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Short Takes: Animated Masterpieces

Heironymous Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights,
El Prado Museum
What happens when Heavy Metal meets Hieronymus Bosch? Watch avant-garde musician and songwriter Buckethead's Spokes for the Wheel of Torment video below and find out. Based on several of Bosch's masterpieces, it's not for the faint of heart.






Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931.Oil on canvas, 9 1/2 x 13" (24.1 x 33 cm).
© 2007 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí
Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Destino was originally conceived as a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. It was storyboarded by Disney artist John Hench and Dali for eight months in 1945-46, but the project was shelved due to financial problems. In 1999, Walt Disney's nephew, Roy E. Disney, unearthed the dormant project and decided to bring it back to life. It was subsequently released in 2003.





Guernica by Pablo Picasso. 1937.
Oil on canvas. 349 cm × 776 cm.
This next video is an animated sequence from the rarely-seen 1969 film The Picasso Summer, starring Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux, and based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. A young couple strolls through what appears to be an underground grotto, illuminating Picasso paintings on the walls and ceiling by candlelight. The actual animation begins at 2:05.



M.C. Escher, Ascending and Descending, 1960
lithograph, 35.5 cm × 28.5 cm

Ending things on a lighter note is this animation based on M.C. Escher's endless staircase from his work Ascending and Descending. A lesson in frustration.





Upcoming at Offramp Gallery

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm









Sunday, March 25, 3pm:
Betty Ann Brown reading & book signing

from her new book, Afternoons with June: Stories of June Wayne’s Art & Life

May 6 - June 3, 2012:
Chuck Feesago: Retention

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm