Artist of the Week: Louis Anquetin

Louis Anquentin

 

1861-1932

 Self-portrait

French painter. He came to Paris in 1882 and studied art at the Ateliers of Bonnat and Cormon, where he was a contemporary and friend of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. His early work shows the influence of Impressionism and of Edgar Degas. In 1887 Anquetin and Bernard devised an innovative method of painting using strong black contour lines and flat areas of colour; Anquetin aroused much comment when he showed his new paintings, including the striking Avenue de Clichy: Five O’Clock in the Evening (1887; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum) at the exhibition of Les XX in Brussels and at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1888. The new style, dubbed Cloisonnisme by the critic Edouard Dujardin (1861–1949), resulted from a study of stained glass, Japanese prints and other so-called ‘primitive’ sources; it was close to the Synthetist experiments of Paul Gauguin and was adopted briefly by van Gogh during his Arles period. Anquetin’s works were shown alongside Gauguin’s and Bernard’s at the Café Volpini exhibition in 1889, where they attracted considerable attention among younger artists.


The contemporary critic Edouard Dujardin praised Anquetin for inventing a style based on heavy outlines and flat areas of color, which resembled cloisonne enamels.

In 1882, he came to Paris and began studying art at Léon Bonnat's studio, where he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The two artists later moved to the studio of Fernand Cormon, where they befriended Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. wikipedia

Photograph from 1886 of Vincent Van Gogh and Emile Bernard

 After viewing this painting Van Gogh wrote in a letter that influenced his painting 

Cafe Terrace at Night (below) . I had previously assumed it was the other way around.

Portrait of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

The Van Gogh Museum recently acquired this painting by Anquentin

Art Knowledge News

Moulin Rouge

1893

Father Commerce and Other Post-Holiday Ruminations

Did you cherish your holidays and your family this season? Me, I tried really hard and fell short of my expectations that I would be the perfect person for each and every individual in my life.  Any smart person would have given up trying by now to be perfect but I, alas, mistakenly harbor hope that one day I will not piss off a single person for even one moment.  Ha!

 Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

~Salvador Dali

There was lots of champagne and good food and beautiful daughters and a loving Old World mother. I decidedly did not receive an iphone from Father Commerce. I find those little gizmos highly distracting. People use their cell phones and other small electronic gadgets while they operate  motor vehicles. If I did that routinely, starting today, I would be dead in three days. Or less. Oh, but I did get a new Canon with a big zoom lens on it. It will be great to be able to photograph birds and the other wildlife around the river and lake. I'm excited.

I think I have a rare form of attention deficit disorder. This is admittedly a self-diagnosis and it may be wacky but I helps me keep my unruly brain in check. Unlike ADHD people, I am often distracted by too much thought - which is really the result of a very long attention span. I don't want to pay attention to too many things at once. I find it overwhelming.  Particularly when it involves driving or operating heavy machinery. For me, a blender constitutes such. I really have to be careful. I also don't understand why so many people don't get that real thinking takes a long time! I'm having this problem with my current instructor. He's way too zippy for me.

I am in a mood. It's not a bad mood, exactly. I just want to tell everyone I love that they should go away from me, please and let me blog. But then, a wonderful thing happens. My daughter SG2, recently turned 21, accepts my invitation to spend the day together yesterday and we click. I took a chance, not altogether sure we would. And we had a wonderful day.. We had a late lunch and then we got our eyebrows waxed. 
I have decided:  one can only eat sushi satisfactorily with another sushi lover.

I promise not to divulge all the eyebrow waxing details. Suffice it to say that I'm very aware of my eyebrows these days. I have been worried that I may frighten people with my shock of white Andy Warhol hair and my jet-black eyebrows. Don't worry. both the eyebrows and the hair remain, and in their respective natural colors. I have merely cleaned up my eyebrows a bit. My daughter approves.  My eyebrows are now more stylish than Warhol's and I hope I'm a tad bit cuter than Andy.

Oh, I got my mother this Christmas and the salt cod!  :-)  And The Runt got some, too!

Pagan Sphinx Warholized

Happy 2010

Be brave and be happy in the new year!

What's Goin' On

There are a few things I intend to do differently next holiday season. The thing is, I'll have to add them on top of all the other things I did this year. It's something to think about.

One of the things I missed this year was my mother. She spent Christmas 2006 with us and visited this past summer from Portugal but it would have been great to have her around. Still, I know she was in many ways happy to relax and not go on any long trips.

Another thing I intend to try to add; notice the emphasis on try. When TCR and I were married, whether my parents were visiting or not, I prepared a Christmas Eve Portuguese meal of cooked salt cod, potatoes and greens, dressed with olive oil and red wine vinegar and a lot freshly ground black pepper. Crusty bread and white wine are essential with this meal. But in my new blended family, no one likes salt cod and we had extra company this year on Christmas Eve. It was quite busy. I enjoyed it but I'm still having a hankering for that salt cod! I'm hoping to pick some up tomorrow so it will be ready to cook on Wednesday. Sherry really got me going with her Italian family's version of bacalla (salt cod). The squid just about put me over the top with longing for Atlantic seafood. Sherry, won't your relatives agree that the little tentacles are the best part? :-)

Hopefully SG2, who is having four impacted wisdom teeth removed, is well enough to enjoy it. On second thought, I think I'd better wait and see how quickly she comes 'round from the surgery. She's not very keen on the idea and is experiencing a bit of anxiety. It's going to be a tough case for the Nurse Mother. Wish us luck. When all is said and done, if we're still speaking, it'll be a miracle. ;-) She knows I jest.

Another thing to try to adopt next holiday is no presents. None at all. Not even small ones that we agreed upon and some people (you know who you are! ;-) go ahead an buy more elaborate gifts anyway. But I must admit I'm not complaining about the new cordless headphones WP surprised me with. Hooked up to my computer, I can so far walk from the bedroom where the laptop is and into the kitchen to pour more champagne. I don't like it when I start to want too many things. And yes, I've been a bit of a lush for two delicious, decadent days. Hehehe. The fun stops tomorrow. Yup. An aching mouth and minus four teeth later, I will be called upon to nurse duty for sure. I suppose I have to put a twenty under her pillow, too. ;-)

WP, his daughter M visiting from San Francisco and I took a drive over the mountain into North Adams to visit Mass MoCA. It was great entertainment. The company was good. It'so nice to see how happy WP is to have his daughter home for the holidays.

There is a Sol LeWitt exhibit at MoCA that knocked my socks off. There are lots of pictures posted to a Picassa online album.

Terrarium Heads:
Wayne (WP), Gina (PS) & Mari (M)

(you can barely see me in the middle; my hand i around Mari)

And stay tuned for a Artist of the Week post on Sol LeWitt.

What did you do today? And how was it?