212 – A yellow book

Ramon Casas I Carbó, Jove decadent. Després del ball, 1899. Museu de Montserrat, Spain.

Don’t be fooled by fame and celebrity – there are some wonderful works of art by artists who only make it to the footnotes of art history, of whom you may never have heard. The ‘poster girl’ for the Ashmolean Museum’s spectacular Colour Revolution (about which I will be speaking this Monday, 11 December at 6pm) is a painting by one such artist, perhaps: Ramon Casas, one of whose works could be found in a corner of the National Gallery’s sprawling After Impressionism exhibition, whose name I had only previously known as an associate of the young Picasso in Barcelona. I’m afraid I object to what they’ve done to the painting online, and on the cover of the catalogue, but you’ll have to join me on Monday (or check the Ashmolean’s website) to find out why! The following week (18 December) I will talk about the Royal Academy’s popular Impressionists on Paper – which ties in with some of the developments covered by Colour Revolution in a rather satisfactory way. It also has some fantastic work by some lesser-known artists, as well as a couple of unexpected works by the most famous. In the New Year – well, that’s in the future – but I hope I will have decided what I’m doing by next week! However, I do know that I will be arranging more in-person tours of the National Gallery: for those of you who couldn’t join me for The Early Italians I will repeat that visit on Wednesday, 17 January, 11:00-12:30. Meanwhile, as ever, keep your eyes on the diary.

Casas was a leading artist in the Modernisme movement, the Catalan version of Art Nouveau, whose most famous exponent was the architect Antoni Gaudí. He was one of the founders of Els Quatre Gats – ‘The Four Cats’ – a bar and club which also exhibited art, inspired by an equivalent club, Le Chat Noir in Paris. It was based at the Casa Martí, designed by one of Gaudí’s most brilliant contemporaries, Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Do seek out his buildings if you go to Barcelona: they are wonderfully elaborate, and far easier to take on board than Gaudí’s other-worldly elaborations – I’m hard pressed to say which of the architects I prefer! Els Quatre Gats is a Catalan expression meaning ‘just a few people’, with the implication that they are also a bit strange. ‘The usual suspects’ might be a better translation… It opened in 1897 but closed, due to financial difficulties, just six years later – although it was ‘revived’ in the 1970s, and is now a rather good restaurant. In its short, original life it became the meeting place of the avant garde, with what is probably Casas’ most famous painting being exhibited there almost as a shop sign.

Ramon Casas and Pere Caseu on a Tandem is a double portrait of the artist and the proprietor of the establishment, effectively two of ‘els quatre gats‘. The tandem illustrates the idea that they were going to break with tradition, as expressed metaphorically by the inscription at the top right: ‘To ride a bike, you can’t keep your back straight’. It was at Els Quatre Gats, in 1899, that the young Pablo Ruiz had his first solo exhibition… or, to give his matronymic, as well as the patronymic, Pablo Ruiz y Picasso. He was seventeen. In the same year Ramon Casas also had his first one-man show – even though by this stage he was an ‘old man’ at 33. Despite having largely funded Els Quatre Gats his exhibition was held at the Sala Parés, the oldest gallery in Barcelona, and it was on this occasion that today’s painting was first exhibited.

I love the extravagance – the richness of colour, and the complete collapse of the subject, the ‘young decadent’ of the title. This is usually translated as ‘a decadent young woman’, but there is no indication of gender in the Catalan, even if it is obvious when we look at the painting. Is this complete collapse the result of exhaustion? The full title suggests that it might be – ‘Young Decadent. After the Dance’. However, it could equally well be ennui – maybe the dance was just too, too boring. The young lady has returned home, taken a book to read, and collapsed on the sofa. She can’t even be bothered to read the book. The diagonal of her body is not the strong, muscular diagonal of baroque art – which would be closer to 45˚ to the horizontal – but more shallow, and broken by the fall of the legs. It’s this shallowness which communicates a sense of lassitude, I think, of ‘not being bothered’ about anything. The fall of the arm, and the long black length of fabric between the arm and the skirt increase the sense of sprawling. The right arm is apparently lodged behind the cushion, and the hand, resting on top of the cushion, is holding a yellow book. She really couldn’t spread out much further, she couldn’t take up any more space.

To the right of the painting the shallow diagonal of the body is matched by the cushions, which form an equivalent diagonal continuing all the way to the left of the painting. Where the legs collapse over the front of the sofa, and the parallel of body and cushions is broken, the flat green surface of the seat emphasizes the ‘absence’ of the skirts, and helps to increase the sense of collapse. The wall appears to be decorated in a similar green colour to the sofa, although it is in shadow, which helps to push the sofa, and so the subject, towards us. On the central vertical axis of the painting the yellow book rings out bright and clear, but the woman’s chin, almost embedded in her chest, confirms the suspicion that she is unlikely to read any more any time soon.

There is something almost spider-like about the figure, with the black skirt, the scarf-like fabric, and the sleeve all radiating from the woman’s torso. I know, there aren’t eight such ‘projections’, but even so… Clearly the green of the sofa and of the wall are the most dominant elements, but a suggestion that the room might contain even more, equally brilliant colours is given by the rich red, yellow and green of the rug which appears at the very bottom of the painting just underneath the one visible foot. There are also some green objects, and maybe one yellow, leaning against something – probably the wall, but apparently the picture frame – in the bottom right-hand corner. They could be more books, or possibly journals. The painting was first exhibited by one of Barcelona’s art journals, Pèl e Ploma, ‘Hair and Feather’. The title would seem to have nothing to do with art, but the implication is ‘brush and pen’, or, in other words, paintings and drawings. The publication was financed – as Els Quatre Gats had been – by Ramon Casas himself, and he designed many of its covers, adapting Jove Decadent for one of them. Maybe he is implying that the future issues of the journal, which maybe we are seeing lined up in the bottom right-hand corner, would be entirely suitable both for the young and the decadent…

Given that the model’s outfit is entirely black, it is hard to make out what the material which falls almost equidistant between her arm and her legs is, but in the print version of this image it is clear that this is indeed one end of a form of scarf, which is tied in an enormous bow under her chin. In the painting you might just be able to make out the two loops of fabric falling below her cheek and towards the pillow on the right, and to the left of the bright flash of red formed by her mouth. The other end falls along her drooping left arm. Her right arm disappears into the cleft between two of the cushions. Casas seems to be enjoying following the different lines of fabric, and exploring the spaces between the cushions and the way in which her head is subsiding into one of the gaps. Almost matching her lips, her hair is a flaming red, piled up on top of her head, falling over her brow, and flicking out above her nose and under her left ear.

Although exhibited in Barcelona, the canvas was painted in France. The model was Madeleine Boisguillaume, the daughter of a fabric merchant who, after her father’s early death, supplemented her earnings as a seamstress by modelling. She posed first, apparently, for Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, and then Casas and his colleague (and associate in the publication of Pèl e Ploma) Miquel Utrillo, who was an art critic and father (probably) of the better known Maurice. Like Casas, he was one of Els Quatre Gats – the four men who founded the eponymous club – as was Santiago Rusiñol, who also employed Madeleine. While in Paris they would all hang out at Le Chat Noir, not to mention the more famous Moulin de la Galette. Photographs suggest that Boisguillaume really did dress like this.

The key to the painting, though, is the book that Madeleine is holding. It may look like a small and insignificant tome – even if the cover is a brilliant yellow – but look how similar it is to a book currently on display in the exhibition at the Ashmolean museum.

I’m not talking about those on the left and right, but the small one at the bottom centre of the photograph. Those to left and right are relevant, though. They are copies of The Yellow Book, an equivalent in some ways to Pèl e Ploma, although with a greater interest in literature. Published in London between 1894 and 1897, it was illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, and associated with notions of aestheticism and decadence. When Oscar Wilde was arrested in 1895, he was carrying a yellow book – but not The Yellow Book – one of the others. However, it is believed that Beardsley suggested this particular yellow colour because of the French equivalents – a multitude of books which were like the closed volume, bottom centre, as well as the open one at the top, which is also yellow, even if you can’t see its cover. They are both the type of book that your maiden aunt would be mightily displeased to see you reading: the yellow cover was enough to tell you that its contents would be thoroughly disreputable. One of these two has a title which is sufficiently unpleasant for me not to want to tell you, but the other is almost delectable in its prolixity: The Secret Loves of an Imperial Countess, in her own words, Followed by the Saucy, Curious and Amusing Pleasures and Adventures of Several good-time girls of Paris. It was written by P. Cuisin and published in Paris in 1850. The fact that Madeleine Boisguillaume has such a yellow book in hand is enough to confirm the title of the painting: she really is a young decadent. Precisely which scurrilous novella she has been reading we will never know, but the genre, together with The Yellow Book in England, help to explain why the decade became known as The Yellow Nineties – where ‘yellow’ can be read as equivalent to ‘naughty’. There were other, more wholesome reasons, though, which I will of course mention on Monday. As for the greens – well, they could be altogether more toxic…