Van Eyck's "Virgin and Chancellor Rolin" of 1435 shows an interior scene with an opening to the world. Van Eyck depicts the chancellor kneeling before the Virgin and Child. The ostentatious nature of the donor's figure, dressed in gold brocade and fur in the manner of a prince, reflects his desire to be perceived as a high court official. The composition is built on either side of an opening consisting of three arcades. On one side is the earthly figure in a position of prayer on a prie-Dieu covered with a chiselled velvet sheet, and on the other are the holy figures. The Virgin sits on a marble throne and wears a large embroidered mantle adorned with gems. The capitals on the left represent scenes from the Old Testament that emphasise the faults of humanity: the expulsion from paradise, the sacrifice of Cain and Abel, God receiving the latter's offering, the murder of Cain, Noah in the ark and finally Noah covered by one of his sons. The whole is composed in the manner of a 'Holy Conversation', a genre that Van Eyck helped to establish and which was to become very popular in Italy.
Berthe Morisot painted "Eugène Manet à l'île de Wight" in 1875. In 1874, Berthe Morisot married Eugène Manet. He was the brother of the painter, Édouard and the politician, Auguste. Eugène led a discreet and idle life. Berthe and her husband were free from material worries, which allowed them to devote themselves fully to their passion for the arts. Encouraged by her husband, Berthe pursued her career as a painter under her maiden name. This small painting, which she executed during their honeymoon in England, is the first she devoted to him. Settled at the Globe Cottage Hotel in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, the couple took the time to savour these calm, gentle moments, which are perfectly captured in this painting. Wight is whight is like a sun in the grey sky, Whight is Wight... Hippie, hippie-pie.
André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington, in New York in 1942, with "Nu à la fenêtre", 1941, by Morris Hirshfield, an extraordinary American painter of Polish origin, oscillating between surrealism and naive art. He died in 1946. My grandfather devoted a retrospective exhibition to him at the Maeght Gallery in 1951, accompanied by a Behind the Mirror. They are in front of a painting by Max Ernst, exceptional for its size and its subject, I will present it to you later. So many geniuses here who knew how to have fun and live intensely. It is amazing what Leonora is holding between her knees in front of the painted nude! Very few of Hirshfield's works can be seen, fortunately MoMA has a few. Henri Matisse, "Intérieur à l'étui de violon".
Dazzling Fauvist painting by Henri Matisse painted in 1905 à Collioure, "Fenêtre ouverte".
Marcel Duchamp "Man at the Window", 1907. It is unusual for Duchamp to be so "conventional" in 1907, remembering that "La Roue de bicyclette", considered one of the first "Ready made", dates from 1913
Marc Chagall, "Paris par la fenêtre", 1913.
"Tempête à Nice" by Henri Matisse, painted in 1919. Henri Matisse, a man from the north, came to the south of France to treat bronchitis and discovered Nice at the end of 1917. Until 1921, he stayed in hotels during the winter seasons, then settled on the Cours Saleya. "Tempête à Nice" was painted from the window of the Hôtel de la Méditerranée where the painter had settled in November 1918. Disappointed by the bad weather, he was ready to leave, "I left Estaque because of the wind and then I had caught bronchitis there. I came to Nice to treat it, but it rained for a whole month. Finally I decided to leave the town. The next day the mistral chased away the clouds, the weather was magnificent... When I realised that every morning I would see this light again, I couldn't believe my happiness.
Charles Camoin, (1879 - 1965). "Fenêtre ouverte sur le port de Saint Tropez", around 1950. Charles Camoin, like all his Fauvist friends, knew Saint-Tropez at the beginning of the 20th century. Signac was the first to settle there. The "eighth wonder of the universe" had been discovered! He was followed in 1903 by Henri Matisse and Henri Manguin. In the summer of 1905, Albert Marquet and Charles Camoin, originally from Marseilles, joined him. Until the 1920s, Camoin travelled to Morocco and stayed in Collioure and Toulon, then returned to Saint-Tropez. From then on, he divided his time between the Midi and Paris.
Paul Gauguin, "Vase de fleurs à la fenêtre", 1880. So not Gauguin ! Samuel Van Hoogstraten, "l’homme à la fenêtre" 1653. Here, the window is used in a completely different way than usual. The man is as if enclosed in the composition of the painting. Caught between the stone blocks..
"Fenêtre" René Magritte, 1898 - 1967.
Masterpiece of photography, André Kertész "Le chien de la concierge", 1926. I love everything about this picture. And what it says is different for everyone, that's what a work is!
Paul Delvaux "La fenêtre" of 1936. The window is a recurrent subject in the avant-garde of twentieth-century art history. Metaphysical painting and surrealism make extensive use of the window to challenge perceptual habits. It is one of the favourite motifs of Magritte and Delvaux who, playing on its banality and apparent innocence, give it a key role in the visual enigmas posed by their paintings. Inside or outside? Dream or reality? Window or painting? Image or idea? For the Surrealists, the window allows the transition between the space of reality and that of the mind. Magritte particularly used this motif in strange, even contradictory compositions that invert logical patterns. Architectural elements, defining spaces and serving as physical boundaries, transition zones, such as facades, screens and doors, are for him ideal motifs for introducing a confusion of planes. This confusion is fully expressed by Paul Delvaux in "La fenêtre" of 1936.
Kees van Dongen shows himself with his back to the window. A dark mass stands out from the window. It is the artist's soul that is revealed here, with these shades of blue running through the canvas. The features of his face are barely visible against the light.
The Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota was born in Osaka in 1972 and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1997. And the window is home.
Profil à la fenêtre by Marc Chagall, 1918.
The sun of the Côte d'Azur by Pierre Bonnard to illuminate our lives, "Fenêtre ouverte", 1921. Dazzling! What a fantastic composition with this black blind responding to the little cat and the verticals... Everything seems to be an assembly of geometrical shapes that create a perfect balance.
Edward Hopper, "Night Windows", 1928. This painting makes us voyeurs. In this New York night scene, a furtive view of a lit interior from the dark street, we see the partially concealed body of a scantily clad woman. This painting is often linked to a short story by Sherwood Anderson, of which Hopper was a reader, about a clergyman who is confronted with the temptations of the flesh after discovering that he can observe his neighbour's bedroom from his home. On several occasions, the clergyman indulges in contemplating the naked body of the young woman who neglects to lower the blinds on her windows after dark. The city at night is a frequent subject in Hopper's work. Here, the three windows allow for a dramatic, almost panoramic, staging of the illuminated interior against the dark night, a juxtaposition that the artist identified as "a common visual sensation".
Victor Brauner, fortunately brought to light last spring by the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. "Lion, lumière, liberté", from 1941.
"Pablo Picasso, rue des Grands-Augustins" en 1945, it's rare Picasso who doesn't look at the lens! photo by Pierre Jahan.
This painting dazzled me in my youth. It remains forever in my heart, in my guts. Pierre Bonnard, "L'atelier au mimosa". The Nabis master began this painting in 1939 in Le Cannet and then painted it again in 1946 in Fontainebleau. In 1922, Bonnard discovered Le Cannet and was won over by this haven of peace. Bonnard came to spend each winter in Le Cannet in various houses that he rented. In 1925, Bonnard bought "Le Bosquet", a modest villa on the hill. The studio on the first floor was very cramped, and Bonnard had the walls modified to create a glass roof overlooking a lush garden and the rooftops of the village below. Around 1930, Bonnard painted a first version of this corner of the studio where the view of the garden occupies only a small part of the canvas. In the second version, this one, begun in 1939 and resumed and completed in Fontainebleau in 1946, it is the window and above all the immense mimosa that occupy almost the entire surface. A system of intersecting lines, created by the ironwork of the glass roof and the oblique of the mezzanine in the foreground, reframes and multiplies the moving, bright and golden mass of the mimosa. It is not surprising that my grandfather chose this work for the cover of the catalogue of the exhibition "Bonnard dans sa lumière" which he presented in 1975 at the Maeght Foundation. The following year, the work entered the French national collections, and can be seen today at the Centre Pompidou.
Roy Lichtenstein's "Bedroom at Arles", 1992, is a huge, pop interpretation of van Gogh's "Bedroom at Arles". It has the same layout as van Gogh's work but the furniture has been given a facelift! "The walls are a pale purple. The floor is red checked. The wood of the bed and the chairs are fresh butter yellow. The sheet and pillows are a very light lime green. The scarlet blanket. The green window. The orange dressing table with the blue bowl. The lilac doors. Extract from a letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo.
Silk-screen print made for the release of the book "Tardi par la Fenêtre", in 1996. Tardi who made us dream and thrill with "Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec".
