Word: renoir
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...woman who is a goddess - or at least harks back to one - that's a different matter. It would be Renoir's aim to reconfigure the female nude in a way that would convey the spirit of the classical world without classical trappings. Set in "timeless" outdoor settings, these women by their weight and scale and serenity alone - along with their often recognizably classical poses - would point back to antiquity...
...time, Renoir worked with figures so strongly outlined that they could have been put down by Ingres with a jackhammer. By 1892, the year with which the LACMA show starts, he had drifted back toward a fluctuating Impressionist brushstroke. Firmly contoured or flickering, his softly sculpted women are as full-bodied as Doric columns. This was one of the qualities that caught Picasso's eye, especially after his first trip to Italy, in 1917. He would assimilate Renoir alongside his own sources in Iberian sculpture and elsewhere to come up with a frankly more powerful, even haunting, amalgam...
That picture is in the LACMA show, along with works by Matisse, Bonnard and Maillol, to demonstrate Renoir's influence. What's apparent from these, however, is that Renoir was most valuable as a stepping-stone for artists making more potent use of the ideas he was developing. The heart of the problem is the challenge Renoir set for himself: to reconcile classical and Renaissance models with the 18th century French painters he loved. To synthesize the force and clarity of classicism with the intimacy and charm of the Rococo is a nearly impossible trick. How do you cross...
...Artist in Winter In the late 1890s, renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. It progressed until his fingers were bent into claws, the tips pressed against the palms of his hands. On the recommendation of his doctors, he moved from Paris to the dry climate of Provence, where, like so many other artists, he found a personal paradise, a garden tended by ghosts of the ancient Mediterranean. His was a farmstead in Cagnes-sur-Mer, not far from Nice. Though in constant pain, Renoir entered the most productive period of his career, producing hundreds of canvases, many of them painted while...
...zquez. At age 16, he looks as if he knows he'll grow up to be one of the greatest of all filmmakers, the director of classics like The Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game. During the run of this show, LACMA has scheduled a Jean Renoir film festival. You can schedule one at home to decide for yourself who was the greater genius in this family. If it weren't for Dad's Impressionist years, my money would be on Junior...