Van Dongen, fauve, anarchiste et mondain
Il y a vingt ans une rétrospective Van Dongen avait lieu au Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Son sous-titre, « Le peintre », comme Kees Van Dongen se plaisait à signer, montrait à la fois sa provocante ambition et son dessein d’artiste. Cette dualité reste à bien des égards un trait marquant du peintre d’origine néerlandais. L’exposition tentait alors de redonner une place à son œuvre dans l’histoire de l’art après des années d’oubli et de mépris. Depuis, force est de constater que le travail de l’historien continue à travers expositions et publications scientifiques. L’exposition Le Fauvisme ou « l’épreuve du feu », qui s’est tenu également au Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris en 1990- 2000, décrivait la place originale et l’importance de Van Dongen au sein de ce mouvement. L’exposition L’Ecole de Paris, la part de l’Autre s’intéressait au rôle des artistes étrangers sur la scène artistique parisienne, dont Van Dongen fait partie. Des expositions en France et à l’étranger ont aussi fait date, celles notamment organisées à Monaco et à Rotterdam qui permettent de découvrir des œuvres jusque-là inconnues et d’approfondir nos connaissances sur l’artiste.
La présente exposition – qui prend la suite de celle du Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen de Rotterdam -, plus restreinte puisqu’elle parcourt l’œuvre de 1895 au début des années 1930, témoigne plus particulièrement des étapes de la carrière de l’artiste, à la lumière des dernière recherches historiques. Le sous-titre évocateur ne cherche pas à rappeler les périodes stylistiques de l’artiste mais ses attitudes souvent contradictoires et paradoxales. Difficile, voire impossible d’établir un style anarchiste ! Il est sensible à certains thèmes, notamment la dénonciation de l’oppression politique et sociale qui trouve un parfait exutoire dans la caricature et le dessin de presse. Il garde une attirance pour les laissés-pour-compte et les marginaux dont la prostituée est en quelque sorte le symbole. De l’anarchie, il conserve une indépendance indéfectible, mâtinée de provocation, cette « liberté » si chère à l’artiste.
Cette exposition rappelle également chez cet artiste la place essentielle du fauvisme – en particulier le rôle de la couleur – qui innerve tout son œuvre. Entre ses débuts fortement imprégnés d’idées anarchistes à Rotterdam et Paris et sa consécration comme peintre « très à la mode », Van Dongen accomplit un parcours impressionnant qui lui vaudra de recevoir dès 1914, avec ses envois au Salon des Indépendants puis, trois ans plus tard, lors de son exposition personnelle à la galerie d’Antin, les louanges de Guillaume Apollinaire, ardent défenseur des peintres cubistes et pourtant critique à l’égard de Van Dongen.
Après ses premiers succès en tant que Fauve – « rien de plus neuf, ni de plus personnel que ses manèges de cochons », dira un critique à propos de ses Carrousels exposés au Salon des Indépendants de 1905 – Van Dongen fait face aux attaques de la presse avec son sensationnel tableau A la Galette de 1906. « Le Kropotkine inspiré du Bateau-Lavoir » comme le surnomme Picasso, est désormais critiqué pour sa « farouche volonté d’indépendance ». A la mort de Cézanne en octobre 1906, qui marque le début d’une profonde réévaluation de son œuvre, Van Dongen décide d’aller passer six mois dans son pays natal, peut-être pour se ressourcer. De retour à Paris en août 1907, il délaisse le précubisme pour un primitivisme qui vise l’expressivité par la couleur et se définit quelques mois plus tard comme « un nègre blanc », à l’occasion de sa première exposition personnelle chez Bernheim-Jeune. Sa carrière est lancée. Sûr de lui, Van Dongen poursuit maintenant sa route en quête d’une synthèse et d’une place à conquérir entre le cubisme de Picasso ou de Braque et le modernisme décoratif de Matisse.
De même, l’atmosphère mondaine qui se manifeste à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale et surtout les « années folles » qui lui succèdent, montrent un peintre « arrivé », qui a conquis Paris, tant par les succès que les scandales. Il remet à l’honneur le portrait, honni par l’avant-garde. Il invente, comme d’autres artistes de l’Ecole de Paris tels Kisling et Foujita le portrait moderne avec ses poses et ses accessoires, gardant son sens de la couleur, reprenant les codes anciens, tout en les détournant parfois de sa destination. Notre sentiment face à ces œuvres est ambigu : on y admire autant l’adresse du peintre fauve que l’on perçoit une part d’ironie. Les personnages changent, les vedettes font leur entrée : mannequins de chez Poiret ou starlettes du muet, du music-hall ou du théâtre. En cette époque de liberté des mœurs, il croque une femme libre et fatale, mais aussi des hommes politiques, des écrivains que Van Dongen n’épargne guère plus.
La crise économique de 1929 marque un coup d’arrêt à son irrésistible ascension. L’artiste, moins sollicité par sa clientèle, devient son propre imprésario, Van Dongen se replie sur lui-même. Sa production, plus inconstante, se raréfie. Sa carrière, moins flamboyante, n’est plus à son apogée. Van Dongen, peintre moderniste et à la mode, avait jusque-là donné le meilleur, présenté dans cette exposition.
Anita Hopmans et Sophie Krebs
Van Dongen, en route vers la célébrité
En 1929, dans un article intitulé «Comment je suis arrivé», Kees van Dongen résume ses débuts de peintre par un laconique «tout ça, c’est du passé», expliquant «qu’il n’a pas de place dans son esprit pour conserver les souvenirs». Au plus fort de sa notoriété «l’idole de Paris», comme le surnomme un quotidien néerlandais, qui n’aime rien tant que « l’art, la vie et les femmes » et donne dans sa somptueuse villa des fêtes parmi les plus courues de Paris, laisse donc à ses interlocuteurs le soin d’imaginer sa vie. Le titre de l’article a beau impliquer que le peintre a bien l’idée d’avoir parcouru du chemin entre ses débuts de dessinateur à Rotterdam et sa consécration internationale, que celle-ci n’est par conséquent ni le fruit du hasard, ni le résultat de la seule volonté, il répétera toujours qu’il ne doit son succès qu’à son propre talent. Tout cela n’aurait au fond, jamais été qu’une affaire de pinceau et de persévérance. A la fin, Van Dongen ne prend même plus la peine d’évoquer ses ambitions ni les influences qui l’ont guidé dans son travail, se défendant au contraire d’avoir suivi la moindre « doctrine artistique ». Quand la légende est plus belle que la réalité, mieux vaut imprimer la légende.
Cette réussite ne s’est bien sûr pas faite en un jour pas plus qu’elle n’a été le coup du destin ou le fait du seul génie de l’artiste. Quand Van Dongen quitte les Pays-Bas, Paris n’est pas seulement la capitale de la France, mais aussi celle de l’art moderne, le temple de l’avant-garde. Les places sont chères, il y a peu d’élus. Exposer comme il le fait à la galerie Vollard en 1904 était un privilège jusque- là réservé à Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso ou Henri Matisse. Quant à son engagement social des débuts, nourri de vues anarchistes, il se fond parfaitement dans le Montmartre international de l’époque. Cette «coïncidence» est déjà révélatrice du parcours de Van Dongen : au cours de son ascension, il saura toujours s’entourer des amitiés nécessaires et trouver le milieu idéal pour progresser, poussé par un rêve moderniste.
Van Dongen jalonne son chemin de tableaux dont le format et l’audace – mais aussi les effets de surprise dont il sait entourer – frappent l’attention du public. Parfois, il présente lui-même ses œuvres directement aux critiques d’art, quand il ne les invite pas à venir suivre chez lui l’évolution de son travail. Mais si il a toujours pris soin d’agir un cran au-dessus de la bienséance, dans le désir de défier, de provoquer ou d’émerveiller, il ne s’en donne pas moins corps et âme à sa peinture, avec passion. « Je travaille, travaille et travaille », confie-t-il au mois d’août 1907, «j’avance lentement mais sûrement. En novembre ou décembre, j’ai une grande exposition chez Berheim [-Jeune] pour moi tout seul». Au dos de la carte sur laquelle est écrit ce message figure la Victoire de Samothrace du Louvre. Dès 1908, le Fauve Van Dongen expose chez Die Brücke et sympathise avec Pablo Picasso et Piet Mondrian, qu’on considère trop souvent simplement comme ses rivaux. Son cercle artistique comptait aussi bien des partisans que des adversaires du cubisme comme Guillaume Apollinaire, André Salmon ou Louis Wauxcelles.
Toujours très avisé, Van Dongen sait tirer parti de ses relations et celles-ci, en retour, ne se montreront pas toujours tendres à son égard. La réalité des débuts s’accorde mal avec l’image mondaine du succès. En 1907, le peintre quitte son atelier du Bateau-Lavoir l’année même où Picasso change le cours de l’art avec Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. En 1912, il s’installe à Montparnasse, quand l’avant-garde se déplace justement vers la rive gauche. En 1916, il emménage dans un hôtel particulier de la villa Saïd et quelques années plus tard dans celui, encore plus chic, de la rue Juliette-Lamber. Dans les 1930, son immense atelier de la rue de Courcelles marque l’apothéose de sa glorieuse carrière.
Tous ces ateliers, pour certains encore partiellement intacts, j’ai eu la chance de les visiter et j’ai été frappée par leurs différences de taille ; la singularité de leur environnement, le type de perspectives qu’ils offraient. Et parce qu’aucun d’eux n’a pu être choisi par hasard, tous me racontent quelque chose du parcours de Van Dongen. Ce voyage de maison en maison est aussi l’une des clés pour mieux comprendre sa vision d’artiste, le rôle joué par les galeries où il exposait et l’importance de ses fréquentations. Quelle métamorphose a-t-il accompli, lui le peintre anarchiste d’avant-garde qui a aimé les pauvres avant d’être apprécié des riches, pour devenir cette « idole de Paris » évoquée plus haut ? Quel chemin a-t-il bien pu parcourir pour aller si loin «dans» la célébrité? La présente exposition et le catalogue qui l’accompagne donneront, je l’espère, la réponse à ces questions.
Anita Hopmans
— Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Kees van Dongen - Her Body is my Landscape
Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) was a somewhat cynical cuss, but with a sense of humor. He cut a flamboyant figure in Paris. His lifestyle was controversial, his lavish nightly studio parties were attended by film stars, masqued politicians and artists. "Woman" was his muse, her body his landscape, and the young Brigitte Bardot his most famous model. What Andy Warhol was to New York in the 1960s, Kees van Dongen was to Paris - a society artist and bohemien who brought added colour and excitement to the upper classes of the city.
Kees van Dongen was born in Delfshaven, a suburb of Rotterdam. Showing early artistic promise, he studied in the evenings at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Rotterdam from 1892 to 1897. He spent much of his spare time at the docks, sketching sailors and prostitutes. He earned his living by day, illustrating for satirical journals including Groene and Rotterdam Nieuwsblad. His spicy drawings of life at the harbour caused some scandal.
In 1899, van Dongen settled in Paris. Shortly thereafter, he married a fellow painter, Augusta Preitinger, whom he had met at the Rotterdam Academy. Van Dongen's primary source of financial support was the illustrations he did for anarchist and other publications, including Le Rire, Gil Blas, and La Revue Blanche. One issue of the left-wing review L'Assiette au Beurre - a special issue devoted to prostitution in contemporary Paris, a phenomenon thought to be symptomatic of the degeneration of the bourgeoisie - was illustrated entirely by van Dongen.
In 1904, van Dongen exhibited some 100 works at the gallery of Ambroise Vollard, a champion of avant-garde art. The catalogue of the show was introduced by the famous anarchist and art critic Félix Fénéon. The next year, he showed pictures at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne alongside a loose collection of like-minded painters of which Matisse was the ringleader. The riot of color in their work caused a somewhat hostile critic, Louis Vauxcelles, to dub these artists "les fauves" (the wild beasts). Femme Fatale is a typical Fauve painting by van Dongen:
In a sense, the Fauves were exploring a similar territory to their contemporaries among the German Expressionists, and it is therefore no surprise to find that in 1908, Van Dongen was invited to exhibit alongside the Dresden-based group, Die Brücke. This had followed his making the acquaintance of Max Pechstein during the latter's trip to Paris the previous year. The Brücke artists featured that same year in Van Dongen's correspondence, when he referred to their first exhibition, although he somewhat ungraciously termed them "boches", a deliberately teasing act of provocation considering the letter was addressed to his German dealer Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler.
In Paris, van Dongen had found lodging in the famed Bateau-Lavoir (the laundry barge), the name coined by the poet Max Jacob for the seedy Montmartre tenement whose most celebrated resident was Pablo Picasso. Picasso and van Dongen became fast friends, and van Dongen painted Picasso's mistress, Fernande Olivier. Thrust into this fertile artistic and literary milieu, van Dongen cultivated a carefree bohemian image typified by his comment: "I've always played. Painting is nothing but a game."
Van Dongen’s travels through Spain, Morocco and Egypt in 1910 and 1913 resulted in a series of sombre but striking landscapes. His continuing attraction to the exotic led him to accept a commission to illustrate an edition of Les Mille et Une Nuits by Mardrus. Van Dongen gained celebrity through the outraged reaction to his large nude of his wife, Tableau, painted in 1913 and now in the Centre Georges Pompidou. This picture, shown at the Salon d'Automne the same year that it was painted, was considered so salacious and licentious that the police removed it.
"For all those who look with their ears, here is a completely naked woman. You are prudish, but I tell you that our sexes are organs that are as amusing as brains, and if the sex was found in the face, in place of the nose (which could have happened), where would prudishness be then? Shamelessness is really a virtue, like the lack of respect for many respectable things.", van Dongen commented upon the virtual detention of his wife.
Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, van Dongen acquired a reputation as a socialite, hosting a masquerade party at this home, now in Montparnasse, that was the talk of fashionable Paris in 1914. His licentious nudes and erotic subjects caused a stir among critics and admirers alike. Van Dongen's connections with the rich and famous led him to chronical the Age des Folles and its excessive habits. His portraits of the time range from the world-weary garçonne to well-known figures such as Anatole France.
At the end of World War I, van Dongen was discovered by the upper classes, who commissioned him to paint many celebrity portrait. With a playful cynicism he remarked of his popularity as a portraitist with high society women: "The essential thing is to elongate the women and especially to make them slim. After that it just remains to enlarge their jewels. They are ravished." A remark that allies itself to another of his sayings - "Painting is the most beautiful of lies."
From 1917 to 1927 van Dongen formed a liaison with Jasmy Jacob, who managed a haute couture house. He seemed as much a participant in as an observer of the fastpaced Roaring Twenties, yet claimed to maintain aesthetic distance: "I very much like being as they say, the painter of elegance and fashion! But I am not, as many wish to believe, a victim of snobbism, of luxury, of the world." But in 1927 van Dongen wrote a biography of Rembrandt that proved to be a largely autobiographical account of a painter encumbered by his own fame. Two years later van Dongen, who had so successfully captured French society in his art, became a French citizen.
With the economic crash of 1929 van Dongen's artistic fortunes, so dependent on a prosperous society, suffered a temporary setback. Yet he continued to garner significant portrait commissions in the 1930s, including that of the Aga Khan and King Leopold III of Belgium. He complemented his work as a portraitist with a steady stream of book illustrations, including writings by Proust (above) Kipling, Montherlant, Voltaire, Gide, and Baudelaire. In 1938 he met Marie-Claire Huguen, who bore him a son, Jean Marie, in 1940. They finally married in 1953. His career was briefly stalled in the mid-1940s thanks to a sponsored 1941 cultural visit to Nazi-Germany in the company of other French artists including André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. The trip was organized by the artist Heinrich Ehmsen, at that time a German cultural liaison officer in Paris.
In the waning years of his life, spent in Monaco, van Dongen was honored by frequent museum retrospectives. He disappeared from this world on May 28, 1968 in Monaco, the same day, all the world had its eyes turned toward the burning barricades in Paris. To disappear almost unnoticed was his final artistic act. Until almost the end he sustained what Apollinaire had called his blend of "opium, ambergris, and eroticism".
— Weimar
Van Dongen: A Fauve in the City.
The reputation of Paris as a leading center of important economic, socio-political and cultural changes was already well established in European social circles at the beginning of the twentieth century. The booming industrialization inspired various economic activities in every aspects of human existence. The market for the commodities of all kind was constantly growing and opening widely for business offerings basically everything, including indecent services, as long as the buyer was able to afford its price. The city of Paris was becoming the international center of the world of fashion, entertainment, and Modern art. Despite its administrative problems related to the overwhelming population growth not followed by the infrastructural necessities in order to accommodate the new arrivals, Paris embraced everyone who was looking for a chance of a working space in the city. The artists from around the world were crossing each other on the streets of Paris, pursuing their dreams for a success and recognition of their talent. Kees Van Dongen, whose exposition was hosted by the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, was one of many who tried to establish his artistic personality in Paris, and one of few who was able to do it successfully during his lifetime.
The Van Dongen’s exposition in Montreal gathered artworks from different periods of his artistic carrier. The artworks which capture a particular attention are the drawings titled: “Woman Drinking Absinthe” , “Cocotte” , and “Le Mepris”. These particular artworks Van Dongen executed during the time he was working for the Parisian reviews such as La Review Blanche, L’Assiette au Beure, Le Rire, and Gil Blas. The magnetic power of these artworks attracts the viewer not only for its aesthetics, but also because of their refine commentary and psychological content. These drawings were executed between the years of 1901 and 1902. These three artworks belong to the series of drawings created by Van Dongen during his first years in Paris. It was the time when he had to struggle for surviving by drawing portraits of people in cafeterias and on the streets in order to be able to sustain him-self and his young family. Van Dongen’s sharpness of his allegoric statements is emanating from these artworks at the viewer with horrifying exposure of the psychological summary of French classes. These drawings depict the social degradation of Parisian society. The picture “Woman Drinking Absinthe” differs from all the others exposed in the museum. In this artwork Van Dongen made editorial comment taking as a subject the problem of prostitution in Paris. At first regard the artwork gives an impression of humoristic view on the male versus female relations. However, this particular drawing Van Dongen executed not in the conventional realistic way as he did with the other drawings. This time the semiotic ambiguity of his judgment of the social degradation is enforced by psychological allegory to the human basic instincts. He exposes the animal nature of human beings. It is a dark satire on the imperfection of the phallic social system. Besides the editorial subjectivity the artwork does not have yet the “Van Dongian” fauvist flavor. Instead, the aesthetics and technical particularities of the drawing ”Woman Drinking Absinthe” suggest enormous influences of Toulouse-Lautrec’s artistic style. Especially in these particular artworks the freedom of the brush is definitely borrowed either from Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Pierre Bonnard, or from all of them at the same time.
Submitting the artwork to the closer examination of its symbolic allegorical meaning, it is necessary to begin with the general description of its content. Van Dongen depicted a seating woman on the street in black dress with her legs covered with black stockings spread widely in a provocatively inviting position in the direction of the metamorphic skeleton of either a rabbit, or a dog, with a human skull and a tuxedo hat on it. The seated position of the skeleton suggests a rabbit, which symbolizes besides many other meanings the dishonesty, damaging activities, as well as a man’s libido. We can also consider that it is a hesitating dog that is not sure if the tempting garter in the hand of the woman is worth the bite. In such case, the dog symbolizes greediness and bad habits. Both descriptions fit the image well. The woman, according to the title of the drawing, is drunk what would symbolize her weakness and frivolity. Her head is covered with the hat with an evident unspecified red decoration on it. Her lips are in red and the visible underwear between her legs is red too. The red color goes from her head through her lips to the woman’s underwear. It is symbolic reference to the three steps of merchandising the prostitute services. The first is the idea of selling her body for money. The second is her mouth, through which she would trade with the client. The third would be the final consumption of the purchased “ goods.” The Woman is supporting her seating figure with her right hand preventing herself from falling. With her left hand stretched out, she is grasping her garter. She is trying to attract the metamorphic creature between her legs. The skull of the creature has an opened mouth, what emphasizes his hunger and the desire to bite the garter, or more. The spread legs are actually preventing the metamorphic creature from escaping, exposing the red flounces as an additional element of temptation. The drawing is executed with great artistic freedom of the brush and mixed media. The image provocative composition is catching the viewer in its psychoanalytic imaginary spider net. From the psychological point of view the image itself does to the viewer exactly what the woman does to the metamorphic creature. It emanates the temptation. It attracts the viewer’s attention by its unusual allegoric symbolism. It is Van Dongen’s the only artwork at the exposition with the surrealistic taste. The allegory of this image is evident and represents the essence of Parisian realities viewed through the critical perception of the artist’s intellect. Van Dongen’s irony in this drawing reflects the consequences of industrialization and its impact on the style of living of those less fortunate who became as merchandise for those who can afford it. The prostitution in Paris become affordable commodity and followed closely the development of consumer society. The difference in the sizes between the woman and the metamorphic creature figures symbolizes how serious the problems of social inequities were at that time, and how devastating the prostitution was as means of gaining a leaving, especially for women. The overwhelming figure of the lady refers to the demography of poverty among the lower classes of Parisian society, which was ruled by the financial power of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist exploratory system, which on the image is represented allegorically as the metamorphic creature. The artwork represents in itself a sort of diagram of economic divisions between the poor and the rich classes in Parisian society at the beginning of the twentieth century. The skeleton beast refers to the phallic demoralizing attitude towards the lower classes. It reflects the elaborated taste of the bourgeoisie to the commodities available to them through their monetary power. The seating woman represents allegorically the social devaluation of human dignity to the object of commodity. Van Dongen, during the time of working on the editorial illustrations for the magazines, produced great deal of drawings. Each of them was accompanied with intelligent commentaries spicy to the point, but in the drawing “Woman Drinking Absinthe,” he proved his great talent of critical psychoanalytic artistic judgment and elaborated perversity of intellectual thought.
Taking in consideration Van Dongen’s Parisian realities at the beginning of his carrier, the interpretation of Van Dongen’s drawing “Woman Drinking Absinthe,” would be quite different. Analyzing his artwork without any knowledge of any specific details about his personal life, the viewer would come to less or more the same interpretation of his drawing as it was explained earlier in this paper. However, knowing about the hardship of his life at the beginning of his Parisian period, as well as his brilliant carrier, which started few years later, this artwork represents the artist himself and his Parisian realities. The drawing “Woman Drinking Absinthe” illustrates an unconscious prediction of Van Dongen’s own future. Van Dongen in his own words stated in his biography: “I am a prostitute of my glory.” Van Dongen’s well being depended on the bourgeoisie interest in his art. In such case the reading of the artwork “Woman Drinking Absinthe” would be different. The female character would represent Van Dongenès affords to attract attention to his talent and his artistic services. The meaning of the metamorphic character would not change. The creature would still represent an important monetary aspect, but in different sense. This time it would be the bourgeoisie’s taste for Van Dongen’s art. The artist in this artwork exteriorized his own artistic struggles. He referred himself as a prostitute, because from the beginning he had to put aside painting and concentrate on publishing in order to survive. The ambiguity of this drawing could refer to Plato’s “problem” with the art, when he said that the artists speak through the images more than through the ideas, what makes the truth cloudy and so not clear.
The artwork “Cocotte” follows similar psychological pattern of the ridicule aspects of live imposed on women in Patriarchal social order. The naked body of sleeping woman is lying on a bed. The body has a signs of physical fatigue related to the erotic services and her supposedly advanced age. The vapor coming from the oil lamp forms a word “Cocotte” floating over her head. In the darkness of the room behind the bed a face of a man is slightly visible. His face expresses his madness of desire for sexual pleasures seemingly available just in front of him. He may represent also “Death” waiting for the body to “burn out” like the oil lamp, so it can take it to the abyss of the “Hades.” In the right corner the way the vapor is turning gives an impression of another individual standing behind the woman’s bed. Assuming that it may be the case, the artist refers to the biblical story of “Susanna and the Elders.” It fits perfectly to the story drawn by the artist. In either way in this simple drawing Van Dongen depicts sarcastically the essence of the human existence.
The drawing “Le Mepris” refers to the common social phenomenon during the times called the “Belle Epoch” when the rich bourgeois men used to take advantage of young women coming to Paris with a hope to find better working conditions and socio-economic opportunities. Instead, they fell in the hands of rich bourgeois men who, with promises of eternal love and possibilities of marriage, misled the women’s cautious attitude. Those women who were unlucky enough to meet such individuals on the streets of Paris, were placed in rented apartments paid by the men and in exchange for the promised dream of marriage, they served to those men for entertainment of sexual pleasures. Many of the men had their own families and regardless to this fact their financial fortune inspired them to have indecent ideas. This euphoria of happiness lasted untill the woman got pregnant. Then usually women were left alone with the babies and without any possibilities of financial support from the child’s father. Most of the times they were thrown out from the apartments they were occupying when they were still unspoiled by the pregnancy. Many women suicides, others went back to their homes in the country, and yet some of them were lucky to survive in the city. Such situations were common in Paris, and Van Dongen as a good observer commented these situations with the brush of his own intelligent sarcasm. In the drawing “Le Mepris” Van Dongen draws a woman sitting in the room on a chair with her back towards the window and her face covered with her hands. Her posture suggests that she is worried and crying. Her face is not visible but it is evident that she is unhappy. The large curtain separates her from the window, which symbolizes the exterior world. The balustrade ornament, which is visible in the lower part of the window’s exterior, suggests the possibility of pleasant and fancy life. The fact of her pregnancy separates her from the exterior world and the enjoyment of life, which she was experiencing before. From now on what she has left is the darkness in front of her marked by the artist with the dark color brush strokes. The picture is accompanied by the captions: “Lover went away… woman is left alone… with her baby.” The text completes the moral of this story. This artwork represents yet another simplicity and depth of Van Dungeon’s thought and his brilliant mind. Studying these drawings makes it evident Van Dongen’s exceptional sense of social critic and proves his intellectual draftsmanship. These three chosen works represent a particular period in Van Dongen’s artistic quest. It was the time when he needed badly to work and earn enough money to make his living. Van Dongen with his extraordinary commentary intuition did not have any problem to make a great satire on any subject.
Analyzing Van Dongen’s artwork from the formal point of view his line and color from the time of his editorial production did not represented yet its future characteristics. During that time Van Dongen did a significant amount of drawings as those discussed earlier in this essay. Their main characteristic was the economy of line and color what certainly was dictated by the technological means available at that time. However, what strikes the most in these artworks is their similarity to the lines of drawing of another artists as Toulouse-Lautrec for example. It is obvious that artists always get inspired one another and with the solid and constant dynamic practice with the passing time they develop their own visual distinguishable characteristics. In Van Dongen’s case it is very clear that his early paintings and drawings have eclectic characteristics. Looking at his artwork from his early period it is evident to see all his favor artists such as Frans Hals, Goya, Manet, and Toulouse-Lautrec collected together. He was amalgamating different styles, which seems typical for most of young artists. Focusing on the drawing “Woman Drinking Absinthe” one thing seems evident that he borrowed the brush stroke from Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Van Dongen mentioned that he saw the artist from time to time on the streets of Montmartre passing by him when he was drawing caricatures and portraits of people on the street during his first staying in Paris. He did not speak to Toulouse-Lautrec because of shame of being too poor and unpleasantly looking. The fact that Van Dongen mentioned such incident proves that he knew of the artist’s artwork at that time. Comparing the drawing “Woman Drinking Absinthe” with some of Toulouse-Lautrec’s artworks proves the point of enormous resemblances. It to put together the Van Dongen’s drawing “Woman Drinking Absinthe” and chosen samples of Toulouse-Lautrec’s drawings, it would seems like it is Toulouse-Lautrec’s artwork. The way Van Dongen is applying the paint on his work has the same characteristic tonality. The nervousness and spontaneity of the lines are identical to Toulouse-Lautrec artworks “Monsieur, Madame and her Lapdog” and “Alone”. It is particularly visible in the Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Alone” drawing. The Van Dongen’s and Toulouse-Lautrec’s drawings share the same energy of brush strokes and can actually be part of the same series. Another interesting resemblance is visible when looking at the faces on Toulouse-Lautrec’s drawings such as” Alone,” “Woman Pulling up her Stockings,” and “The Tattooed Woman or The Toilette:” the face of the woman on the first artwork and the two faces of the women helpers depicted on the two other drawings are almost the same to the face of the woman depicted on Van Dongen’s artwork. Their physical profiles and the expressions are identical. What is also comparable between the Van Dongen’s and Toulouse-Lautrec’s drawings in this particular case is the way Van Dongen treats chromatically the background of his work. The verticality of brush strokes is identical. Especially when comparing the Van Dongen’s artwork with the drawings “The Brothel Laundryman,” “Woman Pulling up her Stockings,” and “The Tattooed Woman or The Toilette.” The Van Dongen’s artwork “Woman Drinking Absinthe” is quiet different form all the other drawings exposed from the first period of his artistic struggles in Paris. The second sample of Van Dongen’s artwork “Cocotte” looks almost an allegorical copy of Toulouse-Lautrec’s drawing “Alone.” The two women share the same laying body position. The two other artworks “Cocotte” and “Le Mepris” besides their graphic resemblances with Toulouse-Lautrec’s brush line have similarities to the two other artists such as Edgar Degas and Pierre Bonnard.
Comparing Van Dongen’s “Cocotte” and Le Mepris” with Degas’s artworks of the ballet dancers the strong decisive lines of the Van Dongen’s figures resemble the heavy outlines on the Degas’s drawings. In Degas’s “Dancer” the hairs of the woman is depicted with the same perfect economy of color like on the Van Dongen’s “Le Mepris.” The solid well granted lines drawn by Degas with the charcoal are visible in Van Dongen’s treatment of his figure of the woman in the drawing “Le Mepris.” Van Dongen’s brush follows the Degas’s pattern. The same concerns the Degas’s depiction of the dancers dresses on his artworks. Van Dongen applied his technique on the curtain, floor, and on the garment of his character. The Degas’s famous painting “Dans un café: L’Absinthe” also inspired Van Dongen in creation of his drawing discussed previously “Woman Drinking Absinthe.” He borrowed the subject from Degas’s painting and created his own interpretation of it. Some elements from Degas’s painting such as a sitting woman’s with slightly spread legs, red gather skirt, and boots are the same as in Van Dongen’s drawing. However, Van Dongen recomposed the entire situation; in Degas’s artwork the indifferent man is sitting beside the lady; in Van Dongen’s drawing he is in front of her hesitating and to some point indifferent to her charms as it is visible on Degas’s work. It is perfect allegorical view of Dega’s masterpiece with Van Dongens’s spicy intelligence of a great cartoonist.
The Pierre Bonnard’s influence on Van Dongen’s artwork referring only to the chosen drawings is a visible freedom of his lines what gives sometimes an impression of sketch. The Bonnard’s freedom of line without any preoccupation about anatomic correctness and its slightly cartooning look are visible also in Van Dongen’s samples represented in this essay. Anatomically speaking all three samples of Van Dongen’s drawings has traces of Bonnard’s drawings. Bonnard’s liberty of line and characteristics of certain naivety and lightness of his drawings encourage Van Dongen to liberate his stoke from certain rigidity of Degase’s heavy outlines of his ballet models. Bonnard’s artwork has certain amount of psychological complexity. Van Dongen saw this nuances in Bonnard’s artworks.
Van Dongen through the psychological collages of his allegorical imagery he was inspired by the greatest artists of the Parisian bohemia and as many artist before and after him is trying to make a sense of the mysterious world of their creative minds.
Van Dongen’s chosen artworks exposes the psychological mirror of Parisian realities. He experienced it by leaving in doubtful neighborhoods at the beginning of his crusade for the fame and glory. The world where Van Dongen was searching for recognition was the world he criticized brilliantly in his early years, and portrayed it with a great success later. It was the world he depended on through all his life, as his female symbolic character in his drawing “Woman Drinking Absinthe.”
— AndréPijet
Livres francophones retraçant la vie de Kees Van Dongen et du Fauvisme.
Van Dongen et le fauvisme
Jean Melas Kyriazi
1971 - La Bibliothèque des Arts Lausanne - Paris
ISBN 2-85047-023-6
Les Fauves, Le Règne de la Couleur
Jean-Louis Ferrier
1992 - Finest S.A./Editions Pierre Terrail - Paris
ISBN 2-87939-052-4
Van Dongen et les Fauves
R. Negri - S. Venturi
1969/1990 Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri S.p.A. - Milan / CELIV - Paris
ISBN 2-86535-109-2
Le Fauvisme
Jean Leymarie
1987 Editions d’Art Albert Skira S.A. - Genève
ISBN 2-605-00093-1
Le Paysage Fauve
Judi Freeman avec Roger Benjamin, James D. Herbert, John Klein et Alvin Martin
1991 Editions Abbeville - Paris, New York, Londres
ISBN 2-87946-002-6
Van Dongen, Le Peintre - 1877-1968
1990 Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
ISBN 2-85346-072-X
Le Siècle de Picasso - Tome 1 1881;1937
Pierre Cabanne
1975 - Editions Denoël - Paris
ISBN : 2-20722-131-8
