THIS WEEK’S MUSE
TAMARA DE LEMPICKA, ARTIST
“There are no miracles, there is only what you make.”
Tamara de Lempicka was a Polish painter known for her powerful, highly stylized portraits – mostly of women and often depicting the wealthy and successful inhabitants of her exclusive social circles. As one of the best-known artists of the Art Deco movement, Lempicka’s work exemplifies its audacious style and bold graphic form.
Lempicka was born in 1898 into the Warsaw social and cultural elite. It was then part of the Russian Empire and she enjoyed a privileged, comfortable family life – principally with her mother and grandmother.
As the Russian Revolution exploded in 1917, she fled—newly married—to Paris. Following the First World War, Paris had become the center of a new modernity. Art and design were being reinvented, the jazz age was thriving, and the city was the embodiment of “new.” Living largely off the sale of family jewels, Lempicka threw herself into an artistic life. Soaking up the essence of the egalitarian spirit sweeping the city, her art perfectly expressed the energy and color blooming around her.
Mixing neoclassical with a cubist approach makes her work unique and brimming with visual tension. While her style is clear and precise in execution, it is infused with more than a hint of the ambiguous decadence around her. And the tension extends to her subjects. Powerfully posed under glowing cinematic light, and dominated by flawless skin and dazzling clothes, they broke all the traditional rules of accepted composition.
Lempicka was a revolutionary proto-feminist – one of the first to challenge the male-dominated art world. She actively defied the tradition of representing women as meek and docile, painted from—and for—a masculine perspective. Instead, she painted women from a feminist viewpoint, illustrating formidable individuals who were fully in command of their own bodies, thoughts, and actions. And importantly, they are not there simply as the focus of male voyeurism.
Her aesthetic was wholly avant-garde, establishing her to this day as a profoundly important pioneer. Her work is a powerful emblem of a past era, portraying the sensual and sensational indulgence of the 1920s; gorgeous people set against exaggerated Modernist landscapes.
In her later years when Art Deco was out of favor, Lempicka shifted style, creating surreal-like still life, hard-edged abstraction, and swapping brushes for palette knives. Perhaps these are missing an essence of her earlier work, but a vitality and visual strength remains.
“I have painted kings and prostitutes,” she noted another time, “I don’t paint people because they are famous. I paint those who inspire me and make me vibrate.”
HAPPENING
Tuesday, July 11, 6–8pm
BACK FROM SCOTLAND DINNER
With Chef Joe Cizynski
A delicious menu from the heart of Scotland!
Member: $65, Non-member: $75
Member: $65, Non-member: $75