Chaim Soutine at the Pinacotheque de Paris
Trip Start
Sep 15, 2005
1
55
164
Trip End
Mar 14, 2013
Paris, France
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Born in the Russian Pale, in the shtetl of Smilovitch to an orthodox Jewish family. Soutine defied his family's intentions of his training to be a tailor, moving first to Vilnius to study art before immigrating to France in 1913. Arriving in Paris, he moved to Montparnasse, living amongst other avant-garde artists at La Ruche (the beehive), an art colony where artists such as Chagall, Leger, Zadkine, Diego Rivera and Modigliani all lived and worked. These artists and their bohemian milieu all had a huge influence on Soutine's work, particularily Modiliani who became his closest friend. Soutine also spent an enormous amount of time at the Louvre, regarding and studying works by Rembrandt and Courbet which he later reinterpreted. Although he was said to have disliked Van Gogh, Soutine's colors and paint treatment remind me of Van Gogh, his twisted French villages echo much sweeter views of Chagall's shtetls, his eviscerated animals are reinterpretations of Rembrandt, his distorted and elongated portraits owe much to his friend Modigliani.
A victim of anti-semitism, Soutine did not receive the acclaim he merited in the art circles he frequented. He remained poor and in ill health much of his life. In 1923, he finally received some recognition and a degree of wealth after Guillaume Appollinaire introduced his works to the American Albert Barnes(Barnes Foundation). Barnes thought Soutine a genius. He bought 52 of Soutine's paintings, and introduced him to his future patrons, the Castaignes, Parisian tastemakers and designers who became enamored of his work. In 1937, Soutine finally showed his work at the Salon of Independents, and was well-received. Unfortunately, his fame was short-lived as the Nazis were coming to power, and he had to flee Paris.
The extraordinary collection of paintings on view spanned his entire working career and is an unusual gathering of many heretofore unseen works held in private hands. The exposition tries to repair the historical perspective of his work, and demonstrate the artist's early and influential place in the development of French and later, German expressionism. It also leaves the questions open as to whether Soutine was "fou" as well as whether he was a "Jewish" artist. The colors, the angst and distortions shown in his paintings are sometimes alluded to when describing him as such, although he never painted Jewish subject matter. In fact, Soutine spent considerable time painting choir boys,a magnificent interpretation of the Cathedral of Chartres, as well as a series of eviscerated animals, including rabbits and pigs, all subject matter that would seem anathema to Jewish sensibility. In was however a portrait of Soutine by his friend Modigliani that alluded to the Cohenim handshake which was the starting point for this particular exhibition. Other histories allude to his work as 'Holocaust' art, but Soutine was not a Holocaust artist. He hid in the provinces during the Nazi occupation, but died seeking surgery in Paris for a perforated ulcer in 1943.
One would expect a new museum, albeit fashioned out of an historical space, would at least be technologically advanced, with proper lighting and well-thought out trajectories. Instead, we found the museum's lighting to make viewing paintings difficult--at one point I actually had to put my sunglasses on to avoid the glare on a canvas. The exposition also offered much information on the artist--which required one to stand in a small space and read four or five ceiling to floor panels at once. This caused backups and problems with room flow--one couldn't get through one space to the next. There were also paintings hung around corners--forcing the museum goer into small spaces with no exit in the opposite direction.
Hopefully the museum experience itself will improve for future exhibitions, however the depth and breadth of the Soutine exhibition was certainly worth the annoyances. The questions the show presented--was he mad, is his art specifically "Jewish" in nature, can only be answered by the viewer. I came away sure that the man was at least depressed or manic--his colors and his vision alternated dramatically between the beautiful and grostesque...but isn't that what Expressionism was to become?
