Edouard Vulliard: A
Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 at the Jewish Museum
Edouard Vulliard, though a gentile, spent his career in the
company of the Jewish people or, at least, wealthy supporters of the Jewish
people. He was, in addition, a member of
post-Impressionist group of artists called the Nabis (nabi meaning “prophet” in Hebrew), so titled because, according to
the poet Henri Cazalis, “most of them wore beards, some were Jews and all were
desperately earnest.” So it is fitting
(right?) that the Jewish Museum (at 92nd and 5th, for
those of you so interested) would stage an exhibition of Vulliard’s greatest
works over his fifty-year career, Edouard
Vulliard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940. Said muses, incidentally, are Vulliard’s
mother, whom he lived with until her death, and two of Vulliard’s lovers who
happened to be married to two of his best friends. They do say art comes from strange places!
Regardless,
Vulliard’s work is beautiful, specific and a perfect view of the beautiful
French meadows, apartments, and city streets on which he made his various
homes. Each brushstroke, one can see, is
meant for a higher purpose, to convey a bigger picture, literally. The greatest thing about Vulliard is that he
is the classic observer, rarely taking part in the antics of the Nabis at their
estates in the south of France. Rather,
he would simply paint what he saw, regardless of what it was or whether it was
at an unusual angle, and had the rare talent of putting it to canvas in as many
different ways as could be imagined—hyper-realistic portraiture,
two-dimensional but still impressive landscape as seen from above, sketch-like
crude but aesthetically pleasing views of one of his inamoratas, Misia
Natanson, and many more.
Vulliard’s
many fortes span all sorts of visual art, including photography, to which
portions of the exhibit are devoted. To
him, as the exhibit puts it, social interaction was a sort of a “game,” something
to be looked at and appreciated—or mocked.
So he took photographs of Nabis and their benefactors at dinner, sitting
in chairs, watching children play hide-and-seek… It seems no activity was
beyond the sphere of his work, beyond the treatment of a representation
springing from his ever-ready brush or camera.
Socialization was not Vulliard’s only interest. Of
course, one of his muses, either his seamstress mother or one of his ingénues,
was always waiting in the wings to model for him whenever he wished it. But he was also fascinated with mirrors. Strange, but true, Vulliard painted people
reflecting in mirrors, or bottles, or vases, or one person facing another, one
of which was facing a mirror, or any such number of reflected points of
interest. I expected at some point to
find a representation of a mirror reflected in a mirror, but I suppose this is
too difficult for even a painter such as he to tackle. Still, Vulliard handles mirrors with
surprising precision, keeping everything exactly symmetrical but slightly
shimmering on the other side of his painted versions of smooth glass. The world through the looking glass, so to
speak, seems interesting, but not so much that, like Alice, we would wish to
escape this one for that. The world
Vulliard has created before the looking glass is just as exciting, and equally
beautiful.
Whatever Edouard
Vulliard’s background, personal life, or faith, the importance of the exhibit
one can view at the Jewish Museum through September 23rd lies in the
images he has created. Like windows into
another world strangely parallel to our own, his paintings and sketches of
various sizes line the walls of an enjoyable exhibition indeed. Perhaps if the artist were still here,
wondering visitors tiptoeing through the quiet halls of an altar to his talent
would be a sight worth his photographing.
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