Chaim Soutine: Flesh
The Jewish Museum presents an exhibition of some 30 paintings by the artist Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), the Expressionist known for his gestural and densely painted canvases.
Chaim Soutine: Flesh highlights the unique visual conceptions and painterly energy that the artist brought to the tradition of still-life. Soutine鈥檚 remarkable paintings depicting hanging fowl, beef carcasses, and rayfish are now considered among his greatest artistic achievements. These works epitomize his fusion of Old Master influences with the tenets of painterly modernism. Virtuoso technique, expressive color, and disorienting and unexpected compositions endow Soutine鈥檚 depictions of slaughtered animals with a striking visual power and emotional impact.
In 1913, at the age of 20, Soutine left his native Lithuania for Paris. He painted landscapes at various locations in France and created an important body of work in portraiture. Chaim Soutine: Flesh will present his work in still-life, from the artist鈥檚 early years in Paris and C茅ret, through the early 1930s, showing his development from more traditional conceptions to the impressive achievement of the paintings of the mid-1920s. Pushing the limits of the tradition, in tableaux evocative of violent dislocations, these paintings offer a tour de force of visual expression and visceral effect.
Soutine鈥檚 highly personal approach to the subject of still-life and the depictions of hanging fowl and beef carcasses were influenced by his childhood memories of the shtetl of Smilovitchi, Lithuania, where he grew up. The strict Jewish observance of dietary laws, requiring the ritual slaughter of fowl and meat, provides a context for these emotionally charged images. Soutine鈥檚 study of Old Master paintings in the Louvre also impacted his dramatic and novel compositions of a single object isolated in space. Rembrandt鈥檚 famous painting, The Flayed Ox (1655), as well as the still-lifes of Goya, Chardin, and Courbet, was of particular importance to Soutine.
Soutine painted directly from life; he needed to have the motif in front of him. He would bring dead fowl and rabbits, and carcasses of beef, into his studio to use as subjects for his paintings. The motif began to occupy the entire canvas, allowing the artist to engage with the images as a painted surface. Soutine鈥檚 haunting imagery, energized brushstrokes, and rich paint have served as touchstones for subsequent generations of artists, from Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, to contemporary artists such as Frank Auerbach, Cecily Brown, and Damien Hirst.
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The Jewish Museum presents an exhibition of some 30 paintings by the artist Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), the Expressionist known for his gestural and densely painted canvases.
Chaim Soutine: Flesh highlights the unique visual conceptions and painterly energy that the artist brought to the tradition of still-life. Soutine鈥檚 remarkable paintings depicting hanging fowl, beef carcasses, and rayfish are now considered among his greatest artistic achievements. These works epitomize his fusion of Old Master influences with the tenets of painterly modernism. Virtuoso technique, expressive color, and disorienting and unexpected compositions endow Soutine鈥檚 depictions of slaughtered animals with a striking visual power and emotional impact.
In 1913, at the age of 20, Soutine left his native Lithuania for Paris. He painted landscapes at various locations in France and created an important body of work in portraiture. Chaim Soutine: Flesh will present his work in still-life, from the artist鈥檚 early years in Paris and C茅ret, through the early 1930s, showing his development from more traditional conceptions to the impressive achievement of the paintings of the mid-1920s. Pushing the limits of the tradition, in tableaux evocative of violent dislocations, these paintings offer a tour de force of visual expression and visceral effect.
Soutine鈥檚 highly personal approach to the subject of still-life and the depictions of hanging fowl and beef carcasses were influenced by his childhood memories of the shtetl of Smilovitchi, Lithuania, where he grew up. The strict Jewish observance of dietary laws, requiring the ritual slaughter of fowl and meat, provides a context for these emotionally charged images. Soutine鈥檚 study of Old Master paintings in the Louvre also impacted his dramatic and novel compositions of a single object isolated in space. Rembrandt鈥檚 famous painting, The Flayed Ox (1655), as well as the still-lifes of Goya, Chardin, and Courbet, was of particular importance to Soutine.
Soutine painted directly from life; he needed to have the motif in front of him. He would bring dead fowl and rabbits, and carcasses of beef, into his studio to use as subjects for his paintings. The motif began to occupy the entire canvas, allowing the artist to engage with the images as a painted surface. Soutine鈥檚 haunting imagery, energized brushstrokes, and rich paint have served as touchstones for subsequent generations of artists, from Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, to contemporary artists such as Frank Auerbach, Cecily Brown, and Damien Hirst.
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Did expressionist painter Chaim Soutine's favorite subject matter stop him from becoming a household name?
In 1950, a Chaim Soutine exhibition at MoMA attracted a serious response from the New York art world. Willem de Kooning expressed great admiration for Soutine, arguing that 鈥淸he] builds up a surface that looks like a material, like a substance.鈥�
At the entrance to 鈥淔lesh,鈥� a survey of Chaim Soutine鈥檚 meat still lifes, we are greeted by an oil on canvas of a dead rayfish (Still Life with Rayfish, ca. 1924), inspired by a Chardin painting.
In 鈥楩lesh鈥� at the Jewish Museum, New York, the Lithuanian painter鈥檚 visceral still lifes seem eerily prophetic
