#jean x hortense

[nesiacha]

166 Years Ago, Empress Marie Claire Bonheur of Haiti Passed Away

Marie Claire Bonheur (1758-1858)

166 years ago, on August 8th (or August 9th, according to other sources) in 1858, Marie Claire Bonheur, the first Empress of Haiti at the time of its independence, took her last breath.

In anticipation of this post for the anniversary of her death, I had already created three portraits of revolutionary women from Haiti or overseas here: link.

Marie Claire Bonheur was born in Léogâne in 1758 into a poor but free family. Her education was provided by her aunt Elise Lobelot, who was a governess within a religious order. As can easily be imagined, at the time of her birth, Haiti, then called Saint-Domingue, was marked by cruel inequalities, the cruelty of the colonists, and the horrors of slavery.

She married Pierre-Lunic, a master wheelwright, but he died in 1795. It was especially during the Haitian Revolution that Marie Claire Bonheur would distinguish herself.

During the siege of Jacmel in 1800, during the conflict known as the War of Knives between Toussaint Louverture and André Rigaud, which led them to clash in Jacmel, Marie Claire Bonheur tirelessly helped the wounded and the starving. One of her notable actions was convincing Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who was then a lieutenant under Toussaint Louverture, to open the roads so that people in the city could receive more aid, such as food, clothing, and medicine while he was besieging the city. She was in the streets, tirelessly organizing meals, among other activities. She was considered a fighter and, above all, an effective nurse for the wounded soldiers.

In 1800, she married Dessalines, and they had seven children in total. However, she insisted on legitimizing her husband's children from previous relationships, including Catherine Flon, who is considered one of Haiti's four national heroines alongside Sanité Bélair, Dédée Bazile, and Cécile Fatiman.

After Napoleon sent an expedition to Saint-Domingue with the aim of reinstating slavery, Jean-Jacques Dessalines joined the insurgents fighting against the French soldiers. He surrendered to them as a strategy, only to fight them again, especially when the reestablishment of slavery was ordered. After the victory at the Battle of Vertières, following Haiti's restoration of independence, he proclaimed himself emperor, and Marie Claire Bonheur became empress.

When Jean-Jacques Dessalines ordered that the white inhabitants of Haiti, including children, be killed in 1804 (an episode I will detail very briefly in the next post, but let’s not forget that while this massacre was horrible and absolutely condemnable, we must also remember the atrocities committed on the other side against black Haitians before the Haitian Revolution and by Bonaparte's troops with shocking orders, whose executions remind us of the atrocities of Carrier’s drownings), Marie Claire Bonheur opposed it. Some say she fell to her knees before her husband to plead for the lives of the French in Haiti. She, along with other Haitians, saved white and French people.

She is known for saving those who would become known as the "orphans of Cap," Hortense and Augustine Javier, two little girls aged 8 and 5. They first lost their father in the massacre. A former black servant tried to hide and protect their mother and the two girls, but they were discovered on the fourth day, and the soldiers killed the mother. However, General Diakoué, a friend of their father, managed to save them and sent them to safety among former black slaves, who showed them great affection. Marie Claire Bonheur took them in in 1806 and moved heaven and earth to send them to France to be with their family. She succeeded, and the two girls were in France by 1810. They devoted their entire lives to expressing immense gratitude to the Haitians who saved them, and apparently, they and their family managed to have King Charles X in 1830 reward General Diakoué with the Cross of Honor.

When her husband Jean-Jacques Dessalines was assassinated in 1806, she refused the hospitality of Henri Christophe. The former empress lived in poverty until 1843 when she was granted a pension. In 1849, the emperor of Haiti, Faustin, wanted to increase her pension due to his admiration for her husband, but she refused. She died in poverty in August 1858 at the age of 100.

This woman, who had an extraordinary destiny, lived for at least a century. Her memory is very present in Haiti, and she left a great legacy alongside other Haitian women.

[unvillagefrancais]

[jean-auguste-dominique-ingres]

Augustine-Modeste-Hortense Reiset, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1846, Harvard Art Museums

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Size: 62.2 x 49.5 cm (24 1/2 x 19 1/2 in.) framed: 80 x 67 cm (31 1/2 x 26 3/8 in.) Medium: Oil on canvas

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/230110

[artist-degas]

Portrait of Paul Valpinçon, Edgar Degas, c. 1855, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Paintings

Edgar Degas and Paul Valpinçon had a lifelong friendship that began even before the two became classmates in 1846. In fact, their fathers were friends. Paul’s father, Edouard Valpinçon, played a role in Degas’s artistic development by encouraging the young artist’s interest in the French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Degas’s admiration of Ingres is apparent in the crisp, classicizing manner with which he captured his friend’s likeness in this portrait. Many years later, Paul’s daughter, Hortense, recounted the family history of the portrait’s creation. She said it was painted in the courtyard of her grandfather’s Paris home when her father was only twenty-one years old—an age that corresponds with the date of 1855 inscribed, in an unknown hand, on the painting’s reverse. The portrait remained with Hortense until the 1930s. Eventually it came into the collection of David M. Daniels, a native of St. Paul, who donated it to The Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1974. Size: 15 7/8 x 12 3/4 in. (40.32 x 32.39 cm) (canvas) 24 x 20 3/8 x 3 1/8 in. (60.96 x 51.75 x 7.94 cm) (outer frame) Medium: Oil on canvas

https://collections.artsmia.org/art/2038/

[mia-paintings]

Portrait of Paul Valpinçon, Edgar Degas, c. 1855, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Paintings

Edgar Degas and Paul Valpinçon had a lifelong friendship that began even before the two became classmates in 1846. In fact, their fathers were friends. Paul’s father, Edouard Valpinçon, played a role in Degas’s artistic development by encouraging the young artist’s interest in the French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Degas’s admiration of Ingres is apparent in the crisp, classicizing manner with which he captured his friend’s likeness in this portrait. Many years later, Paul’s daughter, Hortense, recounted the family history of the portrait’s creation. She said it was painted in the courtyard of her grandfather’s Paris home when her father was only twenty-one years old—an age that corresponds with the date of 1855 inscribed, in an unknown hand, on the painting’s reverse. The portrait remained with Hortense until the 1930s. Eventually it came into the collection of David M. Daniels, a native of St. Paul, who donated it to The Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1974. Size: 15 7/8 x 12 3/4 in. (40.32 x 32.39 cm) (canvas) 24 x 20 3/8 x 3 1/8 in. (60.96 x 51.75 x 7.94 cm) (outer frame) Medium: Oil on canvas

https://collections.artsmia.org/art/2038/

[cma-modern-european-art]

Portrait of Hortense de Perregaux, Duchess of Ragusa, Jean-Baptiste Isabey , 1818, Cleveland Museum of Art: Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Size: Framed: 21.5 x 15.5 cm (8 7/16 x 6 1/8 in.); Unframed: 12.9 x 9 cm (5 1/16 x 3 9/16 in.) Medium: watercolor on card on a gilt metal mount in a pale wood frame

https://clevelandart.org/art/1942.1146

[of-foolish-and-wise]

mega-list of book recommendations

saw a mega-list of literary recommendations going around recently and was struck by the dearth of titles by poc, so i made a list of just poc titles to course-correct. keep in mind that i can only in good faith recommend what i’ve read, so i’m sure i’ve absolutely missed some integral titles. drop me an inbox message if you have more recs, i’m always open

canonical

the narrative of frederick douglass - frederick douglass

incidents in the life of a slave girl - harriet jacobs

the souls of black folk - w.e.b. dubois

montage of a dream deferred - langston hughes

cane - jean toomer

their eyes were watching god - zora neale hurston

the bean eaters - gwendolyn brooks

a raisin in the sun - lorraine hansberry

invisible man - ralph ellison

native son - richard wright

the autobiography of malcolm x - malcolm x

the fire next time - james baldwin

sister outsider: essays and speeches - audre lorde

things fall apart - chinua achebe

the garden of forking paths - jorge luis borges

one hundred years of solitude - gabriel garcia marquez

the color purple - alice walker

the woman warrior - maxine hong kingston

satanic verses - salman rushdie

beloved - toni morrison

sula - toni morrison

the house on mango street - sandra cisneros

the joy luck club - amy tan

DAMN. - kendrick lamar

plays

a tempest - aime cesaire

for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf - ntozake shange

fences - august wilson

dutchman - amiri baraka

the american play - suzan-lori parks

memoir

the light of the world - elizabeth alexander

how we fight for our lives - saeed jones

between the world and me - ta-nehisi coates

persepolis - marjane satrapi

men we reaped - jesmyn ward

heavy - kiese laymon

black boy - richard wright

the yellow house - sarah m broom

brothers and keepers - john edgar wideman

zami: a new spelling of my name - audre lorde

poetry

american sonnet for my past and future assassin - terrance hayes

the tradition - jericho brown

night sky with exit wounds - ocean vuong

citizen: an american lyric - claudia rankine

twenty love poems and a song of despair - pablo neruda

don’t call us dead - danez smith

eye level - jenny xie

life on mars - tracy k smith

a fortune for your disaster - hanif abdurraqib

postcolonial love poem - natalie diaz

i can’t talk about the trees without the blood - tiana clark

i wore my blackest hair - carlina duan

an american sunrise - joy harjo

oculus - sally wen mao

short stories

her body & other stories - carmen maria machado

interpreter of maladies - jhumpa lahiri

exhalation - ted chiang

ficciones - jorge louis borges

what is not yours is not yours - helen oyeyemi

sour heart - jenny zhang

essays

how to write an autobiographical novel: essays - alexander chee

trick mirror - jia tolentino

bad feminist - roxane gay

they can’t kill us until they kill us - hanif abdurraqib

we were eight years in power: an american tragedy - ta-nehisi coates

borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza - gloria anzaldua

this bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color - ed. cherrie moraga and gloria anzaldua

white girls - hilton als

non-fiction

the new jim crow: mass incarceration in the era of colorblindness - michelle alexander

stamped from the beginning: the definitive history of racist ideas in america - ibram x kendi

bunk: the rise of hoaxes, humbug, plagiarists, phonies, post-facts, and fake news - kevin young

an alchemy of race and rights - patricia j williams

looking for lorraine: the radiant and radical life of lorraine hansberry - imani perry

the next billion users: digital life beyond the west - payal arora

fiction

passing - nella larson

caucasia - danzy senna

trust exercise - susan choi

on earth we’re briefly gorgeous - ocean vuong

corregidora - gayl jones

the fifth season - nk jemisin

the brief wondrous life of oscar wao - junot diaz

the round house - louise erdrich

there, there - tommy orange

little fires everywhere - celeste ng

the supervisor - viet than nguyen

kindred - octavia butler

the known world - edward p jones

the underground railroad - colson whitehead

the god of small things - arundhati roy

the vegetarian - han king

theory

playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination - toni morrison

black skin, white masks - frantz fanon

mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: an american grammar book - hortense spillers

discourse on colonialism - aime cesaire

scenes of subjection - saidiya hartman

the signifyin(g) monkey - henry louis gates jr

pedagogy of the oppressed - paulo freire

feminist theory: from margin to center - bell hooks

black noise: rap music and black culture in contemporary america - tricia rose

decolonizing the mind: the politics of language in african literature - ngũgĩ wa thiong’o

black marxism: the making of the black radical tradition - cedric robinson

black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment - patricia hill collins

black and blur (consent not to be a single thing) - fred moten

young adult

diary of a part-time indian - sherman alexei

the hate u give - angie thomas

emergency contact - mary hk choi

i am not your perfect mexican daughter - erika sanchez

poet x - elizabeth avecedo

[joachimnapoleon]

Jean-Baptiste Isabey, born on 11 April 1767, was one of the most celebrated and prolific artists of his time. Having studied under the renowned Jacques-Louis David, over the course of his career he painted official portraits and miniatures (his specialty) for the courts of Louis XVI, Napoleon, and Louis XVIII. It was during the Directory period that he became acquainted with Napoleon and Josephine, who quickly took a liking to him; the latter soon appointed him as drawing master for her children, Eugène and Hortense (he would also later be appointed drawing teacher to Napoleon’s second wife, Marie-Louise). Isabey also helped plan the coronation ceremonies of both Napoleon and Charles X, and was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1825. In 1837 he was appointed Deputy Curator of the Royal Museums by Louis-Philippe. He died in Paris on 18 April 1855.

Some examples of Isabey’s works:

Napoleon at Malmaison, perhaps Isabey’s single most famous painting.

The King of Rome, Josephine, Napoleon, and Joachim Murat.

[uneminuteparseconde]

Des concerts à Paris et alentour en gras : les derniers ajouts :-: in bold: the last news Octobre 21. Pawns + Youth Avoiders + Barren? – Espace B 21. Les morts vont bien + Rivière de corps + René Couteau + Razzle Dazzle (dj) (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 21. Gâtechien + Wallack + Baron Crâne – ESS'pace 22. White Ring + Ghoster + Dalhia – Supersonic (gratuit) 22. Carambolage + Deedee & Tha Abracadabras + Roger de Lille & The Gin Tonics + The Hare (dj) (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 22. Thurston Moore – Trabendo 22. David J – Petit Bain 23. Ecstatic Vision + Les Tigres du futur + Os Noctambulos – ESS'pace 23. Sly & The Family Drone + Stef Ketteringham + Decimus + Dust Breeders – Espace B 23. Plomb + Je t'aime + Electric Press Kit + dj Oxblood (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 23. Tamara Goukassova + Fun Fun Funeral + Kassie Krut  – La Station 23. Four Tet – Le 104 ||COMPLET|| 24. Last Night + Negative Space + Pedigree + Buzz Kull + Sydney Valette + dj Dave Rockin (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 24. Çub + Ayya + Radiant – Le Cirque électrique 24. The Necks – La Marbrerie (Montreuil) 25. A Certain Ratio + Empereur – Petit Bain 25. Poutre + OK fdp + Bruant zizi – ESS'pace 25. Fiesta en el Vacio + Axell Larsen + Franz France + Sinead O'Connick jr + Paroi (Serendip Lab fest.) – Jazz y Jazz 25. Catastrophe + Sean O'Hagan + Form – La Maroquinerie 25. Curses + Sophie Morello + Tonn3rr3 + E for Ears & Grāv Jōnz + Trusspe – La Station 25. Dave Philips +  Bernardino Femminielli & Thea Govorchin – 3 rue de Tournant (Aubervilliers) 25. Blind Delon + Nick klein + UVB 76 + Dress Rehearsal + Little Nemo + L’An2000 [DaGeist + Outer Limit Lotus : ANNULÉ] (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 25. Automat + Stephanovitch + Cirylux + Worker Poor + Stef Mazet + Taiko Nova – Les 4 éléments 25. Varsovie + Paulie Jan + Blndr b2b Panzer + Mind Matter + End of Mortal Life – Glazart 25. Jozef Van Wissem – Crypte Notre-Dame de la Croix (sur résa : jvwparis[@]gmail.com) ||COMPLET||   25. Bestial Mouth + Veil of Light – Protocol (Pantin) ||ANNULÉ|| 25. Orphx + O/H + December + Unhuman + Limbus Puerorum – Protocol (Pantin) ||ANNULÉ|| 26. The Monochrome Set + The Last Detail – Petit Bain 26. Nina Harker + Bianca Warlord + Amour Formica – Le Zorba 26. Truckks + Terrier + Achab + Olive Pogo + Car Crash Control (dj) (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 26. The Wheal + Princesse Napälm + L'Orchidée Cosmique + Klymt (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 26. Femminielli + dj Sundae + ANDCL + Oko – Petit Palace 26. Joachim Montessuis + Martin Bakero – Galerie Metanoïa 26. Rouge Mary + Regina Demina + AZF + Léonie Pernet (dj) + Juke + Morello – Point FMR 26/27. Ilya Smirnov + Christophe de Rohan Chabot + nikolaiykm + Natalya Serkova – 3 rue de Tournant (Aubervilliers) (sur RV : nikolaiykm[@]gmail.com)   26. Mørbeck + Philipp Strobel + IV Horsemen – La Machine 26. Alignment + Hadone + UVB + Parfait + Repro – tba 26. Loto Retina + Jakub Lemiszewski + Somaticae + Le Compas dans l'oeil + Ahta Bat + Letal Ataraxia (Serendip Lab fest.) – Le Sultan 27. Laurent Garnier + Deena Abdelwahed – Dehors brut 27. Stephen Mallinder + Laisse Moi + Hexenschuss (Obernoir fest.) – L'International 28. Kate Tempest – Le Trianon 29. Danse avec les Shlags – Le Motel (gratuit) 29. Agent Side Grinder + DaGeist – La Boule noire 29. Pauwels + Mr Marcaille + BOB Cooper – L'ESS'pace 30. The White Screen + Techno Thriller + Novichok – Supersonic (gratuit) 30. Oiseaux-Tempête + Jessica Moss – La Maroquinerie 30. Jenny Hval – Centre Pompidou 30. Battles – Trabendo 30. Dame Area + Slaylor Moon + Noir de Maars– Espace B 31. Skepta + Mura Masa + Hamza + Zola + Ateyaba + Celeste + Duendita + Ezra Collective + Flohio + Kojey Radical + Master Peace + Slowthai + The Comet is Coming + Yussef Dayes + Charlotte Dos Santos + Kojaque (Pitchfork fest.) – La Grande Halle de La Villette 31. Arrington de Dionyso – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 31. Broken English Club + Cabaret nocturne + IV Horsemen + Gil. Barte – Petit Bain Novembre 01. Chromatics + Belle & Sebastian + Primal Scream + John Talabot + Weyes Blood + Barrie + Briston Maroney + Chai + Desire + Helado Negro + Jackie Mendoza + Nilüfer Yanya + Orville Peck + Sheer Mag + Squir + Loving + Nelson Beer + Sons of Raphael (Pitchfork fest.) – La Grand Halle de La Villette 01. Park Hie Jin + HAAI + Afrodeutsche + Nite Fleit (Pitchfork fest. after party) – Trabendo 01. Meconio + Mamachi + Punaises + Areva (LaDIYfest) – Le Cirque électrique 01. Imperial Black Unit + Mekano + CH-01 + Krase b2b Alphonse Fassaert – Petit Bain 01. Under Black Helmet b2b Hadone + Inhalt der Nacht b2b Echoes of October + Danilo Incorvala + Makornik + Félicie – Les Docks de Paris (La Plaine-Saint-Denis) 02. The 1975 + Charli XCX + 2manysdj (dj) + Aurora + Agar Agar + SebastiAn + Aeris Roves vs Jamila Woods + Jessica Pratt + Kedr Livanskiy + Korantemaa + BEA1991 + Caroline Polachek + Ela Minus + KhadyaK + Mk.gee + Oklou + Tobi Lou (Pitchfork fest.) – La Grand Halle de La Villette 02. Volt + Vicious Irene + U.R.S.A + Gertrude + Kalicia Katakov (LaDIYfest) – Le Cirque électrique 03. Whispering Sons – Point FMR 03. Ensemble économique + CIA débutante – Le Chinois (Montreuil) 05. Body of Light + Dead Mascot + Boy Scoot Hopkins – Supersonic (gratuit) 05. Ceremony – Espace B 05. Dear Deer + Traitrs + Men in disorder – L'International 06. The Murder Capital – Nouveau Casino 06. Scattered Purgatory + Qian Geng + UVB76 + ruò tán – Le Cirque électrique 06. Minus Pilot + GNG + Thomas Stone + Kevin Buckland – Café de Paris 06. Mont Analogue + Les Halles + Bravo Tounky – Garage Mu 06. Guitar Wolf + School Disco – Gibus 06. Glacial – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 07. Camilla Sparksss + Hyperculte [+ Xiu Xiu : ANNULÉ] – Petit Bain 07. Kælan Mikla – La Boule noire 07. Randomer + Parallx + Parfait – Glazart 08. Bedroom Community – Cité de la musique|Philharmonie 08. Part Chimp + Gnod + Hey Colossus – Petit Bain 08. Sourdurent + Raymonde – Pan Piper 08. Jad Wio + Love in Prague – Gibus 08. Jennifer Cardini b2b Gerd Janson + Mouse on Mars + Fantastic Twins + Oko DJ (10 ans d’Arte concert) – La Machine (gratuit sur invitation) 08. Crystal Geometry + Monya + Size Pier + Kaya + Sina XX – La Station 08. Boy Harscher – Trabendo ||COMPLET|| 09. Trotski nautique (20 ans de l’Omadis) – Omadis (gratuit) 09. Molchat Doma + War Scenes – La Station 09. Fleuves Noirs + Thank + Drive with a dead girl + Panico Panico – Le Rigoletto 09. Leroy se meurt + Staatseinde – Le Zorba 09. Kwartz + ABSL + Toscan Haas – Glazart 10. Amiina : cinéconcert sur "Fantomas" de Louis Feuillade – Le Studio|Philharmonie 10. Ôlafur Arnald + Hugar – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 10. Fontaine D.C. – Bataclan 12. Deerhunter + Moon Diagrams – Trabendo 12. Up-Tight + Officine – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 13. Mick Harvey & JP Silo, Steve Shelley, Glenn Lewis – Les Trois Baudets 14. Dinah Bird & Jean-Philippe Renoult (Inaudible Matters) – La Gaîté lyrique 14. Girl Band + Silverbacks – La Maroquinerie 14. Automatisme + Lacustre (Sulfure fest.) – Le vent se lève 14. Manni Dee + Remco Beekwilder + Mental Infection – Glazart 14. Stella Chiweshe + Is a Fish – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 15. Von Pariahs + Nursery – Point FMR 15. Tendra Ael + City Dragon + Meryll Ampe + Divisas – La Pointe Lafayette 15. Chemical Brothers – Seine musicale (Boulogne-Billancourt) 15. Kap Bambino – La Gaîté lyrique ||ANNULÉ|| 15. Karenn + 16H07 + Antigone... (Big Bang Festival) – Les Docks de Paris 16. Kas:st + Agoria + Bambounou b2b François X + Charles Kenkler + Matrixxman + Remcord...(Big Bang Festival) – Les Docks de Paris 17. Nitzer Ebb + Liebknecht – La Machine 17. Tropical Fuck Storm – Badaboum 18. Omni + The Gotobeds + Pleasure Principle – La Boule noire 18. Surf Curse + edgar déception + Fiasco – Supersonic (gratuit) 19. Earth + Helen Money – Petit Bain 20. Lucy Railton + Sean Baxter + Jessica Ekomane – Instants chavirés (Montreuil) 21. Cate Le Bon + Grimm Grimm – Petit Bain 21. Haco + Emiko Ota avec KiriSute Gomen – Studio Campus 21. Vincent Ségal, Clément Saunier, Odile Auboin, Jossalyn Jessen et Gilbert Nouno jouent des pièces de Peter Eötvös, Yan Maresz, Gilbert Nouno et Fausto Romitelli (fest. Innovasounds) – Le 104 21>23. Nosfell : “Le Corps des songes” (fest. New Settings) – Théâtre de la Cité internationale 22. eRikm + Franck Vigroux & Antoine Schmitt : “Chronostasis” (fest. Innovasounds) – Le 104 22. Rubin Steiner + Dombrance + Ambeyance + Meteo Mirage – La Maroquinerie 22. Nursery + Casse Gueule + Tout de suite – Cirque électrique 22. Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead) – Les Étoiles 22. Drew McDowall – tbc 23. Franck Vigroux & Kurt d’Haeseleer : “The Island (part. 1)” + Cinna Peyghamy (fest. Bruits blancs) – La Muse en circuit (Alfortville) (gratuit sur résa) 23. Trio Sacher + Ensemble intercontemporain (fest. Innovasounds) – Le 104 23. Billy Childish + Le Villejuif Undergroud + Petausaure (fest. BBmix) – Carré Bellefeuille (Boulogne-Billancourt) 23. 999999999 + Jawbreakrs + Nico Moreno + Perc + Sentimental Rave + Softcoresoft + Trym + Parfait + UR trax – tba 24. TR/ST – Le Trianon 24. Mdou Moctar – La Boule noire 24. Midori Takada + Carla dal Forno + Felicia Atkinson (fest. BBmix) – Carré Bellefeuille (Boulogne-Billancourt) 24. The Young Gods + Les Tétines noires – La Machine 26. Wardruna – Olympia 27. Poly-Math + Bruit ≤ + Maven – Supersonic (gratuit) 27. The Stranglers – Olympia 27. Silly Joy + Raskolnikov + Jupiter Jane – L’International 27. Le Singe blanc + Double Nelson + Putavelo – Le Cirque électrique 27. Hélène Breschand, Tarek Atoui & Cécile Mont-Reynaud : “Pandore” + Ensemble Motus joue Tony Conrad et Elsa Biston (fest. Bruits blancs) – Anis Gras (Arcueil) 28. The Psychotic Monks – Trabendo 28. Artl + Powerdove – Petit Bain 28. Derek Holzer : “Vector Synthesis” + Cate Hope & Lisa McKinney : “Super Liminum” + Antoine Schmitt & Hortense Gauthier : “CliMax” (fest. Bruits blancs) – Le Cube (gratuit sur résa) ||COMPLET|| 29. Scanner – Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil 29. Ulrich Krieger : “Raw” + Cellule d’intervention Metamkine (fest. Bruits blancs) – La Muse en circuit (Alfortville) 30. Mondkopf – Médiathèque musicale de Paris (gratuit) 30. Donato Dozzy + Max Cooper + Terry & Cyan Riley + Ensemble intercontemporain joue "Drumming" de Steve Reich + Ensemble Social Silence joue "Music for Airport" de Brian Eno + Apollo noir + Récital pour marimbas (Marathon fest.) – La Gaîté lyrique 30. Aidan Baker & BOW Quintet + SEPL (Sulfure fest.) – Le vent se lève 30. Ulrich Krieger + Natacha Muslera + Julien Desprez + Eryck Abecassis + Sylvaine Hélary avec Clyde Chabot, Jean Cagnard, Ismaël Jude, Nathalie Papin et Michel Simonot (fest. Bruits blancs) – Anis Gras (Arcueil) Décembre 01. Motorama – La Maroquinerie 03. White Hills – Supersonic (gratuit) 03. Belgrado – Espace B 06. Phillip Glass Ensemble : cinéconcert sur "Koyaanisqatsi" de Godfrey Reggio – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 06. Answer Code Request + Regis + Raslan b2b Yoannis – La Seine musicale (Boulogne-Billancourt) 07. Phillip Glass Ensemble : cinéconcert sur "Powaqqatsi" de Godfrey Reggio – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 07. Kokoko! – La Gaîté lyrique 07. I Hate Models – tba 08. Phillip Glass Ensemble : cinéconcert sur "Naqoyqatsi" de Godfrey Reggio – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 08. Mark Lanegan Band + The Membranes – Le Trianon 11. Boris – Le Gibus 12. Mono + Jo Quail – Petit Bain 12. Kompromat (Vitalic & Rebeka Warrior) – La Cigale 13. Contrefaçon – La Gaîté lyrique 13. Regards extrêmes + Lisieux + Ascending divers – Les Voûtes 14. Ludwig Von 88 – Le Trianon 18. Amenra – Bataclan 2020 Janvier 04. Rokia Traoré + Ballaké Cissoko & Vincent Segal – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 16. Black Midi – Le Carreau du Temple 17. Edith Nylon – Petit Bain 17. Scratch Massive + Lokier + Cassie Raptor + Faast + Kiddo – Badaboum 18. Lee Ranaldo & Raül Refree – Le 104 18. Franck Vigroux : "Flesh" (Biennale Nemo) – Maison des arts et de la culture (Créteil) 29. Rendez-Vous – La Cigale 30. Editors – Salle Pleyel 31. Tindersticks – Salle Pleyel Février 02. Sunn o))) – La Gaîté lyrique 09. Explosions in the Sky – La Cigale 13. Ride – Le Trianon 16. Orchestral Manoeuvre in the Dark – La Cigale 21. Ensemble Links joue "Drumming" de Steve Reich + Cabaret contemporain : "Détroit" + Molécule – Le 104 24. Sleater Kinney – Le Trianon Mars 02. DIIV – La Gaîté lyrique 05. Orange Blossom : “Sharing” avec les machines de François Delarozière – Élysée Montmartre 06. Frustration – Le Trianon 07. Ensemble intercontemporain joue Steve Reich : cinéconcert sur un film de Gerhard Richter – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 10. Arnaud Rebotini : live pour “Fix Me” d’Alban Richard – Centre des Arts (Enghien-les-Bains) 11. Nada Surf – La Cigale 13. Russian Circle + Torche – Bataclan 17. Chelsea Wolf – La Gaîté lyrique 20. Ensemble Dedalus joue "Occam Ocean" d'Éliane Radigue – Le Studio|Philharmonie 21. Front 242 + She Past Away – Élysée Montmartre 21/22. Laurie Anderson : "The Art of Falling" – Cité de la musique|Philharmonie 27. Lebanon Hanover – La Gaîté lyrique 28. Ensemble Links joue "Drumming" de Steve Reich + Cabaret contemporain joue Kraftwerk – théâtre de la Cité internationale Avril 14>17. Metronomy – La Cigale 27. Caribou – L’Olympia Mai 08. Max Richter : "Infra" + Jlin + Ian William Craig – Cité de la musique|Philharmonie 09. Max Richter : "Voices" – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 10. Max Richter : "Recomposed" & "Three Worlds" – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 19. Swans + Norman Westberg – Le Trabendo 23. Damon Albarn – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie 24. Damon Albarn – Salle Pierre Boulez|Philharmonie ||COMPLET|| 26. Minimal Compact – La Machine Juin 14. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Bercy Arena

[sachertortes]

Lunch Date

Rating: T

Relationship: Darcy x Bucky

Warnings: N/A

Notes: Written for the Darcyland Drabble a Thon, for the prompt “62%”

The first time was an honest mistake.

They were all going to have lunch together off-site. But Jane and Bruce got held up in the labs, and Steve had a last-minute meeting with Hill.

That left Darcy with Bucky Barnes - the man she’d secretly named “Tall, Quiet, and Grouchy”. Only after the (nearly interminable, thanks Tony, did the upstate facility need to be up-upstate?) drive did she discover that he wasn’t grouchy at all. Okay, he was a little grouchy. But mostly, he was funny and sweet. And polite. He held doors open for her. When she got up to use the restroom in the diner, he rose from his seat too.

She was enjoying his company after she finished her lunch special and Bucky had finished three lunch specials, when she realized that she didn’t have her wallet. And Bucky wasn’t carrying cash. A problem at the small cash-only diner.

Which led them to their current predicament.

“Just do it,” Darcy insisted, leaning across the table to give him her best intimidating glare.

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No. You really think it would work?”

“Yes.”

Bucky raised one skeptical eyebrow at her from across their booth.

“Okay, I’m like, 62% sure,” she amended.

“62%, huh? Why don’t you just call Jane to bring you your wallet?”

“Because the facility is like, a 40-minute drive from this podunk town and – “

“Can I get you kids anything else?” interrupted Paula, their waitress.

“Just the check, please,” answered Darcy. Paula nodded and left.

And even though Darcy was fairly certain that Bucky had at least two firearms and one mean-looking knife on his person at all times, she proceeded to pull out her big guns.

“Scared, huh?”

At his look, she knew she had him.

“Fine,” Bucky gritted out. He squared his jaw and took a deep breath. “Darcy Prunella – “

“What the hell, Bucky, my middle name is Elizabeth!” Darcy hissed at him. He only gave her a wink and an evil smirk as he stood from the table and placed his hand dramatically over his heart.

“Darcy Prunella Lewis, for as long as I’ve known you I’ve loved you,” he declared in a loud, smooth voice.

Silverware stopped clinking. The low rumble of conversation halted. Bucky cleared his throat in the silence.

“I know I ain’t got much money…and I ain’t even got a ring yet, but I would be honored if you’d let me try every day of my life to make you the happiest woman on the planet. Darcy Prunella, will you marry me?”

His eyes alighted on their leftover food and he picked up a cold onion ring from the plastic basket. Bucky raised his eyebrows at her expectantly, lips twitching like he was about to burst out laughing any minute. Darcy obligingly held out her left hand and Bucky placed the fried onion on her ring finger where it hung loosely.

“Yes!!” Darcy squealed to the cheers and claps of the other diners. She shot up from her seat to be enveloped in Bucky’s hug. He practically lifted her up onto her toes.

“On the house, you two!” Paula exclaimed with a smile as she approached them. She whisked away their plates and check. “Congratulations!”

“Told ya it would work,” Darcy whispered triumphantly into his ear.

The second time was also an honest mistake. Or so Darcy insisted. All Bucky knew was he definitely had his wallet when they left and now he didn’t, and apparently Darcy didn’t either.

“You ain’t gonna give me a shitty middle name are you?”

“You mean after you saddled me with Prunella? No, I’m nice. It’s the name of one of my favorite characters from classic literature.”

Bucky leveled a warning glare at her that in his spotty memory had once literally made a HYDRA goon wet his pants. Darcy only gave him an innocent, sweet smile in response but he should’ve known. He should’ve known by the crinkle in her nose that she got whenever she was about to do something she thought was hilarious and by the mirth shining bright in her eyes.

“James Bunnicula Barnes – ”

“What the fuck.”

She flashed him a gleeful grin as she continued, “I’ve loved you since I saw your Tinder profile. Marry me?”

He inwardly sighed ­­­­­­then answered dutifully, “Sure thing, sweetheart.”

 From there, it became a game. Over lunches they gave each other ridiculous names and tried to be convincing enough to warrant a free meal. They always sent an envelope full of cash for the bill and a very hefty tip the next day.

 Bucky asked Darcy Hortense Lewis to “be his gal forever and ever” over chicken parmesan subs and mozzarella sticks.

Darcy asked James Benvolio Barnes to marry her over garlic naan and lamb biriyani.

In a little place serving buttermilk biscuits and fried chicken, Bucky begged Darcy Zenobia to make an honest man out of him.

Darcy demanded James Buford Barnes to marry her already to “give their dear baby a father” and Bucky nearly choked on his peach smoothie before agreeing.

 But it was over a homecooked lunch of BLTs that Bucky gave her his next proposal. He had been acting strange all afternoon, furtively patting his jeans pocket as if to make sure that whatever he hid there was still in place. Darcy definitely noticed the nervous, secretive gesture.

Finally, after they finished eating, he took out something that crinkled in his palm then gave her a hopeful smile.

“Darcy Elizabeth Lewis – ” he unwrapped the Ring Pop then held it out to her. “…Will you go on a date with me?”

“Wait. For real?”

“For real.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes. “Lemme see that ring.”

He handed it over and after inspecting it like one would a shiny, clear diamond, Darcy placed the ring on her right index finger and brought her hand up to pop the confection into her mouth.

She smiled, her lips cherry red from the candy. “I’ll totally go on a date with you, James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Only had to ask ya to marry me three times before you’d date me.”

“Y’know, those aren’t great odds.”

Bucky shrugged and grinned. “It works all the time, 62% of the time, dollface.”

Hi there! Please consider donating to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), here. 

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[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: The Blindness of Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas, “Self-Portrait” (c. 1857–58), oil on paper, mounted on canvas, 10 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

David Zwirner Books has published two more entries into its ekphrasis series, which is dedicated to retrieving odd and forgotten texts from the dustbin of art history: the critic-proof Pissing Figures 1280-2014 by Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, a collection of short essays on, broadly speaking, depictions of urination in Western art, and Degas and His Model by the pseudonymous Alice Michel.

This is the only extent manuscript penned by Michel, a two-part memoir published in February 1919 in the bimonthly Symbolist literary gazette Mercure de France, which she wrote in the third person from the point of view of a model known only as Pauline.

There are three models named Pauline documented in Degas’ notebooks, as the translator Jeff Nagy writes in an introduction titled “A Model’s Agency,” but there is no way of knowing whether any of them posed for the artist during the period recounted in the memoir, when he was 76 years old, his eyesight failing. It is believed that the author could have been the model herself, or a third party relating the model’s story.

Nagy subscribes to the latter, and goes a bit further by advancing the idea, first raised by the art historian Heather Dawkins, that Michel was a secondary pseudonym for the singly named, pseudonymous Rachilde, “the pioneering decadent novelist,” as Nagy calls her, who in real life was Marguerite Vallette-Eymery, the cofounder and editor, with her husband, Alfred Vallette, of the Mercure de France.

Nagy justifies his opinion by asserting that Rachilde, given her status as a woman “occupying a significant position in an overwhelmingly male industry […] would likely have been sensitive to issues of women’s labor. Perhaps just as importantly, she had the institutional power to see that such an extremely unusual document found its way into print.”

The labor issues addressed in the book are presented in unsparing detail: the dark, cold, filthy studio; the muscle-wrenching poses; the stingy wages; the sometimes brutal treatment; the artist’s mood swings and hair-trigger temper. Pauline puts up with it because Degas offered steady work in an uncertain profession, but she also evinces a real, if conflicted, fondness for the old buzzard, and genuine pity over his encroaching blindness.

Pauline, who poses for Degas after he gave up painting and devoted himself to sculpture, appreciates his importance to French art even as a younger generation of painters, fixated on salons and honors, has all but forgotten him. He was the first artist to hire her, despite her shyness — an improbable drawback for a nude model, which is left unexplained. There is a queasy-making flashback to Degas watching her reluctantly undress so that he could judge whether she was “shapely enough to pose,” followed by an account of the artist punching her repeatedly in the small of the back to force her into the position he wanted.

After years of almost daily contact — Degas never took a day off, not Sundays or even Christmas — the artist seems to gain a grudging respect for his model, while she takes as much control of their relationship as she can, seeing through his bluster and strategizing over what she could say to him to lighten his mood or gain the upper hand in a dispute over working conditions.

Degas and His Model, for a short book (just 58 pages), is rich in incident and secondary characters, such as the artist’s long-suffering housekeeper, Zoé, and Pauline’s gossipy fellow models, Juliette and Suzon, as well as a hapless admirer of the artist who decided to pay an unannounced visit to the studio one morning, which he quickly learned was the wrong place at the wrong time.

Michel, through the viewpoint of Pauline, relates that Degas hated his first name and loved to sing Italian arias; hated the smell of flowers and perfume but loved the odor of burning bread; hated the sight of makeup on young women but loved the artificiality of the theater and ballet.

He reserved his deepest hatred, however, for Jews. Twenty-seven pages in, almost out of nowhere, he erupts into a shocking anti-Semitic tirade that all but capsizes the narrative: “I detest them, those Jews!” he rages. “An abominable race that ought to be shut up in ghettos. Or even totally eradicated!”

Almost as shocking, and perhaps creepier, is a scene that finds Zoé “reading aloud from an article in Libre parole” — a nationalist and anti-Semitic newspaper, as an endnote informs us — while the artist ate his breakfast. “Degas listened with an attentive expression, nodding slightly here and there to signal his agreement with the author.” This anecdote demonstrates that Degas’ bigotry was not a subterranean toxin that would break through the surface from time to time, like a fit of insanity, but a grievance he nursed and cultivated.

The overall monstrousness of his behavior as described in this memoir might be, to an art historical apologist, chalked up to the crankiness of old age. But a decades-long adhesion to a virulent belief system, which led him to cut off his Jewish friends in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair, is unredeemed by the sublimity he achieved in his art.

As we belatedly come to recognize that social progress is halting at best, and it becomes harder to flatter ourselves on our own enlightenment, it also becomes harder to relegate Degas’ inhumanity to an artifact of a time when racism and bigotry of all kinds were more acceptable. His cruelty becomes, instead, an indelible component of his artistry.

This is admittedly precarious territory, but I believe it can be argued that the obdurate politics of the two most prominent anti-Dreyfusards in the history of modern art, Degas and Paul Cézanne, played a role in the coldness infusing their relationship to the human form.

Cézanne famously rendered his sitters, most notably his wife, Marie-Hortense Fiquet, with the same dispassion he would apply to a bowl of fruit, setting off generations of painters and sculptors in search of pure form. But his gaze also turned people into objects of research, whose interest lay primarily in the formal possibilities they presented to the artist’s imagination.

Degas’ portraits can be breathtakingly beautiful, but they are also reserved and distant. The sitters avoid eye contact with the viewer (as a stand-in for the artist), and when they do, as in his self-portrait from 1857-58 in the collection of the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, they look wary and world-weary. In the majority of his signature depictions of dancers and bathers, the model’s face is turned away or obscured. This was very likely done for formal reasons — to direct the viewer’s gaze toward the entire composition, rather than zero in on the face — but it also reduces the subject’s personality to her pose — which was frequently torturous, as Pauline attests — and body type. The artist’s insistence on strenuous positions resulted in muscularly expressive imagery, but it also displayed a not-so-mild sadistic streak.

In contrast to their academic contemporaries, whose cloying and superficial paintings quickly achieved institutional recognition and market success, Degas and Cézanne were unable to cloak their ugliness in glazes and varnish: their conflict is our conflict; their inhumanity is our inhumanity. It was their inadvertent honesty that made them modern.

And the modernism they ignited quickly raced away from them. The dramatic spine running through Degas and His Model is the artist’s inability to complete Pauline’s sculpture — a second version of “Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot” (1910-11) — after endless hours of posing. The practice of calibrated accuracy between model and image, which Degas dragged like an albatross from the glory days of the French Academy into the chaos of World War I, had been ambushed decades earlier by the Impressionists, with Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907) delivering the coup de grâce.

As Nagy writes in his introduction, “perhaps the most cutting feature of Michel’s portrait is that ‘old Father Degas’ is artistically impotent. He can finish nothing, and statuettes that represent years of work over hundreds of sessions crumble to dust before his eyes, to be begun again, and again, in a cycle broken only by his death. Instead of a prolific visionary, Michel’s Degas more resembles a Beckett character retrofitted for Third Republic melodrama.”

The Beckett reference is particularly apt: every afternoon, dressed in rags because he refused to spend money on clothes, Degas would shamble alone around the streets of Paris until twilight force him back inside. But every morning he would get up, eat breakfast, brusquely greet his model, and engage once again, nearly blind and stewing with resentment, in the solitary, pointless, and fruitless pursuit of beauty — a 20th-century figure despite himself.

Degas and His Model (2017) is published by David Zwirner Books and is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

The post The Blindness of Edgar Degas appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[unvillagefrancais]

[cma-modern-european-art]

Portrait of Hortense de Perregaux, Duchess of Ragusa, Jean-Baptiste Isabey , 1818, Cleveland Museum of Art: Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Size: Framed: 21.5 x 15.5 cm (8 7/16 x 6 1/8 in.); Unframed: 12.9 x 9 cm (5 1/16 x 3 9/16 in.) Medium: watercolor on card on a gilt metal mount in a pale wood frame

https://clevelandart.org/art/1942.1146

[artist-degas]

Portrait of Paul Valpinçon, Edgar Degas, c. 1855, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Paintings

Edgar Degas and Paul Valpinçon had a lifelong friendship that began even before the two became classmates in 1846. In fact, their fathers were friends. Paul’s father, Edouard Valpinçon, played a role in Degas’s artistic development by encouraging the young artist’s interest in the French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Degas’s admiration of Ingres is apparent in the crisp, classicizing manner with which he captured his friend’s likeness in this portrait. Many years later, Paul’s daughter, Hortense, recounted the family history of the portrait’s creation. She said it was painted in the courtyard of her grandfather’s Paris home when her father was only twenty-one years old—an age that corresponds with the date of 1855 inscribed, in an unknown hand, on the painting’s reverse. The portrait remained with Hortense until the 1930s. Eventually it came into the collection of David M. Daniels, a native of St. Paul, who donated it to The Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1974. Size: 15 7/8 x 12 3/4 in. (40.32 x 32.39 cm) (canvas) 24 x 20 3/8 x 3 1/8 in. (60.96 x 51.75 x 7.94 cm) (outer frame) Medium: Oil on canvas

https://collections.artsmia.org/art/2038/

[jean-auguste-dominique-ingres]

Augustine-Modeste-Hortense Reiset, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1846, Harvard Art Museums

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop Size: 62.2 x 49.5 cm (24 1/2 x 19 1/2 in.) framed: 80 x 67 cm (31 1/2 x 26 3/8 in.) Medium: Oil on canvas

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/230110

[cma-modern-european-art]

Portrait of Hortense de Perregaux, Duchess of Ragusa, Jean-Baptiste Isabey , 1818, Cleveland Museum of Art: Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Size: Framed: 21.5 x 15.5 cm (8 7/16 x 6 1/8 in.); Unframed: 12.9 x 9 cm (5 1/16 x 3 9/16 in.) Medium: watercolor on card on a gilt metal mount in a pale wood frame

https://clevelandart.org/art/1942.1146