Museum Open House; Light, Dark and Daumier; 16

I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. Light and dark. It's Paris at midnight. And two good citizens are scared out of their wits to meet each other as they hurry home muffled against the biting winter wind. It's a don't me let the grass. And that means it's a slice of life seen through the eyes of that great 19th century Frenchman the man who captured the gayety and the gloom of the human spectacle. With a two edged two of the artist light and dark. Italians called it light and dark. Today we call it value. We have to be careful about this word live. If an auctioneer

talks about the value of this print we know what he means. If a philosopher talks about human or moral values that are reflected in it he means something else. To the lover of good drawing. It has quite another value. But if two artists were talking about the value in this print. They would most likely mean the gradations on the value scale from white to black. Which make up the design of this picture. The cartoonist dominee knew more about value than most of the successful artists of his day. He knew instinctively that. Values like colors can appear to change by changing their surrounding value by changing its background. Here is a strip of paper of a medium gray value. There is nothing up my sleeve. Here's a sheet of paper which has been graded with a

crayon from black to white. When I place this strip against the gradation something happens or should happen it appears to change from light at the top to dock. At the bottom. Of the seam simple but an artist must really take to heart. The old cliche that appearances are deceiving and put these deceptions. To creative use as Domina does. Here we are struck by the dramatic contrast of the figure dark against the light meaning the grey figure against the black. It's a daring composition almost cut in half. That dramatizes the shock of this. Midnight confrontation. And then we discover that the two overcoats. Are really the same gray. That only appears to be different. Dami has enriched the effect of the design without adding to the means he's done

more with less. The artist's sense of light has changed over the centuries. The light of the Middle Ages was a form of light that artists used to define separate forms. Something like the light that is on me now are spiritual all embracing light rather than an observed earthly one which would reveal the solidity of flesh and blood beings we see in this Byzantine image. I like that emphasizes the separate shape of eyes nose mouth that reveals a clear linear decorative rhythms of the figure but never convinces us that the sun is shining or establishes a relationship between man and his environment. In the early Renaissance man becomes more observant of himself. He studies more the way gradations of value make solid form

is in the modeling that is on my face now. We see here in this painting by massage this drawing by massage of the monumental solidity. But this still in isolation and then from one another. Men from the vulgar world around them gradually artist saw how light established relations between all things that it could create movement and drama and even probe and eliminate the private lonely recesses of human character from Leonardo through a kind of audio to Rembrandt. The supreme master of light and dark who's now honored throughout photographic studios by the use of Rembrandt lighting. In fact the lighting of our present day films and television are still based essentially on the vision of these masters. Domine

painted this group of lawyers in their formal black robes central foreground figures staring directly at us. His face half in darkness. A shrewd aristocratic suspicious face made coldly sinister by the harsh light that slices him out of the gloom. Early experience as a clerk in courts of law left me with a sense of the irony of Man's Search for Justice in his apparent incapacity to grant it to others. He found in the courts all the enemies he was to do battle with. Throughout his life pomposity greed arrogance dishonesty hypocrisy in vain ambition. This is a late oil painting. Most Frenchmen knew Domine not as a painter but as a caricaturist and a cartoonist his lithographs in the daily papers started the day off with a smile. Unless you happen to be one of his victims.

In his series of men of justice he delighted in the extravagant gestures of lawyers captivated by their own eloquence. This fierce looking prisoner confronts a magistrate who gives his case thoughtful consideration. You were hungry so you were hungry. But that's no justification. I too am hungry almost every day but that doesn't make me steal. Another judge badgers an unfortunate witness. See here it's important that you tell us exactly and in detail what you did on last April 12th. But Your Honor that was nine months ago. Never mind that tell us anyway.

You're a pretty girl. We will have no trouble proving that your husband was to blame. Of course you've lost your case but then you had the pleasure of hearing me plead it. But. With a few shadows and lines here spells out the contrast between the man who has seen enough to question and the young man who has read enough to answer. And here the triumphant advocate.

Hughes won his case and he overflows with a warming sense of righteousness. As we close in we see that Daumier has had as little regard for the slick polish of official art as he had for the well-oiled wheels of official justice. This is an oil painting and the paint is thickly put down in strong plains. The grouping of the bright light on the face the shirt the papers and the hand makes a triangular constellation of forms Domi makes us look up to the lawyer and that enhances the general mood of self importance. At the top. Light against dark. At the bottom dark against light. If you viewed the workings of the law with humorous suspicion he saved this his richest contempt for the government. Or more accurately any

individual or institution which was undemocratic and totalitarian as were most of the governments of 19th century France. Here is the young Domi is a moment in view of his country's leading lawmakers gathered in the national assembly. The rich sculptural form of these figures was based on a practical fact the Domine did make sculptures clay figures before he made the series of drawings and accounts for their strong solidity. Will the real Humpty-Dumpty please stand up. The cartoons like this one and others showing King Louis Philippe in various disrespectful ways

earned for the young Domi a official recognition in the form of six months in jail. And here he is sent. With two fellow prisoners that's no me at left. Very intense young man. It has been suggested that this later painting of a man on a rope may be an escape scene that he witnessed while in prison. It's a powerful. Emotional work the swing of this figure bowled against the line of the building. Lack of finish is no more a virtue than an finish but here the roughness contributes to the strength we get the essence of the movement. And that's at a time when the only essence that most painters were attracted by came in perfume bottles.

Motion obscures detail and I don't mean these attempts to find new ways to express momentary action. Place him at the head of a strong current developing in 19th century painting. He was a hard man to hold down and two years after his imprisonment in a time of rebellion and cruel suppression he shows his King as a doctor diagnosing a dead political prisoner. You can let him go now. He's not dangerous anymore or. His crayon was provoked to angry protests by the senseless massacre of an entire family by soldiers seeking political fugitives. Nowhere in all the cylons of Europe at this time know where perhaps except in the work of Goya. Was there anything so

honest so moving and so true is this furious document which still speaks of yesterday and today and tomorrow. The threats of censorship were raised again and drew this heroic figure of a printer telling the king to keep hands off the freedom of the press. But the iron clamp of censorship slammed shut and only a turn to social satire until the end of the regime in the revolution of eight hundred forty eight. This painting called The uprising is probably based on the 1848 revolution. The guy once said that one doesn't paint a crowd with 50 people but with five you may have learned this from Daumier. This is a marvelous painting and it demolishes by its real passion all the contrived political posters of

the heroic masses. He one feels the depth. Of the artist's identification. He was people a friend said of Daumier and he loved the people to the depth of his in trails in the simple diagonal thrust of this man's gestures the whole force of the people's will the freedom of painting is reinforced here and there with the black lines of the draftsman. By the shadows they're all made to be one. And they're personified in this man. The foreground is more complete. He stands for the mall. You notice how don't you make say a shadow fall in the back of his head so that he will stand out against the light of the distant buildings. France was to erupt in war and civil bloodshed again in 1870 71 and the ageing but ever vigilant. Don't be a

comments on the interior political chaos here the conciliating attitude of those who title themselves the moderate party. It ended in a humiliating defeat for France and the bloody suppression of the Commune and the black ink of the artist Marx deep his horror in his morning. Oh. But the dominant theme of his work is somewhat less and grim the the life of the middle class of Paris. And he pokes fun at them as one might today a good natured cousin who manages to be both annoying and lovable at the same time. One favorite pastime for Asians is watching people fishing in the sand. The caption reads it seems unbelievable that the wretched

fishermen squatting on his boat should cause a crowd together. Surely the Persians those they shifts and intelligent people must have been attracted by someone drowning a milliner a peer of France or just a vendor a candidate for the Academy. Victim of love for ambition. But alas no. It's actually a small carp which you can't see and neither can they. All you can do is go to sleep. One love to which a good Parisian is always faithful. It's a food the expression of an eastern mystic achieving enlightenment is the only site comparable to that of a Parisian encountering a camel bear in the proper state of decay.

Or here the feel and fragrance of a fat ripe melon. When the children have been really good. Father rewards them by taking them along to the public bathhouse. When can a funny cartoon also be fine art. Perhaps here in this masterful drawing of an old man in bed with nostalgia. His expression seems to come alive even better if we get him to sit up. The splendid variety and quality of the local beverages have their connoisseurs and their victims. I never touch a beer. There's nothing like absinthe to pick a man up.

I. The theater provides the human spectacle revealed in a dramatic light that was irresistible to Daumier in this detail of a scene from a play by Moliere uses the new stage lighting in positions of the heads to exaggerate contrast of characters. Everything is softened and kept rough and vague except the features of the old man sharpen to accent his cheerless disposition. He found as much humor and pathless in the audience as on stage in these brilliant drawings in his late expressionistic style. He was your lover my dom.

I am but. The passion was not always on stage. You know me I called this one a literary discussion in the second balcony. Few men knew him yet as a serious painter the poet Botha Laird the great poet the great critic was one of them. I'm going to speak to one of the most important men I would not say merely in caricature but in modern art a man who amuses the population every morning and daily satisfies the need for public gayety by giving it something to feed on the bourgeois the the businessman the street boy and the housewife often laugh and passed on.

Ungrateful creatures without noticing the artist's name. Up to now only artists have grasped that there is something serious about him something that would really supply material for a treatise. As you may guess it's about me. In this rest of the clowns we see the massive sculpture esque quality which moved back to say the Domine had Michelangelo under the skin. His color is limited to Earth browns and yellows and reds that suggest Rembrandt. There's a circular design here. It leads us up the back of the boy on the left. Through the shoulder of of the central figure. To the wiry massive head of the the old clown and the light picks up again on his arm to begin moving us around once

more. This painting is called Return from market and it alone would explain the reverence which modern painters from SES on down have felt for Domi the stripping away of all frills and fripperies of charm and virtuosity down to the bone bare roots of creation to the simple elements of line and form of positive and negative areas with a light and dark are held in some magic balance in a kind of majestic poise. In our day of inflated substitute murals. It's good to see paintings that manage to be both. Small and monumental. And remember that it's the size of the artist that counts. One of the smallest and most popular paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

is this one third class carriage. What is there in this work that seems so oddly balanced with all the light on the Windows side that makes it great art and not a sentimental magazine cover with talk of the elemental simplicity of Domi is drawing his profound observation of character. His strong federal execution is far from imitating nature the light is picked out arbitrarily selectively. There's the further abstraction that Grafton's line which doesn't exist in nature in the figure at left it's it's almost decorative and suggests a massive version of early Picasso figures. None of these things are enough to explain its greatness it must be done is adjustment then of all these elements that raise this above illustration above. Folksy anecdote to the level of an epic drama that includes all of

us in the cast. One is tempted to regret in front of paintings like these that the economic demands of life kept me eyes nose to the limestone 20 you might have grown into an even greater painter. But if there are hundreds of lithographs that one would sacrifice for another painting like the third class carriage. There are many that are glories of graphic art and it is evident that his concentrated study in The Prince of the graphic expressive power of light and dark built a strong foundation for his oils. He didn't spare a fellow artist from his good natured needling in this early print to artist dance to keep warm in their own heated studio. The span of Dominus life saw the gradual estrangement of the artist from the state from the church from the public and the growing legend of the individual burning eyed

genius starving in his gallery never to know of his posthumous fame. But a few people knew of his genius the Impressionist admired him but he didn't return their admiration. Here he smiles at the artist who goes out to face nature in fresh air and finds his composition full of another lover of fresh air. Nor did he spare the academic hacks who aim for popularity by producing artistic confections for official or public taste. The food's complains the artist. I think the religious painting in their left they don't even have the religion of art but art was for me as for any artist a tragic as well as a joyful way of life. You knew that times alone in the studio when you needn't worry about making people laugh when all the record of his life was there on the canvas the parts unrealized the parts neglected the parts destroyed in

search for something better or something more true because he did to make that search. We know him now is something more than a brilliant cartoonist. In this exciting canvas here in the Boston Museum don't you dealt with the dynamics of motion and no artist that ever did the figure on the white horse is a blur not a dog or a smear or a sketch but is considered blurred a softening of edges and elimination of details that brings it all to to life. The elements which are the alphabet of the painting never completely spell out its greatness. Repetition of forms with variety. Contrast of white against dark the charging line that whips around and over defining bone and flesh as it moves the subtle mysterious echo of the third horseman facing in holding us in the picture but above all that plastic sense of value that moves our eye. Back and forth and holds everything together in a unity stronger than any of its

parts. Here on loan at the museum is a painting of a subject dear to Dominus heart when he treated noble 50 paintings and drawings of Don Quixote and his faithful companion Sancho Panza. It doesn't take much effort to see this as the artist as prophet we shave off that moustache there might be a. Startling resemblance to a modern French woman who has some grand visions that set him apart from his fellow men. Art derived from other art forms is not often successful but there's something great in this Don Quixote series. The White Horse a magnificent collection of old bones and ageless dignity shuffles along against the dark rocks by liberal night sits silhouetted his noble pit purpose etched against the sky. A loyal lump of sun called Pons A follows in the distance seeming to be one with his beast. But it's a symbol of Domina himself that I see this

painting. Someone said he had the soul of Don Quixote in the body of Funchal PONZA. He was offered the Legion of Honor and refused it because he said he was too old. He was going blind. He might well have drawn the sword beside Don Quixote and beside Cyrano de Bergerac and all the filters at windmills and cried. What say you. It's useless. I know but who fights ever hoping for success. I fought for lost cause and for fruitless quest. You there. Who are you. You have thousands. I know you now old enemies of mine false would have it you. Ha. Compromise. Prejudice. Treachery. Surrender. Parley. No never. You to folly

you. I know that you will lay me low at last. Let be. Yet I fall fighting. Fighting still.