The Best Not-the-Best Painting (551 words)
I had been planning to write that Kees van Dongen’s The Corn Poppy, a star of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston collection, is actually a mediocre painting despite its popularity.
But I find myself less interested in shredding artworks than I once was. I no longer burn with a youthful righteousness that comes out swinging. I am less certain about certain things.
Also, I have to admit: The Corn Poppy has undeniable appeal. I think it is a genuinely good, not-good painting, and that paradoxical gray area, and my struggle to write about it (I’ve been working on these 551 words longer than I care to admit) make it interesting.
The composition is graphic and striking. Everyone loves illustration, and it has that quality. You can’t argue with a single figure in a blank brown background (ask Sargent, Manet, Velasquez, et al.). Everyone loves a mysterious, pretty lady. Everyone loves the color red.
On the other hand, the woman-as-mysterious-cipher thing is kind of dumb and even dehumanizing. I also don’t care for the thick, cement-like paint and clumsy brushwork of The Corn Poppy. The 1960s and 70s loved this look, and I’m reminded of the terrible paintings in the guest baths of my childhood. The Corn Poppy may have a certain appeal, but it does not hold up alongside the aforementioned greats of the figure-on-a-brown-background genre:
But this spring I saw a poster of it in an Amsterdam shop window, and I realized The Corn Poppy has a big life outside the confines of Houston museum enthusiasts.
The c. 1919 painting was given to the MFAH by Audrey Jones Beck in 1998. It’s featured on the cover of the Museum’s catalog dedicated to the Beck collection. The artist, Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), was best known as a Fauve who liked to paint women. Van Dongen is not remembered as a great painter, and nor was he. He was also not an admirable person: he betrayed his wife and daughter, and later accepted an invitation, along with André Derain and other French painters, to a Nazi-sponsored exhibition in Germany during the occupation of France. Which sucks.
Still, I firmly believe in separating the art from the artist. I wonder what van Dongen would think about Texans feeling a sense of ownership of his red beret lady. It doesn’t take long here to be considered a local. Our former mayor Bob Lanier famously said of Houston, “Nobody here cares who your daddy is.” Nobody cares (or knows, for that matter) what Nazi-sympathizing Dutchman painted her. We just like her. She’s a self-conscious, skittish beauty, and she is ours.
They’re even selling her as a beaded brooch in the museum’s gift shop.
An earlier van Dongen lady (c. 1906), on loan from the Lewis Collection, is also currently on view in the Modern galleries in the MFAH Kinder building. These pictures strike me as the Tik Toks of their day—easily digestible dopamine hits of cool chicks.
The van Dongen I’m most interested in at the MFAH is not on view. His earlier Scene at a Racetrack (1906) has a pre-WWI prettiness I’d like to see in person. It may not be a Manet or Degas horse racing scene—it may not have that distinctive, inside-the-action composition—but I would like to check it out.
