Word: bonnards
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...Paris last week was an art show with a lofty label-"Masterpieces of the 20th Century"-and a thesis. Among the 114 canvases and twelve sculptures on display were major works by Renoir, Van Gogh, Picasso, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Klee, Marcel Duchamp and scores of lesser lights. The thesis: "Such cultural achievements are possible only in a climate of intellectual freedom...
...that "A hundred years from now, Gromaire will be considered one of the most representative painters of our period." That was faint praise, yet fair enough. Gromaire's art says little that has not been better expressed by older School-of-Paris artists-among them his two favorites, Bonnard and Matisse. But in a field crammed with slapdash imitations of the masters, Gromaire's paintings have an honest, craftsmanlike, and sometimes compelling ring...
...Bonnard once pointed out (in a conversation quoted in Verve) that his personal brand of impressionism involved painting first impressions. He described an experiment in painting from nature instead of from memory which had ended in failure. "I tried to paint directly, scrupulously," he recalled, "and I let myself be absorbed by the details ... I realized that I was muddling, that I was getting nowhere. I had lost, I could no longer find my way back to my initial idea, the vision that had charmed me . . . the first seductiveness...
...maintain the seductiveness of his first impression, Bonnard painted from memory, not from nature. A French critic once provided a vivid picture of Bonnard's working methods: "With four thumb tacks he had pinned a canvas, lightly tinted with ocher, to the dining-room wall. During the first few days he would glance from time to time, as he painted, at a sketch on a piece of paper twice the size of one's hand ... At first, I could not identify the subject. Did I have before me a landscape or a seascape...
...eighth day ... I was astonished to be able to recognize a landscape in which a house appeared in the distance and a young woman on a path, with a child and two dogs beside her. From that time on Bonnard no longer referred to his sketch. He would step back to observe the effect of the juxtaposed tones; occasionally he would place a dab of color with his finger, then another next to the first. On about the fifteenth day I asked him how long he thought it would take . . . Bonnard replied: 'I finished it this morning...