Jean Auguste Ingres

Thoughts on Ingres as a Source of Art by Jeannine Cook

The other day, I attended an artist’s talk for an exhibition opening at the Ingres Museum in Montauban, a delightful small town in South France.

It was thought-provoking, albeit not perhaps quite as the artist intended.

Flyer for the Ingres Museum show on Vincent Carpet

Flyer for the Ingres Museum show on Vincent Carpet

Vincent Carpet is a French artist, born in Paris in 1958, who came to art because there seemed nothing else viable for him to do.

His career really took off, apparently, when he exhibited with two other artists in a very controversial show, Masculin-Féminin, le sexe de l’art, at the Centre GeorgesPompidou Paris. Since then, he has increasingly specialized in using an artist’s work to develop his own version of that work, often with what seems to be a very ironic eye.

It was in this context that he is now exhibiting his work in the Ingres Museum Montauban is Ingres’ home town and the museum owns a huge number of Ingres’ drawings and many important paintings. So Vincent Corpet was invited to select a number of Ingres’ works, paintings and drawings, and develop his own reactive work, to be hung alongside the original work. The show is called Vincent Corpet vit au long d'Ingres.

His talk at the Museum, given to a very small number of people, was ironic, rich in facile remarks and occasional honest moments, such as when he admitted getting totally bored with trying to find what else to do and say when faced with all the multitude of Ingres’ portraits.

Another such moment was when he said he couldn’t paint hands or feet, so he simply stuck his hand or foot in paint and walked on the canvas to leave the imprint. His method of work, apparently, is to make a black and white, quick and dirty copy of the original painting, with the canvas on the floor, as one personage.

He then changes to being another person, in his mind, and selects out things to emphasise and reinterpret, mostly with fantasy animals, upside down, sideways or whatever. He then changes again to another person and covers the rest of the canvas in some simple colour, painted on rather as one would paint a wall, it appeared. Only when the three stages are completed is the canvas placed upright.

Vincent Corpet at work

Vincent Corpet at work

His drawings were simpler and more painterly, but very repetitive, with sexual forms predominating, with a lot of smudging, erasing the black with spirits to get tonal changes.

He had also made the selection of Ingres’ drawings to go with his drawings, but alas, many of them were so faint that they were almost invisible. He had apparently made a very quick selection on the web of these drawings, not seeing them in the original, which was perhaps sometimes unfortunate.

The overall impression on was left with after this talk was that this was an artist who had perfected the game of parleying his skills into a career in the official art world. Derivative and shallow art is apparently quite acceptable, as long as there is shock value. To me, his talk was short on depth of thought, and thus on impact.

Tackling a take-off of Ingres, himself very much a product of the 19th century traditional art world and not so hot on accurate drawing of the human body, for instance, is not an easy task. Nonetheless, the “translation” done by Vincent Corpet into 21st century idiom simply reminded me of the existence of a potentially shallow, transitory and basically ugly sector of today’s art world. 

In essence, the talk became a reminder to me personally as an artist that one needs to try to dig as deeply and thoughtfully as possible inside one’s own world, not to copy and not to be facile.

Not easy!

"Singing" of Spring by Jeannine Cook

These days of warm springlike weather are absolutely irresistible! I should be doing all sorts of other things, but I find myself rushing out to paint - for the sheer joy of being outdoors as an artist!

Of course, it is then instant humbleness as I struggle to accomplish what I hope to paint. The wind blows, the gnats arrive and I can't believe that what I deemed to be straightforward has suddenly become complicated. But underlying the whole experience is harmony, of "singing true" and almost a sense of completeness: I am privileged to be doing what I love to do, in a beautiful spring world.

I think Ingres knew about this sense of plenitude and harmony, in his paintings but also when he was drawing his astonishing graphite pencil portraits or his landscape drawings in Rome. He wrote, "Everything in nature is harmony; a little too much, or else too little, disturbs the scale and makes a false note. One must teach the point of singing true with the pencil or with brush as much as with the voice; rightness of forms is like rightness of sounds."

View of the Villa Medici, Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres, 1807, pencil on paper (Image courtesy of Musée Ingres, Montauban, France

View of the Villa Medici, Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres, 1807, pencil on paper (Image courtesy of Musée Ingres, Montauban, France

Urson Jules Vatinelle (1788-1881) 1820, graphite on paper, Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres, (Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York)

Urson Jules Vatinelle (1788-1881) 1820, graphite on paper, Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres, (Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York)

Somehow, the close observation of one's surroundings and an effort to create a harmonious composition and luminous painting help to make one grow as an artist. That always helps make life more fulfilling.