Maurice de Vlaminck – Figure on a Village Street
When COVID started, I did not de-clutter my house and perfect the (surprisingly complicated) process of baking sourdough bread like most of the other grown-ups that I know. Instead, I reveled in the enforced isolation, repeatedly cycled through all my favorite TV shows while online window shopping, and realized that I was getting kind of – serious – about art.
I have always liked art. The walls of the many places I have lived since leaving the house I grew up in were never bare. Everywhere I went, if art was featured in any way, I noticed it. Whenever I went on vacation, if I bought a souvenir, it was usually a piece of art created by someone local. It wasn’t until mid-pandemic though, sitting on the couch one summer night, only vaguely paying attention to the “Republic of Doyle” episode I’d already seen 4 times, while also browsing Art.com, that I realized I was now beginning to deliberately look for a certain kind of art. And I was tired of the same old stuff.
At that point, I felt I did have, a somewhat respectable collection. A moody Andrew Wyeth print, a Maxfield Parrish print that I’d rescued from the bottom of dusty pile at an antique store, one of Charlie Russell’s less well known black and white sketches that I bought at the Russell Museum in Great Falls, MT. Most of what adorned my walls though, was “Couch Art” at its finest. Cheap, accessible, the vast majority bought on an insomniac’s impulse at 2am. I liked it, but it wasn’t meaningful in any appreciable way.
What I found myself thinking that summer evening, as the big box store of online art offered up images of ‘Starry Night”, “Woman with a Parasol”, and “The Kiss” – again – was, “There has got to be more than this.”
I don’t mean to give the impression that I dislike the works of Van Gogh, Monet, and Klimt. I LOVE Van Gogh, but “Starry Night” is not the only work he ever created. He did produce over 900 paintings in his remarkably short 10-year career.
For Instance, this one, aside from the politically incorrect title, is one of my favorites:
Vincent Van Gogh – Encampment of Gypsies With Caravans
What I started to discover, is that along with lesser-known works by well-known artists, there is an almost bottomless well of incredible art by lesser known artists. Take the top image by French painter Maurice de Vlaminck who was a contemporary of Henri Matisse. They were principles in the “Fauve” movement, a group of artists who from 1904 to 1908 were known for their bold use of intense color. In 1905, during the Salon d’Automne exhibition, where Vlaminck and Matisse were featured, the art critic Louis Vauxcelles disparaged them as “fauves” (wild beasts), thus coining the movements name. I can’t even articulate how knowing that- just – delights me. And the painting above seems to be a perfect representation of that categorization.
Anyone Edward Hopper fans? Have you ever seen any of Charles Scheeler’s work?
Charles Scheeler – MacDougal Alley 1922
The point is, you don’t need to scratch the obvious, “everyone knows that!”, surface very hard to find some truly wonderful stuff. Although, full disclosure, I still enjoy the occasional impulse buy on Art.com at 2am. Unlike “Starry Night”, the “Pidgeon Reading ‘Pooping on People'” never gets old.
