Paparazzi, if they had existed in 1880s France, would have followed
Amélie Gautreau in a permanent cloud. Crowds gathered when she appeared
in the streets of Paris. Newspapers reported her outfit changes. Royalty
asked to meet her. Traditional beauty is rarely so exciting, but hers
was unorthodox: She had a long neck, a big nose and skin so uncannily
white that people argued over whether it was real or fake. Theories
included that she covered her entire body with makeup or strategically
dosed herself with arsenic. In an era of puffy, body-swallowing gowns,
she wore snug dresses that showed off her curves; she put red makeup on
the tips of her ears, just for extra drama. She was rumored to be
sleeping with half the men in Paris. Every painter wanted to paint her,
to be the great hero who fixed her image for a culture desperate to
stare at it. But art — the translation of three-dimensional life into a
flat, static illusion — was an act of magic with serious consequences.
In a time before mass-produced cameras, an image was a heavy thing,
laborious to make and hard to distribute. Instagram was Duragram. Amélie
always refused.
Then came John Singer Sargent.
Like Amélie, Sargent was a displaced American eccentric whose
reputation was soaring in France. (Amélie’s family was from New Orleans;
Sargent’s from New England.) During portrait sessions, he chain-smoked,
chattered constantly, used pocketfuls of bread as erasers and — when he
was particularly inspired — ran at the canvas screaming, “Demons,
demons, demons!” Sargent courted Amélie, and eventually he got her.
Unfortunately she turned out to be a terrible subject. She fidgeted,
complained, skipped appointments. She wanted to go to parties, not to
stand frozen in a quiet room in front of a man she wasn’t even sleeping
with. Sargent sketched her over and over, obsessively, whenever she gave
him the chance, month after frustrating month.
The painting was unveiled at the Paris Salon of 1884. It was huge
(nearly seven feet tall) and striking in a way that portraits rarely
are. Sargent called it “Portrait of Madame ***,” but the asterisks were
useless: Everyone recognized the nose, the curves, the skin. The image
radiated erotic energy. Amélie looked simultaneously haughty and casual,
contorted and relaxed, implausible but real. She wore a snug black
dress that looked as if it were about to come off, an effect Sargent
exaggerated by painting her right shoulder strap slipping down. (It had
fallen one day during a session, and Sargent asked Amélie to leave it
that way.) The portrait’s background was muddy brown, and Amélie’s
exotically fair skin popped against it with almost supernatural
brightness. She looked bioluminescent.
Read the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/magazine/the-surreal-fine-art-spectacle-in-laguna-beach.html
Related article: http://thisishowitshouldbe.blogspot.co.uk
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