Tell Me a Painting

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José Antonio Roda Lluís Cassany
PAINTING TELL ME

mad as a hatter!

Vincent Van Gogh was a brilliant artist, among the top 10 in the history of art. He was also a misunderstood, antisocial and obsessive madman with a tormented soul. He famously ate his own paint (back when paint contained lead) and had to be committed to a psychiatric hospital more than once because of his unstable mental health. What’s more, he would drink till he dropped and stunk to high heaven.

But Vincent wasn’t a genius because he was mad, nor was he mad because of his artistic genius. When he painted, he left his soul on the canvas and no one else came close. Despite his eccentricities, he earned the admiration of his fellow artists.

That wasn’t the case for the wider public: he painted 900 paintings, did 1,600 drawings… and failed to sell a single one. Today, if you were able to bring together all the works he didn’t sell, it would be worth an unthinkable fortune.

For a while, Van Gogh concentrated on painting pictures of himself; hence the large number of self-portraits in his work. Obsessive to an extreme, it is perhaps little wonder that he painted himself more than 40 times. But only one painting shows the painter without a beard. In some he has a pipe, others a hat or a coat, there’s even one after he cut off his ear… but in all of them but one Vincent has a beard.

You could spend all day pondering over this one, but you’ll never guess why. Although when you find out, I’m sure you’ll understand. He painted this self-portrait as a birthday present for his mother, who couldn’t bear Vincent’s beard. And of course, what wouldn’t a son do to please his mum…?

There’s something funny about an artist as crazy as he was, who never washed, cut off one of his ears (well, just the lobe actually) and worked like a man possessed, yet when it came to keeping his mother happy, could make such a sensitive gesture.

In true Van Gogh style, the artist ended up shooting himself in the chest with a rifle.

Self-portrait without beard, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889. Private collection

Matisse, drawing with scissors

Instead of a painting, this is the story behind a photo; one of a man lying in bed, drawing stick figures on the wall. But, hang on a minute, let’s show a little more respect, after all we’re talking about none other than the great Henri Matisse, one of the geniuses of modern art. And he wasn’t in bed out of laziness, but rather because he was very sick and had no choice in the matter. Matisse was always obsessed with colour, all his work is an explosion of strong, exaggerated tones. Why? Because he believed that colours were the expression of feelings. During his earlier days as a painter, nobody understood him. A critic who once saw his paintings in the refined city of Paris said they looked like they’d been done by a wild beast. Needless to say, few people, if any, would agree with him today, as Matisse is now admired all around the world!

Matisse suffered from sickness at the beginning and end of his career. These two moments each have a different story to tell.

The first: Matisse studied law and worked as a lawyer, but as a young man he was stricken with appendicitis and had to be operated on. During his convalescence, to save him from getting bored, his mother gave him some canvases to paint. That was how Henri discovered his passion for art. Sickness made him a painter.

The second: at the end of his life, Matisse took very ill. He couldn’t move, and for a man that was used to doing big paintings, this was very hard to accept. So, he came up with a new technique: collage. He cut out bits of paper, painted them and put together compositions. That’s why at the end of his life he used to say he drew with scissors. Sickness forced him to reinvent himself as a collage artist.

Photography of Le Corbusier, painting a mural in house E-1027 (1939)

a genius with a wild side

The naked man in the photo is called Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, although he is known by his pseudonym: Le Corbusier. He was the world’s most famous architect, but he was also a masterful designer and painter.

The story behind these murals reveals Le Corbusier’s wild side.

To understand it, let me first introduce you to Eileen Gray, a sensitive and intelligent designer and architect… She was one of the first people to conceive of a domestic space in its entirety. In her global concept, the architecture was important, but so too were the colours, the light, the furniture, the rugs. Everything counted.

To demonstrate her theory, together with her husband, she designed and constructed a house called E-1027 on the French Riviera. She was very proud of it and demonstrating her theories using her own house gave her great satisfaction. Le Corbusier, a friend of the couple, asked Eileen to let him paint the walls of the house, an offer she flatly refused; she had no interest in “decorating” the walls with someone else’s ideas.

The years went by and Le Corbusier, now famous everywhere, kept pestering her, but his friend always gave the same response: no way. Eileen eventually split up with her husband and moved out of house E1027, which was when our genius and somewhat wayward artist made his move. He went straight over to the house and painted the murals just as he wanted, without asking anyone for permission.

And he didn’t stop there; he thought they were so good that he even took photographs of what he’d painted and sent them to different architecture journals for their publication…without telling anyone that the house was Eileen’s and that he didn’t even have permission to step foot in it (let alone paint the walls!).

Eileen was furious with her old friend. She never returned to the house.

Incidentally, have you noticed the massive scar on Le Corbusier’s leg? It’s from a nasty sailing accident, which almost left him without a leg.

a thief called Picasso?

It was a Monday in August and the Louvre Museum in Paris was closed to visitors. Not many guards were on duty and security was weak. The next day, when the museum opened to the public… shock, horror!!! the Mona Lisa had vanished from the wall and nobody had the faintest idea where it had gone.

The first thing the police did was order the museum’s closure and all visitors there at the time were searched. Not a single clue was found.

First the French press and then newspapers from all over the world ran the story on their front pages, and, although the Mona Lisa wasn’t as famous as it is now, it immediately became the world’s best known painting. People stood in long queues to enter the Louvre and take their chance to see… the space where the painting had been. Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece was in the hands of a thief and the Paris police had to work against the clock to solve the mystery.

Over the ensuing days, the investigators found out that a young poet called Apollinaire and a painter friend of his by the name of Pablo Picasso had recently declared that all paintings should be stolen and removed from art galleries. They felt it was time for a new kind of art, one that wasn’t for stuffy museums that had fallen behind the times.

That was how the police came to arrest Apollinaire, who, after two days in jail, mentioned Picasso as his friend and partner in some of his antics. The gendarmes wasted no time in arresting Picasso and subjecting him to a thorough interrogation.

Clearly lacking any kind of real proof, they had no choice but to let him go without charges. Nevertheless, for months this creative genius was forever looking over his shoulder to check if he was being followed by the French police. The whole affair left him utterly traumatised! After becoming a world famous artist, he couldn’t stand people reminding him of that story.

So, thanks to a painting by the greatest genius of the Renaissance, modern art’s greatest genius was put through the wringer down at the police station.

And what about the real thief? He was a museum employee. He wanted to steal the masterpiece to take it to Italy, the homeland of its creator. That Monday in August, he took down the painting, hid it beneath his clothes and walked calmly out of the museum.

Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci, 16th Century, Louvre Museum, Paris (France)

an ugly guy

Rembrandt is one of the masters of a style called Baroque, and perhaps the most talented and best known painter of the Netherlands. After he’d already made a name for himself as a painter, a rather swollen-headed mayor (in those days known as burgomasters) dropped by his workshop and commissioned him to paint his portrait. After the artist had worked on the painting for a few days, the politician went to pick it up. On seeing it, he grimaced and told Rembrandt that the portrait was no good, that he’d made him look too ugly. With a touch of pride, Rembrandt said he would go over the painting again and that it would be ready in a few days.

When he returned, the mayor came into the studio and his eyes were immediately drawn to a gold coin that someone must have dropped. Without thinking twice, he bent down to pick it up… but couldn’t: it was painted onto the floor.

Our poor old, vain and conceited burgomaster had been taught a lesson without a word passing anyone’s lips: if Rembrandt was genius enough to paint such a realistic-looking coin on the floor, what kind of imbecile could then cast doubt on the accuracy of his portrait? The mayor said nothing, took the painting and went home. He was obviously uglier than he had thought.

Frida’s double self-portrait

Do you know who Frida is? You’ve likely seen plenty of pictures of her: a woman with eyebrows that nearly joined in the middle and who painted herself in different circumstances and using an array of adornments, costumes and accessories. She was pretty and often wore flowers in her hair.

But Frida is much more than that: Frida is the victory of art over pain and suffering. And even over lost love and drama. Her life was anything but easy.

At the age of eighteen, Frida had a terrible accident: a streetcar slammed into the bus she was travelling in. She was left almost paralytic from a dreadful back injury and was bedridden for months. During her convalescence she set aside her plans to be a doctor and discovered her passion for painting, and more precisely her obsession for self-portraits; her way for healing the pain and offering the world a new femininist artistic vision. When asked why she painted so many self-portraits she replied: “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Imagine wearing a plaster corset that holds your body in place because your spine is broken. Imagine being sick so often you spend most of your days in bed. Imagine having a leg amputated. The result of so much suffering, in Frida’s case, is her art. And just take a look at her self-portraits… she’s almost always smiling.

In this double self-portrait, the Frida on the right is dressed as a Mexican and the Frida on the left in European style. Both have their hearts outside of their bodies. The painting conveys the strength that helped the artist get through the pain of her divorce from her husband.

The Two Fridas, Frida Kahlo, 1939, Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City (Mexico)

the world’s most famous dentist

Grant Wood was a small town boy with magic in his brushes. In his time, most American painters were running away to the big cities on America’s west coast or towards New York, but he found his inspiration in a more rural vision of his country. He was already well-travelled and had learnt much from the great European painters.

One day, he came upon a house with a window like the kind you see in Gothic churches (which may help you understand the title of the artwork), and he decided to paint a farmer and his daughter standing outside of it. The house was (is!) real, and is called “Dibble House”. But there was neither a farmer nor a farmer’s daughter living there.

What could he do? Well, part of the problem was easily solved: he asked his sister Nan if she could pose as the farmer’s daughter. Sorted.

But, where would he find the farmer? It seemed nobody he could think of would do… Until one day it came to him. He asked his dentist, Doctor Byron McKeeby, if he’d mind posing for him, but he didn’t tell him what it was for. In fact, Grant promised his dentist that nobody would recognise him in the picture. Uh-oh! He painted him as a very sternfaced countryman, holding a pitchfork… and, since Grant was an outstanding realist painter, the doctor’s face was identical to the original.

As it turned out, the good dentist was not very satisfied with the painting, but it did impress the Art Institute of Chicago, winning one of the prizes it was entered for. They paid him handsomely (300 dollars) in exchange for the painting, which can still be seen there to this day.

The poor dentist clearly didn’t have a great head for business: instead of getting angry, he should have asked him for the painting… today, any one of Grant’s paintings is worth millions.

American Gothic, Grant Wood, 1930. Art Institute of Chicago (USA) Woman with a Hat, Henri Matisse, 1905. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

the girl with a hat

If Amélie, the woman with the hat, had had an Instagram or Tik Tok account, this would probably be her profile photo. As much as anything because Amélie had a lady’s hat shop, and this painting would have made fantastic publicity.

The creator of the painting was her husband, the painter Henri Matisse, a brilliant artist with an obsession for colour and confident brushstrokes. And he despised realism. Apparently, on seeing the painting, a lady approached him and said:

“Excuse me, did you know that we women do not have green noses?”

To which Matisse replied:

“Madam, this isn’t a woman. It’s a painting.”

What a comeback! But he was right: Matisse and his fellow painters, a group known as the “Fauves”, wanted to emphasise the use of colour to convey emotions.

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