Duchamp (1887 - 1968) or Bonnard (1867 - 1947)
The lapse of time. Twenty years separate the birth of Duchamp from that of Bonnard, but those twenty years seem to be this gulf that separates painting from all that is, at least here in France, "l'art contemporain."
Painting as a practice has lived and died and been reborn so many times that it almost doesn't even seem to be a relevant topic of debate anymore -- despite all the theory, criticism and articles written on the subject, painting is still being practiced, shown, sold, re-sold and collected. And this, despite a complete and thorough attempt at its disintegration by the purveyors of "critical" theory.
Of course, that being said, being collectable and salable itself can be a big negative if one subscribes to any system of belief that sees this as a compromise in intellectual rigor and the remnants of the retrograde mindset of the bourgeoisie that needs to be discarded by all means possible. In fact, anything "beautiful" or "retinien" is suspect and to be rejected in such a gestalt. But must one remind everyone with such intransigence that most painting nowadays, by the majority of its practitioners past and present, are only seen on the floating intersections of the internet, completely for free and open to the public, and most usually to never be seen elsewhere?
But there is a gulf between Bonnard and Duchamp. The gulf may be the difference between a painter and a dandy/playboy/chess-player; more "retrograde" minds would say that it is the difference between an artisan and a charlatan. I wonder if the difference wouldn't be that of someone who loved painting and someone who didn't.
Matisse (1869 - 1954) loved Bonnard and called him a great painter. Picasso (1881 - 1973) hated Bonnard and spent long moments crafting diatribes such as "this is not painting." I wonder what that means within this context of the twenty year time lapse mentioned above.
One may have to read an old Hilton Kramer article to remind oneself how "controversial" an artist Bonnard can be. It has been nearly two decades since Kramer wrote his defense of Bonnard. I wonder if one of these days, we will have people waving banners outside museums asking them to take down paintings by Bonnard for reasons of "sucking at painting" as they have done so recently against Renoir's work.
I actually wonder if the hatred for Bonnard, or that of Renoir, may not be symptom of a larger hatred. Not hatred really, but complete incomprehension. It is perhaps akin to the preference of our technological times for gadgets instead of poetry, or at least our way of confounding the latest iPhone with poetry. I will quote Hilton Kramer, as I think only a "retrograde" like Kramer is capable of writing such lines:
And I might add that only a retrograde and decadent like Marcel Proust could possibly unabashedly love the paintings of Renoir.
"Dining Room in the Country," 1913; Oil on canvas; 164.5 x 205.7 cm
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis
Duchamp in front of an "authorized" reproduction of his lost 1913 original bicycle wheel.
Painting as a practice has lived and died and been reborn so many times that it almost doesn't even seem to be a relevant topic of debate anymore -- despite all the theory, criticism and articles written on the subject, painting is still being practiced, shown, sold, re-sold and collected. And this, despite a complete and thorough attempt at its disintegration by the purveyors of "critical" theory.
Of course, that being said, being collectable and salable itself can be a big negative if one subscribes to any system of belief that sees this as a compromise in intellectual rigor and the remnants of the retrograde mindset of the bourgeoisie that needs to be discarded by all means possible. In fact, anything "beautiful" or "retinien" is suspect and to be rejected in such a gestalt. But must one remind everyone with such intransigence that most painting nowadays, by the majority of its practitioners past and present, are only seen on the floating intersections of the internet, completely for free and open to the public, and most usually to never be seen elsewhere?
But there is a gulf between Bonnard and Duchamp. The gulf may be the difference between a painter and a dandy/playboy/chess-player; more "retrograde" minds would say that it is the difference between an artisan and a charlatan. I wonder if the difference wouldn't be that of someone who loved painting and someone who didn't.
Matisse (1869 - 1954) loved Bonnard and called him a great painter. Picasso (1881 - 1973) hated Bonnard and spent long moments crafting diatribes such as "this is not painting." I wonder what that means within this context of the twenty year time lapse mentioned above.
One may have to read an old Hilton Kramer article to remind oneself how "controversial" an artist Bonnard can be. It has been nearly two decades since Kramer wrote his defense of Bonnard. I wonder if one of these days, we will have people waving banners outside museums asking them to take down paintings by Bonnard for reasons of "sucking at painting" as they have done so recently against Renoir's work.
I actually wonder if the hatred for Bonnard, or that of Renoir, may not be symptom of a larger hatred. Not hatred really, but complete incomprehension. It is perhaps akin to the preference of our technological times for gadgets instead of poetry, or at least our way of confounding the latest iPhone with poetry. I will quote Hilton Kramer, as I think only a "retrograde" like Kramer is capable of writing such lines:
Something like this realm of experience was, in any case, central to Bonnard’s project as a painter in all the later decades of his life. His word for it was “poetry”—a poetry of feeling that for Bonnard was the poetry of life itself—and he was indeed its unrivaled pictorial master in the art of the modern era. This “poetry” is not to be mistaken for a romantic idyll, however. There was little about the anxiety, melancholy, and despair of conjugal experience that Bonnard did not comprehend—and make the subject of his paintings—long before he embarked upon the late Bather pictures.
And I might add that only a retrograde and decadent like Marcel Proust could possibly unabashedly love the paintings of Renoir.
* * *
Actually, in reaction to incomprehension, Bonnard actually said it best:
“Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking, But who looks? If people could see, and see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it’s because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.”
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