Portrait de Paul Eluard, Surrealism and the Life of Salvador Dali by Pieter Bergli

Portrait de Paul Eluard 1929. Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí b.1904 d.1989 Spanish surrealist painter and sculptor. Sold at Sotheby's in 2011 for $22.4 Million Dollars.

At the age of six Salvador Dali wanted to be a cook, at seven he wanted to be Napoleon, and his ambitions continued to grow thereafter. When he was only sixteen years of age, he wrote down in his notebook: “I will be a genius, and the world will admire me. Perhaps I’ll be despised and misunderstood, but I’ll be a genius, a great genius, I’m certain of it.” 

The genius of Salvador Dali arose with his inane ability to take the subject and twist it inside out to explore the subconsciousness. The painting above is Dali's own tribute to his friend Paul Eluard, the French poet, whom Dali idolized by his charm and magnetism around the company of women in Paris in the summer of 1929. In turn Eluard was mesmerized  by Dali's ability to turn the subject of a painting away from traditional landscapes and Impressionist themes to explore the hidden workings of the mind from within and not without. 

Dali's introduction to art began in 1916 when at the age of eleven years he attended a local drawing school near the Catalan town of Cadaqués. Five years later at the age of sixteen years in 1921 his mother died of breast cancer. Dali later wrote that this experience "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshiped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul". His father married the sister of his mother, the maternal aunt, thereafter with approval of the young Salvador. 

In 1922, Dalí moved to Madrid to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Quickly Dali became known for his charm and extravagance. By 1924 Dali started experimenting with the French method of Cubism. There were none in Madrid at the time and so his art gained immediate attention. Always the cause célèbre himself, Dali soon found himself amidst controversy of unrest and was accused and expelled from school in 1926. Unruffled in typical fashion Dali went on to paint his first serious work in 1926 - The Basket of Bread. In the same year Dali then went to Paris and met the famed Pablo Picasso whom he revered and whole helped guide the young flamboyant man.

Basket of Bread 1926 - Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA.

Dali's foray into the mind and Surrealism then went on to produce one of the most memorable pieces of his career; namely, The Persistence of memory in 1931 with the amazing image of soft melting watches. Dali's career then took him to London and New York and as the civil war raged at home, dali spent time meeting such figures as Sigmund Freud and Coco Chanel in the French Riviera. Dali married his live in partner Gala, the ex wife of his friend Paul Eluard, in 1934. As world War II broke out Dali then spent eight years in USA.  the arrival of such a giant in New York became an instant sensation and his sojourn became the most important catalyst in the development of New York City as the world center for art in the post war years. In 1948 Dali returned home to his native Cadaqués where he spent the next three decades inspiring the art world with such masterpieces of incredible genius. In 1968 as extravagant as ever Dali bought a castle in Pubol for Gala. In 1982, King Juan Carlos bestowed on the now frail Dalí the title of Marqués de Dalí de Púbol (Marquis of Dalí de Púbol) into the nobility of Spain, referring to Púbol, the place where he lived. Gala died shortly after in June 1982. Salvador Dali composed his last paining in June 1983, the melancholy study - The Swallow's Tail. He then lost his will to live and died on January 23, 1989.

The Swallow's Tail 1983 - Dalí Theatre and Museum, Figueres, Spain.

It cannot be said that this genius of a man lived an ordinary life. Salvador Dali himself was incredibly an extrovert by nature, enigmatic and controversial. With usual extravagance and drama Dali once declared that his own rarefied tastes and:  "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" can be ascribed to a certain ancient "Arab lineage", whose ancestors were once descended from the Moors!

Salvador Dalí photographed by Carl Van Vechten November 29, 1939 during the Spanish Civil War.



Reflections upon fine art by Pieter Bergli

For my readers that enjoy a cafe and something to read please turn to my other blog -

http://thegenteelworldofcoffee.blogspot.com/

and of course for lovers of art

https://www.pinterest.com/myartmusings/

Thank you

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Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?) c. 1892 Paul Gaugin

Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?) c. 1892 Paul Gaugin b.1848 d.1903. Oil on canvas. In 2015 this famous work was sold for no less than 300 million US dollars to a private collector from the Kingdom of Qatar.

Paul Gaugin struggled to achieve success within his life time. Born in Paris, France, to a journalist father Clovis Gauguin and mother Alina Maria Chazal of Peruvian origin, Gaugin saw struggles from a very early age. He lost his father as a mere infant of 18 months when his father voyaged from Paris to Peru to cover the story of politics in Peru. Thereafter the mother took the infant to Peru and lived there for 4 years without financial support to continue a life in Paris. It was here in Lima that the first traces of his colorful art and themes could be traced with the very first sparks of imagination in a child. at the age of 7 years the young boy returned to France to live with grandfather in Orléans where he schooled until the age of 14 when he went to Paris to join a naval preparatory academy. With the death of the mother in 1867 young Gaugin returned to Paris to become a stockbroker. At 23 years of age Gaugin made some early successes on the Paris Bourse and then also as an art dealer on the side. but as the stock market crashed in 1879 so too did his fortunes. In 1879 after having married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad, Gaugin decided to throw himself into a new career as a painter and where his passion for life could be restored.

As an art dealer Gaugin had the privilege of meeting artists like Pissaro and Cézanne and frequent galleries to spot emerging artistic talent. Gauguin showed his very own paintings to the world first at the Impressionist exhibitions held in 1881 and 1882. His art was not received well. 

In November 1884, for the sake of saving his marriage he moved with his wife Mette-Sophie Gad and children to Copenhagen, Denmark. but their marriage quickly broke down and Gaugin returned to Paris.

In later years Gaugin became deeply distrustful of European impressionism and searched for deeper hidden meanings within the arts of Africa and Asia. His use of color broke new grounds from the Impressionist movement starting to stifle and grow dull. Gaugin experimented with Medieval enameling techniques known as Cloisonnist work, which saw the abandoning of subtle gradations of color with bold outlines. As a French post-impressionist Gaugin only became truly noticeable after his death for his fascinating use of color and synthesis which began to set the artist apart from the mainstream school of Impressionism. Avante garde contemporary French artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse became fascinated with Gaugin's style of palette. Such experimentation with color led to the creation of what is know today as the 'synthetist' style of modern art. Synthetist artists aimed to synthesize these three important features:

    1. The outward appearance of natural forms.
    2. The artist’s feelings about their subject.
    3. The purity of the aesthetic considerations of line, colour and form.

The style of work of Paul Gauguin and other artists like Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin led to the emergence of a separate and distinct identity from contemporary Impressionism in art.

Paul Gaugin - photograph c. 1891.

In 1887 Gaugin visited Martinique where he traveled amongst the rural poor, composing paintings and learned to rediscover the bright charms of Latin America. the works composed during this sojourn became deeply admired by Vincent Van Gogh. Back home in France the two artists became friends and then spent 9 weeks together painting in the town of Arles and living together in a rented house. but their relationship broke down and after a heated argument where Gaugin declared that he was leaving, Van Gogh famously cut his own ear off in anger! In 1891 Gaugin went to the Polynesian island of Tahiti where he lived in a bamboo hut and thence produced some of his finest works including the work Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?). In 1893 Gaugin returned to Paris but soon became lost within his own city of birth and decided to return to Tahiti in 1895 where over the next 6 years he produced many paintings and wood carvings. Gaugin died in French Polynesia in 1903 at the early age of 54 years.

Reflections upon fine art by Pieter Bergli

For my readers that enjoy a cafe and something to read please turn to my other blog -

http://thegenteelworldofcoffee.blogspot.com/

and of course for lovers of art

https://www.pinterest.com/myartmusings/

Thank you

  * European Union laws require that all visitors to this blog from the European Union are aware that cookies are used by Blogger and Google, including the use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies and in reading all material from this blog readers based in the European Union hereby do consent to the use of such cookies for use by Google Analytics and AdSense

A vast collection of nonsense; a sparse collection of substance!

With collecting modern art either you are going to get it fantastically right or woefully wrong unless you develop a model of analysis how to pick and choose contemporary art for investment and wait for your sleeping seeds to grow. Whether you are living in Paris or London or any major city where artists congregate, weekends have recently become a thriving activity for art-lovers to visit galleries and look for art that may well grow in value in the years to come. And we're not just talking about tacky commercial art or run-of-the-mill copies but wading through the whole vastness of utter disparity before discerning the smart and selective panoply of meaningful art.

Eggs in different baskets has always been the general dictum but try this one now; a vast collection of nonsense; a sparse collection of substance. In simple language; is better to have in your hand 5-10 pieces of an artist of promise than 50-100 pieces of an artist whose mind seems to be going nowhere through the story of artistic evolution whether on canvas or board, clay or metal or any other form of expression. Eye catching art is simply not about one or two brilliant bursts and then a gradual fade out into the deeper realms of the nonsensical. Like Alberto Giacometti or an L.S. Lowry one can identify a continuing story in form that gathers force of meaning and becomes enriched and emboldened in time. With Giacometti and his sculptures, for example, the history of his sculptures demonstrate the evolution of a concept of modern man, or mankind, and the viewer may pause and watch how the idea takes root in the artist's mind and stretches in imagination and vary in presentational form until the idea finally becomes completely refined in its purest form with a kaleidoscope of superior emotional evocations. Thus, as the saying goes, a sparse collection of a few modest pieces taken from a well-defined theme and shaped with continuity often stands a far better chance of accumulation of artistic merit than a vast disparate field of ideas hitting out in all directions, some with radiant brilliance and some with dull monotony.

A composer intoning 7 notes all at once in a sudden burst of sound becomes nothing less than a reverberating 'noise' unlike a masterful Mozart who may delicately weave such notes to the point of selective emphasis down to the very second by second basis. Evolutionary art that accumulates value in time is like a tree that plants its roots firmly in the soil and grows its trunk and stretches out it's boughs into the sky. A Picasso moving into his Blue Phase of reflection in 1902 would ponder over the poor; firmly implant the roots of his subject into the social issues of economic failure and watch the beggar in the streets become a trunk, notice the saddened faces by the table in the corner become a bough and touch upon such themes of mental anguish and silent despair etched upon the faces that come and go in glimpses and phases that become the artistic leaves of creation whether in Paris or Barcelona. Art of value is a story of evolution. Furthermore the story of evolution could become the basis of acquisition and collection for future value.

Modern portfolio theory is the basis of investment for the purpose of asset management across several classes. Investors seeking to increase the value of their wealth seek to acquire such items likes equities or bonds, commodities and lands which not only preserve monetary value but enhances their financial capabilities in the future. Classical economic theory confirms the function of store of wealth as a prerequisite for value to grow. That theory would require the negation of inflation which erodes the current and future value of an asset. For those of my readers that are already familiar with the markets and the financial world of investment it may come as surprise that I should be discussing the value of art set amongst other traditional classes of investment. However, given the historical significance of a Rembrandt and the inability of mankind to reproduce another item that would come anywhere near the semblance of the original master's hand, then indeed, art, like the cut of a precious stone, would confirm it's own uniqueness of asset class upon the basis of it's rarity. 

Let us just take a moment for reflection upon  art of Michelangelo and the fresco - The Creation of Adam, which is located in Rome on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling and was painted circa 1511–1512. In all our triumphs and modern capabilities would we ever come anywhere near to replicating the master's unique gift of the illustration the Biblical story of creation taken from the Book of Genesis?

Well one would suppose that a house in Clapham or a cottage in le Midi or Tuscany could be knocked down and another pile of bricks could be erected just as easily and eloquently. Or one could simply sell a stock holding of Apple Inc and replace the value with another holding in Nestle or perhaps Total? Buy a bond sell a bond, the store of value simply transfers from one lot to another. but in all this understanding of the interchangeability of assets and retention of value it certainly begs the question: can one actually sell a Picasso and find equal monetary satisfaction in another work of art not considering the loss or gain of personal satisfaction associated with transferring value? If such were the case then surely for the rarest of collectibles; the fine arts of a Gainsborough or an actual piece of Rodin would not command a significant monetary value were the association of uniqueness as readily inter-changeable amongst collectors. In the final analysis of fine art within the context of modern portfolio theory and financial investment we would need a serious reconsideration of the true meaning of the value of genius.

Genius is not replaceable and not interchangeable and therefore fine art becomes an asset class of significant desirability amongst the astute investors of the world today. Genius becomes the milestone of achievement in the story of civilizations and humanity. A sparse collection of substance can have far more universal value that a vast collection of nonsense.

Reflections upon fine art by Pieter Bergli

See also - https://www.pinterest.com/myartmusings/

For those readers that may enjoy a decent coffee anecdote or tale then please turn to my other blog for some interesting reading and my coffee narrative -   http://thegenteelworldofcoffee.blogspot.com/
Thank you

  * European Union laws require that all visitors to this blog from the European Union are aware that cookies are used by Blogger and Google, including the use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies and in reading all material from this blog readers based in the European Union hereby do consent to the use of such cookies for use by Google Analytics and AdSense

The Scream by Edvard Munch

The Scream - 1893 - Edvard Munch b. 1863 d. 1944. 

This work is most definitely one of the greatest pastel works of expressionist eloquence and in the top 10 most expensive paintings ever sold in art history. The rare painting sold for $119 m in 2012 and is now housed at the National Gallery, Oslo, Norway. It is a startling picture of a 1000 words in an age of industrial growth in Europe and militarization of the European powers. The color scheme used is bright and imaginative to the point of dizziness as the distorted subject swirls into a new level of madness. Munch's preoccupation with the exploration of mental health comes to the fore. the painting becomes the precursor to the Expressionists of the early 20th century that sought to explore the inner working of the mind and express emotions on canvas.

The inspiration to Edvard Munch to create this piece came in a strange way. As he wrote in his diary: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature." At once Munch launches into an enormous shift in the history of art where earlier the Romantic movement of the 19th century dealt with Man as the hero of nature. Now, all of a sudden we have mental paralysis, anxiety and emotional issues triggered by fears over the unknown that rise for rocks and stone. This is a radical departure to say the least for man no longer becomes the subject so much as the state of man's mind according to Edvard Munch. Reddish skies and dark unwholesome imagery of the Fjord evokes a sense of hell and desperation that the subject suddenly cannot cope with in his mind. At issue is the torment of the soul which no longer seems heroic cast within congenial settings. Edvard Munch caused such a stir in the art world upon releasing this analysis of the emotional and psychological state of man who now has become the product of the new industrial modern world.

Reflections on art by Pieter Bergli

See also - https://www.pinterest.com/myartmusings/

For those readers that may enjoy a decent coffee anecdote or tale then please turn to my other blog for some interesting reading and my coffee narrative -   http://thegenteelworldofcoffee.blogspot.com/

Thank you

  * European Union laws require that all visitors to this blog from the European Union are aware that cookies are used by Blogger and Google, including the use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies and in reading all material from this blog readers based in the European Union hereby do consent to the use of such cookies for use by Google Analytics and AdSense

Portrait of a man in red chalk - Leonardo da Vinci

Quite simply there are some works of art that cannot be valued at all because of their immense influence and roles played during the course of history. Should value be attached to this particular work by Leonardo da Vinci, known as the man in red chalk, then truly historians and valuation experts would find the toughest task in ascertaining a monetary figure for a work whose value is truly immeasurable.

The portrait of a man in red chalk c.1510 is the assumed portrait of none other than the genius himself, Leonardo da Vinci. b.1452 d. 1519. This work is of red chalk on paper and is in such a fragile state that it remains hidden in the  Royal Library (Biblioteca Reale) Turin, Italy in a purpose built caveau hidden from natural light and kept at a constant of 20 degrees Celsius with the humidity level at 55 per cent to maintain its preservation along with other priceless manuscripts. 

This was the painting that was hidden in Rome during WWII for fear the Nazis would present it to Adolf Hitler and drive the dictator to even higher levels of madness! The painting remains hidden from the public, much to do with it's fragile state, but also because it is rumored to have mystical powers for whosoever gazes into the master's eyes. It's monetary value as a source of inspiration to the beholder is truly incalculable and immeasurable.

The self-portrait has had a mysterious and secretive history with the only credible evidence of ownership appearing when the portrait appeared as part of a collection of major art works purchased in 1839 by King Carlo Alberto of Savoy for the sum of 70,000 Piedmontese lire. The work was immediately housed at Turin.

Historians forever shall dispute the likeness of the portrait to Leonardo da Vinci but what remains indisputable is the fact that at one moment in history this piece of art became the fervent obsession of the Nazi dictator himself and should the work have ever fallen into the Nazi's hands how would such a work have inspired the dictator to an alternative course of events. Helen of troy had a face that launched a thousand ships. Such sources of inspiration in men's minds become the sources of pride and passion and historical conflict.

Reflections on art by Pieter Bergli

See also - https://www.pinterest.com/myartmusings/

For those readers that may enjoy a decent coffee anecdote or tale then please turn to my other blog for some interesting reading and my coffee narrative -   http://thegenteelworldofcoffee.blogspot.com/    

Thank you

 * European Union laws require that all visitors to this blog from the European Union are aware that cookies are used by Blogger and Google, including the use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies and in reading all material from this blog readers based in the European Union hereby do consent to the use of such cookies for use by Google Analytics and AdSense