Wednesday, July 29, 2009

"SERAPHINE" LOUIS DE SENLIS: Angels & Demons & the Reflection of the Artist in the Work of Her Admirers





Above, the film, sdirected by Martin Prevost, starring Yolande Moreau, 2009.



Above, the artist, Seraphine Louis.







Above, more visionary paintings by Seraphine Louis de Senlis: Sacred art from private places.

I am not sure which is more remarkable, the extraordinary and tragic life of this remarkable artist, or the recent film starring Yolande Moreau as Séraphine by director Martin Provost. (The film won a César--the French Oscar--in 2009 for Best Actress for her performance. The film won a total of seven Césars, including Best Film.)

Séraphine Louis (Séraphine de Senlis) (1864–1942) was a French painter in the naïve style. Self-taught, she was inspired by her religious faith and by stained-glass church windows and other religious art. The intensity of her images, both in color and in replicative design, is sometimes interpreted as a reflection of her own psyche, walking a tightrope between ecstasy and mental illness.

Alongside her arduous day jobs, Séraphine painted by candlelight and largely in secret isolation, until her considerable body of work was discovered in 1912 by art collector Wilhelm Uhde. While in Senlis, Uhde saw a still-life of apples at his neighbor's house and was astonished to learn that Séraphine, his housecleaner, was the artist. His support had barely begun to lift her horizons when he was obliged to leave France in August, 1914, with war between France and Germany making him an unwelcomed outsider in Senlis, much as Séraphine was, given her eccentric persona. They only reestablished contact in 1927 when Uhde – back in France and living in Chantilly - came to an exhibition of local artistry in Senlis and, seeing Séraphine's work, realized that she had survived and her art had flourished. Under Uhde's patronage, Séraphine expanded her canvas, literally (with an apparent preference for canvases two meters high), and she came to prominence as a naïve painter of her day. In 1929, Uhde organized an exhibition "Painters of the Sacred Heart" that featured Séraphine's art and launched her into a period of financial success she had never known - and was ill prepared to manage. Then, in 1930, the effects of the Great Depression undercut her patronage, as Uhde was obliged to stop buying her paintings. In 1932, she was admitted for "chronic psychosis" to the psychiatric ward of a geriatric hospital at Clermont, where her artistry found no outlet. Although Uhde reported that she had died in 1934, Louis actually survived until 1942, friendless and alone in a hospital annex at Villers-sous-Erquery. (Some exhibitions still suggest she died in 1934.) She was buried in a common grave.

Mr. Prevost's film, and the wonderful performances by Ms. Moreau and Mr. Turkus. echo and embody the gorgeous French countryside, the simple lives, the religious devotion, and the changing world of Europe in the early 20th century that seems to have had such a profound impact on the life and work of this artist. Today, the common appelation is the "Outsider" artist, suggesting the unschooled and untrained creatives who exist outside of the social structures of the art world - art school, museums, galleries, Williamsburg, etc. Often this term is a delicate way of also referring to the psychological and emotional problems that keep these artists on the periphery. I prefer "Visionary" artists, which is represented well in Baltimore's American Museum of Visionary Art.
http://www.avam.org/


The real story of Seraphine is a powerful and remarkable tale. This film passionately and generously explores her work and story, and is a must-see, both as a refleciton of her art, and how the artist's own life and challenges have affected their own art-making. Now at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema on Henry Street and Pineapple Street.


More at Wikipedia on artist Seraphine Louis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9raphine_Louis

More on the painter's imagery: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://delapeinture.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/seraphine-2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://delapeinture.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/seraphine-louis-dite-seraphine-de-senlis-1864-1942/&usg=__161irW_bqSp0GiqGcmHw6i_UZgQ=&h=514&w=605&sz=75&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=1_Kfe-ADrOMFaM:&tbnh=115&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dseraphine%2Blouis%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1

So much of art and creativity today are inextricably tangled with commerce, the drive for career, or celebrity, fame, identity and social status as an "Artist." The story about this artist, in reality and as portrayed in the film, reinforces the truth of the angels and demons that drive many artists to work in solitude, without concern for showing, much less selling, their work. Artists who create because they have no other choice, despite their humble and unglamorous day jobs. Artists who create simply, because their lives depend on it.

--Brooklyn Beat

Sculptor Mieczyslaw Partyka Karol, Prominent in Polish American Community, Found Dead

NY Daily News on Polish-born sculptor acclaimed for his statue of Pope John Paul II outside a Greenpoint church was found dead on Monday, his body washed up on a city beach, police said.

Mieczyslaw Partyka Karol, whose bronze works are on display in galleries in Poland and New York, was found near the shore of Gateway National Recreation Area in Brooklyn.

An avid fisherman, the 51-year-old Karol kept a boat at the nearby Gateway Marina. His wife said she last heard from him as he was repairing his vessel during Sunday night's thunderstorm.

"He called me and we got disconnected," said Izabella Grajner-Partyka. "I went to the marina, and I couldn't find him."

Investigators suspect the sculptor - who had a heart condition - either went into cardiac arrest during the storm or fell off his boat and drowned, police said.

An autopsy is scheduled for today, police said.

His most famous creation, a likeness of Pope John Paul II outside St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church in Greenpoint, became a meeting point for the city's Polish community after the pontiff's 2005 death, his grieving wife remembered.

"I followed him to America," said Grajner-Partyka, who moved with her husband to New York more than 20 years ago.

"I told him when I first met him I'd follow him wherever he'd go," said a tearful Grajner-Partyka. "I didn't know it would end this way."

As news of Karol's death spread, his Richmond Hill, Queens, apartment, which is lined with his sculptures, drew mourners stunned by the jovial artist's sudden death.

"He was very religious, [and] in that Polish world he was a celebrity," said Grajner-Partyka, who said her husband's work was on display in several museums in Eastern Europe. "His whole life, he sculpted."

His final projects were busts of the couple's two teenage daughters, 18-year-old Julia and 13-year-old Taria, but Karol never finished the sculpture of the younger girl.

"Taria isn't finished," sobbed Grajner-Partyka. "He will never finish it."With Barry Paddock
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/28/2009-07-28_artists_body_in_bay_polish_sculptor_was_working_on_boat_in_storm_washes_up_on_bk.html#ixzz0MeNZ1KQi

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/07/28/2009-07-28_artists_body_in_bay_polish_sculptor_was_working_on_boat_in_storm_washes_up_on_bk.html

Assemblyman Joseph R.Lentol commented on news of the untimely death of sculptor Mieczyslaw Partyka Karol:

"It is with great sadness that I have learned of the untimely death of Mieczyslaw Partyka Karol. Karol was an integral member of the Polish community in Greenpoint and he will be sorely missed. His beloved statue of Pope John Paul II will now not only commemorate the Pope’s visit, but also Karol’s positive impact on all of us.”

Current Reading

  • Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War- Tony Horwitz
  • A Sultan in Palermo - Tariq Ali
  • Hitch-22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens
  • Negropedia- Patrice Evans
  • Dead Funny: Humor in Nazi Germany - Rudolph Herzog
  • Exile on Main Street - Robert Greenfield
  • Among the Truthers - A Journey Among America's Growing Conspiracist Underworld - Jonathan Kay
  • Paradise Lost - John Milton
  • What Is Your Dangerous Idea? Thinking the Unthinkable - John Brockman
  • Notes from the Edge Times - Daniel Pinchbeck
  • Fringe-ology: How I Can't Explain Away the Unexplainable- Steve Volk
  • Un Juif pour l'exemple (translated as A Jew Must Die )- Jacques Cheesex
  • The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
  • Pale King - David Foster Wallce
  • David Bowie: Starman bio - Paul Trynka
  • Tobacco Stained Mountain Goat - Andrez Bergen
  • The Future of Nostalgia -Svetlana Boym
  • Living in the End Times - Slavoj ZIzek
  • FIrst as Tragedy Next as Farce - Slavoj Zizek
  • How to Survive a Robot Uprising - Daniel Wilson
  • Where is My Jet Pack? -Daniel Wilson
  • Day of the Oprichniks - Vladimir Sorokin
  • Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
  • First Civilizations
  • Oscar Wilde -Andre Maurois
  • The Beats - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • SDS - Harvey Pekar, et al
  • The Unfinished Animal - Theodore Roszak
  • Friends of Eddy Coyle
  • Brooklands -Emily Barton
  • Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahme-Smith - Entertaining and historical
  • Dictionary of the Khazars - Pavic
  • Sloth-Gilbert Hernandez
  • War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
  • Charles Addams: An Evilution
  • Life in Ancient Greece
  • Time - Eva Hoffmann
  • Violence - S. Zizek
  • Luba - a graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez
  • Life in Ancient Egypt
  • Great Apes - Will Self - riveting and disturbing
  • Lost Honor of Katherina Blum - Heinrich Boll - could not put it down
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed (author deserving of new wide readership)
  • Living in Ancient Mesopotomia
  • Landscape in Concrete - Jakov Lind - surreal
  • 'There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby'-Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - creepy stories - translation feels literarily "thin"
  • Mythologies - William Butler Yeats (re-read again & again)
  • How German Is It ? - Walter Abish
  • The Book of Genesis - illustrated by R. Crumb - visionary
  • "Flags" - an illustrated encyclopedia - wish I could remember all of these. Flag culture
  • Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
  • Ubik - Philip K. Dick
  • Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo
  • Hitler's Empire - Mark Mazower
  • Nazi Culture - various authors
  • Master Plan: Himmler 's Scholars and the Holocaust - Heather Pringle
  • Eichmann in Jerusalem - Hannah Arendt
  • Living in Ancient Rome
  • Traveling with Herodotus -R. Kapuszynsky
  • Oblivion - David Foster Wallace - Some of his greatest work
  • Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - still wrestling with this great book
  • Netherland - Joseph O'Neill - staggeringly great read
  • Renegade - The Obama Campaign - Richard Wolffe
  • Mount Analogue - Rene Daumal
  • John Brown
  • Anathem - Neal Stephenson - love Stephenson but tough slogging first few chapters
  • 7 Deadly Sins
  • ALEX COX - Alex Cox
  • FIASCO by Thomas Ricks
  • I, Fellini - Charlotte Chandler & Federico Fellini
  • Best of 20th century alternative history fiction
  • Judah P. Benjamin - Eli Evans - Confederacy's Secretary of State & source of the W.C. Field's exclamation
  • Moscow 2042 - Vladimir Voinovich - Pre-1989 curiosity & entertaining sci fi read; love his portrayal of Solzhenitsyn-like character
  • Gomorrah - Roberto Saviano - Mafia without the It-Am sugar coating. Brutal & disturbing
  • The Sack of Rome - Celebrity+Media+Money=Silvio Berlusconi - Alexander Stille
  • Reporting - David Remnick - terrific journalism
  • Fassbinder
  • Indignation - Philip Roth
  • Rome
  • Let's Go Italy! 2008
  • Italian Phrases for Dummies
  • How to Pack
  • Violence - Slavoj Zizek
  • Dali: Painting & Film
  • The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight - Jimmy Breslin
  • The Good Rat - Jimmy Breslin
  • Spook Country - William Gibson
  • A Blue Hand - The Beats in India - Deborah Baker
  • The Metaphysical Club - Louis Menard
  • Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
  • Physics of the Impossible - Dr. Michio Kaku
  • Managing the Unexpected - Weick & Sutcliffe
  • Wait Til The Midnight Hour - Writings on Black Power
  • Yellow Back Radio Brokedown - Ishmael Reed
  • Burning Down the Masters' House - Jayson Blair
  • Howl - Allen Ginsberg
  • Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Palace Thief - Ethan Canin
  • John Adams - David McCullough
  • The Wooden Sea - Jonathan Carroll
  • American Gangster - Mark Jacobson
  • Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
  • Gawker Guide to Becoming King of All Media
  • Jews and Power - Ruth Wisse
  • Youth Without Youth - Mircea Eliade
  • A Team of Rivals - Doris Goodwin
  • Ghost Hunters -William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - Deborah Blum
  • Dream -Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy - Stephen Duncombe
  • Love & Theft - Eric Lott
  • Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
  • Studio A - The Bob Dylan Reader

Current Listening

  • Alexi Murdoch Wait
  • Wilco Summer Teeth
  • Wilco The Album
  • Carmina Burana - Ray Manzarek (& Michael Riesmann)
  • Polyrock - Polyrock
  • 96 Tears - Garland Jeffries
  • Ghost of a Chance Garland Jeffries
  • Yellow Magic Orchestra
  • Mustang Sally Buddy Guy
  • John Lee Hooker
  • Black and White Years
  • Together Through Life - B. Dylan
  • 100 Days 100 Nites - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
  • DYLAN: 3 disc Greatest...
  • Glassworks - Philip Glass
  • Wild Palms - Soundtrack -Ryuichi Sakamoto
  • Dinah Washington - Best of..
  • Commander Cody& His Lost Planet Airmen Live at Armadillo