THIS IS NOT MODERN ART

Portrait of Alice Regnault

1880

Giovanni Boldini

He is fucking exceptional

A Day’s Outing

Federico Andreotti (1847-1930)

So there I was, happily going about my business, righteously proclaiming how the Rococo was maligned and put-down and never taken seriously, feeling all crusader-y and pumping my fist in the air for Rococo rights and whatnot when along comes this painting.

Wha?

Tissot’s faces with Watteu’s fashions?

In the late 1800s?

So there was a Rococo revival. Fine. Good. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?

I mean it was still purely decorative and not taken seriously, that’s why none of your art history subjects are called Rococo: a style we take seriously now and study and stuff.

But here we have a revival in the 19th century, so what does this mean?

Growth of middle classes. Class mobility. Disposable wealth. Growing merchant classes, development of the idea of using free time for enjoyment, etc, etc. People with new money, leisure time and a sense of fun filling their homes with flippant things of beauty that bring them joy. Just like the aristocracy did, well, before.

The women Tissot painted look like they’d have loved to imagine themselves sitting in a park with a man in a wig and a mandolin.

note: As an avid, rabid and disturbed watcher of Antiques Roadshow I now feel ashamed for not connecting the multitudes of porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses with a larger 19th century Rococo-revival trend. My bad.

Just some ladies doing a bit of morphing.

Wish we could see the whole paintings

Chloé, 1875

Jules-Joseph Lefebvre

Oil on canvas

Melbourne is a city that loves three things: art, beer and women.  (I have, for the sake of my argument, not included all of Melbourne’s other loves: Football and sport of all kinds, beer, coffee, chicken parmagianas, beer, being self-referential, trivia nights, beer, itself, and feeling superior.) Here we’ve found ways to combine all three, art in pubs!

I’d like you to meet one of my favourite Melbournians. Chloé,  painted by Jules-Joseph Lefebvre.

The lovely and demure Cholé has been housed in one of the most famous pubs in Melbourne since 1909. Now it is up for debate whether Young & Jackson made Cholé famous or if the pub became famous thanks to Chloé. My guess is the later. But then I would say that. She is hung in her very own namesake bar and has been friend and companion to a wide range of drunks. Perhaps that’s why she looks away- she has seen TOO MUCH.

The Sultana Sets Work for the Odalisques

Charles Amédée Phillippe Van Loo, 1773

Oil on canvas

THIS IS MY HOUSE BITCH

Madame Grassini in the Role of Zaire

Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun c.1805

Oil on Canvas

I’m sad that turbans never took off again.