Les Nabis were a group of young post-Impressionist avant-garde Parisian artists of the 1890s that influenced the fine arts and graphic arts in France at the turn of the 20th century.
Les Nabis
Les Nabis originated as a rebellious group of young student artists who banded together at the Académie Julian. Paul Sérusier galvanized Les Nabis, and provided the name and disseminated the example of Paul Gauguin among them. Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis became the best known of the group; at the time, however, they were somewhat peripheral to the core group.
Meeting at Académie Julian, and then at the apartment of Paul Ranson, they preached that a work of art is the end product and the visual expression of an artist's synthesis of nature in personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols. They paved the way for the early 20th century development of abstract and non-representational art. The goal of integrating art and daily life, was a goal they had in common with most progressive artists of the time.
Les Nabis artists worked in a variety of media, using oils on both canvas and cardboard, distemper on canvas and wall decoration, and also produced posters, prints, book illustration, textiles and furniture. Considered to be on the cutting edge of modern art during their early period, their subject matter was representational (though often symbolist in inspiration), but was design oriented along the lines of the Japanese prints they so admired, and art nouveau. Unlike those types however, the artists were highly influenced by the paintings of the impressionists, and thus while sharing the flatness, page layout and negative space of art nouveau and other decorative modes, much of Nabis art has a painterly, non-realistic look, with color palettes often reminding one of Cézanne and Gauguin. Bonnard's posters and lithographs are more firmly in the art nouveau, or Toulouse-Lautrec manner. After the turn of the century, as modern art moved towards abstraction, expressionism, cubism, etc., the Nabis were viewed as conservatives, and indeed were among the last group of artists to stick to the roots and artistic ambitions of the impressionists, pursuing these ends almost into the middle of the 20th century. In their later years, these painters also largely abandoned their earlier interests in decorative and applied arts.
Maurice Denis
With Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, Denis was a founding member of the Nabis group in France, active from 1888 to 1899. Denis, the group's spiritual leader and chief theoretician, called for a new pictorial language in response to the rhythms of nature. In date and sensibility, his work bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as shown here, he had a firm grasp on modernist thought. He once said, "Remember that a picture, before being a war horse, a female nude, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."
Springtime, a double-sided canvas, describes a purification scene set deep in the forest of Saint-Germain, near Paris. Several pairs of young women—representing the sacred and the profane—blend into a bucolic landscape where one of them stands nude in a stream. Denis draws a parallel between the flowering sapling in the center (a symbol of spring, renewal, and Easter) and the maidens.
References:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1999.180.2ab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Nabis
Les Nabis
Les Nabis originated as a rebellious group of young student artists who banded together at the Académie Julian. Paul Sérusier galvanized Les Nabis, and provided the name and disseminated the example of Paul Gauguin among them. Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis became the best known of the group; at the time, however, they were somewhat peripheral to the core group.
Meeting at Académie Julian, and then at the apartment of Paul Ranson, they preached that a work of art is the end product and the visual expression of an artist's synthesis of nature in personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols. They paved the way for the early 20th century development of abstract and non-representational art. The goal of integrating art and daily life, was a goal they had in common with most progressive artists of the time.
Les Nabis artists worked in a variety of media, using oils on both canvas and cardboard, distemper on canvas and wall decoration, and also produced posters, prints, book illustration, textiles and furniture. Considered to be on the cutting edge of modern art during their early period, their subject matter was representational (though often symbolist in inspiration), but was design oriented along the lines of the Japanese prints they so admired, and art nouveau. Unlike those types however, the artists were highly influenced by the paintings of the impressionists, and thus while sharing the flatness, page layout and negative space of art nouveau and other decorative modes, much of Nabis art has a painterly, non-realistic look, with color palettes often reminding one of Cézanne and Gauguin. Bonnard's posters and lithographs are more firmly in the art nouveau, or Toulouse-Lautrec manner. After the turn of the century, as modern art moved towards abstraction, expressionism, cubism, etc., the Nabis were viewed as conservatives, and indeed were among the last group of artists to stick to the roots and artistic ambitions of the impressionists, pursuing these ends almost into the middle of the 20th century. In their later years, these painters also largely abandoned their earlier interests in decorative and applied arts.
Maurice Denis
With Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, Denis was a founding member of the Nabis group in France, active from 1888 to 1899. Denis, the group's spiritual leader and chief theoretician, called for a new pictorial language in response to the rhythms of nature. In date and sensibility, his work bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as shown here, he had a firm grasp on modernist thought. He once said, "Remember that a picture, before being a war horse, a female nude, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."
Springtime, a double-sided canvas, describes a purification scene set deep in the forest of Saint-Germain, near Paris. Several pairs of young women—representing the sacred and the profane—blend into a bucolic landscape where one of them stands nude in a stream. Denis draws a parallel between the flowering sapling in the center (a symbol of spring, renewal, and Easter) and the maidens.
References:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1999.180.2ab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Nabis
No comments:
Post a Comment