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The Art Institute of Chicago
(Art Institute of Chicago Website)
111 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60603
312.443.3680
Press: Chai Lee
Girodet: Romantic Rebel
February 11 to April 30, 2006
Susan Weinrebe
February 8, 2006
In a self-portrait, very much resembling a Jim Morrison of his day, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, the French Revolutionary era painter of exquisite legends, Olympian forms, and heroic personages, greets visitors to his first American retrospective.
Keeping with the Art Institute’s growing initiative to inform and educate visitors, an illustrated time-line of Girodet’s life and work spans one wall. Placed along a continuum of social and political change, it alludes to his genius, not only as a painter, but also as an individual who successfully breasted the waves of national change.
Initially a student in the atelier of Jacques-Louis David, Girodet eventually broke from his master’s influence. Then he developed techniques that rendered beautiful bodies in crystalline essence. While he explored mythic themes and captured the personas of exotic people in close portraiture, he also wrote heroic poetry to accompany his visualizations, presaging the Romantic Movement in art and literature. The exhibition shows this breadth of his work and the innovative executions he mastered.
Directly contrasted with each other, The Dead Christ Supported by the Virgin and The Sleep of Endymion, represent a progression in Girodet’s developing individuality. The pieta shows the body of a solidly muscled, mature male whose flesh looks mortal. The body is weighty and still powerful even in death. Hands as square as boxes look as though they could have throttled an ox. The sleeping shepherd, Endymion, on the other hand, is as delicately porcelain-skinned as the marble from which Galatea was carved. His curving supine body and gracefully placed hands suggest androgynous languor and eroticism staged upon a nest of leopard skin against which he reclines.
Blending myth with realism while scattering allusions to political alliances for the savvy interpreter, The Spirit of French Heroes Welcomed by Ossian into Odin’s Paradise, is a many-faceted and vast portrait. It is dense with bodies, weapons, the newly dead and the long gone, friends and foes, a sense of struggle, welcome, divine reward and a miasma of wraiths from the spirit world. Several of the conceptualized faces verge on the bestial. I was struck by the simultaneous projection of beauty and ferocity panned across the canvas.
And speaking of symbols, the most deliciously referencing work of the exhibit is Girodet’s retributive portrait of Mademoiselle Lange. An actress and “girl about town,” she and her recent husband, rich, but quite nouveau and crass, didn’t care for the first painting Girodet had made of them. Their mistake was to pique the painter. Not only did he destroy the original, he repainted the notorious Mlle. Lange as the nude Danaë, ecstatically reaching toward a shower of gold. A florid turkey, quite resembling her husband, is being fitted with peacock feathers, whilst a mask of her lover lies at her feet, blinded by a gold coin. Quel scandale!
With 100 works in the show, it is hard to know which grouping best represents Girodet. At times in his career he painted landscapes, renditions of legends, raging battle scenes, grand images of Napoleon to hang in bureaucratic offices, as well as tender portraits marking the stages in a little boy’s life. He even created a studio for women artists. This vibrant show, straight from the Louvre, is a step towards a better acquaintanceship with Girodet.
Besides the exhibit, the Art Institute has a full program of performances and lectures to accompany the show. Included are readings, discussions, a Beethoven concert, and a family program of “Drawing in the Galleries” as well. Additionally, a three-course dinner and lecture, “Girodet at Brasserie Jo,” (312.595.0800) is scheduled for the last week of February. The Art Institute’s own Garden Restaurant (312.553.9675), offers a special prix-fixe luncheon, featuring cuisine inspired by the exhibit, making Girodet: Romantic Rebel, a multi-sensory experience.
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (French 1767-1824 ). The Spirits of French Heroes Welcomed by Ossian into Odin's Paradise , 1801. Oil on canvas; 192 x 182 cm ( 75 3/4 x 72 1/2 in. ). Musée national du châteaux de Malmaison , Rueil-Malmaison, MM. 40.47.6955.
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (French 1767-1824 ). Dead Christ Supported by the Virgin , 1789. Oil on canvas; 335 x 235 cm ( 131 7/8 x 92 1/2 in. ). Saint-Victor Church , Montesquieu-Volvestre, France, inv. PM31000418 (MH).
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (French 1767-1824). Benoit Agnès Trioson Studying his Latin Grammar Book , 1800. Oil on canvas; 73 x 59.5 cm (28 3/4 x 23 3/8 in.). Musée du Louvre, Paintings Department, Paris, RF. 1991-13.
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