The ugly deeds of famous artists, which sometimes even ardent admirers of their talent do not know about

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the fall of 2019, Europe witnessed a scandal around Gauguin's paintings. At the exhibition at the London National Gallery, his paintings were accompanied by plates explaining that they depicted teenage girls whom the artist forced into an intimate relationship. The public reaction was sharp and varied. It would be even sharper, perhaps, if each picture was accompanied by a plate about the artist's personality.

What do they generally say about the tablets for the paintings of Gauguin

Of course, there are two opposite opinions. The first is that such inscriptions should not be, because Gauguin's work is valuable regardless of his personality. The second is that the personality of the artist completely devalues his work, and Gauguin should be abandoned. There are also more balanced opinions.

For example, those who partially agree with the former are sure that if creativity is valuable, then the knowledge of what it grew out of does not diminish this value in any way - which means that there is no point in protesting against an open conversation about the artist's personality. Others argue that it is important to understand the personality traits of past artists in order to be able to share their contributions and the ability to use them as a moral guide. After all, we are not offended if we find out that the antique statues were made by slave owners, who, moreover, were more likely to have an intimate relationship with adolescents of both sexes, or even were outright rapists. This is a common place, it never occurs to anyone to protest against talking about the slavery of the ancient Greeks and Romans - although this is a serious crime against the individual.

On the contrary, the ability to discuss the personality of the artist and the moral attitudes of the society around him give us not only the ability to separate the charm of creativity from the charm of the person, but also a very encouraging feeling that humanity is developing, moving away from pedophilia and infanticide of Antiquity, racism of the colonial time, violence as a norm of relations in twentieth century (and all centuries before). This makes it possible to feel the movement of humanity forward and the desire to continue it.

I wonder, however, what could be written on the plates about the identity of other artists next to their paintings?

Salvador Dali

If you believe his own hints, he seduced his younger sister, and then did not even think to sympathize with her when she was beaten and raped by Franco's gendarmes. In addition, all his life he abused her in absentia. He behaved no better with his famous muse - although no, at times worse, because Salvador beat Galu with a cane and once even broke her hip, at the age when there was no longer a chance to recover from such an injury. She never got out of bed. It was probably after this incident that he bought her a castle, into which he was prohibited from entering without Gala's written permission. There she died.

Isaac Levitan

The remarkable landscape painter became famous - however, rather, he amused his acquaintances - by the pursuit of women with whom he fell in love, and ardent jealousy towards them. Why am I laughing? Levitan was terribly amorous and simply did not have time to properly scare another woman. In fact, everyone in his circle knew that Isaac just had to endure, it would not be long. In addition, he was distinguished by poor health - he could be instantly tamed with a blow of an umbrella. Making fun of what Othello is pretending to be a frail comrade, Chekhov even on the book “Sakhalin Island” presented to Levitan inscribed mockingly: they say, in case he commits a murder out of jealousy and ends up on this island. Nevertheless, the artist behaved with the ladies in an unambiguously ugly manner. Harassment is disgusting.

Ivan Aivazovsky

Under half of the paintings of this wonderful Russian marine painter, one could write: "Created in parallel to the brutal beatings of his wife, which crippled her and from which the authorities had to protect her." The artist was distinguished by real ferocity when it came to his unfortunate wife, throwing her on the ground, disfiguring her face with a candlestick, and so on, without being embarrassed by the presence of his daughters (who later chose to live with their mother, not their father). When the conversation about her started at the level of the city administration (!), He said that she just slept with everyone who stood up for her and testified on her side: policemen, doctors, just acquaintances. In general, he behaved disgustingly.

Michelangelo Caravaggio

Usually, everyone is intrigued by the number of pretty naked young men in his paintings, but there is reliable information that Caravaggio forced the young men to do something. But he, as if by force and threats, forced other sitters to hold stale corpses in their arms, for hours, and also killed a man in a fight (and, probably, in his many drunken battles, he crippled more than one). Perhaps his character was badly deteriorated by lead poisoning, which was contained in paints in large quantities - but, in fact, many people used the same paints at the same time.

Auguste Rodin and Le Corbusier

Rodin used the work of his student and mistress Camille Claudel - she made those parts of the body of his sculptures that he did not succeed well. Moreover, he did not feel any respect and gratitude for the one who did his work - although he willingly accepted applause, without going into the details of the exact authorship. It got to the point that when Claudel began her own career, she was reproached for the fact that one thing or the other is similar to Rodin.

In the same way, the legendary architect Le Corbusier used the labor of women, who considered him their companion-in-arms. Including he passed off as the house of his authorship a project completely developed and embodied by the architect Eileen Gray - she had to sue.

Pablo Picasso

But next to Picasso's paintings, you can hang a long list of the nasty things he has done. The artist himself frankly admitted that he likes to destroy women. He destroyed, tortured, mocked - until he fell into senile addiction to one of them. As if taking revenge for all the previous ladies, the last wife of Picasso kept him in constant fear that she would leave him. It even became an obsession. He also robbed the Louvre - literally, they found two stolen figurines from the museum, and he did not buy them on the black market.

Pablo Picasso and his victims: An artist who did not know how to love, but loved to artistically torture.

Frans Hals

What the artist did with his family is now called economic violence. In those years, his wife could not just leave and find a job for her living, she was completely dependent on her husband - just as the children inevitably depended on the father's earnings. Frans Hals, on the other hand, wanted to be a sociable guy, so he drank almost everything that he earned by labor, not caring about the food for his relatives, and what he didn’t drink, he simply gave away. I lent without giving back. And, although the term "economic violence" was not then known that the artist behaves badly with his family, then almost everyone was already aware.

Can a genius be without bestiality?

In fact, a huge number of famous painters possessed, at the most, a complex character or entered into relations that were not approved by society by mutual consent. Many famous artists regularly fed children, worked from dawn to dusk, took their wives to the mineral waters,disinterestedly helped young colleagues, or if they have gone down in history with some indecency, it is, for example, unfulfilled work obligations or hooligan antics in a drunken shop, and not systematic violence, addiction to prostituted teenagers and theft of other people's fame. It is especially difficult to find beastly behavior among famous artists. Genius and villainy seem to be compatible only when a person finds it possible to combine them. For example, 11 famous families where the husband supported his wife, not competed with her - and both succeeded.