Salon – MATTHEWS GALLERY BLOG

Jaime Colson (1901-1975) was a teenager when he left his homeland of the Dominican Republic to study art in Spain. The talented young painter landed smack in the middle of the Spanish avant-garde, rubbing elbows with Salvador Dali and befriending Rafael Barradas and other artists. Colson lived there for six years and developed a surrealist style. His next move was to perhaps the only place that could be stranger than España surrealisto: 1920’s bohemian Paris.

Colson arrived in the City of Lights in 1924, at the height of Gertrude Stein‘s reign as a powerful salonnière and premiere champion of modernism. In Paris, Colson met Picasso and Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Leger. He soaked up modernist innovations—and quite a lot of absinthe—like a sponge. Four years later, as a full-fledged Parisian, Colson painted the latest addition to our collection:

Colson’s Cubist Still Life offers an essential review of the original vie bohème, a painted guide to the colorful, booze-soaked existence of the Lost Generation. Its skewed lines and wild patterns capture all the dynamism of a moveable feast, and the pall of the “green fairy” hangs over its heart. Without further ado, here are seven details that set the roaring scene…

Colson painted Cubist Still Life in 1928, the same year Rene Magritte made his famous Ceci n’est pas une pipe. The pipe that appears near the center of the composition is at once an homage to Magritte’s French surrealism and a nod to Colson’s Spanish surrealist past.

Pernod Fils was the reigning brand of absinthe in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The anise-flavored, bright green spirit was formulated in Switzerland, and its distillery in Pontarlier, France churned out as much as 30,000 liters of absinthe per day. Knock-offs abounded (Pernot, Perriot and Parrot among them), some of which contained toxic substances and were cheap enough to appeal to many a town drunk. In 1910, the French consumed 36 million liters of absinthe in a year, but by 1915 the drink had been demonized and banned.

After World War I, Pernod Fils introduced a new, lower-proof liqueur d’anise, which is the drink Colson would’ve encountered during his Paris years. However, the famous absinthe pictures by Picasso, Lautrec, van Gogh and the like hail from the golden age of the beverage, before the ban. Perhaps the ghostly bottle of Pernod Fils and the empty glass below it are Colson’s tribute to a madcap age that his contemporaries remembered with longing.

A cubistic guitar and a trompe-l’œil glimpse at the French newspaper Le Journal refer to modernist art forms Colson was exposed to in Paris. In 1912, Picasso began experimenting with collage, incorporating scraps of fabric and other materials into his oil paintings. Picasso’s Still Life with Chair-Caning, one of the first fine art collages ever made, is on an oval canvas and features a scrap of furniture material. Picasso’s close collaborator Braque soon followed suite, using glue to attach wood-grain papers to his cubist canvases. Colson replicates similar patterns and textures using oil paint in Cubist Still Life.

In late 1912, Picasso made artworks using clippings from Le Journal, and also created three dimensional collages called art assemblages, including a cardboard guitar. These are Colson’s strongest references to his modernist contemporaries in the painting, directly addressing Picasso’s tendency to weave real-world events into his works and distort objects in groundbreaking ways.

Colson lived in Paris until 1934. After a short stint in Cuba and another stay in Europe, he returned to the Dominican Republic with a head full of revolutionary ideas. He began blending his European influences with Dominican subject matter, creating images of the rich central American culture the likes of which had never been seen before. Along with Yoryi Morel and Dario Suro, Colson is known as one of the founders of the modernist school of Dominican painting, and is considered one of the great Latin American masters of the 20th century.

Learn more about Jaime Colson on our homepage, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for daily gallery news.

Ever heard of a ruelle, a visit card or les bas-bleus? In preparation for SALON 669, we’ve compiled a glossary of weird and wonderful terms from literary and art gatherings of the past. Don’t worry though, you don’t have to be a noble, a French speaker or dressed in blue stockings to attend our Oct. 18-27 event series. Just bring a healthy helping of the last term on the list…

Age of Conversation: Spans the height of the salon’s popularity, from the 16th to 18th centuries in Italy, France and across Europe. Some scholars say the intellectual meetings helped spark the French Revolution.
Enlightenment: A cultural movement that was spurred in part by the salon, which created an even playing field of ideas that elevated the growing bourgeois class to the level of the nobility.
The Great-Woman: The hosts of salons were commonly women of the bourgeois and noble classes, who threw the gatherings to educate themselves and wield social and political power. Historians have called the most influential of these salonnieres “great-women”, using their stories to reframe misogynistic historical narratives.
Greek Symposium: The Athenians invited artists and intellectuals to their homes, providing a safe political space for different classes to mingle. The symposium inspired the Roman banquet, which inspired Italian Renaissance gatherings, which inspired the French to coin the term “salon”.
Horace: Roman lyric poet who said his craft aimed “either to please or to educate”. The salons often followed Horace’s motto, aspiring to foster delightful, stimulating conversation.
Je Ne Sais Quoi: French for “I don’t know what”, a popular way to describe the harmonious feeling of the salons in 17th century France.
Lane: Or, in French, ruelle. Describes the space between the bed and the wall in a lady’s chambers, where 17th century French salon goers sat while their hostess lounged. Not all salons were so intimate though. At Louis XIV’s petit lever (literally “a little lift”), no one was allowed to sit down.
Literary Lion: Term for fierce literature enthusiasts who organized salons in the 19th and 20th centuries. Madame Recamier (1777-1849) helmed a powerful literary salon attended by intellectuals who were unpopular at court, snubbed a position as the Empress consort’s lady-in-waiting, and even started a tiff between artists Jacques Louis-David and Francois Gerard over a portrait commission. The hardly humble writer and salon host Gertrude Stein later used the title to describe herself.
Les Bas-Bleus: A term that has come to mean “female intellectual”. Madeline de Scudery founded the les bas-bleus (blue-stockings) salon in the 1600s. When salons sprung up across Europe in the 18th century, Elizabeth Montagu founded her own blue-stockings gathering in England. Montagu maintained such a rigid dress code that she once rejected the Duke of Wellington for having the wrong shade of socks.
Visit Cards: From the 1800s until the 1930s, visitors to upper class French salons would present a card with their name on it to a servant at the door. If the host didn’t recognize their name, they were booted from the premises.
Wit: Throughout the history of salons, cleverness was key. The two most important rules at a salon were that all guests were to be treated equally, and that everyone was expected to make points without provoking confrontation.

Stay tuned for more salon-themed posts, and make sure to attend SALON 669 at the Matthews Gallery from October 18-27. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more news from the Matthews Gallery!

Tag: Salon

SALON 669: A Historical, Hysterical Salon Glossary