Madame (Werefkin)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Madame (Marianne von Werefkin)
Madame
Marianne von Werefkin , around 1909
Tempera on cardboard
69 × 46 cm
Fondazione Marianne Werefkin , Ascona

Madame is the title of a picture that the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin painted around 1909. The work belongs to the holdings of the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin (FMW) in Ascona . It has the inventory number FMW 0-00-16. The corresponding sketch , a colorful gouache with the inventory number FMW 49-2-664-b12 / 76, is also in the FMW.

Technology and dimensions

The picture is a tempera painting on cardboard , 69 × 46 cm. It has no signature or date.

iconography

It depicts a woman, not a beauty, the head shown in profile, with blue eyes, a noticeably protruding nose and a bizarre hairstyle with abnormal hair ornaments. In a sophisticated get-up, she sits on a reddish sofa in front of a flat background. She is wearing a dark blue dress that has a striking pink flower pattern. A yellow scarf falls from both shoulders down her arms onto her lap. Hands and forearms are covered with white ice cream gloves . In her left hand she is holding a folded red fan .

Grotesque attitude, strange gestures

The gouache preceding the painting is revealing for the artist's intention. She anticipates the figure in its entirety and shows the head in half profile with both eyes. In the upper left corner of the sheet, Werefkin repeated the portrait head of the “Madame” in pure profile with a very large, misshapen nose, which was not so clearly shown in the painting. The sketch illustrates Werefkin's artist's will to express the ugliness of the depiction by means of caricature-like exaggeration. Werefkin contrasted the misshapen and grotesque with the notions of traditional beauty ideals that were still common at the time .

Madame certainly goes back to a suggestion by the Nabis . Werefkin seems to have known the theoretical writings of Maurice Denis , in which he advocates caricature as a legitimate stylistic device. On her travels in France, Werefkin must have met originals by Édouard Vuillard , Pierre Bonnard and other Nabis. One feels reminded of pictures of the Nabis, which show figures in strange, bizarre movements. These refer to the Japanese woodcut art , which had created a type of image that particularly likes to show actors in fantastic appearances in a grotesque posture with comical gestures. Since several copies of this type of image have been preserved in Jawlensky's Japanese woodcut collection, it must be assumed that Werefkin was not only inspired by the Nabis to adopt it, but that they also used original Japanese models. Because too often the grotesque appears as a stylistic element with the inclusion of cloisonnism in her sketchbooks, e.g. B. in their Sacharoff representations , how he dances the Cakewalk .

Toulouse-Lautrec's caricatural stylistic devices

Werefkin attached great importance to the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . When she hadn't started drawing and painting again, she regretted that this painter was misunderstood by her friends. It was only when she began to paint again herself and used Toulouse-Lautrec in many of her pictures, reinterpreted him, given his subjects a different weighting, that his art also became a model for others. Her agreement with Erma Bossi on artistic matters was particularly close in this regard . Hardly any other artist had devoted himself so exclusively to the study and portrayal of human beings as Toulouse-Lautrec. For him there was only the figure. He understood spaces, even landscapes, as "an ingredient [...] to make the essence of a figure more understandable." He, too, had learned from the Japanese to depict the essentials of humans in a reduced way. He is always concerned with character studies that are made possible by simplifications, exaggerated facial expressions and exalted gestures that can be quickly grasped by the viewer. Caricature and striking stylistic devices were developed by Toulouse-Lautrec, which is still used today, e.g. B. in advertising , have their validity. It is not surprising that it was used by Werefkin, as it was by Alexander von Salzmann before her , when she put the disposition of someone close to her on paper.

literature

  • Clemens Weiler : Marianne von Werefkin. Exhib. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958, no p.
  • Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
  • Brigitte Salmen (Ed.): Exh. Cat .: Marianne von Werefkin in Murnau, art and theory, role models and artist friends. Murnau 2002, p. 95, color illus. Cat. 48, ISBN 3-932276-14-0
  • Verena Borgmann: Marianne Werefkin / caricature and absurd comedy. In: Merciless, Artists and the Funny. Kunstsammlungen Böttcherstraße, Bremen 2012, p. 40 ff.
  • Isabell Schenk-Weininger / Petra Lanfermann (eds.): Exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, From the Blue Rider to the Great Bear. Municipal Gallery Bietigheim-Bissingen 2014, p. 72, cat. 32
  • Bernd Fäthke : Marianne Werefkin: Clemens Weiler's Legacy. In: Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in her Circle. (Tanja Malycheva and Isabel Wünsche eds.), Leiden / Boston 2016 (English), pp. 8–19, ISBN 978-9-0043-2897-6 , pp. 8–19, here pp. 14–19; JSTOR 10.1163 / j.ctt1w8h0q1.7

Individual evidence

  1. Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 82, color illus. 85, ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
  2. Ursula Perucchi-Petri: The landscape of the big cities, streets, squares and public parks. In exh. Cat .: The Nabis, prophets of the modern age. Kunsthaus, Zurich 1993, p. 80.
  3. Ursula Perucchi-Petri: The landscape of the big cities, streets, squares and public parks. In exh. Cat .: The Nabis, prophets of the modern age. Kunsthaus, Zurich 1993, p. 77 ff.
  4. Ildikó small Bednay: Jawlensky Japanese woodcut collection. In exh. Cat .: Jawlensky's Japanese woodcut collection. A fairytale discovery. Edition of the Administration of State Palaces and Gardens, Bad Homburg vdH, No. 2, 1992, pp. 87 ff.
  5. Exhib. Cat .: Jawlensky's Japanese woodcut collection. A fairytale discovery. Edition of the Administration of State Palaces and Gardens, Bad Homburg vdH, No. 2, 1992.
  6. Bernd Fäthke: Von Werefkins and Jawlensky's weakness for Japanese art. In: exhib. Cat .: "... the tender, spirited fantasies ...", the painters of the "Blue Rider" and Japan. Murnau Castle Museum 2011, p. 119 f, color illus. 33
  7. Bernd Fäthke: Erma Bossi, an expressionist from the very beginning. In: Weltkunst , October 1, 1999, pp. 1891 ff.
  8. Götz Adriani: Toulouse-Lautrec and Paris around 1900. Cologne 1987, p. 7