Sexy Frenchies

"The Arcadian Shepherds (aka Et in Arcadia Ego)" by
Nicolas Poussin (photo courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Feb. 12 – May 11, 2008

Gustave Courbet
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Feb. 27– May 18, 2008

I’ve got your Whitney Biennial hangover cure: some good old-fashioned sexy French oils.

Numero uno is Nicolas Poussin, perhaps the first great French painter and originator of the Neoclassical style.

While it purports to focus on the artist’s use of landscape, the show is a nice chronology of the artist’s development.

In my view, Poussin's most stunning paintings were done early in his career, when he lived in Rome where he soaked in the Renaissance love affair with Greek and Roman mythology, painting small, sensuous canvasses under the influence of Titian.

In “Landscape with a River God; Venus and Adonis” (1626) the unclothed god and goddess embrace with ardor amidst a sun-soaked idyllic landscape as putti play under a tree and a river god salves the thirst of a greyhound. The stunning painting was cut in half some two hundred years ago, its pieces reunited for the first time in this show.

Almost Courbet-like in its blatant sensuality is “Sleeping Venus and Cupid” from the same year. A prostrate and naked Venus sleeps, legs akimbo, and long hair hiding her lady parts as two shepherds lasciviously watch from behind some bushes.

My favorite might be “The Arcadian Shepherds (a.k.a. Et in Arcadia Ego),” (see above) which depicts three figures — two young men and a lovely toga-clad woman — in a moment of surprise as they come across a tomb on which sits a skull. Its cryptic inscription reads “et in arcadio ego” — which means something like “I am death even in Arcadia” and may be read as an allegory for loss of innocence. Or, if you’re a reader of the “Da Vinci Code,” it’s proof of a sinister conspiracy of some sort.

The second half of the show features the artist’s decidedly less-sexy mature style – larger canvasses, smoother brush work and more sober and allegorical works. One example is the deeply strange “Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun” (1658). In this work, a blind giant is aided by a man named Cedalion rides on shoulders. One arm outstretched, Orion walks through verdant scenery, seeking the light that will cure his blindness. But hovering above is a blue-skinned Diana, who commands the clouds to cast a shadow. Whatever it means, the painting displays Poussin’s mastery of light and landscape, especially in conveying depth and distance.

As an aside, it’s evident from the show’s catalog that Poussin and his “Blind Orion” painting are favorites of Phillipe de Montebello, the museum’s departing director. Perhaps it says something about the man that he’s drawn towards these notoriously difficult and intellectual works.

The great Cézanne famously said that he strove to “recreate Poussin after nature,” meaning that even when copying nature directly he still thinks of aspires to be as perfect as Poussin. As it happens, Cézanne was also a fan of Gustave Courbet, and is said to have carried a photograph of the artist’s super-sensuous “Women with a Parrot” in his wallet for many years. More on that painting below.

A self-styled Bohemian, Monsieur Courbet made a name for himself thumbing his nose at convention, declaring a new style of “Realism” in opposition to the prevailing Romantic and Neoclassical styles -- rejecting the prevailing Poussin-like mode of mythologizing, dramatizing and historicizing and paving the way for Manet, Cézanne and Picasso.

Arranged thematically and in loose chronology, the Courbet retrospective presents a nice overview with plenty of self-portraits, such as the jaunty “Self-Portrait with Pipe” (1941), adept landscapes, superfluous hunting paintings, a few peasant scenes and several portraits, including a famous 1853 one of his friend, the Anarchist philosopher P.J. Proudhon.

Sadly, due to their monumental size, his two greatest works – “Burial at Ornans” (1849-50) and “The Artist’s Studio” (1855) – are not included in the show and remain in Paris. The lack of the latter painting — a kind of Sergeant Pepper’s portrait of the artist and his friends — is cleverly handled by hinting at it through a patchwork display of single photographs and paintings, such of one Charles Baudelaire. (No, Baudelaire isn’t included in Sgt. Pepper, I checked. Poe yes, Baudelaire non.)

The high point of the show are, of course, the sexy bits.

“Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine” (1856-77) depicts two women laying under a tree. Hot and tired from the summer sun, or perhaps, it’s hinted, some other more erotic exertion. The disheveled woman in the foreground looks distractedly towards us, her features distorted, as if melting. This electric painting points the way towards Manet and Gaugin.

In Cézanne’s favorite painting, “Women with a Parrot” (1866), a naked wild-haired woman is in the midst of a reverie. Head twisted backwards with the hint of a toothy smile, her luminescent white flesh and twisted sheet make her seem to float above the deep, lush landscape where, dream-like, her bed lies. Perched on an outstretched hand is her pet parrot, its colorful wings outstretched. A brilliant flowing composition, the painting presents what might be an allegory of masturbation. (Interestingly, Manet did a much more demure “Woman with a Parrot” the same year.)

Unlike Poussin’s sexually-charged “Sleeping Venus,” Courbet’s nudes dispense with mythologizing veils like that of the Oriental Odalisque used by his contemporary Ingres. Although, certainly “Women with a Parrot” has an otherworldly feel.

For true clinical realism, the show includes Courbet’s notorious crotch-shot, “The Origin of the World” (1866), which was purchased along with a tacky lesbian canvas (“Sleep”) by a Turkish diplomat. A later owner, the French psychoanalyst and theorist Jacques Lacan, displayed “Origin” behind a specially made curtain. While the works retains much of its shock-value after all these years, its brilliant, bluntly poetic title transmutes the work into something far more than pornography.

After taking in both shows, I wandered around the museum’s second floor, coming across three paintings by Poussin and nine (!) by Courbet that remain on display separately. These include two exceptionally lovely works – Poussin’s “The Rest or the Flight to Egypt” (c. 1627) and Courbet’s “Nude with Flowering Branch” (1863). What a testament to the depth of the Met’s collection.