Brassaï’s portfolio was executed in the medium of cliché-verre, a hybrid medium that combined aspects of drawing on a light-sensitized plate derived from photography. Unaware of earlier works in the medium by artists from the previous century, such as Corot and Daubigny, he returned to photographic plates he had executed of a female nude, allowing them to become a point of departure for subsequent images drawn from his imagination. He described these works as "released" forms, and considered their creation analogous to the process, pursued in his sculptures, of unearthing the hidden form from the surrounding stone. From these photographs, Brassaï created hybrid musical instruments and other images based on forms suggested by the female nude. As the artist stated in the foreword to the portfolio, "From the photographic image to the engravings (cliché-verres), realism was outweighed by oneirism. The photograph is now and then volatilized. At times some debris has survived: a piece of quivering breast, a foreshortened face, a leg, an arm. Enshrined in graphism this debris gives to our obsessions, to our dreams the flash of the instant, the breath of reality. Without doubt, different strata of our being were engaged in the processes of the photo and that of the engraving."
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Brassaï’s portfolio was executed in the medium of cliché-verre, a hybrid medium that combined aspects of drawing on a light-sensitized plate derived from photography. Unaware of earlier works in the medium by artists from the previous century, such as Corot and Daubigny, he returned to photographic plates he had executed of a female nude, allowing them to become a point of departure for subsequent images drawn from his imagination. He described these works as "released" forms, and considered their creation analogous to the process, pursued in his sculptures, of unearthing the hidden form from the surrounding stone. From these photographs, Brassaï created hybrid musical instruments and other images based on forms suggested by the female nude. As the artist stated in the foreword to the portfolio, "From the photographic image to the engravings (cliché-verres), realism was outweighed by oneirism. The photograph is now and then volatilized. At times some debris has survived: a piece of quivering breast, a foreshortened face, a leg, an arm. Enshrined in graphism this debris gives to our obsessions, to our dreams the flash of the instant, the breath of reality. Without doubt, different strata of our being were engaged in the processes of the photo and that of the engraving."
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
This painting depicts the abstract form of a woman sitting in a chair with her head, shown in profile and tilted upward. There is a stringed instrument in her lap and her hands rest on the arms of the chair. It is painted in muted colors of aqua and lavender with brighter areas of yellow, orange and blue. The figure, chair and instrument are created with just a few black lines to suggest their forms.
Subject Matter
The painting is an abstract rendering of a woman seated in a chair, playing a mandolin. Picasso has emphasized the theme by including several musical symbols. The subject is Marie Therese Walter, Picasso’s lover at the time.
Label Copy
March 28, 2009
The woman in this painting is almost certainly Picasso’s young mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, described as “the most unfettered and passionate of all his loves,” and a favorite subject during the course of their affair in the early thirties. Although Picasso’s work from this period ranges from Cubist geometries to neoclassical portraits to calligraphic welded iron constructions, the sweeping, curvilinear style and soft, free-floating planes of color in this picture were reserved for Marie-Thérèse, his muse. The distinctive manner in which he has rendered her profile—with a continuous, arched line from forehead to nose—became his emblem for her depictions; the lyricism of the subject is echoed in the sensuous arabesques that comprise her body.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
This drawing was created in the midst of Beckmann’s persecution by the Nazis for his political views and artistic innovations. In 1933 he was dismissed from a teaching post at the Städel Academy in Frankfurt, his work was removed from museums in Germany, and its exhibition was outlawed. Seeking anonymity, he moved to Berlin; few collectors were bold enough to buy his work.
This drawing can be seen in the context of those troubles, and understood as a commentary on them. Created in December of 1934, this still life of toylike objects seems at first glance like a holiday display (a reading enhanced by the playful pinks, yellows, and blues of the objects)—a toy soldier on the back of a giraffe, a conch shell, four smaller toy soldiers, a curled horn, a lute, a fez. Yet the predominantly military overtones of some of the objects—in particular, the toy soldiers, the horn, and the fez—may allude to Hitler’s military regime and Beckmann’s own revulsion toward war, perhaps triggered by his nervous breakdown brought on by military service in World War I. By reducing the Nazis to the status of toys, Beckmann symbolically reacts to their repression of his art and that of other persecuted artists.
Sean M. Ulmer, University Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, for "A Matter of Degree: Abstraction in Twentieth-Century Art," November 10, 2001 - January 27, 2002
Inscription
Signed and dated, l.r.: Beckmann/Dez. 34 Watermark: INGRES/L'ECOLIER/C & F
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
A highly abstracted photographic composition in which the viewer catches glimpses of a female nude seen in the stomach at center and the keyhole glimpse of a breast to the viewer's right; the overall composition is dark with patterned, textured overlapping fabrics
Subject Matter
A highly abstracted figure of a reclining nude female holding a mandolin. The figure and the instrument share the same organic form and suggest sensuality and harmony.
Label Copy
Brassaï’s portfolio was executed in the medium of cliché-verre, a hybrid medium that combined aspects of drawing on a light-sensitized plate derived from photography. Unaware of earlier works in the medium by artists from the previous century, such as Corot and Daubigny, he returned to photographic plates he had executed of a female nude, allowing them to become a point of departure for subsequent images drawn from his imagination. He described these works as "released" forms, and considered their creation analogous to the process, pursued in his sculptures, of unearthing the hidden form from the surrounding stone. From these photographs, Brassaï created hybrid musical instruments and other images based on forms suggested by the female nude. As the artist stated in the foreword to the portfolio, "From the photographic image to the engravings (cliché-verres), realism was outweighed by oneirism. The photograph is now and then volatilized. At times some debris has survived: a piece of quivering breast, a foreshortened face, a leg, an arm. Enshrined in graphism this debris gives to our obsessions, to our dreams the flash of the instant, the breath of reality. Without doubt, different strata of our being were engaged in the processes of the photo and that of the engraving."
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
