SHARING WITH ME

Hokusai, is perhaps not a name that we pronounce every day. Yet if you saw this engraving of « The Great Wave » which is one of the series « Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji » I can hear many voices saying « of course…… » At the exhibition yesterday a couple of women were in front of me looking at it and the conversation went something like this….. The Great Wave (around 1830-1834) « I didn’t realize it was so small » (25,9x37,2) « But we all know it…… » (pause) « My goodness, I never knew there were boats - are they fisherman? Shipwrecked? » I always describe this engraving as the « Mona Lisa » of Japan. I’m sure many before me have described it as such. The mystery. The catastrophe, the size of the wave, it’s foam and no way could those fisherman survive. The same day I went to see the film « Silent in Water » A Franco-spanish-japanese film where the inhabitants on a small island have an incredib...

Like many artists, I have seen Emile Bernard’s (1868-1941) work in permanent collections around Europe without really knowing much about him. Now that there is a retrospective of his work this seemed to be the moment to go a little further. They say that he was a major artist in the development of modern art who has not always had the recognition that he deserves. I go along with the second part of this phrase but I am not really in agreement with the modernity. His early works had an affinity with Impressionism. He then launched a movement which I knew nothing about called Cloisonnist style in the late 1880’s. The composition of the paintings is divided into areas of contrasting flat color surrounded by a black line. This for me compares to the German Expressionism, Die Brücke and probably what immediate comes to mind are artists like Van Dongen, Emile Nolde and others. The same style was adopted by Van Gogh and the Nabis group with which Emile Bernard had close ties. Nudes an...