Gustave Caillebotte at the Brooklyn Museum

On Target First Saturdays, admission to the Brooklyn Museum is free. JS suggested seeing the Caillebottee exhibition "Impressionist Paintings from Paris to the Sea." He was there with two friends, R and Y, when I finally arrived after an epic journey on the 2-turned-local train. 

Though "The Floor Scrapers" (1876) is a lesser painting compared to the one on the same theme in the Musee D'Orsay, it is still very pleasingly virtuosic and humanly sensitive. While the master works to finish a newly laid hardwood floor by shaving the buckling boards in place, his apprenticeship is, appropriately, sharpening his blade. Since the room is likely to be Caillebotte's studio, the painting becomes a depiction too of the relationship between tradition and the individual talent. 

The best group of paintings are scenes on water. "Oarsman in a Top Hat" (1877-78) directs the eye along a wonderful recession into the painting, while "Oarsmen Rowing on the Yerres"(1877)  almost thrusts the front oarsman out of the picture frame into the viewer's arms. Both paintings exhibit not only Caillebotte's interest in unusual points of view and dramatic croppings, but also his fascination with doubles. In the first painting, another boat glides in the background, rowed by two men whose greater experience than the top-hatted city gent is belied by their practical straw hats and thin white shirts. In the latter drawing, the front oarsman finds a visual back-up in the rower behind him. 

The same device, that of doubles, is used in my favorite painting of the exhibition. In "Bather Preparing to Dive, Banks of the Yerres" (1877) the titled Bather is about to leap out of the picture, on the left side of the frame. Another bather, not mentioned in the title, is climbing out of the water onto the bank on the right side of the painting. Though both bathers may be thought to form a kind of cycle--entering and exiting the river--the fact they they face away from each other gives the cycle an interesting tension. What the cycle encircles is the water of the Yerres, a shimmery greeny-blue under tree shade. 

Another painting that I like very much is "Roses in the Garden at Petit Gennevilliers" (1886). Caillebotte was also an enthusiastic gardener on top of being an acclaimed sailor. Unusual for him, the painting makes use of a curved path, instead of strict rectilinear forms, to create the illusion of depth. The curve is almost a ribbon round the rosebushes presented like a giant bouquet to the woman in the painting, his companion Charlotte Berthier. 

Add: JS pointed me to this video on Caillebotte, a PBS Sunday Arts program, in which the exhibition curator talks about her artist. You can see the paintings there that I describe in this post. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Thumboo's "Ulysses by the Merlion"

I've just revised a poem written years ago, a poem that delineates the different responses of four readers, of different generations, to the seminal nationalistic poem by Edwin Thumboo . Thumboo is reckoned to be the first major Singaporean poet writing in English. First, Thumboo's poem, then followed by mine. ULYSSES BY THE MERLION (for Maurice Baker) I have sailed many waters, Skirted islands of fire, Contended with Circe Who loved the squeal of pigs; Passed Scylla and Charybdis To seven years with Calypso, Heaved in battle against the gods. Beneath it all I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled, Travelled and travelled, Suffering much, enjoying a little; Met strange people singing New myths; made myths myself. But this lion of the sea Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail, Touched with power, insistent On this brief promontory... Puzzles. Nothing, nothing in my days Foreshadowed this Half-beast, half-fish, This powerful creature of land and sea. Peoples settled here, Brought to th
Read more

Steven Cantor's "What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann"

Image
Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato , 199 0 Since it is moving pictures, a film necessarily captures--produces--a process. It turns photographs into the making of photographs. It joins moments ("spots of time") into a Life. This I expected watching Cantor's documentary on Sally Mann's creation of the exhibit "What Remains." So photographs of a long-dead beloved greyhound "lead" to photographs of the Civil War battlefield of Antietam, to photographs of Mann's Virginian farm bloodied by the police killing of a runaway convict, to photographs of decomposing bodies in a forensic study site, as if each group of pictures forms an independent yet preparatory stage in the creative process. What I did not expect to see is the influence of the film-making on the photography itself. Mann begins to think of her exhibit as a "narrative," and wants the narrative of death to end on a more uplifting note. With such an idea in mind, she takes close-up pic
Read more

Goh Chok Tong's Visit to FCBC

Image
I am surprised by how much this incident is affecting me. I thought I have moved past my former religious life, left it behind in Singapore, but like tin cans tied to a dog it has followed me and is rattling me. I am posting the incident, and my response to it, here on this blog, because I want to remember that the past is not yet past. When Emeritus Senior Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong visited Faith Community Baptist Church on 13 January during a Sunday service, Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong took the opportunity to deliver a hateful anti-gay message . Among other things, he said: We affirm that the family unit comprises a man as Father, a woman as Mother, and Children. This is the basic building block of society, a value foundational for a secure future, a premise fundamental to nation-building. and warned ominously that We see a looming threat to this basic building block by homosexual activists seeking to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code.   Examples from ar
Read more