Suprematist Composition, the most expensive Russian art
Suprematist Composition (Blue rectangle over the red beam), oil on canvas painting by Kazimir Malevich, 88.5 cm x 71 cm (34.8 in x 28 in), private collection
The Suprematist Composition (Blue rectangle over the red beam) is an oil painting by the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935). The painting depicts a rare combination of geometrical figures and bright colors arranged harmoniously in space.
Created in 1916, the Suprematist Composition was exhibited in Moscow in 1919-20. In 1927 Malevich exhibited the work at exhibitions in Warsaw, Munich and later at the Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung in Berlin. These exhibitions brought him international fame and recognition of his artistic style. But abruptly he had to return to the Soviet Union (USSR) in June1927 when he was summoned home.
Malevich left his paintings behind in Germany when he returned to the Soviet Union because he anticipated an antagonistic shift in the policy of the Soviet authorities towards modern art. As he anticipated, the Soviets under Stalin branded abstract and other modernist art forms as a ‘type of Bourgeois Art’. As a result, most of the works of Malevich were confiscated by the government and he was disallowed to create and exhibit such art.
From 1927, Malevich was also not allowed by the Soviet Government to travel abroad until his death in 1935. So, the Suprematist Composition, along with his other works, went under the supervision of the German architect Hugo Haring.
Haring brought the paintings to Amsterdam from Germany where they were branded as ‘degenerate art’ by the Nazis, and because he feared that they could be confiscated by the Nazis, and he could be personally harmed for possessing such art. According to reports, the collection included over 100 paintings by the artist, making it the largest Malevich collection outside the former Soviet Union. Later, in 1958, they were acquired by City of Amsterdam from the heirs of Haring. Since then the paintings remained in the city’s Stedelijk Museum for about 50 years.
In 2003-2004, when the museum exhibited the paintings of Malevich in the United States, the heirs of Malevich challenged the right of the heirs of Haring to dispose of Malevich’s works, and also disputed the rights of the Stedelijk Museum.
Following a 4-year legal battle, the parties reached a settlement under which the museum transferred five major paintings to the heirs of Malevich from their collection. And after 17 years of legal battle over the ownership of the painting, Suprematist Composition was returned to the heirs of the artist.
In November 2008, Suprematist Composition was sold to an anonymous buyer for $60 million ($63.7 million, inflation-adjusted value in US dollars as of December 2011) by the heirs of Kazimir Malevich at an auction at Sotheby’s in New York, setting a new record as the most expensive work in the history of Russian art ever sold in an auction, and it is one of the most expensive paintings in the world.
Henri Rousseau: The Sleeping Gypsy (La Bohémienne endormie)
The Sleeping Gypsy (La Bohémienne endormie), oil on canvas painting of 1897 by Henri Rousseau, 129.5 cm x 200.7 cm (51.0 in x 79.0 in), Museum of Modern Art, New York City, United States.
In 1897 the French Post-Impressionist artist Henri Rousseau painted The Sleeping Gypsy (La Bohémienne endormie), depicting a black gypsy woman sleeping on a desert landscape and a lion musing over her. The painting that could not find a decent buyer when it was first exhibited at the Paris Salon later went on to become as one of Rousseau’s most famous works, and one of the most recognizable paintings of the modern times.
The Sleeping Gypsy was described by the artist as one that depicts a tired wandering mandolin player, who lies with her drinking water jar beside her, in deep sleep, under the moonlit, starry sky. A lion that happens to pass by sniffs at her but does not devour her.
This picture is in the same genre as his best known paintings that depict jungle scenes, though he had never seen jungles, excepting visiting the gardens of Paris, and watching pictures of jungles. In this painting, he replaces the jungle with a desert landscape, (probably the Sahara Desert, where you won’t see lions), and as his fantasy runs wild, there is a river (or a rivulet, or steam, a rarity in a desert), but not even a blade of grass in the whole picture. It is another improbability as any landscape with a river or water body around will be lush green. And look at the mountains or hills in the background, which too appear bald, and not typical desert hills or mountains.
Rousseau was a ‘bad’ student who loved to draw and paint, and sing and won prizes. Following his bankrupt father’s death, he had to take a low level government job in Paris to support his widowed mother. He wanted to study in an art school that he never could. So, he was an untrained, self-taught artist, whose work was mostly ridiculed during his lifetime.
However, he took up painting seriously only in his mid-forties, and after his retirement from his job as a customs officer at the age 49, he became a full time artist. His works had philosophical messages, extraordinary vision, fantastic imagery, and he used rich bright colors and his style was as graphical with bold outlines as a child’s. There was a small group of French avant-garde artists, including Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Vasily Kandinsky, who found an extraordinary, raw, savage power in his works.
Rousseau first exhibited The Sleeping Gypsy at the 13th Salon of The Société des Artistes Indépendants (Society of Independent Artists). Though he failed to sell it to the mayor of his hometown, it was bought by a charcoal merchant with whom it remained until 1924, when it was discovered by an art critic. The same year, the art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler purchased the painting, following which art historian Alfred H. Barr Jr. acquired it for the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
The Sleeping Gypsy has been an inspiration for poetry and music, and it is one of the most copied and parodied works by various artists who just made minor alterations in the painting to draw their versions.
Georges Seurat: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte), oil on canvas painting created during 1884-1886 by Georges Seurat, 207.6 cm x 308 cm, displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago
The painting ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ (original title in French: Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte) is one of the celebrated works of the French Post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859-1891). It is acclaimed as a work that changed the course of Modern Art by promoting Neo-Impressionism and Pointillism.
The island of la Grande Jatte (Île de la Grande Jatte), depicted in the painting is an island in the River Seine in Paris. It has now a public garden and a housing development area. In 1884 it was a retreat (away from the city center), where Seurat used to sit in the park and made sketches of the figures there for the composition of the work. He took over two years to complete A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
The painting is a study of optical illusion, color, light effects, and how the disjointed, tiny dots of colors created images and unified hues through optical illusion in the viewer’s eyes. His experiments with such contrasting and complementing dots of colors made pointillism a more brilliant and more powerful tool to create art than brush strokes.
Paul Gauguin: Mahana no Atua
Mahana no Atua (the Day of God, titled also as ‘Reo Mā`ohi: Te mahana nō te Atua), 1894, oil on canvas painting by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), 66 cm x 87 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago, USA
‘Mahana no Atua’ is an oil painting by the celebrated French artist Paul Gauguin, who produced the largest volume of his works during his stay in the French Polynesia, especially Tahiti. Most of his works during the last phase of his life are heavily influenced by the Tahitian life and culture, Tahitian Gods and beliefs and the beauty and sensuality of Tahitian women.
The art and life of Gauguin had a huge influence on Pablo Picasso, whose paintings of monumental figures from 1906 reflect a direct impact of the figures, symbolism, and fauvism found in Gauguin’s works. Picasso’s celebrated work, ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ created in 1907, shows the savage power evoked by Gauguin in his works.
Gauguin’s ‘Mahana no Atua’ was one of ‘100 Great Paintings’ of all times, featured in the television series by Edwin Mullins for BBC Two in 1980.
Paul Cezanne: The Large Bathers
Les Grandes Baigneuses (The Large Bathers), 1898-1905, oil on canvas painting by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), 250.8 cm x 210.5 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, United States
The oil painting ‘The Bathers’ (also known as The Big Bathers or Les Grandes Baigneuses) is considered Paul Cézanne’s finest work and one of the masterpieces of Modern Art. The painting was included in ‘100 Great Paintings’, a television series created by Edwin Mullins for BBC Two in 1980.
At the time of his death in 1906, Les Grandes Baigneuses remained unfinished, although Cézanne had been working on it for seven years. The Philadelphia Museum of Art purchased it for $110,000 in 1937.
‘The Bathers’ is the largest of a series of paintings titled ‘Bathers’ created by Cézanne. This painting is generally referred to as ‘The Large Bathers’ or ‘The Big Bathers’ to distinguish it from Cézanne’s other ‘Bathers’ which are smaller in size.
The painting is noted for its symmetry by aligning the abstract female figures with the triangular pattern formed by the trees and the river. Space is also intentionally used to align with the symmetry by grouping the bathers to the right and left of the canvas, leaving clear vision almost in the center to view the other bank of the river, and the road or path beyond leading to a place with buildings in the distance. Though not drawn to have any importance in the overall scheme of the painting, the figure towards the extreme right of the canvas, just behind the large woman walking forward, seems to be a man, and seems to have been included deliberately.
Cézanne, along with artists such as Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and El Greco (1541-1614), has been said to have influenced Pablo Picasso for the creation of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Also both Cézanne and Gauguin were particularly influential for the formation of Cubism and the paintings created by Picasso during 1906 and 1907.
Henri Matisse: Le bonheur de vivre (The joy of life)
Le bonheur de vivre (The joy of Life), oil on canvas painting of 1905-6 by the French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954), dimensions 241 cm x 175 cm, The Barnes Foundation, Pennsylvania, USA
Henri Matisse’s painting titled ‘Le bonheur de vivre’ (The joy of Life), is a collage of various sensuous figures and themes including the group of dancers depicted in his painting The Dance (the second version of 1910, now in The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia), bathers, lovers, and other figures.
Le bonheur de vivre is Matisse’s response to the conservative policies of the Paris Salon, and the treatment his works received at the Salon. It was exhibited in the Salon d’Automne of 1905, organized by himself along with André Derain, Angele Delasalle, Georges Rouault and Albert Marquet.
The painting was also an expression of his art more deeply getting influenced by Fauvism, a rather wild style (of the beasts) of art followed by a group of early artists of Modern Art.
Some art critics argue that Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was a reaction to Le bonheur de vivre.
Henri Matisse: La danse
La danse (‘The Dance I’, the first version of 1909), oil on canvas painting by Henri Matisse, dimensions 259.7 cm x 390.1 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York City
There are two paintings, and a mural by the French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) with the title ‘The Dance’ (‘La Danse’). What is displayed here is an image of the first version, known as ‘The Dance (I)’ because it is a study or preliminary work by Matisse for the painting he created for the Russian businessman Sergei Shchukin. The final version, ‘The Dance’ (‘La danse’) is now in the collection of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The third version is a very large (15 ft x 45 ft) triptych mural titled ‘The Dance II’ created by Henri Matisse in 1932 for the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia.
Henri Matisse painted the first version in March 1909 with paler colors and lesser details as it was a compositional study. However, it became a famous work in its own right and it is now at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. The painting was donated to the museum by Nelson A. Rockefeller in honor of Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
The painting shows five figures of dancing women forming a circle. The painting is often quoted to show Matisse’s fascination for Primitivism and Fauvism. It is also considered as a corner stone in his career and his contribution for the development of Modern Art.
The Art and Life of Paul Gauguin
Manao tupapau (‘The Spirit of the Dead Is Watching’ or ‘L'esprit des morts veille’) oil on burlap canvas painting of 1892 by Paul Gauguin showing his Tahitian wife Tehura, 72.4 cm x 92.4 cm, now at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
‘The Spirit of the Dead Is Watching’ (Manao tupapau), an oil painting created by the French painter and writer Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) in 1892, depicts a frightened young Tahitian girl lying on a bed while an old woman, symbolic of the spirit of the dead (tupapau), is watching her. In Polynesian/ Tahitian mythology, the title of the work may refer to the girl imagining the ghost or the ghost imagining her.
The woman on the painting was Gauguin’s Tahitian wife Tehura, with whom he had a son Emile who wanted to be a painter himself but died of poverty at the age of 80 in January 1980. In a previous marriage (1873) with the Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad, Gauguin had five other children in ten years of married life.
One day, Tehura was lying in fear of the tupapau when Gauguin returned home late at night. He feared that she might take him for one of the ghosts (spirits of the dead) or the tupapaus her people, the Tahitians, feared the most. The spirit Tehura feared is personified by the old woman in the painting. The bold exotic colors symbolize the Polynesian belief that phosphorescent lights of the night emanate from the dreadful spirits of the dead.
According to Polynesian mythology, and particularly Tahitian beliefs, after death a person’s spirit (ghost) will go to the heaven or the underworld. But some spirits may stay on earth and possess the body of the living people. Such ghosts have to be charmed out of the possessed persons by exorcists or tantrics.
Another legend common in Polynesia is about the concept of a double soul: one that never leaves the live body and the other that can be driven out by chanting mantras or powerful magic scriptures.
Several of Gauguin’s works of the Tahitian period have symbolisms of Polynesian, African, Native American, Micronesian Asian (Indian and Japanese) and similar myths and legends. Gauguin’s experimentation with bold, dark, phosphorescent and exotic colors led him to evolving to a style of Synthetism of Modern Art. His interpretation of the subjects of his paintings led to Fauvism and Primitivism.
Fed up by his eluding success as an Impressionist artist, and depressed by financial and psychological strains (once he even attempted suicide), Gauguin made many attempts to find a tropical paradise where he could work and live, away from European culture. These attempts took him to Martinique for a short period, and also made him work as a construction worker on the Panama Canal project for two weeks before he was fired from the job.
Finally in 1891, Gauguin found his tropical paradise in the Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands of the South Seas. As he was three-quarters French and a quarter Peruvian Creole, who was taken to live in Peru in 1851 when Napoleon III staged a coup d’état in France, and he grew up watching sensual figures commonplace in South America of those times, the new Polynesian paradise suited him very much.
He could find in Tahiti all the artistic inspiration he wanted in the Tahitian girls he repeatedly painted. Initially he reveled in the local custom of welcoming a different native woman into his hut, but it drained his finances and energy, leaving no time to paint. So he wanted his own Vahine (woman) that he found in the beautiful Tahitian girl Tehura.
Before settling for the tropical French Oceania, Gauguin did not find much success with his art in France. Also he felt that European art was repetitive, plagiarized and imitative, and had no symbolic depth. But in Polynesian myths, African tribal art, especially the African tribal masks, art of the Native Americans and in Asian art he found his favorite mysticism, fauvism and symbolism that he incorporated into his works.
During his short stay in Martinique, Gauguin came into contact with a small group of Indian immigrants who later influenced some of his paintings in the form of Hindu mystic and spiritual symbols appearing in them.
In Polynesia he mingled freely with the native people, sided with them and even came into confrontation with the Catholic Church and French colonial powers. This period influenced him in the form of exotic religious symbolism and ideas of the Polynesians frequently appearing in his paintings. Also, almost all the females in his paintings were Polynesian women who played multiple roles for him as artists’ models and servants.
According to William A. DeGregorio, Gauguin went back to France in 1893 leaving the pregnant Tehura behind. He spent time and life with a former mistress Juliette Huet, and another woman Anna (subject of his painting titled ‘Annah the Javanese ‘) and returned to Tahiti in 1895 to find Tehura had by then married an islander. Tehura visited him, but she was frightened by his syphilitic sores he contracted possibly in France and she went back to her native husband.
In place of Tehura, Gauguin found many other women, and briefly settled down with the beautiful Tahitian girl Pahura, whom he painted in 1896 in the painting titled ‘Te Arii Vahine’ (‘The Noble Woman’ now in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow).
In 1901 he moved to a 1.25 acre lot in one of the Marquesas Islands and built a hut, and lived with any native woman willing to overlook his syphilitic sores.
As an artist Gauguin could not become financially successful and had to live a poverty-stricken life. Additionally, his permissive lifestyle, alcoholism and all kinds of other excesses weakened him physically and financially.
On 8 May 1903 at the age of 54, Paul Gauguin, who was already in the advanced stages of syphilis, died of a heart attack, and he was buried in Cimetière Calvaire, Atuona, Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia).
Gauguin’s work influenced artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and André Derain. He also influenced art movements including Primitivism, Fauvism, Cubism, Orphism and other later movements.
Gauguin’s posthumous exhibitions in 1903 and 1906 had immensely impressed the French avant-garde, and particularly Pablo Picasso, who started to paint plus-sized women in 1906. Picasso’s sculptures were reminiscent of Paul Gauguin’s works, especially highlighting Primitivism. Gauguin’s direct influence can be traced in Picasso’s monumental painting ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, painted in 1907.
The small glazed stoneware ceramic sculpture titled ‘Oviri’, depicting the gruesome Tahitian deity of death and mourning, Goddess Oviri (literally The Savage), which is now at Gauguin’s grave, influenced Picasso even more to paint ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’.
Gauguin, a self-taught artist, was influenced by the Norwegian Symbolist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944). Unless explained, an untrained viewer will take the paintings of Munch for another Gauguin, for their dark stark colors, brushstrokes, and even style (for instance, ‘The Scream’ by Munch).
