Articulating the Arts: Off The Wall
Articulating the Arts is Articulate's signature series, where we share works from other art forms to our playwrights and let it inspire them to write new theatre works. For "Off the Wall" we gave them the classic paintings that you see below. For info on what they created, check out the AtA Production Page.
INTERESTING TIDBITS ABOUT THESE PAINTINGS
Thanks to our crack research team -Liz Richards, Lisa Barri and Karen Ann Ledger- here's some items of interest about the paintings.
Peter Paul Reubens, "Massacre of the Innocents" (1611) Reubens’ work depicts the episode of the biblical massacre of the innocents of Bethlehem, as related in the gospel of Matthew. It is the moment when Herod sends his soldiers to kill infants in case one of them should be the Messiah. Antwerp, where Rubens lived, was a city haunted by the horrors of war. This painting uses the biblical scene to depict Reubens’ world. The violence is shoved in our face by a theatrical presentation, at the very front of which, pressed horribly towards us, is a fleshy tangle of clawing fingers, plunging swords and murdered babies.
Berthe Morisot - Children With a Bowl (1886) Morisot painted what she experienced on a daily basis. Her paintings reflect the 19th-century cultural restrictions of her class and gender. She avoided urban and street scenes as well as the nude figure and, like her fellow female Impressionist Mary Cassatt, focused on domestic life and portraits in which she could use family and personal friends as models. Paintings like The Cradle, in which she depicted current trends for nursery furniture, reflect her sensitivity to fashion and advertising, both of which would have been apparent to her female audience. Her works also include landscapes, portraits, garden settings and boating scenes. Born into a family of wealth and culture, Morisot received the conventional lessons in drawing and painting. She went firmly against convention, however, in choosing to take these pursuits seriously and make them her life's work. Having studied for a time under Camille Corot, she later began her long friendship with Edouard Manet, who became her brother-in-law in 1874 and was the most important single influence on the development of her style. Unlike most of the other impressionists, who were then intensely engaged in optical experiments with color, Morisot and Manet agreed on a more conservative approach, confining their use of color to a naturalistic framework. Morisot, however, did encourage Manet to adopt the impressionists' high-keyed palette and to abandon the use of black. Her own carefully composed, brightly hued canvases are often studies of women, either out-of-doors or in domestic settings. Morisot and American artist Mary Cassatt are generally considered the most important women painters of the later 19th century.
Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night (1889) In May 1889, Vincent Van Gogh decided to enter the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he stayed for the next year. Inspired by the landscape surrounding the asylum, he painted Starry Night in June 1889. There are several main aspects that intrigue those who view this image. 1) There is the night sky filled with swirling clouds, stars ablaze with their own luminescence, and a bright crescent moon. 2) Below the rolling hills of the horizon lies a small town. 3) There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. 4) This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion. During Van Gogh's younger years he wanted to dedicate his life to evangelization of those in poverty. Many believe that this religious endeavor may be reflected in the eleven stars of the painting. In Genesis 37:9 the following statement is made: "And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made
obeisance to me." Although Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life, the aftermath of his work is enormous.
Elizabeth Nourse - Tennessee Woman (1885) Born to the Catholic household of Caleb Elijah Nourse and Elizabeth LeBreton Rogers Nourse on October 26, 1859, Elizabeth and her twin sister were the youngest of ten children. She attended the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati (now the Art Academy of the Cincinnati Art Museum) at age fifteen, and was one of the first women admitted to the women's life class offered there taught by Thomas Satterwhite Noble. In 1882, with the assistance of an art patron, she went to New York to continue her studies, briefly in the Art Students League. From 1884 – 1886, she spent most of her summers in Tennessee in the Appalachian Mountains doing watercolor landscapes. In 1887, she moved to Paris, France along with her older sister, Louise. There, she attended Académie Julian, studying under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre. In 1888, her work was featured in her first major exhibition at the Societé Nationale des Artistes Français. Her subjects were often women, mostly peasants, and depictions of France's rural countryside. Though continuing to live and work mainly in Paris, Nourse travelled extensively around Europe, Russia, and North Africa painting the people she met. During the first world war, Nourse defied the tendency of most American emigres to return home and remained in Paris, where she worked to assist the war's refugees and solicited donations from her friends in the United States and Canada for the benefit of people whose lives were disrupted by the war. In 1921, she was awarded the Laetare Medal for "distinguished service to humanity" by a Catholic layperson, an annual award from Notre Dame University.
E. Fortesque Brickdale - The Ugly Princess (1902) Inspired by a poem by Charles Kingsley, which concludes: “I was not good enough for man and so am given to God.” The heroine is a princess forced to become a nun after being rejected by her intended husband. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, Fortescue-Brickdale was an illustrator as well as an artist, illustrating contemporary poets including Browning and Tennyson. But she also described herself as an ‘artist-craftswoman’, and produced designs for Liberty pewter-ware, stained glass and memorial statuary. As a person, she apparently appeared to be a gentle, typical spinster, though with a wicked sense of humour and a tendency towards smoking cigars and going to the races! Her work also moved with the times: at some point during the Great War, perhaps, she seems to have moved on from Pre-Raphaelitism to something much more contemporary, but there is no doubting her Pre-Raph credentials, as her paintings testify. As an illustrator and painter, Brickdale’s works are always styled in the manner of the Pre-Raphaelites, using vibrant jewel like colors and representative 19th century subject matter.
Edouard Manet - A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) This painting was Manet’s last work. It depicts a scene in the Follies Bergere nightclub in Paris. The central figure stands before a mirror, yet this point has been debated by critics, accusing Manet of lack of perspective. There is an optical illusion of sorts. Clearly there’s the large gold frame of a mirror. It is said that we the viewers, stand opposite the barmaid on the other side of the counter and, looking at the reflection in the mirror, see exactly what she sees. The painting is rich in details which provide clues to social class and milieu. The woman at the bar is a real person, known as Suzon, who worked at the Follies Bergere. The oranges were Manet’s symbol for prostitution, and identifies the barmaid as a prostitute. The feet in the upper left hand corner belonged to a trapeze artist who performed above the patrons.
Margaret Murray Cookesley - Quiet Corner in Tangiers The number of professional women artists who painted Orientalist subjects grew as the century wore on (due in part to the increased ease and safety of travel). As might be expected, the majority stuck to safely feminine areas of representation such as topography, portraiture, children, and ethnographic types... Others, however, ventured into what we might consider to be more dangerously immoral area of Orientalist pseudo-classical nude. Whilst there were some artists whose work clearly fell into one camp rather than another, many women painted both 'feminie' cameos of Oriental daily life and nudes and odalisques. The range of subjects and styles adopted by women artists in relation to the Orient suggests that the boundaries of the field were more fluid than had been previously supposed and also indicated the changing nature of women's relationship to art. Certainly, by the 1880s, when the M.M. Cookesely was exhibiting, her pseudo-classical Oriental nudes appear to have been quietly received; her Nubian Girl leans against an urn, proudly bare-chested, clad only in an 'Oriental" drape and was shown to no great notoriety.
Peter Paul Reubens, "Massacre of the Innocents" (1611) Reubens’ work depicts the episode of the biblical massacre of the innocents of Bethlehem, as related in the gospel of Matthew. It is the moment when Herod sends his soldiers to kill infants in case one of them should be the Messiah. Antwerp, where Rubens lived, was a city haunted by the horrors of war. This painting uses the biblical scene to depict Reubens’ world. The violence is shoved in our face by a theatrical presentation, at the very front of which, pressed horribly towards us, is a fleshy tangle of clawing fingers, plunging swords and murdered babies.
Berthe Morisot - Children With a Bowl (1886) Morisot painted what she experienced on a daily basis. Her paintings reflect the 19th-century cultural restrictions of her class and gender. She avoided urban and street scenes as well as the nude figure and, like her fellow female Impressionist Mary Cassatt, focused on domestic life and portraits in which she could use family and personal friends as models. Paintings like The Cradle, in which she depicted current trends for nursery furniture, reflect her sensitivity to fashion and advertising, both of which would have been apparent to her female audience. Her works also include landscapes, portraits, garden settings and boating scenes. Born into a family of wealth and culture, Morisot received the conventional lessons in drawing and painting. She went firmly against convention, however, in choosing to take these pursuits seriously and make them her life's work. Having studied for a time under Camille Corot, she later began her long friendship with Edouard Manet, who became her brother-in-law in 1874 and was the most important single influence on the development of her style. Unlike most of the other impressionists, who were then intensely engaged in optical experiments with color, Morisot and Manet agreed on a more conservative approach, confining their use of color to a naturalistic framework. Morisot, however, did encourage Manet to adopt the impressionists' high-keyed palette and to abandon the use of black. Her own carefully composed, brightly hued canvases are often studies of women, either out-of-doors or in domestic settings. Morisot and American artist Mary Cassatt are generally considered the most important women painters of the later 19th century.
Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night (1889) In May 1889, Vincent Van Gogh decided to enter the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he stayed for the next year. Inspired by the landscape surrounding the asylum, he painted Starry Night in June 1889. There are several main aspects that intrigue those who view this image. 1) There is the night sky filled with swirling clouds, stars ablaze with their own luminescence, and a bright crescent moon. 2) Below the rolling hills of the horizon lies a small town. 3) There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. 4) This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion. During Van Gogh's younger years he wanted to dedicate his life to evangelization of those in poverty. Many believe that this religious endeavor may be reflected in the eleven stars of the painting. In Genesis 37:9 the following statement is made: "And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made
obeisance to me." Although Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life, the aftermath of his work is enormous.
Elizabeth Nourse - Tennessee Woman (1885) Born to the Catholic household of Caleb Elijah Nourse and Elizabeth LeBreton Rogers Nourse on October 26, 1859, Elizabeth and her twin sister were the youngest of ten children. She attended the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati (now the Art Academy of the Cincinnati Art Museum) at age fifteen, and was one of the first women admitted to the women's life class offered there taught by Thomas Satterwhite Noble. In 1882, with the assistance of an art patron, she went to New York to continue her studies, briefly in the Art Students League. From 1884 – 1886, she spent most of her summers in Tennessee in the Appalachian Mountains doing watercolor landscapes. In 1887, she moved to Paris, France along with her older sister, Louise. There, she attended Académie Julian, studying under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre. In 1888, her work was featured in her first major exhibition at the Societé Nationale des Artistes Français. Her subjects were often women, mostly peasants, and depictions of France's rural countryside. Though continuing to live and work mainly in Paris, Nourse travelled extensively around Europe, Russia, and North Africa painting the people she met. During the first world war, Nourse defied the tendency of most American emigres to return home and remained in Paris, where she worked to assist the war's refugees and solicited donations from her friends in the United States and Canada for the benefit of people whose lives were disrupted by the war. In 1921, she was awarded the Laetare Medal for "distinguished service to humanity" by a Catholic layperson, an annual award from Notre Dame University.
E. Fortesque Brickdale - The Ugly Princess (1902) Inspired by a poem by Charles Kingsley, which concludes: “I was not good enough for man and so am given to God.” The heroine is a princess forced to become a nun after being rejected by her intended husband. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, Fortescue-Brickdale was an illustrator as well as an artist, illustrating contemporary poets including Browning and Tennyson. But she also described herself as an ‘artist-craftswoman’, and produced designs for Liberty pewter-ware, stained glass and memorial statuary. As a person, she apparently appeared to be a gentle, typical spinster, though with a wicked sense of humour and a tendency towards smoking cigars and going to the races! Her work also moved with the times: at some point during the Great War, perhaps, she seems to have moved on from Pre-Raphaelitism to something much more contemporary, but there is no doubting her Pre-Raph credentials, as her paintings testify. As an illustrator and painter, Brickdale’s works are always styled in the manner of the Pre-Raphaelites, using vibrant jewel like colors and representative 19th century subject matter.
Edouard Manet - A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) This painting was Manet’s last work. It depicts a scene in the Follies Bergere nightclub in Paris. The central figure stands before a mirror, yet this point has been debated by critics, accusing Manet of lack of perspective. There is an optical illusion of sorts. Clearly there’s the large gold frame of a mirror. It is said that we the viewers, stand opposite the barmaid on the other side of the counter and, looking at the reflection in the mirror, see exactly what she sees. The painting is rich in details which provide clues to social class and milieu. The woman at the bar is a real person, known as Suzon, who worked at the Follies Bergere. The oranges were Manet’s symbol for prostitution, and identifies the barmaid as a prostitute. The feet in the upper left hand corner belonged to a trapeze artist who performed above the patrons.
Margaret Murray Cookesley - Quiet Corner in Tangiers The number of professional women artists who painted Orientalist subjects grew as the century wore on (due in part to the increased ease and safety of travel). As might be expected, the majority stuck to safely feminine areas of representation such as topography, portraiture, children, and ethnographic types... Others, however, ventured into what we might consider to be more dangerously immoral area of Orientalist pseudo-classical nude. Whilst there were some artists whose work clearly fell into one camp rather than another, many women painted both 'feminie' cameos of Oriental daily life and nudes and odalisques. The range of subjects and styles adopted by women artists in relation to the Orient suggests that the boundaries of the field were more fluid than had been previously supposed and also indicated the changing nature of women's relationship to art. Certainly, by the 1880s, when the M.M. Cookesely was exhibiting, her pseudo-classical Oriental nudes appear to have been quietly received; her Nubian Girl leans against an urn, proudly bare-chested, clad only in an 'Oriental" drape and was shown to no great notoriety.