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Théodore Géricault 1791-1824
French painter
'One of my horses would have devoured six of his!' declared Géricault of his teacher, a conservative classicist, as he left to join the Paris studio of the liberal Baron Guérin in 1810.
The rest of his short life was spent on the outside of the art establishment, using unorthodox methods. He worked directly on to the final canvas from models, without preparatory squared-up drawings, and his subject matter were from the margins — for instance, lithographs of London poverty (1820-2) and powerful and affecting portraits of the insane (La Folle, 1822). He also created studies of bodies in a Paris morgue and heads of executed prisoners while working on his major work The Raft of the Medusa (1819).
This huge, cold painting was Géricault’s outraged reaction to a political cover-up: the captain and officers of the foundering frigate Medusa commandeered the lifeboats, leaving the crew and passengers to fend for themselves. The survivors ate the flesh of their dead companions.
Find out more …
Artcyclopedia: Théodore Géricault
www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/gericault_theodore.html
Artcyclopaedia portal site, with links to other Géricault sites.
Théodore Géricault
www.getty.edu/art/collections/bio/a498-1.html
Page from the Getty Museum in California, with biography and images.
The Raft of the Medusa by Jocelyne Doray (Black Rose Books, 1994) £11.99.
Historical study of the events immortalised by Géricault’s painting.
Marcel Duchamp 1887-1968
French artist
Duchamp, whose conceptual methods are influential today, moved from France to New York in 1915, where he participated in the iconaclastic Armory Show, and created ‘ready-mades’ such as the famous urinal signed 'R Mutt' and entitled Fountain (1917). He often expressed disgust with artists who did not 'put painting … at the service of the mind'.
He publicly renounced painting in 1918. In the 1930s, he was accused by André Breton, one of the founders of Surrealism, of abandoning art for chess, which he had taken up at competition level, along with roulette. 'I haven’t stopped being a painter,' Duchamp said. 'I am drawing on chance now.'
However, on his death it was revealed that he had been secretly at work for 20 years — 1946 to 1966 — on the assemblage Etants Donnés, a complex and richly allusive work. The Large Glass, another major piece, took 10 years to make and employed different chance operations to determine its composition.
The artist Joseph Beuys stated: ‘Duchamp’s silence is over-estimated.'
Find out more …
The Collection
www.guggenheimcollection.org/
A search for the artist on the Guggenheim Museum’s website retrieves images and a biography.
Artcyclopedia: Marcel Duchamp
www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/duchamp_marcel.html
Artcyclopedia portal site with links to Duchamp sources.
The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp by Arturo Schwarz (Thames & Hudson, 1997) £145.
Catalogues both the artist's enigmatic life and every artwork he produced.
Marcel Duchamp: A biography by Calvin Tomkins (Pimlico, 1998) £15.
Illustrated with photographs of Duchamp, his friends, other artists, his family and his work.
Mark Rothko 1903-70
American painter
In the early hours of 25 February 1970, Mark Rothko commited suicide. He was found on his studio floor in a pool of blood, which tragically echoed the deep colours in his paintings.
Rothko, of Jewish immigrant origin, had been a co-founder of the New York school of abstract expressionists, along with Pollock, Newman and, Gottleib. His mature works use saturated banks of colour to express ' basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom'. The late mural paintings have an overwhelmingly melancholic and heroic presence, arousing ecstatic and dark emotions.
He was ambivalent about his later success, which added to his torment and despair. On a number of occasions, he refused patronage, including the commission for the Seagram's restaurant in New York: throwing his hat on to the table, he said, 'Anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kinds of prices will never look at a painting of mine!'
Find out more …
Mark Rothko
www.guggenheimcollection.org/
A search for the artist on the Guggenheim Museum’s website retrieves images and a biography.
Mark Rothko
www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/rothkosplash.html
Comprehensive site within the website of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
Mark Rothko by Diane Waldman (Thames & Hudson, 2001) £29.95.
Rothko's childhood, his student days at Yale, his early career, and his crucial role in the development of the New York school of abstract expressionism are described and documented and the progression of his work analysed.
Mark Rothko by Jeffrey S Weiss (Yale University Press, 2000) £25.
Features reproductions of more than 100 of Rothko's paintings, prints and drawings. Comments on various formal aspects of the artist's work, and contains interviews with contemporary artists and a chronology of his life.