Traipsing Through The Arts-All Serious 20^th Century Art Is About Sex-Forget That Stuff You Learned In Art Class About The Search For The Sublime-Looking For Sex In All The Wrong Places- With Edouard Vuillard’s “Woman In Striped Dress” (1895) In Mind

Édouard Vuillard

By Laura Perkins

Now I am starting to hit my stride in where to head and how in this on-going self-selected quirky, my expression, art works bonanza based on my general theory that all serious 20^th century art is deeply sexual, sensual, erotic or all three. For various reasons from an artist like Grady Lamont saying up front that is what his work is about at its core is sex to the more subtle suggestions of a pimp daddy like Whistler who thought nothing of “advertising,” pimping or procuring the better expressions, his mistress (The White Girl) to any interested party, the richer the better to make ends meet when the money ran low to the muted eroticism of Mark Rothko. Of course this all caused a furor among the denizens of the art cabal, those who have a stake in having their patrons see art as more than high-grade pornography or personal sex ads and more like the lucrative search for beauty or the sublime. Best of all and I still chuckle every time I hear this one especially from those greedy self-satisfied art gallery owners who made the wrong choice of where art was heading and are stuck with a stock of useless works of various kinds “art for art’s sake.” Meaning that the works are ready for the dumpster or for the fierce competition at the local flea market. (That last part courtesy of Sam Lowell who not only is my longtime companion in life but as I have mentioned elsewhere my “ghost” advisor in this project now that he had time on his hands).   

But art gallery owners are not the only ones in the cabal interested in special pleading and in keeping art’s head above the commercial crassness of advertising and pornography. As I mentioned in my last liberating piece on colorist Grady Lamont (a saint who saved my bacon by “confessing” that all his works color or line, realistic or abstract,  are motivated by deep sexual longings providing plenty of cover for my theory) I have finally after much flailing away and a confession of my own about lumping too many artists under one flag figured out it is best to take one artist and one work and scorch earth the item for its sexual content. (See the Grady piece in the Archives, dated April 11, 2019). Having reached that conclusion, I have been interviewing various curators (the ones who will talk to me) about their takes on art (sneaking my views in as best I can). Now remember every curator lives for two things- to become the director of some major museum to be able to make all the hot shot decisions about who and what to display or failing that which given the limited number of museums in the world is the fate of most curators getting to curate a mega-exhibition.

That latter goal is important not only to move up the cabal food chain and increase the number of invitations to openings and cocktail parties but gives the curator a chance to write huge catalogues fit for coffee tables or maybe dinner room tables filled with her or his insights into what the artist really meant, and here is the beauty of this profession, or didn’t mean. I have seen five- thousand- word essays on just that tact if you can believe it and the curator never had to leave the museum back offices. Nice work if you can get it because then the devoted art patron, the key part of the cabal paying the freight through precious tickets, store purchases or best of all buying some piece will take their words as from the mountain and spread to the crowd below. That was the case when Helen Cantor over at the National Gallery consented, her word not mine, to an interview after curating the French Painters, 1900-1940 exhibit. My reason, my devious reason as one might suspect, was to challenge her monogram about Edouard Vuillard’s The Woman In The Striped Dress (1895) where Ms. Cantor went on and on about the point he was trying to make, her take a variation of the art for art’s sake joke which everybody with no clue about what the artist really meant or like Grady proclaimed has hidden behind at least since Vasari.

For those who don’t know Vuillard and a fellow artist named Bonnard and a few others joined together as artists sometimes do to proclaim a new wave group looking to tear down the old regime (in this case Impressionism). That group called itself the Nabi which according to Ms. Cantor is Hebrew for “prophet.” She was not prepared when I told her that the word also can be translated as “seer” and by extension as “voyeur” (information known by me not via research but thanks to an old Jewish boyfriend who through fits and starts got through Hebrew School as a youth and from whom I first heard about the Nabi in Art Appreciation class in college at Rochester). Somewhat startled she said she knew that there were other meanings but given the nature of Vuillard and his fellows’ paintings “prophet” seemed a better translation.             

  

That was the rub as I asked her to continue about the genesis of the painting and more importantly about one Misia Godebska the famous pianist and the wife of Thadee Natanson who commissioned the painting (part of a set of five). Since I had already read her monogram I knew that Ms. Cantor would go on and on about how much Vuillard admired Misia and about how this work, as all his works once he figured out the Nabi message to the art world, was highly symbolic. The naïve, or maybe disingenuous, although I prefer naïve Ms. Cantor took the patterns and the arrangements to in the painting be perhaps reflecting Misia’s musical abilities. At that I gave her a sideward glance that she would ask me about later once I told my take on the painting.        

As part of the art cabal’s protecting every inch of space for whatever they have declared art, a big tent these days, it is almost as  important not to give up an inch on any harebrained theory if it might bring down the price of a painting which might in turn make the whole art market crash if one independent truthful word got past the well-guarded gates of the kingdom. And Ms. Cantor’s take was in that harebrained category. Reason: thanks to Sam Lowell’s diligence as with the wolf’s head and fur symbols in Whistler’s The White Girl which he had down cold we now know that Vuillard did more than greatly admire Misia (I don’t want to keep typing and getting wrong her last name so Misia). Those long nights of her sitting for the portrait and/or having to take piano lessons anything to get out of the house and that fixated husband (even if he was footing the bill for the paintings) were spent not just working through the madness of high culture but in a secluded hotel, inn I guess it was really, outside Paris. In short they were lovers whether Platonic, wink, wink or deep in the satin sheets I don’t know. But a cozy discrete inn outside of Paris that seems likelier. What I know and this again worked through a suggestion by Sam is that this painting was a “gift,” a symbolic gift to Misia to show his love for her.

Sam’s suggestion is important in this regard and not merely because once again an artist and a model or patron got flirty. The key is the three flowers in the center two white and one black (Sam says carnations I say peonies, but the point is the three flowers and the colors) repeated down in the left corner. The black flower represents the new love, the new invader, here Eduovard and has since medieval times while the repeat is symbolic of his repeated expressions of love amidst the profession of other vague sentiment flora. The woman helper, the innkeeper’s wife, represents the discretion that all parties took to ensure that Thadee did not find out. Most importantly Misia’s red hair done up signifies that she is happy with him and most of all the red stripes suggest that they have slept together (downgrading that Platonic possibility). Finally the triangular shapes meshed form Vs and Ms and guess who those initials belong to. Naturally Ms. Cantor as expected dismissed my theory out of hand leaving that “greatly admired” nonsense on her plate. That is neither here nor there. What is important is that a well-known curator at a major museum now knows that there is a “new sheriff” in town (Sam’s expression and thanks)