Rupert Bunny: the French Years

The exhibition Rupert Bunny: Artist in Paris will continue at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV in Melbourne until 9pm, Saturday 19th June 2010.

Rupert Bunny (1864-1947) was born in Melbourne. After being very interested in music and architecture, in the early 1880s he settled on art at the National Gallery of Victoria School and stayed there from 1881-4. Eugene von Guerard and George Folingsby were some of his first teachers; John Longstaff was one of his friends and colleagues.

He travelled to Europe in 1884, still in his late teens, and studied at the St John's Wood Art School, London. He had only a short stay in England before settling in France and spending almost all the rest of his working career there. During the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s, Bunny was known primarily for his mythological works in oils.

To enjoy the very romantic, very languid painting called Sweet Idleness c1897, see The Monday Issue blog and Felicity Gleeson's blog. But sometimes the languid is too much. Malcolm Clark saw the women in Bunny’s paintings as sensual, yet devoid of sexiness.

Only with the turn of the new century did the ex-pat Australian artist decide to modernise himself. In 1902 Bunny married the French artist model Jeanne Morel, several years after first painting her. Later she appeared in a number of portraits. Genre scenes of Jeanne and other charming young women in flowing white tea gowns played a predominant role in his newest work.

Dame Nellie Melba, c1902

Bunny’s portraits were splendid and romantic. Dame Nellie Melba c1902 hangs on temporary loan from the National Gallery of Victoria in the State Dining Room at Government House. It must have been an important commission for the young artist. But the genre was to be expected. During the early 1900s, the Australians in Europe painted images of women and children, especially Bunny, Phillips Fox and George Lambert. It was a subject that was also popular with other artists at the turn of the century, with the Salon and Royal Academy painters, as well as less established artists.

He joined the New Salon d'Automne which was organised in 1903 by Georges Rouault, André Derain and Henri Matisse to be more radical than the Old Paris Salon. It must have been a delightful shock for Bunny to be exposed to Matisse’s and the Fauvists’ very different use of colour for the first time.

Contemporary critics admired Bunny's handling of light and texture; what they referred to as his simple charm. None of his paintings showed this more clearly than the enormous canvas called A Summer Morning c1908. The elegant and graceful women in their long white dresses and picture hats could have been anywhere; there was nothing particularly Australian about them. If anything, he tapped into Monet’s and Whistler’s subject matter. Life, as he showed it, was comfortable, leisurely and supported by paid staff.

A Garden Bench c1915 was another sensitive, sunny image of women at leisure. But unlike A Summer Morning, the background of Garden Bench consisted of mere colour splashes, filling the canvas with hints of spring bushes. Again the long dresses and straw hats suggested elegance, however in the second painting, his work was more spontaneous, more impressionistic. Girl At a Window by contrast was cool, laid back and very modern. This young lady was supremely comfortable in her clothes, face, hair, seat, demeanour.

Bunny lived mainly in France throughout these decades, making only brief visits to London and to Australia (in 1911 and 1928). He became a member of the Salon Nationale Des Beaux Arts, as did Phillips Fox, Agnes Goodsir and Bessie Davidson. He helped other Australians in Paris whenever he could eg standing up for David Davies when he married at the British Consulate in Paris. And best of all, Bunny had several exhibitions in Paris where he was lucky enough or talented enough to sell some of the paintings to the Musee du Luxembourg. Bunny was one of the few Australian artists of the time to establish an international reputation. In fact the French Government bought 10 of his paintings.

Summer Morning, 1908

I have concentrated on Bunny’s painting of the feminine arcady; women at leisure, in gardens, on beaches and in parks. These much loved works were widely seen as epitomising the charm of France’s belle époque; his subjects were fashionable women who apparently did not have to work for a living. But this leisurely life was abruptly ended once WW1 commenced. Times were tougher, so his images changed, but more of that in a different article. His wife was ill, the money had run out and the art buying public were no longer fascinated with Belle Epoque images. His post-WW1 paintings, often landscapes, will be discussed elsewhere.

Bunny had always been involved in music in his young years and he composed music after his wife died in 1933. Now a lonely widower, he sailed home to Melbourne and spent the first summer painting in the city’s Royal Botanical Gardens. He painted the people of Melbourne walking in the gardens, sitting on the benches and lying on the grass. These paintings were probably intended to make money, and to appeal to Australians who enjoyed for Australian subjects. Not all the critics viewed these paintings well, but Melbourne buyers disagreed with the critics and only a handful were not sold.

Despite his strong reputation in Europe, Bunny was an ex-pat in his own country, not quite a Frenchman and not quite an Australian either. And it took a very long time before he was honoured at home with a retrospective exhibition at the NGV in 1946. But it was all too late. His local reputation was building nicely, just as he died in Melbourne in May 1947.

Tony Curren Gatecrash gave a reason for Bunny’s 2010 exhibition being so pleasant. Inlike so many Australian artists, Bunny pursued his own artistic ambition without over Australianising his work. I agree that Bunny’s art was largely French during the years 1884-1933, a huge chunk of his working life time. So I was somewhat surprised to find that many of his dreamy, symbolist paintings ended up in Australian galleries, now much loved. What appeared to be French fluff before WW1 came to be seen as intimate, sensual and beautifully crafted.

A Lovely Afternoon, c1908

However I am absolutely aware that not everyone loves Bunny’s paintings. Melbourne Art & Culture Critic saw the exhibition and thought its only contribution was to give the viewers an interesting perspective on art history.

Varian Fry: hero and rescuer of thousands

Varian Fry (1907 – 67) was an American journalist. While working as a foreign correspondent for an American paper, Fry visited Berlin in 1935 and was very distressed by Nazi violence against Jewish citizens.

Varian Fry, 1941

Following the occupation of France in August 1940, Fry was still distressed by what he knew what going to happen to the Jews. He went to Marseilles as an agent of the newly formed Emergency Rescue Committee, in an effort to help persons wishing to flee the Nazis. Fry had a rather small pot of money and a short list of refugees under imminent threat of arrest by the Gestapo. Soon anti-Nazi writers, avant-garde artists and musicians were begging for his help.

Despite the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, Fry and his small group of volunteers hid refugees in a safe home until they could be smuggled out. 2,200 people were taken across the border to the safety of neutral Portugal from which they made their way to the USA. Others he helped escape on ships leaving Marseilles for the French colony of Martinique, from which they could go to the USA.

The rescue network was essential to his success. Miriam Davenport, a former art student at the Sorbonne, and Mary Jayne Gold, a wealthy cultured woman who had moved to Paris in the early 1930s were two American women. When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, Gold went to Marseilles to work with Fry and to fund his operation.

Most important was obtaining the visas Fry needed for the artists, writers and academics. He could not have succeeded without Hiram Bingham IV, an American Vice Consul in Marseilles who fought against US State Department anti-Semitism. Like the Japanese consul in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, Bingham was personally responsible for issuing thousands of legal and illegal visas.

An amazing photo survives from those scary and heroic days. The Emergency Rescue Committee office in Marseilles in 1941 shows fine artists who escaped France: (from left to right) Max Ernst, Jacqueline Breton, Andre Masson, Andre Breton and Varian Fry.

Photograph Musee Cantini, Marseilles.

The list of people who escaped Nazi Europe, with the help of Fry and others, is like a roll call of European culture. A handful of famous names will suffice: Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt, André Masson, Franz Werfel and Alma Mahler Werfel, Jacques Lipchitz, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Heinrich Mann, Marc Chagall and André Breton.
0es in the USA. He was recalled several times by the American government and ignored every recall. He was finally ousted by the Vichy French government as an undesirable alien, for protecting Jews and anti-Nazis, in September 1941. His activities in France caused the Federal Bureau of Investigation to keep him under surveillance, thus preventing this hero from ever working for the USA government. He wrote and spoke critically against USA immigration policies, particularly relating to the issue of the fate of Jews in Europe. In The New Republic Dec 1942, he wrote an article with dire warnings called "The Massacre of Jews in Europe".

Many artistic émigrés found their way to New York City where Peggy Guggenheim exhibited their work at the Art of this Century gallery, which she opened in 1942. Another amazing photograph was taken during a gathering of these artists at her New York apartment. Guggenheim did not rescue them (apart from Max Ernst) but she helped their survival and integration, once they had safely landed on American soil.

"Artists in Exile", Peggy Guggenheim's apartment, New York, 1942. Front row: Stanley William Hayter, Leonara Carrington, Frederick Kiesler, Kurt Seligmann. Second Row: Max Ernst, Amedee Ozenfant, Andre Breton, Fernand Leger, Berenice Abbott. Third Row: Jimmy Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, John Ferren, Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian. Photograph: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Photograph: Parrish Art Museum, NY.

At least the government of France recognised Fry's heroic efforts with the Legion of Honour in 1967, the only recognition he was alive for. In 1991 and 24 years after his death, Fry received his first official medal from a US agency, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. And in 1995 Varian Fry became the first American citizen to be listed in the Righteous Among the Nations in the national Holocaust Memorial, Jerusalem. What a shame that he died in 1967.

If you think only the USA and French government were right wing, anti-Semitic and anti-refugees, and that their anti refugee policies was only enacted during the chaos of World War Two, consider the plight of refugees today. The few, miserable refugees who escape the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan head for Australia in leaky tug boats. The right wing response in Australia, from 2000 to 2010, has been to imprison the refugees in Pacific island camps behind barbed wire fences and to demonise the rescuers as criminal thugs. We have learned nothing from Varian Fry, Sir Nicholas Winton, Raoul Wallenberg, Chiune Sugihara or Oskar Schindler.

Other blogs have recommended books about Fry:
Isenberg, Sheila A Hero of Our Own, Random House, 2001
Marino, Andy A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry, Macmillan, 2000.
McClafferty, Carla Killough In Defiance of Hitler: The Secret Mission of Varian Fry, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008

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A 2013 international symposium, Varian Fry in Marseilles: The Culture of Europe in Exile 1940-42 revealed the role Marseilles played as the cultural capital of exile during WW2. This conference offered fresh perspectives on the notion of exile of European intellectuals and artists It explored the work of exiles in Provence, their treatment in internment camps, and their efforts to escape to North America. It also raised the question of memory and how today’s generations remember and interact with this chapter in Provençal history. The programme is still available in French.

Canada’s Golgotha sculpture: why was it hidden away?

In England in 1887 British artist Francis Derwent Wood entered art school and worked as a modeller. In 1890 he joined the National Art Training School where he studied under Edouard Lanteri, the man who also taught Charles Sargeant Jagger. Quite independently of this particular post, I have written several times about Jagger in the past: Low Reliefs and War and Sex.

From 1918 on, Wood was professor of sculpture at the Royal College of Art and one of his commissions was to model the wreaths for Sir Edwin Lutyens' Centotaph.  Lord Beaverbrook decided to document Canada's huge contribution to WW1 by commissioning 116 English and Canadian artists to produce 800 art objects. One of 116 artists was Francis Dervent Wood.

This post is going to concentrate on Canada's Golgotha, a half life-size bronze sculpture by Wood that depicted a crucified WW1 soldier. It illustrated the story of an unknown man from the Battle of Ypres in April 1915. We know only that he was a Canadian (from the maple leaf insignias) and that he was surrounded by jeering Germans as he died on the makeshift cross. You can see the tatty barn door in the background. Appropriately for a war casualty, this young man had baynets in each wrist and ankle, not nails. And he was in heavy army clothing: a great coat and boots, rather than a mere loin cloth.

The sculpture was first displayed in an exhibition for the Canadian War Memorials Fund 1919, at Burlington House in London. But the sculpture was withdrawn from the exhibit after protest. The Allies were disgusted at German barbarity and they were particularly horrified that a Christian symbol be used to kill a young Canadian soldier. The Germans, on the other hand, were outraged that an atrocity story could be publicised without any evidence of it having been historically accurate. They assumed it was more Allied propaganda.

But why was the sculpture, controversial though it might have been in 1919, hidden away for the rest of the century? Whose interests were being served?
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Wood, Canadian Golgotha, 1919, 83 cm high x 64 cm wide

After the end of the war, the Germans formally requested the Canadian government provide proof of a crucifixion. But there were two insurmountable problems: the written eyewitness accounts were unclear and contradictory, and no crucified body was ever found.

BEST FREE DOCUMENTARIES described new historical evidence which identified the crucified soldier as Sergeant Harry Band. He was from the Central Ontario Regiment of the Canadian Infantry. Based on letters from other soldiers in Band’s unit to Band's sister Elizabeth Petrie, and her letters back, the family in Canada eventually discovered that the horror stories about a crucified Canadian soldier were true. Like other soldiers without a proper grave, Band was commemorated only on the Menin Gate memorial.

It is interesting to me that when the sculpture was displayed in 2000 at the Canadian Museum of Civilisation, it again provoked controversy. People are still very angry about German atrocities, assuming that crucifixion of the old Canadia soldier was the most barbaric of all atrocities. I, a non-Christian, personally think the massacre of thousands of French and Canadian soldiers in Belgium by poisonous gas to be far more barbaric. But I might be missing the critical symbolism here. In any case, note the name of the 2000 exhibition: "Under the Sign of the Cross: Creative Expressions of Christianity in Canada".

In 1921 the entire War Memorials Collection was donated to the National Gallery in Ottawa, but the Gallery was not in a hurry to display any of these precious art objects. Particularly Canada's Golgotha.

Canadian War Museum, Ottawa

Now at least the sculpture is in its rightful home, the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Perhaps the 1984 book Art in The Service of War: Canada, Art and The Great War by Maria Tippett will provide some answers.

Lucile Duff-Gordon, couturier extraordinaire

Lucy Sutherland (1863–1935) had a very ordinary childhood, born in London and raised in Ontario, then taken to the Isle of Jersey from 1871 with her younger sister, Elinor. Lucy’s first marriage was a dismal failure that ended in divorce and poverty, but she had to support herself and her little girl, Esme (1885–1973). Thus Lucy began working as a dressmaker from home.

By 1894 Lucy had opened Maison Lucile in Old Burlington St, in London’s West End. Her first client was her younger sister, Elinor Glyn, later totally famous as a novelist and script writer for films. Lucy quickly gained a loyal following of women, which helped her first shop succeed. In 1897 a larger shop was opened at 17 Hanover Square London.

Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon was the 5th baronet of Halkin who enjoyed a family estate near Aberdeen. In 1900 Duff-Gordon married this soon-to-become famous London fashion designer, despite her being a divorcee. Lucy Sutherland became Lady Lucile Duff-Gordon.

By 1900 business was expanding further, all through Lucile’s own hard work and talent. Nonetheless it did not hurt that Sir Cosmo's backed and founded “Lucile Ltd” in 1903, to sell her designs around the world. His noble title also helped Lucile’s acceptance at court.

George St garden, mannequin parade, 1913

The George St London address was lovely. Inside the large 18th century town house were smart rooms for clients, leading to a garden, and airy workrooms for her staff of 400. And she decorated the interiors beautifully, adding antique furniture and paintings to make upper crust customers feel at home.

Presentations to the specially invited audience must have been splendid. Lucile had a stage built so that women could preview the clothes in comfort, and she installed curtains and scenery for added drama. She trained models in deportment and style, and paid them, so that they could do credit to her clothes. Thus the catwalk show, complete with beautiful walking mannequins, was born. Her style shows specialised in tea-time presentations, palm fronds, music from a string quartet and professionally printed programmes. She became most famous for her lingerie, tea gowns and evening wear, with her trademark style, classical draping and pastel colours.

Lucile Ltd served a wealthy clientele including aristocracy, royalty, and theatre stars. Her more noble and royal clientele included the Duchess of York, later Queen Mary and Countess Margot Asquith. Margot’s husband, Herbert Henry Asquith, became British Prime Minister in 1908-1916. Anyhow the business expanded, with branches opening in New York City, Paris and Chicago in 1910, 1911 and 1915 respectively.

Her branches of Lucile Ltd in New York and Paris were risky, because she was moving into these foreign centres of fashion culture, almost as an outsider. But apparently her famous fashion parades did well there too, perhaps wooing wealthy women over with traditional English afternoon teas and palm fronds. Perhaps they simply loved the diaphanous, soft materials, scalloped hemlines, silk sashes and sprays of hand-made flower trimmings. I certainly do!

Lucile's tea gowns, 1912

In 1912, Lucile travelled to America on business in connection with the New York branch of her salon. She and her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, booked first class passage on the ocean liner RMS Titanic. I don’t want to discuss the Duff-Gordons experience on the Titanic except to say that during the evacuation, the couple escaped in a less-than-full lifeboat. There was a lot of nasty gossip, but for more detail about the Titanic episode, read Edwardian Promenade.

You might have expected Lucile Ltd to be defeated by World War One. But by 1915 Lucy was spending half the year in the USA where there was no war. The income from her New York shop was so great it apparently helped support the London and Paris branches. And at the very time when Parisian and London couturiers were seeing their businesses collapse, Lucile was reaching her financial and creative peak. She had a staff of over a thousand designers, models, seamstresses and advertising people.

The cleverest of her licensing ventures was a lower-priced, mail-order fashion line for Sears & Roebuck (1916–7), which promoted her clothing in rather lovely catalogues. These ready-to-wear clothes were priced for middle class women who had upper class aspirations.

I haven't space to examine Lucile's important role in exposing lingerie as a luxury item, but people who have an interest in these things should read Cemetarian La Dolce Vintage 's excellent post.

In 1917, Lucile lost a case that had nothing to do with the Titanic. In the New York Court of Appeals case of Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon. It was held that Lucile had a solid contract that assigned the sole right to market her name to her advertising agent, Otis F Wood. She was not bankrupted but her connection with her design empire began to falter, following a restructuring of Lucile Ltd in 1918–9. By Sept 1922 she had ceased designing for the company, and restricted herself to designing for a few individual clients, from private premises.

Lucile had always written a weekly syndicated fashion page for the Hearst newspapers (1910–22), and monthly columns for Harper's Bazaar and Good Housekeeping magazines (1912–22). So she continued as a fashion columnist and critic after her active career ended. Her designs were displayed in Pathé and Gaumont newsreels, and she appeared in the weekly British newsreel Around the Town.

In older age Lucile wrote her best-selling autobiography Discretions and Indiscretions in 1932. Apparently people in the fashion industry in London and Paris were getting their lawyers onto retainers, waiting to see which secrets she exposed. But she was discrete. And she soon died of breast cancer in a London nursing home in 1935, aged 71. She was buried with her husband, who had died in 1931, at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. Lucy’s daughter from her first marriage became the wife of 2nd Earl Halsbury and mother of the 3rd Earl of Halsbury.

Designing the It Girl, FIT

Lucile's trusted assistant, Howard Greer, published memories of his years working with her in the book Designing Male 1950. A biography of Lucile and her sister Elinor Glyn, called The 'It' Girls, by Meredith Etherington-Smith, was published in 1986. As of 2006, the V&A Museum included a permanent Lucile exhibit. And note an exhibition devoted exclusively to Lucile's work by the Fashion Institute of Technology in NY: Designing the It Girl: Lucile and Her Style (2005). The Victoria & Albert Museum in London published Lucile Ltd by Amy de la Haye and Valerie D Mendes just recently. American Beauty by Patricia Mears was recommended by the House of Beauty and Culture.

After I finished this article, I found some beautiful images in the Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon blog.

Peggy Guggenheim, modernist gallery owner and patron

Marguerite Peggy Guggenheim was born 1898 in New York. As the second daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim and Florette Seligman, Peggy had a rather cultivated upbringing in New York. Peggy regularly visited Europe with her parents and two sisters, a very pleasant life until her father Benjamin tragically died on the Titanic in 1912.

Peggy Guggenheim, photographed by Man Ray in 1924

Eventually, at 21, Peggy inherited from her late father’s fortune. So her fabulous career in art was totally due to her share of her father’s estate (and later her share of her mother’s as well).

When Peggy was given the first of her money in 1919, she got herself to Paris as soon as she decently could. The expatriates there thought she was terrific. She married Laurence Vail, an American writer who loved the bohemian life of Paris as much as Our Peggy did. In 1928 the marriage was over and Peggy moved to London.

In 1938 she opened Guggenheim Jeune, a London gallery of modern art that celebrated the works of Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp acted as a mentor for the rather inexperienced Miss Guggenheim and suggested to her that she should focus her energy on surrealist and other modernist art. The young gallery owner was delighted to display works by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky, Henry Moore, Constantin Brancusi and of course Max Ernst.

By 1939, Peggy was organising herself for a Museum of Modern Art in London together with the English art historian/critic Herbert Read. She hot footed it to Paris to begin collecting work for the new Museum but the outbreak of war ruined the plans. Nonethless she did manage to buy 10 Picassos, 40 Ernsts, 8 Mirós, 4 Rene Magrittes, 3 Man Rays, 3 Dalís, plus one each from Paul Klee, Marc Chagall and Georges Braque.

Only days before the German invasion of 1941, this brave Jewish woman realised the danger she and her friends were in. She left Paris for New York with hundreds of works of art with which she would begin a new American gallery. Peggy travelled to New York with the German surrealist artist Max Ernst, whom she married in 1942 (and soon divorced).

In 1942, Peggy found a space to exhibit her collection. Her gallery-museum, Art of This Century, did well. It opened on 57th St in Oct 1942 and featured surrealists and cubists, Americans and European refugees. The gallery, designed by Frederick Kiesler, with concave walls, startled and intrigued visitors. Modern viewers can see a replica of the 1942 show called The Flight of European Artists from Hitler.

I am not certain about Peggy’s relationship with Jackson Pollock. Certainly he was a young artist who suddenly found the art critics were discussing his work. One thing we know for certain is that Peggy commissioned a HUGE mural from Pollock for the entry of her new townhouse. Also in 1946, Robert De Niro had his first one-man exhibition at Peggy’s Art of this Century gallery, and did well.

Art of this Century in NY, 1942

In 1947 Peggy Guggenheim could not live outside Europe for another day. In May, she closed the gallery doors for good and moved to a rather lovely palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal. The home must have become a bit of a home away from home for travelling wits, bohemians, artists and writers. She spent the rest of her life in Venice, devoting herself to her modernist art. In 1949 she held an exhibition of sculptures in the garden.

In 1951 Peggy formally opened her Venetian home as a museum. See from the contemporary photos that there were several Jackson Pollocks and Arshile Gorkys in the collection.

In 1965 Peggy’s collection travelled to the Tate Museum, and then in 1969 to her late Uncle Solomon Guggenheim’s Museum which had been established in New York. In 1974 the New York Guggenheim took over the running of the Venetian museum, acquiring the collection as well as the palazzo. Peggy Guggenheim died in her palazzo in Dec 1979, having lived a creative, productive and sometimes provocative life.  PollockstheBollocks said she lived her life as an art addict!

Guggenheim Museum in Venice

Today the New York Guggenheim continues to run the Peggy’s Venetian museum. The east wing houses early Cubist and other modernists including Picasso, Braque, Dalí and Miró. Out in the sculpture garden are pieces by Henry Moore and Jean Arp. Another wing hosts temporary exhibitions. For a wonderful array of photos on Peggy, the garden, her museum and its contents, see Farrago and Folly and Irenebrination: Notes on Art, Fashion and Style.

Amedeo Modigliani, a flawed genius?

I have lectured on Jewish Artists of the Belle Epoque many times in the past. What never fails to amaze me is the difference between the dozens of Eastern European lads from impoverished families on one hand and the elegant Italian Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), son of a very comfortable family, on the other.

Amedeo was born in Livorno/Leghorn, west of Florence in 1884. His parents were business and professional people, both sides of the family being Sephardim. Amedeo was their 4th and youngest child, frail throughout childhood. Bored witless in bed, it was then that he began to play with painting. Alas the young lad became seriously ill with typhoid fever and tuberculosis, and was close to death.

Portrait of Chaim Soutine, 1916, 
private collection

Eventually he recovered and had formal art training in Florence and Venice. But he already saw himself as tormented and on the path to self destruction. So it was quite risky when he decided to move to Paris in 1906 and to settle in Montmartre, the centre for Bohemian artists and writers. He settled in Le Bateau-Lavoir, a commune for impoverished artists where each person had at least enough space to sleep, paint and drink coffee. There probably wasn’t much food in the entire rambling building complex.

There Modigliani was thrilled by Paul Cezanne, the artist who came to exert a decisive influence on Modigliani’s early years, as did Pablo Picasso in his blue period. Of the sculptors, his greatest mentor was the Romanian Constantin Brancusi, another recent immigrant to Paris.

Modigliani was a sculptor who modelled his work on African art, particularly tribal masks. When he could no longer carry out the heavy physical work required by sculpture, he turned to painting. The use of strong line and elongated shapes, so typical in his African-inspired sculptures, was carried into his portraits. I am never quite sure if modern viewers find his style simple, powerful and expressive.. or childish and repetitive.

Modigliani's portraits, rather quickly completed, came out of the positive emotional connection between the artist and his model. Very often he would use his artist friends as models, presumably to save himself the cost of paying a modelling fee. Instead he would share his food with his artist-friends who had no food of their own. He exhibited six of these portraits at the 1910 Salon des Independants, allowing the public to see a groups of his works for the first time.

Portrait of the Painter Manuel Humbert, 1916, 
NGV Melbourne

The pre-WW1 period saw the Paris art scene shift south from Montmartre to Montparnasse. Picasso and Modigliani moved to rue Campagne-Première, joined by Miro and Kandinsky; Braque worked nearby. Belle Epoque cabarets gave way to WW1 coffee shops and bars, heaps of them along bvd du Montparnasse: the Coupole, Dôme, Select, Rotonde and Closerie des Lilas. Often frequented by impoverished artists and writers, I can imagine the bar owners agreeing to barter coffees and wines for drawings and quick paintings.

I have selected just two of Modigliani’s artist-friends who agreed to act as models. Chaim Soutine 1916, later hunted to death by the Nazis, was his closest friend. By applying the paint strongly and thickly, Modigliani made Soutine look like the unpretentious Eastern European man he was. Manuel Humbert 1916 was a Spanish painter of landscapes and also a friend of Modigliani. In this insightful portrait, Modigliani drew attention to Humbert's eyes and sensual mouth. In both cases, the artist captured the character of his friends with appealing simplicity.

For other Modigliani portraits, see Paulo Coelho’s Blog, The Bespoken: For Gentlemen, Chasing Light and Lines and Colors.

The sophisticated Italian was a role model for the other immigrant Jewish artists and went out of his way to be friendly to, and supportive of the younger men arriving in Paris from Eastern Europe. Moise Kisling and Simon Mondzain never forgot Modigliani’s kindness, and Andre Salmon lived across the street and often shared his meals. But no-one relied on Modigliani as much as Chaim Soutine did, professionally, socially and emotionally. Soutine was totally devastated when his friend and mentor died in 1920.

The book Modigliani: A Life was written by Meryle Secrest and published by Knopf just recently (2011). I have read many biographies of the artist, but Secrest is the first person to suggest that it was the struggle AGAINST tuberculosis that was the cornerstone of his decisions and behaviours, not the disease itself. And certainly not alcoholism or drug addiction. In a life that he knew to be short,  Modigliani used alcohol and drugs only as the means by which he could keep functioning as a prolific painter.

Sergei Diaghilev: impresario, genius and tyrant

It was inevitable that I would get involved in anything to do with The Ballets Russes. Firstly my own family was Russian. Secondly I learned ballet throughout primary and high school with the Borovansky Ballet Company. And finally Leon Bakst warmed the heart of art historians with his costumes which came to Melbourne not long ago.

Fire bird, costume by Bakst

But now something new; Diaghilev: A Life by Sjeng Scheijen was published by Profile Books late last year. This is a major new biography of Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) who revolutionised ballet by founding the Ballets Russes. He may have had to finagle his way into St Petersburg's rather snooty cultural elite but from there he launched himself into the gasping world. Via the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev made managerial and aesthetic decisions about who to work with: composers like Igor Stravinsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Sergei Prokofiev, and dancers and choreographers like Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Fokine, Leonide Massine, Alicia Markova and George Balanchine. Finally there were the costumers and set designers like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alexandre Benois and of course the incomparable Leon Bakst.

Little Augury showed how cultural icons were introduced to each other. Madame Eugenia Errázuriz (1860-1951), of Basque descent, was a style leader of modernist Paris from 1880 on. She was said to have refined the bohemian Pablo Picasso, invited Igor Stravinsky, WR Sickert, Cecil Beaton and Jean Cocteau to her Paris home, and introduced Diaghilev to her protégés. Paris was where it was all happening!

He may not have been a brilliant dancer or artist himself, but Diaghilev was hugely successful in marketing his vision of Russian arts. Luckily no nation on earth has produced such a roll call of brilliant talent for the impresario to draw upon.

Nijinsky as a faun, by Bakst, 1912

At the heart of The Ballets Russes’ success lies sex - Diaghilev’s and everyone else’s. Nijinsky looked as if he was having sex on stage, which must have shocked the good burghers of Paris and points west. See { feuilleton } for some interesting images of the young dancer. Bakst’s costumes were colourful, bejewelled and half naked. In fact before the Ballets Russes, theatre goers may not have even realised that the visual arts and sexuality had such important roles to play. Stravinsky's music for The Rite of Spring caused a near-riot by the audience, stunned by its depictions of fertility rites. Diaghilev himself slept with all the men in the company although not, presumably, on stage.

I don’t suppose it was pleasant working for Diaghilev. The Guardian reviewer said that Scheijen's real interest is in the complex and often antagonistic web of male relationships surrounding the director. Ambitious and celebrity-struck from the start, he had made it his business early on to meet Tolstoy, Zola, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Verdi and Borodin. And within his Company, he drove the women to exhaustion and exploited the men emotionally and physically. A charming and hugely successful control freak is still, in the end, a tyrant.

Diaghilev, Nijinsky and Stravinsky on tour, 1912

Alexandre Benois (1870-1960), who I mentioned in passing in this article, was the subject of a more thoughtful examination by The Blue Lantern blog. Benois' greatest triumph, as a set and costume designer, was Stravinsky's Petrushka in 1911.

At the same time that Sjeng Scheijen's book was first published in 2009, many institutions were planning tributes to Diaghilev on the centennial of the founding of Ballets Russes in 1909. The blog Objects Not Paintings has the most comprehensive list of lectures, exhibitions, music and costume/set displays I have seen. They ranged from the Museum of Decorative, Applied and Popular Art in Moscow to The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to The National Gallery of Art in Canberra.

Sydney's beach pavilions: 1922-1939

A beach pavilion is a public facility on the beach where children and adults can change in and out of bathing suits, store their street clothes while they are swimming and shower the salt water off before going home. The fancier pavilions may have had a swimming pool and coffee shops; the simpler pavilions did not.

Gunnamatta Pavilion, Cronulla

In Britain, by the late 1930s, pavilions had opened in Prestatyn (1922), Blackpool (1923), Plymouth (1928), Bournemouth (1929), Exmouth (1929), Skegness (1932), Hastings and St Leonards (1933), New Brighton and Wallasey (1934), Brighton (1935), Penzance (1935), Morecambe (1936) and Weston-super-Mare (1938). There was something special about the health giving and recreational values of beach culture that made councils want to meet the needs of their residents, and to entice outside visitors to their beaches.

Surely then, Sydney would have as many beach pavilions as Britain, also built in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. After all, Sydney’s population enjoyed a gorgeous natural harbour, fine beaches facing the open ocean and excellent weather.

Bondi Pavilion, built 1928-9

In 1906 the Bondi Surf Bathers' Life Saving Club was established. By this time Waverley Council had already erected changing sheds, and a sea wall, at the rear of the beach, was built between 1911 and 1920. Due to the increased popularity of beach swimming and surfing, in 1923 an improvement scheme for Bondi Beach was launched. A local architectural firm won the competition to design the new works: a surf pavilion was a major element of the scheme, and the foundation stone for the pavilion was laid in May 1928 by the Waverley mayor.

The Bondi Beach Pavilion (1928-9) was built in a form that reflected aspects of the Deco style that was so fashionable during the Inter War era, along with Mediterranean elements. The core building was two storeys high, with single-storey wings encircling a large central courtyard. It was given a colonnaded facades on four sides, frontage being 130 metres and the depth being 50 metres. It was the largest beach pavilion built in Sydney. The pavilion, which opened in Dec 1929, served several purposes: changing facilities for swimmers, food outlets and entertainment venues. There were even Turkish baths and a ballroom.

In modern times, the Bondi building remains but many earlier beach culture elements (lockers, bathing suit hiring, laundry, ballroom and Turkish baths), have disappeared.

Bathers' Pavilion in Balmoral Beach

The Bathers' Pavilion in Balmoral Beach was originally built as a changing shed by Mosman Council in the early 1920s. The building was upgraded to a very grand Deco-Moorish complex in 1929, and despite more modern development in the area, the views towards the Heads and Middle Harbour are still very special.

Nielsen Park Conservation Management Plan believed that of all the pavilions in Sydney, there were 3 important pavilions built in the 1920s: the Bondi Beach Pavilion, the Bathers’ Pavilion at Balmoral Beach and the Brighton Le Sands Beach Pavilion. For an excellent photo of the Brighton Le Sands beachfront, see Sydney - City and Suburbs blog. All three were built at the height of a development boom and reflected the heightened public aspirations of that time, particularly in regard to beachside recreation. The Management Plan noted that these three examples had to varying extents changed their original functions, while the Nielsen Park example remains virtually unchanged and provides the same facilities as was originally intended.

By contrast the Shark Beach pavilion, Nielsen Park was built at the height of the Great Depression in 1932 using restricted resources. Shark Beach’s pavilion differs from the other three in another important way; it was purposely made to be subservient to the park landscape is accordingly set well back from the beach. The others were sited on the beach, and were meant to be dominant landmarks adjacent to the baths or main surf beach.

Cronulla built at least three different pavilions in the Inter War period, and they seem to be very simple in their architecture. The colours are very bright and beachy, often white and sky blue as in the now slightly derelict Shelly Beach building. W.F. Foster and Co. built the Oak Park pavilion in 1939, probably the last of the Cronulla sites, to replace the earlier timber dressing-sheds. For a fine picture of South Cronulla's art deco Lifesaving Club, pavilion and beach, see Sydney - City and Suburbs.

Oak Park pavilion, Cronulla

I know that during the long Depression in Australia, the beach was often the only entertainment families could afford. But by 1939, communities faced more pressing issues than building resources focused on pleasure. Sofar I haven’t found any pavilions built in Sydney, once war began in 1939.

Since this post was completed, Your Brisbane Past and Present showed gorgeous changing rooms in that city. One, the Southport Bathing Pavilion 1934, looked to be similar to Shelly Beach pavilion in Cronulla size-wise and shape-wise, but it had a special entrance. Southport's decorative gabled entrance had three arches and barley sugar pillars. The other, Main Beach Pavilion 1935, was also designed in the Spanish Mission style.