You Can Hire an Artist

Half-Naked Thursday: Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Oct 1, 2009

Let them eat cheesecake!

Queen Marie-Antoinette had King Louis XVI pull some strings to get her favorite portrait painter, Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, admitted to France’s Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture as a painter of historical allegory.  Rules at the Academy barred the few women that were admitted from life drawing classes attended by the men.  But that apparently didn’t stop Élizabeth-Louise from learning her anatomy lessons.  Soon everyone who was anyone sat for Vigée-Lebrun, including 30 portraits of Maire Antoinette.

Vigée-Lebrun became one of the most popular artists of her day.  She survived the French Revolution, fleeing to the courts of Italy, Austria, and Russia.  In Rome she was elected to the Roman Accademia di San Luca.  While in Russia she painted numerous members of Catherine the Great’s family. Vigée-Lebrun was made a member of the Academy of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg as well.  She was able to return to France during the reign of Emperor Napoleon I, but much in demand by aristocrats and notables she also traveled to England and Switzerland on commissions.  In Switzerland she was made an honorary member of the Societe pour l’Avancement des Beaux-Arts of Geneva.  She published her memoirs in 1835 and 1837 giving us a glimspe of the artist’s training methods of the time.  Over her lifetime Vigée-Lebrun painted 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.  Not bad for a girl in the 18th century.  Funny no one ever  mentioned her in school.

Kathleen Benton

All art work featured in the slideshow by Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842)

Bacchante, 1785, Oil on panel, 109 x 78 cm, Museum Nissim de Comondo, Paris  France.  This painting was commissioned by Count de Vaudreuil, in addition to a portrait of himself.

Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante, 1785, Oil on canvas, 28 7/8 x 23 3/8 in, Clark Institute, Williamstown, MA

Bacchus and Ariadne ?, Oil on canvas, 1782, unlocated

Allegory of Poetry, 1774, Oval, 24 x 30 in, unlocated

American Woman, 1803, Oil on canvas, unlocated

Young Woman in Love -?, Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm, unlocated

Portrait of a Young Lady as Flora, 1811, Oval, 72 x 60 cm, National Museum of Stockholm, Sweden

There are many sites the feature the art and career of Élizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun.  The one I’ve found with the most information and art examples is at http://www.batguano.com/vigee.html

Half-Naked Thursday: Ross Bleckner

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Sep 24, 2009

“What?” you ask.   But, of course!  If it’s this week’s Half Naked Thursday, Ross Bleckner must be the subject.  It’s my selectively orderly nature to keep these two themes, Half-Naked Thursday and Elegantly Dressed Wednesday somehow connected every week.  So now we must proceed with Ross Bleckner.  For some reason New York Social Diary is not coming up with the goods this time.  (Who’s been editing the party photos?)  But Ross is sporting a bit of décolletage on 8/9/04.  Naturally, you’ll have to scroll down to find it.  

But maybe there’s another way around.  In looking through the gallery of Ross Bleckner’s paintings at his web site, one stood out as a bit different.  The painting is called  One Day Fever.  Dropping in or exiting out of the top of composition are a set of bare legs and feet.  This is indeed Half and Naked.  Success!  This is the only example I’ve seen of human form in Ross Bleckner’s paintings (It must have been due to the fever).  If I’m wrong I’m sure you’ll let me know.

Kathleen Benton

Ross Bleckner (American, b.1949), One Day Fever, 1986, Oil and wax on linen, 48 x40 inches

Half-Naked Thursday: Eve Babitz with Marcel Duchamp

Posted by Kathleen Benton on Sep 17, 2009

At the end of my first Elegantly Dressed Wednesday post (see EWD: Georgia O’Keeffe) I considered the possibility of adding  the feature, Half-Naked Thursday, using art and artists as my consortium.  This feature is inspired by yet  not to be confused with Half-Nekkid Thursday, a practice of exposure which has been going on at other sites for years.  The rules there request that  subject be of the participants themselves or someone known to them.  Since my purposes here are to highlight art and artists, I’m going to borrow the theme and do just that.

Since I chose Marcel Duchamp as my subject for yesterday’s Elegantly Dressed Wednesday article I thought I would follow it with this example which includes Duchamp for my first installment. 

The photograph’s subject is a fully clothed Marcel Duchamp and a naked Eve Babitz sitting at a table playing chess in a gallery filled with Duchamp’s artwork.  The room is a gallery at the Pasadena Museum of Art in 1963. 

The concept is attributed to the photographer Julian Wasser, although it seems inspired by the Dada  playfulness and incongruity of Marcel Duchamp’s own work.  As the title states, the subjects were posed.  This means it was not presented as a performance, nor was the photography session open to the public.  So, in line with many of Duchamp’s pieces, what seems to be documentation is actually fiction.  As a photograph, the juxtaposition of fully-clothed and nude figures still shocks even today,  as did Édouard Manet’s composition Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), painted one hundred years prior in 1863.

A little bit on Eve Babitz:  She is an author, artist, and former model.  She has several book titles to her credit-  Eve’s Hollywood, Slow days, fast company: The world, the flesh, and L.A. : tales and Fiorucci, the book. 

In an interview conducted in the year 2000 with Paul Karlstrom, Babitz seems intent on making the claim that the set-up was her idea.  You can judge that for yourself.  Here is a link to the transcript of that interview:  Oral history interview with Eve Babitz, 2000 Jun 14, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Kathleen Benton

(Click on images to enlarge and read details.  Click again to return to page.)

Julian Wasser (American), Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz posing for the photographer Julian Wasser during the Duchamp Retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum, 1963, © 2000 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris