Word: stael
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...impossible to name all the artists or point out all of the outstanding works. Miro, Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani, de Stael, Matisse, Kandinsky, Vlamink--they are all there. Three very gentle and humourous Dubuffet's, a marvelous Miro bull, Max Ernst's flowers with sea-shell impressions for petals are examples of traditionally but well represented artists. Picasso steps out of the norm with a stage curtain painted for Diaghilev's Russian Ballet, recapturing Paris's sense of community, in contrast to the unique achievements of each artist separately...
...types of works, however discontinuous the pattern is chronologically or by school. For instance, all portraits are combined in one small galery and geometric and cubist styles of all kinds are grouped in another. Dissimilarities are exploited as well. For example in the juxtaposition of Nicholaes de Stael's violent, angular Reclining Blue Nude on a Red Background and Jean Fautrier's The Gentle Woman, which is cool, liquid, and soft as an oyster...
Samuel Johnson: Vile rubbish. Women in the eighteenth century had all the power. Madame de Stael practically made the French revolution...
Simone: Ah, Madame de Stael was wonderful. But all that salon-power was unofficial, illicit. Out in the real world, the public sphere, there were only men. Who remembers today that Madame de Stael coined the distinction between Classic and Romantic? In school you learn about Napoleon, Robespierre; who in the next generation will remember that Neitzsche's mistress prodded him into writing his greatest book? It's shameful...
...complexion of the marriage changed after Bonaparte returned a national hero, besieged by well-wishers and idolized by women ("Genius has no sex!" cried Madame de Stael, trying to rush past a startled footman to surprise Bonaparte in his bath). Threatened with divorce, Josephine meekly settled down to the role of dutiful wife...