Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Paul Bonnard, Nu a contre jour (Nude against the light)


           This piece of art plays with the light. It is a change for artists, because they, and the viewer, are being invited into the most private times of everyday life. I like how they capture everyday moments and make them so intellectual.
            There is a mirror in the background, and anytime we have a mirror it means the artist is showing us the theme, “what it means to look. The way this women is standing and the way she is arching her back shows us she is standing in the sunlight. She is pressing up against the light as if it is holding her down and she is pushing back. Pushing against the light.
            Francis Jammes was a rising poet at the time of this painting and one of his most famous works was Le Deuil des Primevères. He was eventually able to live off of his writings and I think that ties into this art somehow. In my mind the woman is pushing up the sunlight not just to bask in it, but as a motion of getting somewhere. Of accomplishing something. And that is what Jammes did with his poetry.

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