Naked Christ, a corpse in his arms, strange angles for a little daughter. How famous artists shocked

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

We are used to perceiving famous artists through brief explanations of their paintings. This makes their images almost ethereal. As if there was nothing but painting in their life, and as if their painting immediately became a sacred classic. But the artists were full-blooded people. Their creativity sometimes caused bewilderment, and their actions - condemnation.

Zinaida Serebryakova

Daughter, granddaughter, niece of some artists, mother, aunt and grandmother of others, she herself seems to be the embodiment of purity and love for art. So, in general, it is. Serebryakova was not inclined to drunken revelry and all those sins for which it is customary to reproach the bohemian.

Nevertheless, there were oddities in her life. For example, she shocked many by marrying her own cousin. Many of Serebryakova's paintings and drawings are in plain sight, but some are published very rarely and shock the viewer: they depict Zinaida's naked daughter Katya in poses and foreshortenings that seem overly sensual for a girl of about ten years old. Critics of the early twentieth century, however, assured that Serebryakova's children's nudes are surprisingly innocent, so that the whole point may be in changing social norms.

In addition, when Zinaida moved to the homeland of her ancestors, to France, out of four children she took with her only two, son Sasha and daughter Katya. The son Zhenya and daughter Tanya who remained in the USSR took offense at their mother for a long time. Tanya saw her mother again only in 1960, as an adult woman.

Another artist, much more shocking in her way of life, Tamara de Lempicka, was also accused of the lack of maternal feelings and dubious angles when portraying her daughter. She left her daughter to her grandmother, and the poses and views in the portraits of the girl seemed to be the same as in the portraits of her mistresses.

Albrecht Durer

The most popular images from Dürer for the average Russian citizen are his self-portraits, in which he looks like a very refined and spiritualized man, and the drawing “Praying Hands”. In general, Dürer created many engravings on religious themes.

One of the self-portraits, by the way, looks exactly like a painting on a religious theme, namely, the image of Christ. At that time, men were rarely painted strictly in the face, and if a man's beard, hairstyle and whole appearance were similar to how the Son of God was portrayed, this was considered unacceptable. As if emphasizing the iconic character of the portrait, Dürer signs it in gold letters on a dark background - and no, this was not accepted. So this particular self-portrait is another hooliganism.

When you see an artist with such a pious appearance, and even emphasizing his piety and religiosity, you expect a catch. But Dürer on the whole was a really good person, prone to melancholy. When his elderly mother was widowed, he did not hesitate to take her to his home. He also professed the idea, unpopular at that time, that one should learn art not through tears, but through joy and interest.

There is also a self-portrait, less known to the general public, depicting Dürer as Christ. He again was overly bold - not only is the artist on him in the pose in which Jesus was usually depicted in paintings dedicated to the Passion of Christ, even with a fold of skin imitating a wound, but he is still completely naked. Given the chosen image, this is very ugly.

Caravaggio

For many years now, this famous Italian artist has been accused of almost never depicting women, and many teenage boys in his paintings look like castrates (there were many castrates in Italy during the time of Caravaggio). If, they say, you are fond of young castrates, there is nothing to stick out - approximately in this vein, they discuss the artistic and not only the inclinations of the painter.

During his lifetime, Caravaggio made a repulsive impression on many. While fabrics and colors play in his paintings, fruits and wine caress the eye, in life he was extremely untidy. Caravaggio dressed badly, had bad manners, drank a lot and was sometimes rowdy. However, nothing new.

In one of the fights involving Caravaggio, a man was killed. The artist was recognized as the murderer, and the Pope outlawed him. This meant that anyone he met had the right to take Caravaggio's life. He had to hide for a long time.

Painting a picture of the resurrection of Lazarus, Caravaggio got hold of a human corpse that had begun to decompose. Two of his sitters refused to hold the corpse in their arms for several hours, but the artist forced them by force.

Salvador Dali

The promiscuous sex life in the biographies of the artists of the twentieth century does not surprise anyone, so that as strange and unpleasant moments, Dali are not remembered for sexual inclinations and appetites.

Firstly, Dali had a rather unpleasant habit of not just putting a mustache upside down, but also dyeing it. No, Dali was satisfied with their natural color. He just liked kissing women only to admire the sweat on their faces from the imprint of his mustache.

The rally that Dali once arranged for the Soviet composer Khachaturian, in general, cannot be called anything other than mockery. Having invited the composer to visit, he himself was in no hurry to meet the guest. The servants took the composer to the dining room. Khachaturian spent several hours locked in this room. True, there was food and drinks, but after a while the composer felt an unbearable desire to use the toilet.

In the end, Khachaturian decided to urinate in a vase. As soon as he started, his famous "Saber Dance" burst out of the speakers, absolutely naked Dali rushed into the hall on top of a mop and galloped around the composer, swinging a saber. Then the artist disappeared, the master of ceremonies entered, announced that the audience was over, and escorted the dumbfounded composer away.

Many are now inclined to call this act an artistic act. Like imprinting mustaches on other people's faces.

Maria Bashkirtseva

The artist spent her entire adult life in France, but was never able to fit into French society. She did not drink, did not row, did not sleep with either men or women. But she was still considered a girl of dubious morality. And all because her relatives behaved doubtfully: mother, aunt, uncle and brother. Because of their reputation, Bashkirtseva upset her engagement with an Italian boy from a good family, whom she loved passionately.

Bashkirtseva's pictures are exceptionally well-behaved, but her diary, correspondence and articles would seriously blacken her image in the eyes of those around her. So the articles - with seditious statements that a woman should receive as many rights as a man - Bashkirtseva signed with a pseudonym. The diary - telling frankly about sensual thoughts, the antics of relatives and petting with a failed groom - she hoped to publish in old age, when mores changed. And obscene correspondence with the famous bawdy Guy de Maupassant, perhaps, never, in the artist's opinion, should have surfaced. She did not even sign these letters and seriously thought that Maupassant did not know who they were from.

As a result, the diary was published by Maria's mother after the artist's early death, but … In such a form that nothing remained of it, except for a few exclamations about how beautiful art is and how one wants to become famous. Everything else turned out to be too scandalous.

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