Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Pierre Bonnard
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Critical reception and legacy== [[File:Houghton Typ 915.00.8680 - Séguidille.jpg|thumb|Illustration for a poem by [[Paul Verlaine]] (1900)]] [[Claude Roger-Marx]] remarked that Bonnard "catches fleeting poses, steals unconscious gestures, crystallises the most transient expressions".<ref name=agd>{{cite web|url=http://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/archive/itp-175-the-open-window-by-pierre-bonnard.html|first=Andrew |last=Graham-Dixon|title= ITP 175: ''The Open Window'' by Pierre Bonnard |date=24 August 2003|work= Sunday Telegraph|author-link=Andrew Graham-Dixon}}</ref> Although Bonnard avoided public attention, his work sold well during his life. At the time of his death, his reputation had been eclipsed by subsequent [[avant-garde]] developments in the art world; reviewing a retrospective of Bonnard's work in Paris in 1947, [[Christian Zervos]] assessed the artist in terms of his relationship to Impressionism, and found him wanting. "In Bonnard's work," he wrote, "Impressionism becomes insipid and falls into decline."<ref>Brodskaya, 14</ref> In response, [[Henri Matisse]] wrote: "I maintain that Bonnard is a great artist for our time and, naturally, for posterity."<ref>Brodskaya, 16</ref> Bonnard was described, by his own friend and historians, as a man of "quiet temperament" and one who was unobtrusively independent. His life was relatively free from "the tensions and reversals of untoward circumstance." It has been suggested that: "Like Daumier, whose life knew little serenity, Bonnard produced a work during his sixty years' activity that follows an even line of development."<ref>Stanton L. Catlin, "Pierre Bonnard's Dining Room in the Country," ''The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin'' 44, No. 6, November 1955, pp. 43-49</ref> Bonnard has been described as "the most thoroughly idiosyncratic of all the great twentieth-century painters", and the unusual vantage points of his compositions rely less on traditional modes of pictorial structure than voluptuous color, poetic allusions and visual wit.<ref name=perl>{{cite web|last=Perl |first=Jed |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/complicated-bliss |title=Complicated Bliss |publisher=New Republic |date=1 April 2009 |access-date=4 April 2014}}</ref> Identified as a late practitioner of [[Impressionism]] in the early 20th{{nbsp}}century, he has since been recognized for his unique use of color and his complex imagery.<ref name="Amory, 4">Amory, 4</ref> "It's not just the colors that radiate in a Bonnard," writes [[Roberta Smith]], "there's also the heat of mixed emotions, rubbed into smoothness, shrouded in chromatic veils and intensified by unexpected spatial conundrums and by elusive, uneasy figures."<ref name="Smith">Smith</ref> Two major exhibitions of Bonnard's work took place in 1998: February through May at the [[Tate Gallery]] in London, and from June through October at the [[Museum of Modern Art]] in New York City. In 2009, the exhibition "Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors" was shown at the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]].<ref name=perl/> Reviewing the exhibition for the magazine ''[[The New Republic]]'', Jed Perl wrote: <blockquote> "Bonnard is the most thoroughly idiosyncratic of all the great twentieth-century painters. What sustains him is not traditional ideas of pictorial structure and order, but rather some unique combination of visual taste, psychological insight, and poetic feeling. He also has a quality that might be characterized as perceptual wit—an instinct for what will work in a painting. Almost invariably he recognizes the precise point where his voluptuousness may be getting out of hand, where he needs to introduce an ironic note. Bonnard's wit has everything to do with the eccentric nature of his compositions. He finds it funny to sneak a figure into a corner, or have a cat staring out at the viewer. His metaphoric caprices have a comic edge, as when he turns a figure into a pattern in the wallpaper. And when he imagines a basket of fruit as a heap of emeralds and rubies and diamonds, he does so with the panache of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat."<ref name=perl/> </blockquote> In 2016, the [[Legion of Honor (museum)|Legion of Honor]] in San Francisco hosted an exhibit "Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia", featuring more than 70 works spanning the artist's entire career.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://legionofhonor.famsf.org/pierre-bonnard|title=Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia|website=Legion of Honor|access-date=18 April 2016}}</ref> Bonnard's record price in a public sale was for ''Terrasse à Vernon'', sold by [[Christie's]] in 2011 for €8,485,287 (£7,014,200).<ref name="Davies">{{cite news|url=http://www.lapresse.ca/arts/arts-visuels/201102/09/01-4368687-un-tableau-de-gauguin-retire-des-encheres-a-londres.php |title=Un tableau de Gauguin retiré des enchères à Londres |newspaper=La Presse |date=9 February 2011 |publisher=lapresse.ca|access-date=29 March 2015|language=fr}}</ref> In 2014, the painting ''La femme aux Deux Fauteuils'' (''Woman with Two Armchairs''), with an estimated value of around €600,000 (£497,000), which had been stolen in London in 1970, was discovered in Italy. The painting, together with a work by [[Paul Gauguin]] known as ''[[Fruit on a Table with a Small Dog]]'' had been bought by a Fiat employee in 1975, at a railway lost-property sale, for 45,000 lira (about £32).<ref>{{cite web|last=Davies|first=Lizzy|date=2 April 2014|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/02/stolen-paintings-italian-works-wall-40-years-gaugain-bonnard |title=Stolen paintings hung on Italian factory worker's wall for almost 40 years|work=The Giuardian|access-date=3 April 2014}}</ref> Bonnard features heavily in the 2005 Booker prize winning novel, [[The Sea (novel)|''The Sea'']] by [[John Banville]]. In the novel, the protagonist and art historian Max Morden is writing a book about Bonnard and discusses the painter's life and work throughout. Bonnard is played by [[Vincent Macaigne]] and Marthe by [[Cécile de France]] in the 2023 French film directed by [[Martin Provost]] ''[[Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe]]'', which focuses on the couple's romance.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://variety.com/2023/film/global/bonnard-pierre-and-marthe-memento-1235485824/ | title='Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe' Sells to Major Markets for Memento International, First Stills Unveiled (EXCLUSIVE) | date=11 January 2023 }}</ref> The movie premiered at the [[2023 Cannes Film Festival ]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://news.yahoo.com/cannes-premiere-title-bonnard-pierre-153951371.html | title=Cannes Premiere Title 'Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe' Sells for Memento International; Trailer Unveiled (EXCLUSIVE) | date=9 June 2023 }}</ref>
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)