Dargaud's "Statue of Liberty" in Santa Barbara
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| Paul Joseph Victor Dargaud, The Statue of Liberty in Frédéric-Auguste-Bartholdi's Studio, Paris, 1884. Santa Barbara Museum of Art |
The painting was featured in "Encore: 19th Century French Art," a companion show to the recently closed selection of the Dallas Museum of Art's collection of French Impressionism. Dargaud however was not an Impressionist. He was more a Canaletto in the age of Manet, specializing in views of the evolving Parisian metropolis that he showed at the Salon. As with Caillebotte, it was Dargaud's empirical eye and unconventional use of perspective that allied him with the avant-garde.
In the U.S., Dargaud is remembered mainly for two small pictures of America's echt-monument: The Statue of Liberty, by Bartholdi (before 1883) in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, and The Statue of Liberty in Frédéric-Auguste-Bartholdi's Studio, Paris (1884) in Santa Barbara. SBMA purchased its painting in 2001. I don't know whether the World Trade Center attacks were a motivation, and Dargaud is not usually thought of as a political painter. But in the present moment, the Statue of Liberty pictures demand that the viewer consider a time when immigration was widely recognized as America's strength.
The Santa Barbara picture shows a plaster model for the statue's left arm, as displayed in Bartholdi's studio. Its industrial setting may recall that of Kara Walker's A Subtlety (2014), a monumental sphinx in sugar. Bartholdi conceived his statue of Liberty Enlightening the World after a trip to Egypt, vowing to make a monument twice the size of the Great Sphinx.
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| Paul Joseph Victor Dargaud, The Statue of Liberty, by Bartholdi, in the Workshop of the Gayet Foundry, Rue de Chazelles, before 1883. Musée Carnavalet, Paris |
Comments
> probably never
> heard of
Which is why the gatekeepers of arts and culture can be very capricious, very subjective, very provincial, very biased, very political. That includes the old maxim, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
The contents of the Lucas Museum compared with, for example, what's in the Broad Museum, and visa versa, will be judged ("good," "bad") in so many ways, that a person's head will spin straight off.
The LA Times former art critic dismissed the upcoming Lucas as "treacle," while dismissing current-day LACMA as "not a very good one (ie, of contemporary art)." Starting in a few months, just how obvious that is (or isn't) will become more evident.
BTW, Michael Govan years ago in an interview mentioned LACMAonfire. But articles from the LA Times former art critic were even more visible, yet his annoyance with Govan and the museum has never sunk into LACMA's hard heads. However, I'm assuming staffers recently joining a union wasn't to express disapproval of what's going on. That includes the cheap-o municipal-gallery format of contemporary! contemporary! contemporary!!
The 2 works by Paul Dargaud (even less big-time than "Beraud") look no less well done or professional that what's owned by the museum. But the Beraud work at least isn't in the style and category of contemporary. Thank God for small favors.