Crazed
through much child-bearing 'The Crazed Moon' by William Butler Yeats |
Evening Mood, 1882 |
Quick! Cover your Eyes
Perhaps the largest volume of Bouguereau's work is secular and even sexual. He includes many themes from mythology especially of cupid who comes in the form of Bacchus, and Eros. Indeed he shares a fascination that spans many artists and art lovers over all of time. That is, the nude female. The artists who followed the traditions of the French Salon were allowed to display their love of the female form, but only if put into an acceptable context such as mythology. Rebellion of this principle is exactly what caused the art of Monet to cause such a stir! As long as the nude woman was someone people didn't know, and her pose was nonconfrontational, it was perfectly acceptable to glare at her curves. Bouguereau followed the rules in his passions, and scorned the new up and coming artists who did not...
| "...A new
art! But what for? Art is eternal, it is
unique. Our art is the same as the art of all other
times. We do the best we can and when we do as well
as our masters, that's all we can hope for!" "Have you ever seen blue shadows? Do you think it is very clever to create women who sweat rainbows? Yes! women perspiring in prismatic colors! There are color-blind people; but that's not my fault! There are others who think that is painting. What do you want me to do about it?...One shouldn't believe in all those so-called innovations. There is only one nature and only one way to see it. Nowadays, they want to succeed too fast, this is how they go about inventing new aesthetics, pointillism, pipisme! All this is just to make noise... We have a few masters in the nineteenth century... not to mention those still alive -- Ingres and Delacroix; water and fire, don't you think? And still very clever people, who made no blue shadows and no tapestries and who knew how to draw! But all these people... have no talent. They hide their shortcomings under a display of childish tricks. They want to put their models right into the full sun!... This has never been done! What do you do when you're in the sun? You squint and make a face, and so do I! One can't paint the sun!... Yes, I'm quite willing to have a little sun effect, there, in the background, but nobody has light on his palette! Painters with a lot of talent have have succeeded in creating an illusion of it, like Decamps... but that's not what one should strive for... One has to seek Beauty and Truth, Sir! As I always say to my pupils, you have to work to the finish. There's only one kind of painting. It's the painting that presents the eye with perfection, the kind of beautiful and impeccable enamel you find in Veronese and Titian...." |
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