.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
I love everything that shines, precious stones that sparkle, fabrics that bristle, beautiful women who inspire carnal desire. And painting gives me the most complete possession of that. —— Kees Van Dongen
Au Music-Hall, painted circa 1958, combined Kees van Dongen’s keen observational skills with a vanguard approach to painting, displaying the expressive approach to colour which aligned him with the revolutionary circle of artists known as Les Fauves. Immersed in the vibrancy of the French capital, Van Dongen enthusiastically chronicled the fashionable, vibrant milieu that thronged its streets through an explosive mixture of strident colour and vigorously rendered forms.
Van Dongen, a self-taught artist, had arrived in Paris from Rotterdam in 1897 and was immediately struck by the city’s vitality and modernity. The artist would later note that Paris drew him in ‘like a lighthouse’, pulling him into its hedonistic world of cabarets and nightclubs that dotted the hills of Montmartre and Pigalle (quoted in A. Hopmans, The Van Dongen Nobody Knows: Early and Fauvist Drawings 1895-1912, exh. cat, Rotterdam, Lyons and Paris, 1997, p. 26). Treading in the footsteps of his predecessors who similarly depicted and lived amongst the entertainers on the fringes of Parisian society – among them Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas, who were still frequent patrons of the bars and brothels of the city during this time – Van Dongen cast his intense eye on the fleeting spectacle of modern life. From 1905 to 1907, Van Dongen rented rooms in the famed and notoriously ramshackle Bateau-Lavoir on the rue Ravignan, intermingling with the flashy characters of the demi-mode and living among pioneers of the avant-garde scene, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris. Picasso and Van Dongen worked on the same floor, striking up a close friendships in the years in which they lived and painted side by side, spending hours in each other’s studios, exchanging art, and discussing their practice. The former’s paintings of prostitutes and entertainers of the early 1900s were an important precedent for Van Dongen, who was fascinated by the seductive nightlife of the area and who sought his subjects among the Bohemian pleasure-seekers who thronged the cafes and dancehalls, as well as the cohorts who entertained them.
The riotous colour palette of Au Music-Hall is undoubtedly a nod to Van Dongen’s artistic lineage. Indeed, the brilliant jewel tones of the present work are particularly vivid, their vibrancy perhaps intended to emphasise the flamboyant and tawdry nature of the entertainer who dominates the foreground of the composition. Standing coyly on the stage of a brightly lit, crowded music hall, her demure posture is at odds with her lewdly revealing dress and the applause from the delighted audience, suggesting an artificial display of bashfulness. Her pale skin is shaded with rich emerald, and her plumed costume and stockings are treated in various shades of red, vermilion, and fuchsia which are mirrored throughout the rest of the scene and embedded in the theatre’s walls. Her cheeks and lips are painted a garishly bright red, and her eyes are outlined by coal and more rich greens. The bright yellow mop of curls atop her head comically mirrors the stark planes of colour in the landscape of the stage setting, crowning a field of green tinged with red that matches the prisms of colour on her face. The palette with which Van Dongen depicts the entertainer is exaggerated in his depiction of the audience and theatre, particularly in the tinted golden lustre of the sculpted columns, here depicted as nudes with their arms outstretched, likewise dappled in shades of greens and magenta.
The deft mastery of electric colours and dramatic tonalities underscores Van Dongen’s alignment with Fauvism. The group, conceived by Henri Matisse and André Derain in 1904, burst onto the Parisian art scene with their visceral application of paint and their bold use of clashing planes, achieving overnight succès de scandale and having been dubbed les fauves (“wild beasts”) by the critic Louis Vauxcelles for their daring aesthetic. Van Dongen would have surely admired Matisse’s epochal Femme au chapeau, for the audacious swirling of colours in the contours of Madame Matisse’s face, and for its embodiment of the fashion of the time. Although Van Dongen had not exhibited with the group in the 1905 Salon d’Automne, he subsequently became associated with them and rapidly earned a reputation as one of the boldest and most original among the artists associated with the movement.
Au Music-Hall, though painted in the last years of the artist’s life, harkens back to the subjects which fascinated Van Dongen and to which he returned to throughout his prolific career. As he continued to gain critical success, Van Dongen travelled extensively throughout Europe and northern Africa and was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in 1926. By the 1930s, he had become a fixture in the luxurious world of the Paris elite, embraced by the fashionable milieu and becoming friends with legendary designers such as Paul Poiret and Jeanne Adèle Bernard, who both collected his art. His many portraits, particularly of women, were lauded in society and achieved critical acclaim. Van Dongen continued to revel in depicting beautiful women in contemporary fashions with virtuoso colourism, inviting the viewer to indulge in the vibrant world of entertainment and reminiscing on the decadent world to which he once belonged. In 1949, he purchased a villa in Monaco where he settled with his wife Marie-Claire and their son. Appropriately, he named the villa Le Bateau-Lavoir.
Au Music-Hall, painted circa 1958, combined Kees van Dongen’s keen observational skills with a vanguard approach to painting, displaying the expressive approach to colour which aligned him with the revolutionary circle of artists known as Les Fauves. Immersed in the vibrancy of the French capital, Van Dongen enthusiastically chronicled the fashionable, vibrant milieu that thronged its streets through an explosive mixture of strident colour and vigorously rendered forms.
Van Dongen, a self-taught artist, had arrived in Paris from Rotterdam in 1897 and was immediately struck by the city’s vitality and modernity. The artist would later note that Paris drew him in ‘like a lighthouse’, pulling him into its hedonistic world of cabarets and nightclubs that dotted the hills of Montmartre and Pigalle (quoted in A. Hopmans, The Van Dongen Nobody Knows: Early and Fauvist Drawings 1895-1912, exh. cat, Rotterdam, Lyons and Paris, 1997, p. 26). Treading in the footsteps of his predecessors who similarly depicted and lived amongst the entertainers on the fringes of Parisian society – among them Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas, who were still frequent patrons of the bars and brothels of the city during this time – Van Dongen cast his intense eye on the fleeting spectacle of modern life. From 1905 to 1907, Van Dongen rented rooms in the famed and notoriously ramshackle Bateau-Lavoir on the rue Ravignan, intermingling with the flashy characters of the demi-mode and living among pioneers of the avant-garde scene, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris. Picasso and Van Dongen worked on the same floor, striking up a close friendships in the years in which they lived and painted side by side, spending hours in each other’s studios, exchanging art, and discussing their practice. The former’s paintings of prostitutes and entertainers of the early 1900s were an important precedent for Van Dongen, who was fascinated by the seductive nightlife of the area and who sought his subjects among the Bohemian pleasure-seekers who thronged the cafes and dancehalls, as well as the cohorts who entertained them.
The riotous colour palette of Au Music-Hall is undoubtedly a nod to Van Dongen’s artistic lineage. Indeed, the brilliant jewel tones of the present work are particularly vivid, their vibrancy perhaps intended to emphasise the flamboyant and tawdry nature of the entertainer who dominates the foreground of the composition. Standing coyly on the stage of a brightly lit, crowded music hall, her demure posture is at odds with her lewdly revealing dress and the applause from the delighted audience, suggesting an artificial display of bashfulness. Her pale skin is shaded with rich emerald, and her plumed costume and stockings are treated in various shades of red, vermilion, and fuchsia which are mirrored throughout the rest of the scene and embedded in the theatre’s walls. Her cheeks and lips are painted a garishly bright red, and her eyes are outlined by coal and more rich greens. The bright yellow mop of curls atop her head comically mirrors the stark planes of colour in the landscape of the stage setting, crowning a field of green tinged with red that matches the prisms of colour on her face. The palette with which Van Dongen depicts the entertainer is exaggerated in his depiction of the audience and theatre, particularly in the tinted golden lustre of the sculpted columns, here depicted as nudes with their arms outstretched, likewise dappled in shades of greens and magenta.
The deft mastery of electric colours and dramatic tonalities underscores Van Dongen’s alignment with Fauvism. The group, conceived by Henri Matisse and André Derain in 1904, burst onto the Parisian art scene with their visceral application of paint and their bold use of clashing planes, achieving overnight succès de scandale and having been dubbed les fauves (“wild beasts”) by the critic Louis Vauxcelles for their daring aesthetic. Van Dongen would have surely admired Matisse’s epochal Femme au chapeau, for the audacious swirling of colours in the contours of Madame Matisse’s face, and for its embodiment of the fashion of the time. Although Van Dongen had not exhibited with the group in the 1905 Salon d’Automne, he subsequently became associated with them and rapidly earned a reputation as one of the boldest and most original among the artists associated with the movement.
Au Music-Hall, though painted in the last years of the artist’s life, harkens back to the subjects which fascinated Van Dongen and to which he returned to throughout his prolific career. As he continued to gain critical success, Van Dongen travelled extensively throughout Europe and northern Africa and was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in 1926. By the 1930s, he had become a fixture in the luxurious world of the Paris elite, embraced by the fashionable milieu and becoming friends with legendary designers such as Paul Poiret and Jeanne Adèle Bernard, who both collected his art. His many portraits, particularly of women, were lauded in society and achieved critical acclaim. Van Dongen continued to revel in depicting beautiful women in contemporary fashions with virtuoso colourism, inviting the viewer to indulge in the vibrant world of entertainment and reminiscing on the decadent world to which he once belonged. In 1949, he purchased a villa in Monaco where he settled with his wife Marie-Claire and their son. Appropriately, he named the villa Le Bateau-Lavoir.