Not Monet: Vladimir Gusev

The first time I saw this painting

I said to myself, "I didn't know Monet painted that."

Now, I have never claimed to be an expert on the seminal Impressionist painter.  I can say, however, that I probably am more familiar with his work than the average layperson.  At least, I know enough to know that not all of his images are of waterlilies on ponds, lovely as those are.

And I know enough to tell a Monet from a Manet--and, certainly, from a Sisley, Pisarro, Renoir, Degas or Gaugin.  Still, I had to wonder, "Why did I never see this in any of the books--or in the Musee d'Orsay?

The first vehicles most of us would identify as bicycles--or semblances of them--were created early in Monet's life.  The high-wheeler or penny-farthing came along when he was coming into his own as an artist; the "safety" bicycle would be invented in the middle of his life, when he was becoming his most productive and innovative.  And the "bike boom" that seized most of the Western world (and Japan) at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th coincided with his etudes of the Rouen Cathedral and his early Giverny work.  So it's certainly not inconceivable that a bicycles would appear in Monet paintings--or, for that matter, works by any of his contemporaries.

But, as far as I know, there are no velocipedes in any of his work.  This painting--of his son, Jean, on a hobby-horse--is about as close as he comes to including a bicycle in anything he did:

The artist whom I mistook for Monet, however, has graced quite a few canvases with his depictions of two-wheelers and the people--women and girls, mainly--who ride, or at least accompany, them.

And I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out more paintings with two-wheelers in them.  Yes, the artist in question is very much alive and working:  Vladimir Gusev.

If his name sounds familiar, it probably means you've been reading this blog.  In a bizarre coincidence, he shares his name with the unfortunate cyclist who--in my opinion, anyway--had his career ruined by the hypocrisy and mendacity of Johan Bruyneel, the directeur sportif of Astana, who threw him under the bus after the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) threatened to ban the team (and defending maillot jersey winner Alberto Contador) from participating in the Tour de France after doping allegations. 

Yes, we're talking about the same Johan Bruyneel who managed someone named Lance Armstrong on something called the US Postal Service team.  And, yes, the same UCI that looked the other way when Lance was winning but forced Gusev to drop his suit against them in order to continue his career.

The painter Gusev, of course, has nothing to do with any of that.  And the bicycles and cyclists in his paintings seem worlds away from the scandal-ridden milieu of professional racing.

Why You Have To Ride A Bicycle To Truly Understand Picasso, Rodin Or Any Impressionist Painter

You all have seen this Picasso sculpture.

Question:  What kind of handlebars are they?  Velo Orange Belleville?  (OK, so VO didn't exist in Picasso's time.)  Whatever they were, they definitely weren't flat bars.  In fact, I can't think of any way even Picasso (or, for that matter, Rodin or Michelangelo) could have made an objet d'art from flat bars.  For that reason alone, they should be illegal. 

(Don't get me started on those mountain bike bar ends that were all the rage circa 1992-1996!  Yes, I had a pair of Onzas--in purple, no less!)

I posted that image because I figured that I should, since I visited the Picasso Museum--my favorite, after the Rodin--today.  However, I didn't actually see the "bull".  The part of the museum in which it is displayed was closed off because a special show is being organized.  Oh well.

At least there's all sorts of other interesting stuff to see there.

Now that's something to think about the next time you're kissing your beloved!

It goes without saying that Picasso, like many great male artists, had complicated relationships with women:

To be fair, he also had a strong social conscience.  You've probably seen Guernica.  A decade and a half later, he painted "Massacre in Korea":

And he understood, I think, how thin the line is between sensitivity and derangement can be.  At least I gather something like that from his painting Absinthe Drinker:

That one isn't in the Picasso Museum. I saw it yesterday in the Musee d'Orsay.  There's so much there and so much has already been said about many things that are there that I'll just choose a few vague (wave) paintings:



Paul Gaugin (another favorite of mine): Marine avec Vache

 

Georges Lacombe:  La Vague Violette


 

August Strindberg (You didn't know he was a painter, did you?) :  Marine avec recif

 

Alexander Harrison (Philadelphia 1853-Paris 1930):  Marine 

I find it very interesting that the Impressionists and Rodin came along around the time the bicycle was taking a form we recognize today, which vastly increased its popularity over that of "high-wheelers" and other predecessors.  For the first time, many people had access to a mode of travel that is faster than walking.  Because we pass by people, landmarks and other parts of the landscape more quickly on a bicycle than on foot, we see them clearly but momentarily, so they form impressions in our consciousness.  That, I believe, is why we can so readily call upon sense memories of what we saw, heard, felt, smelled or tasted during a bike ride.

On the other hand, when Picasso was helping to invent Cubism, the automobile was in its juvescence.  So was cinema.  When we see things from the window of a fast-moving car or other motorized vehicle, we see "cuts" in much the same way we see a series of images on a strip of motion picture film.  Each image in the series differs slightly from the one before it, but the cumulative effect is that what's at the end of the strip is very different from what we saw at the beginning.


I'm sorry if this all sounds like half-baked cognitive psychology mixed with even-less-baked art and film theory.  I'm just doing the best I can to describe what occurred to me as I was riding between museums, and after visits to museums.  If nothing else, it made clearer--to me, anyway--why the trip to the museum, especially if it's on a bicycle, can be just as important and even interesting as the museum itself.

Just for fun, I'll end this post with something from that great interpreter of fin-de-siècle Paris nightlife, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec: