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Working Notes May 2008
[image: libcom.org]
"...the Ateliers are a microcosm of the painter's professional universe...canvases and frames are stacked; on a lectern is a pile of sketchbooks which Braque claims he uses as `cookerybooks' to provide ideas and suggest subjects for compositions...tables are laden with artists' materials, while others are covered with pots, vases, musical instruments, bowls of fruit, pieces of sculpture, objets trouvés, philodendron plants and all kinds of odds-and-ends...".
[John Richardson: 'The Ateliers of Braque', Burlington Magazine XCVII no. 627, June 1955]
"I no longer believe in anything. Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them or between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence - what I can only describe as a state of peace - which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry."
[George Braque]
"...the object is poetics".
[George Braque]
This is, on one level, a very simple enquiry – what happened to Braque's studio objects after his death? I've just mailed this question to Alex Danchev.
Wouldn't it be something to find those things that triangulated so essentially with painter and painting?
It isn't possible to assess to what extent Braque arranged his affairs before his death (Danchev reports that Braque, slipping in and out of consciousness, asked for his palette when close to death, and this suggests the painter had a sense of on-going project, of unfinished business, and not of termination or extinction). So let's assume that Braque simply left everything to his wife, Marcelle. Or maybe he left all his studio objects to Mariette Lachaud, his studio assistant for over thirty years. Maybe this is as simple as finding a couple of Wills and understanding the distribution of Braque's Estate.
This could just be a case of chasing the paperwork, and of seeing where this takes us.
Or maybe some provision was made (by Braque, by Marcelle?) whereby the studio objects were dispersed along with the late paintings. The seven volumes of Braque's Catalogue Raisonne (Maeght Editeur, Paris) don't extend beyond 1957, and, therefore, are not of much use in this instance. Certainly Marcelle Braque made a bequest to the Musee National d'Art Moderne before her death in 1965. Also, some of the late paintings went to Aime Maeght. I've just noticed that the provenance for some of the paintings from the 1940s and 1950s in Golding's catalogue for 'Braque The Late Works' is given as "Collection of the artist". What does this mean? Who now holds this collection?
I'm sure I've seen somewhere a partial inventory of the objects shown in some of Braque's paintings... Anyway, to do a full inventory would be fascinating. But better still would be to draw and paint these objects (or the 'rapport' with and between these objects) in the hope that this would make "everything possible and right" (again). Perpetual revelation?
Alex Danchev has replied very promptly. He says: "I'm sorry to say that I think they [the studio objects] are either dispersed or inaccessible. After Marcelle's death, the Braque estate passed to the Laurens family...legally, the inheritor is now Quentin Laurens, the director of the Galerie Leiris."
Yes, that's also part of the big loop the other day. I was doing something for [XXXX], and started talking about Lefebvre’s understanding of conceived space and Soja’s ‘thirding-as Othering’ and 'thirdspace', and from this I went to Ingold's notion of taskscape. And that's when I came back to Braque in terms of the triangulation of painter/painting/objects. What Zen calls 'not two'. It was this recognition of Braque's studios (the paintings and the physical spaces) as taskscapes that got me to chasing the objects.
By the way, John Golding, in his review of Danchev’s ‘Georges Braque A Life’ [1], notes that it was Marcelle that started Braque reading Dostoevsky. And Danchev notes that (page 17) that Braque “treated” his studio assistant, Mariette Lachaud, to a copy of Dostoevsky’s ‘White Nights’ following the Liberation of Paris in 1944. I’m now also starting to see Braque’s late Studios in the context of Bakhtin’s 'Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel' [in 'The Dialogic Imagination'] – chronotope, "the place where the knots of narrative are tied and untied”.
“In White Nights the apparent idyll of the dreamer's romantic fantasies disguises profound loneliness and estrangement from 'living life'. Despite his sentimental friendship with Nastenka, his final withdrawal into the world of the imagination anticipates the retreat into the 'underground'...” [Amazon.co.uk].
The full story is at http://penref.blogspot.com/2007/10/fyodor-dostoevsky-white-nights.html
Dostoevsky’s ‘White Nights’ (A Sentimental Story from the Diary of a Dreamer) opens with a possibly telling quote from Ivan Turgenev:
"And was it his destined part
Only one moment in his life
To be close to your heart?
Or was he fated from the start
to live for just one fleeting instant,
within the purlieus of your heart."
In 1944, Braque would have been 61, and Mariette Lachaud 30 years old. As Danchev quotes Braque, “I prefer the man to the artist. Cezanne was not an artist, but Manet was. If you follow me.”
[1] ‘In Braque's Studio’ by John Golding (‘Georges Braque: A Life’ by Alex Danchev): New York Review of Books Volume 54, Number 10 - June 14, 2007
[click here for more on Braque]
[image: libcom.org]
"...the Ateliers are a microcosm of the painter's professional universe...canvases and frames are stacked; on a lectern is a pile of sketchbooks which Braque claims he uses as `cookerybooks' to provide ideas and suggest subjects for compositions...tables are laden with artists' materials, while others are covered with pots, vases, musical instruments, bowls of fruit, pieces of sculpture, objets trouvés, philodendron plants and all kinds of odds-and-ends...".
[John Richardson: 'The Ateliers of Braque', Burlington Magazine XCVII no. 627, June 1955]
"I no longer believe in anything. Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them or between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence - what I can only describe as a state of peace - which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry."
[George Braque]
"...the object is poetics".
[George Braque]
This is, on one level, a very simple enquiry – what happened to Braque's studio objects after his death? I've just mailed this question to Alex Danchev.
Wouldn't it be something to find those things that triangulated so essentially with painter and painting?
It isn't possible to assess to what extent Braque arranged his affairs before his death (Danchev reports that Braque, slipping in and out of consciousness, asked for his palette when close to death, and this suggests the painter had a sense of on-going project, of unfinished business, and not of termination or extinction). So let's assume that Braque simply left everything to his wife, Marcelle. Or maybe he left all his studio objects to Mariette Lachaud, his studio assistant for over thirty years. Maybe this is as simple as finding a couple of Wills and understanding the distribution of Braque's Estate.
This could just be a case of chasing the paperwork, and of seeing where this takes us.
Or maybe some provision was made (by Braque, by Marcelle?) whereby the studio objects were dispersed along with the late paintings. The seven volumes of Braque's Catalogue Raisonne (Maeght Editeur, Paris) don't extend beyond 1957, and, therefore, are not of much use in this instance. Certainly Marcelle Braque made a bequest to the Musee National d'Art Moderne before her death in 1965. Also, some of the late paintings went to Aime Maeght. I've just noticed that the provenance for some of the paintings from the 1940s and 1950s in Golding's catalogue for 'Braque The Late Works' is given as "Collection of the artist". What does this mean? Who now holds this collection?
I'm sure I've seen somewhere a partial inventory of the objects shown in some of Braque's paintings... Anyway, to do a full inventory would be fascinating. But better still would be to draw and paint these objects (or the 'rapport' with and between these objects) in the hope that this would make "everything possible and right" (again). Perpetual revelation?
Alex Danchev has replied very promptly. He says: "I'm sorry to say that I think they [the studio objects] are either dispersed or inaccessible. After Marcelle's death, the Braque estate passed to the Laurens family...legally, the inheritor is now Quentin Laurens, the director of the Galerie Leiris."
Yes, that's also part of the big loop the other day. I was doing something for [XXXX], and started talking about Lefebvre’s understanding of conceived space and Soja’s ‘thirding-as Othering’ and 'thirdspace', and from this I went to Ingold's notion of taskscape. And that's when I came back to Braque in terms of the triangulation of painter/painting/objects. What Zen calls 'not two'. It was this recognition of Braque's studios (the paintings and the physical spaces) as taskscapes that got me to chasing the objects.
By the way, John Golding, in his review of Danchev’s ‘Georges Braque A Life’ [1], notes that it was Marcelle that started Braque reading Dostoevsky. And Danchev notes that (page 17) that Braque “treated” his studio assistant, Mariette Lachaud, to a copy of Dostoevsky’s ‘White Nights’ following the Liberation of Paris in 1944. I’m now also starting to see Braque’s late Studios in the context of Bakhtin’s 'Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel' [in 'The Dialogic Imagination'] – chronotope, "the place where the knots of narrative are tied and untied”.
“In White Nights the apparent idyll of the dreamer's romantic fantasies disguises profound loneliness and estrangement from 'living life'. Despite his sentimental friendship with Nastenka, his final withdrawal into the world of the imagination anticipates the retreat into the 'underground'...” [Amazon.co.uk].
The full story is at http://penref.blogspot.com/2007/10/fyodor-dostoevsky-white-nights.html
Dostoevsky’s ‘White Nights’ (A Sentimental Story from the Diary of a Dreamer) opens with a possibly telling quote from Ivan Turgenev:
"And was it his destined part
Only one moment in his life
To be close to your heart?
Or was he fated from the start
to live for just one fleeting instant,
within the purlieus of your heart."
In 1944, Braque would have been 61, and Mariette Lachaud 30 years old. As Danchev quotes Braque, “I prefer the man to the artist. Cezanne was not an artist, but Manet was. If you follow me.”
[1] ‘In Braque's Studio’ by John Golding (‘Georges Braque: A Life’ by Alex Danchev): New York Review of Books Volume 54, Number 10 - June 14, 2007
[click here for more on Braque]