Eugène Grasset – Page 2

May

View of Fuji from Miho Bay, May (1830) by Utagawa Kunisada.

No weekend links this week, unfortunately. The past few days have been spent re-establishing some equilibrium following the technical upheavals of the previous weeks, including updating things on the old computer so it can be the main work machine until the new one is fixed. Consequently I’ve spent no time at all looking at blogs or reading RSS feeds.

Continuing the monthly post of month-related paintings, and May is a difficult month to search for when its name is also a woman’s name and a word that turns up in other contexts: the BBC’s Your Paintings website is rendered almost completely useless by the profusion of portraits of the nation’s mayors through the ages. As months go there’s an understandable emphasis on the blossoming of the natural world. Some examples are represented here, together with a few less obvious depictions.

A May Morning in Moret (1886) by Alfred Sisley.

La Belle Jardiniere: May (1896) by Eugène Grasset.

May Morn (1899) by John Henry Twachtman.

Continue reading “May”

January

January, Skating on the Frozen River (First half of the seventeenth century) by Jan Wildens.

The first month of the year doesn’t seem to provide much inspiration going by the few examples at Wikipaintings and the Google Art Project/Cultural Institute. We haven’t had any snow so far this winter, the days more closely resemble Isidre Nonell’s gloomy park scene.

The Park in January (1894) by Isidre Nonell.

La Belle Jardiniere—January (1896) by Eugène Grasset.

January (1940) by Grant Wood.

January Full Moon (1941) by George Copeland.

Weekend links 111

The Fox (1968). Design by Bill Gold, art by Leo & Diane Dillon.

Mark Rydell’s The Fox may be regarded unfavourably now for its retrograde idea of a lesbian relationship but that’s still a great poster by the Dillons. Equally retrograde (well it was 1957) is Anders als du und ich, a film about wayward German youth directed by ex-Nazi propagandist Veit Harlan:

Klaus is a young man in post-war Berlin. He is drawn to his friend Manfred and, under the encouragement of their acquaintance, Dr. Winkler, explores the underground world of gay clubs and electronic music. His family begins to learn of his other life and do everything they can to set him straight.

A saving grace is the conspicuous deployment of Oskar Sala’s Trautonium. They’re deviants—of course they like weird electronic music! Sala’s instrument was his own invention which means it has a unique pre-Moog sound, famously used by Alfred Hitchcock in the score for The Birds. YouTube has a collection of the electronica moments from Anders als du und ich. Wait for the wrestling scene…

• Netherwood: Last Resort of Aleister Crowley by A Gentleman of Hastings. Related: Jimmy Page’s Lucifer Rising sessions part 1 and part 2.

• “This coming 16 June, [BBC] Radio 4 will be a wall-to-wall Joycefest, kicking off at 9am and running until midnight.”

• A World Where Architecture is the Driving Force Behind Society, Core77 on the Cités Obscures of François Schuiten.

• At The Hooded Utilitarian an examination of the thorny problem of adapting Lovecraft for the comics medium.

• Plates from La Plante et ses Applications Ornementales (1897–1900) by Eugene Grasset.

• Coilhouse found a rough copy of Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

• Three Quick Ways to Introduce Yourself to the Work of Harlan Ellison.

• Daniel Buren’s Monumenta 2012 at the Grand Palais, Paris.

• Our Sorrows, a new video from Julia Holter.

• I, Cyclops: Monocularity in a 3-D World.

• JG Ballard: The Concordance.

• RIP Pete Cosey.

• Pete Cosey with Miles Davis et al, November 1973: Ife | Turnaroundphrase

Exposition jewellery

Broche Marguerite.

Still in the 19th century, and more contributions to the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. The first and third of these are collaborations between Art Nouveau designer Eugène Grasset and jeweller brothers Henri & Paul Vever. The butterfly woman is Henri Vever’s own creation.

Well-known jewellers since the 1870s, Henri and Paul Vever broke new ground at the Universal Exhibition of 1900 when they presented a new line of “artistic” jewellery alongside more traditional pieces. They asked the decorator Eugène Grasset to design the new pieces. Grasset, who was the author of the famous vignette on Larousse dictionaries: “Je sème à tous vents”, had trained as a sculptor, designed furniture, posters, stained-glass windows and ceramics and made a name as an illustrator. (More.)

Sylvia.

Apparitions.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exposition Universelle catalogue
• Jewelled butterflies and cephalopods
• Exposition Universelle publications
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The art of Philippe Wolfers, 1858–1929
• The Palais du Trocadéro
• Lalique’s dragonflies
• Lucien Gaillard

The art of Jean Carriès, 1855–1894

The Frog with Rabbit Ears (1891).

La matière de l’étrange, an exhibition of ceramic grotesques by Jean Carriès is currently running at the Petit Palais, Paris, through to January 27th, 2008. Carriès doesn’t feature in any of my books about eccentric or fantastic artists which I find surprising, his work is very peculiar by 19th century standards, looking like the creation of a Rodin obsessed by Lautréamont. Carriès’ series of “horror masks” are so similar to the earlier series of heads by sculptor Franz Messerschmidt I suspect there may be an influence there. And like Rodin, Carriès also had unsuccessful plans for a monumental gateway ornamented with his figures and scowling faces. Unlike Rodin, his plaster draft of the work was destroyed by a criminally unsympathetic curator but the Petit Palais exhibition attempts a reconstruction based on a model by Eugène Grasset.

Thanks to Nathalie for the tip!

• English article at The Art Tribune
• French page with video of the exhibition

Head of a Faun (1890–92?).

Grotesque mask, element for the Monumental Door (1891–94).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Masks of Medusa
• Bernini’s Anima Dannata
• The art of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, 1736–1783
• The art of Stanislav Szukalski, 1893–1987