Painter-critic Walter Sickert (1860-1942) wittily

[Larry Kart]

certain jazz musicians.

Writing in 1924 about a book of the drawings of Jacques Callot, Sickert says:

"Modern etchers who imitate Callot are ipso facto invariably beneath critical consideration, if only because, if they were any good, they would be inventing a new manner for some other goose to imitate."

Sickert BTW was one hell of painter. The belief -- most recently put forward in a book by mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell -- that Sickert was Jack the Ripper is demonstrably false. While Sickert was a man of significant oddity who painted striking and arguably quite morbid scenes of prostitutes and their clients, he was in France when the Jack the Ripper murders took place.

[Larry Kart]

Some Sickert images:

http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/exhibitions/2007/sickert/index.shtml

[BillF]

certain jazz musicians.

"Modern etchers who imitate Callot are ipso facto invariably beneath critical consideration, if only because, if they were any good, they would be inventing a new manner for some other goose to imitate."

"If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats" (Charles Mingus song title)

[sidewinder]

Check out 1:30 in on this fascinating documentary - one of Sickert's main haunts for inspiration. I used to walk past that place daily after it had been flattened but before they rebuilt on the site.

Many of his paintings were set in dingy rooming houses in Camden. Full of atmosphere !

Camden Music Hall - Sickert

Edited January 1, 2011 by sidewinder

[Larry Kart]

Thanks, Sidewinder. Very interesting.

[ejp626]

I got interested in Sickert when coming across him in several UK collections, particularly the Tate Britain (Ennui is a more conventional painting but still well done - it is now a bit undervalued because of the emphasis on the Camden Town nudes). There is also a decent Sickert in the Cambridge museum but it isn't often reproduced. I sadly wasn't in town for the Courtauld Institute of Art exhibit in 2007. I did manage to get to the Courtauld several times though. What a great museum!

[BillF]

I did manage to get to the Courtauld several times though. What a great museum!

Agreed. Comparatively unknown compared to The National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern, but with a collection of prime items by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rousseau and a roomful of Fauves and one of German Expressionists, absolutely not to be missed!

[ejp626]

I did manage to get to the Courtauld several times though. What a great museum!

Agreed. Comparatively unknown compared to The National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern, but with a collection of prime items by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rousseau and a roomful of Fauves and one of German Expressionists, absolutely not to be missed!

Aside from a few high profile exhibitions, the place is always nearly empty, which makes studying the works much more pleasant (actually the main floor rooms in Tate Britain are usually nearly empty as well, though the exhibitions in the basement are often packed).

Edited January 1, 2011 by ejp626

[cih]

I was reading some stuff about Roger Fry recently - the painter/critic and contemporary of Sickert's. He said of Sickert that he was "whimsical, capricious, wilfully subjective in his opinions and humorously unreasonable in his upholding of them" - He and Fry were split on the art of the early 20thC and Sickert criticized Fry for casting Cezanne as the first of the moderns in his big post-impressionist exhibition. Sickert said Cezanne "was made to cover the impudent theories of Matisse and Picasso, who, talented themselves, have invented an academic formula which is the salvation of all arrivistes"... it's easy to read Sickert as a 'mouldy fig' but it must have been a hell of a time to be an art critic!

[BillF]

I did manage to get to the Courtauld several times though. What a great museum!

Agreed. Comparatively unknown compared to The National Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern, but with a collection of prime items by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Rousseau and a roomful of Fauves and one of German Expressionists, absolutely not to be missed!

Aside from a few high profile exhibitions, the place is always nearly empty, which makes studying the works much more pleasant (actually the main floor rooms in Tate Britain are usually nearly empty as well, though the exhibitions in the basement are often packed).

I shall be in London on Saturday to catch the Gauguin exhibition before it disappears from Tate Modern and also to see recent Bridget Rileys displayed among old masters at the National. (Love her recent work which I saw in a small exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.)

Incidentally, is it time we had an art thread? This seems to be turning into one ...

[cih]

I tried to see the Gauguin - I was passing through London a few weeks back and made a detour especially (thus missing a train and costing me ££), and the Tate was shut! - Though it was 6pm on a Monday, I just assumed it would be open, 24 hour city and all that.

[BillF]

I wouldn't like to tell you how many Monday trips I've made to galleries - only to find them closed!

[ejp626]

...

Incidentally, is it time we had an art thread? This seems to be turning into one ...

There is a thread about best art exhibits you've seen, but it's a bit buried...

[Larry Kart]

I was reading some stuff about Roger Fry recently - the painter/critic and contemporary of Sickert's. He said of Sickert that he was "whimsical, capricious, wilfully subjective in his opinions and humorously unreasonable in his upholding of them" - He and Fry were split on the art of the early 20thC and Sickert criticized Fry for casting Cezanne as the first of the moderns in his big post-impressionist exhibition. Sickert said Cezanne "was made to cover the impudent theories of Matisse and Picasso, who, talented themselves, have invented an academic formula which is the salvation of all arrivistes"... it's easy to read Sickert as a 'mouldy fig' but it must have been a hell of a time to be an art critic!

As fate would have it, I have a copy of "Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings On Art" -- a big, fat book that weighs a ton even in paperback -- and he eventually does a big though invisible (as in, he doesn't say why) turnabout on Matisse. In 1911, writing about Fry's "Manet and the Post Impressionists" show, Sickert (who knew many of the Impressionists and Post Impressionists quite well and was regarded by them as an artistic comrade in arms) really goes off on Matisse (though Fry is the target behind the target):

"Matisse has all the worst art-school tricks. Just a dashing hint of anatomy is obtruded; and you will find a line separating the light from the shade.... The instinct of self-preservation. conscious or unconscious, must have dictated to him that this slickness of empty perfection, of a poor order, would never make its mark. So we have wilful deformations, wilful distortions, either the glutei maximi or the abdomen inflated like a balloon, or pectorals like hat-pegs. These distortions arrest if they do not please...."

In 1913, it's still "the empty sillinesses of Monsieur Matisse."

Then, in 1924: "Matisse ... is a great painter, as his exquisite view of an avenue from inside a motor[car] proves. The delicious window at Nice is a motive [i.e. motif] that he has made a classic. These things are important pictures -- infinity represented with the greatest economy of means -- stable decorations, eternally alive."

No intervening indication of what might have brought about this change of heart, and Sickert was writing professionally about art almost all the time.

[seeline]

Looks to me like he's got nothing against Callot; just contemporaries who work in his manner. (fwiw.)

certain jazz musicians.

Writing in 1924 about a book of the drawings of Jacques Callot, Sickert says:

"Modern etchers who imitate Callot are ipso facto invariably beneath critical consideration, if only because, if they were any good, they would be inventing a new manner for some other goose to imitate."

Sickert BTW was one hell of painter. The belief -- most recently put forward in a book by mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell -- that Sickert was Jack the Ripper is demonstrably false. While Sickert was a man of significant oddity who painted striking and arguably quite morbid scenes of prostitutes and their clients, he was in France when the Jack the Ripper murders took place.

[Larry Kart]

Looks to me like he's got nothing against Callot; just contemporaries who work in his manner. (fwiw.)

Right.

[cih]

That book of his writings sounds interesting.

I suppose Sickert's change of heart about Matisse might just be due to the variety in Matisse's painting? - the motor car picture mentioned in the quote above, and the Nice window paintings from the same period, look to be based on sound observation and disciplined drawing, observation of light etc.. that is, in a slightly more 'Sickertian' manner than the Matisses where the subject is subordinate to some artificial or abstract device. I get the feeling reading Sickert's review of a Futurist exhibit that he was suspicious about new fads and styles that might be based on theories rather than observation - "no amount of explanatory doctrine and militant defence will make a bad draughtsman into a good one"... but he applauds the principle of rebellion, and the refusal to be hypnotised by the past.

Whatever their differences, Fry rated Sickert highly enough as a painter to have his 'Queens Road Station' hanging above his fireplace at home.

Also, just to put his views on Fry's post-impressionist show into context, the English papers had lesser critics calling the artists lunatics, or like a plague of rats, or else demanding that the paintings on show should be destroyed!

Edited January 2, 2011 by cih

[Larry Kart]

In his biography of Sickert, Matthew Sturgis raises the possibility that Sickert's change of heart on Matisse might have been a case of "shameless journalistic bandwagoning" rather than "a considered change of opinion."

OTOH, Sickert loved to play pranks. Once Roger Fry write an article in which he ridiculed the horrible painting that Sickert had above his mantlepiece. Sickert then revealed that, knowing that Fry was to pay a visit, he had placed the painting there d'enmerder Fry (sp?), i.e. "to shit upon Fry."

Someone will tell me if my transcription or translation is wrong.

[Larry Kart]

Sorry -- that should have been "pour emmerder Fry." And the person who transmitted to Fry how "idiotic" the picture was was Fry's slavish backstrapper Clive Bell.

[cih]

And the person who transmitted to Fry how "idiotic" the picture was was Fry's slavish backstrapper Clive Bell.

Who seems to have been a bit of a stirrer... in regard to his later courtship of Picasso, John Richardson finds him guilty of "abject toadying"