Adolphe Monticello and the Fashion of Painting. . .

Like every aspect of society, from clothing to philosophy, art is guided by fashion - by continually changing aspects of tastes and biases. Such notions of tastes influence not only what we might produce as artists, but at a social level it guides what we think of as "good" or valuable in both contemporary art and in historical terms.

Everyone knows, for example, the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. His work and his life story has become valuable to us and we cherish them. In fact, van Gogh's work has become central to how we understand modern art, and his biography has become an essential narrative in how we see the modern, romantic artist - the individual struggling to find an artistic voice and express something through aesthetic production that means something to society and human experience.

However, as much as I admire van Gogh as a painter and a man, I know that his fame and his place in art is certainly not based solely on his abilities as a painter. In fact, we only really know about van Gogh because of hard work undertaken by his admirers after his death. And his popularity is based not on some objective standard of what is "good" art but, rather, on how academics, writers, and other artists reacted to his work. The very notion, in fact, of "post-impressionism" and what it means aesthetically and socially, is a construct created by people who think and write about the arts. Thus, if society had progressed differently and we had developed different ideas about art than we did through the course of the 20th century, we may have never even heard of van Gogh, let alone held him in such remarkably high regard.

I was struck by the extent of this fashionable aspect of art once when I was sitting with a professor of art history at the University of Leeds. This man was a nice enough gentleman; he was quiet, unassuming, well-spoken, intelligent, and friendly. But as he spoke about van Gogh, the irony of the situation became continually more clear. This quiet, very bourgeois, typically "English" man, would have been appalled by van Gogh as a man if he had encountered him today, let alone in the 1880s and 1890s. Van Gogh had become an historical figure, a construct of our preconceived ideas about him (and art in general). It is easy to admire him today, so removed as we are from the man and his times. But if this nice English gentleman met such a man as van Gogh himself and we was faced with this emotionally-charged, unstable, gruff man, his sensibilities would be horrified. The fashionable vagaries of art and art history was what allowed this professor to enjoy van Gogh. But I very much doubt that he would be able to admire the flesh and blood man or recognize his competency or potential value as an artist outside of the social milieu in which he worked.

With these ideas in mind, I want to briefly feature an interesting painter who was more or less a contemporary of van Gogh. He was a man who van Gogh admired, but has been much maligned in recent history. The artist in question is the French painter Adolphe Monticelli whose work appears in a number of important European museums. Monticelli was born in Marsailles in 1824 and died there sixty-one years later. Monticelli was a friend of Cézanne and the two went on painting trips together. His work prefigures much of the 'post-impressionistic' era, and is remarkable for the impasto technique that he more or less pioneered. You can see here one of his more dramatic impasto paintings.

Though the effect might be a bit over the top for some people, I think it is a remarkable piece of work, particularly when we consider the era in which is was painted. Other Monticello paintings are equally dramatic. Such as this landscape.

Though I like these paintings, some of Monticello's work, particularly his figurative paintings, verge on what now might be considered 'tacky.' Take this painting for example:

This work, entitled "Torchlight Procession," might strike many as 'overdone' and the colors, combined with the slightly cartoon-like impression of the figures, is a little reminiscent of what today are unfashionably sappy (for what of a better word), and sentimental paintings. It is this kind of impression that led Sir Timothy Clifford (director of the National Galleries of Scotland) to claim that Monticello produced "screamingly awful art."

You can decide for yourself, of course, about the value of Monticello's paintings. However, I must say that one person's "screamingly awful art" is another person's beautiful picture. Either way, Monticello was no slouch when it came to a certain technical mastery over paint, and he was interesting enough to be a significant influence on van Gogh, a man that even Sir Timothy Clifford surely admires.

I encourage you to look at the work of Monticello and admire it or hate it. Either way, he was a committed painter and left us an interesting aesthetic legacy. But the fashions of art has rendered him more of a 'footnote' in art than as a "great" painter.