Les Nabis Was the Name Taken by a Group of Artists From Which Movement in Art?

French artists

Les Nabis (French: les nabis, French pronunciation: ​ [le nabi]) were a grouping of young French artists agile in Paris from 1888 until 1900, who played a large part in the transition from impressionism and academic art to abstruse art, symbolism and the other early movements of modernism. The members included Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Paul Ranson, Édouard Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Félix Vallotton, Paul Sérusier and Auguste Cazalis.^[ane] Most were students at the Académie Julian in Paris in the late 1880s. The artists shared a common admiration for Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and a determination to renew the art of painting, but varied greatly in their individual styles. They believed that a work of fine art was not a delineation of nature, but a synthesis of metaphors and symbols created by the artist.^[ii] In 1900, the artists held their final exhibition and went their separate ways.^[3]

Etymology [edit]

The Nabis took their name from a Hebrew term which comes from the word nebiim or "prophets"^{[4] [v] [6] [a]} The term was coined in 1888 by the linguist Auguste Cazalis,^[7] who drew a parallel betwixt the way these painters aimed to revitalize painting (as 'prophets of mod art') and the way the ancient prophets had rejuvenated Israel.^[8]

Beginning [edit]

Motif Romanesque by Maurice Denis (1890), one of the earliest Nabi paintings

The Nabis were a group of young artists of the Académie Julian in Paris, who wanted to transform the foundations of art. One of the artists, Paul Sérusier, had traveled to Pont-Aven in Oct 1888, where under the guidance of Paul Gauguin he made a small painting of the port on forest, equanimous of patches of vivid colour assembled to give the feeling of the port. The students called this first Nabis painting The Talisman, and it eventually became an icon of 20th-century art.^[three]

In 1889, the same year of the Paris International Exposition and the opening of the Eiffel Tower, the group held its first modest exposition at the Café des Arts, which was located without the grounds of the Exposition. It was titled The Impressionist and Synthesist Group, and included works by 2 well-known artists, Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard.

In August 1890, Maurice Denis, then 19 years one-time, gave the group a more concrete philosophy. Writing under the proper name Pierre Louis, he wrote an article in the journal Art et Critique entitled The Definition of Neo-traditionalism, which became the manifesto of the movement. The celebrated opening line of the essay was: "Call back that a moving picture, earlier beingness a boxing horse, a female person nude or some sort of anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order." This thought was non original to Denis; the idea had been frontward not long earlier by Hippolyte Taine in The Philosophy of Art, where Taine wrote: "A painting is a colored surface, in which the various tones and various degrees of light are placed with a certain choice; that is its intimate being." However, information technology was the expression of Denis which seized the attention of artists. As Denis explained, he did not mean that form of the painting was more than important than the bailiwick. He wrote, "The profoundness of our emotions comes from the sufficiency of these lines and these colors to explicate themselves...everything is independent in the beauty of the work." In his essay, he termed this new motion "neo-traditionalism", in opposition to the "progressivism" of the Neo-impressionists, led by Seurat.^[ix]

The post-obit yr, in 1891, three of the Nabis, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis, took a studio at 28 rue Pigalle in Paris. It was frequented past other early Nabis, including Ker-Xavier Roussel and Paul Sérusier, also as journalists and figures from the theatrical and literary world.

In 1892, the Nabis branched out into the theatrical world and the decorative arts. Paul Ranson, assisted by Sérusier, Bonnard, and Vuillard, designed sets for a theatrical presentation of the Bateau ivre of the poet Arthur Rimbaud. Maurice Denis made costumes and sets for another theatrical production, the Trilogy d'Antoina at the Théatre Moderne, and also painted a ceiling for the residence of the art collector and painter Henry Lerolle.

The Nabis held a group exhibition in Toulouse in June 1894, and the following year presented their work in Siegfried Bing's Maison de l'Fine art Nouveau, the famous gallery which had given its name to the Art Nouveau movement.^[3]

Throughout their existence the Nabis were a sort of one-half-serious semi-hugger-mugger club, who used humorous nicknames and a private vocabulary.^[10] Even the name of the group was secret until 1897. They chosen a studio an 'ergasterium'^[10] and ended their messages with the initials E.T.P.Thousand.5. et Chiliad.P., signifying En ta paume, mon verbe et ma pensée ("In your palm, my word and my thoughts").^[eleven]

Japanese influence [edit]

The graphic art of Japan, known as Japonism, particularly woodblock prints, was an important influence on the Nabis. The style was popularized in France by the art dealer Siegfried Bing, who traveled to Nippon to collect prints past Hokusai and other Japanese artists, and published a monthly art periodical, Le Japon Artistique, between May 1888 and April 1891, which offered color illustrations. In 1900 he organized an exhibit of seven hundred prints at the École des Beaux-Arts.^[12]

Pierre Bonnard was especially influenced by the Japanese manner; his nickname among the Nabis was "Le plus japonard". For one series of 4 paintings created in 1890–91, The Women in the Garden, at present in the Musée d'Orsay, Bonnard adapted a Japanese format called kakemono with a narrow vertical canvas. The models are his sister Andrée and his cousin Berthe Schaedin. The four figures are presented in curving, serpentine postures, like those in Japanese prints. The faces of the women look away from the artist; the bold patterns of their consumes and the foliage behind them dominate the paintings. He originally conceived the work as a Japanese screen, but he finally decided to carve up it into four paintings, and to emphasize the decorative aspect, he added a painted border around the canvases.^[12]

The theme of women in a garden, stylistically adapted from Japanese prints, appeared in the work of other Nabis, including Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier. Denis used the theme of women in gardens in paintings and decorative murals. Sérusier adjusted the same format in his Women at the Bound (1898), stylistically depicting women descending a hill to take h2o from a spring.^[12]

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  Maurice Denis, Evening in September (1891)

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Faith, symbolism, myths and legends [edit]

The Nabis were influenced by the literature, music and theater of the symbolist motility, and, among some of the Nabis, there was a strong current of mysticism and esotericism. Their approach to their club was partly humorous and whimsical; the studio of Ranson at 25 Boulevard du Montparnasse was chosen their "temple", Madame Ranson was termed "The light of the Temple", and the original Nabi painting by Sérusier was displayed in the studio like a shrine, and titled The Talisman. Sérusier whimsically painted Paul Ranson in a sort of Nabic robe, with a staff and a text before him. However, they besides had a more serious side. They rejected the materialism of the new industrial age, and admired the poesy of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Edgar Allan Poe. They placed themselves in opposition to the current of naturalism expressed in the paintings of Courbet and Manet and the literature of Émile Zola.^[13]

Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier were the Nabis who most often painted religious subjects. The work of Denis was influenced past the paintings of Fra Angelico. He often painted scenes and themes taken from the Bible, but with the figures in mod costume, in simplified landscapes and surrounded by light, a symbol of faith. In 1895, he received a commission for a series of seven large paintings called The Legend of Saint Hubert for the Paris home of Baron Cochin. They illustrated the story of Saint Hubert hunting in the forest of Aquitaine, seeing a vision of Christ, and being converted to Christianity.^[13]

Paul Sérusier painted less Christian and more mystical scenes, particularly La Vision pros du torrent or The rendezvous of fairies (1897), showing a group of women in Breton costumes passing through the forest, carrying bouquets of flowers to a ceremony, and Femmes à la Source, depicting a serial of women solemnly descending through a mystical wood to a leap. This illustrates the legend of the Danaides, who in mythology were condemned to fill and refill leaking jugs of h2o from a bound. He painted several works of women in Breton costumes conducting pagan ceremonies in the forests of Brittany.^[13]

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  Maurice Denis, Le Calvaire (Climbing to Calvary) (1889), Musée d'Orsay

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  Maurice Denis, Last scene of the Legend of Saint Hubert (1897), Departmental Museum of Maurice Denis, Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1897)

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  Paul Sérusier, The Sacred Wood

Interiors [edit]

The Nabis Pierre Bonnard, Félix Vallotton and Édouard Vuillard, created particularly remarkable paintings depicting the interiors of homes, where the inhabitants of the rooms were almost entirely absorbed into the intense floral decoration and effects. In some of the paintings, such every bit Vuillard'southward The Seamstress and La Tabular array de toilet (1895), or People in an Interior - Music, it is hard to even find and count the individuals in the painting.^{[14] [15]}

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  Édouard Vuillard, Adult female in a Striped Dress (1895), National Gallery of Art

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  Édouard Vuillard, People in Interior- Music (1896), Petit Palais Museum, Paris

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  Misia at the Pianoforte (c. 1898), Édouard Vuillard, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Women in the garden [edit]

I of the nigh mutual subjects of the Nabis was women in an idyllic garden setting, usually picking flowers or fruit. It appeared in four panels representing the seasons of a immature woman's life by Maurice Denis (1890–91), painted for the bedchamber of a immature girl, and in the panels of women in the public parks of Paris by Édouard Vuillard (1894) painted for the residence of his patron Alexandre Nathanson; 2 paintings of women and children picking apples in an orchard by Pierre Bonnard (1894–96); and in a tapestry by Paul Ranson, Leap, depicting three women picking fruit. All the images are highly stylized, often using the same serpentine forms to represent the women, the trees and the foliage. The young women in the series past Denis are shown traveling along a road, dressed in vestal white in the first painting, and then in unlike colors every bit they reach maturity in the final painting.^[three]

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  April or The road of life by Maurice Denis, painted for the chamber of a young girl. (1892)

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  Women picking flowers in the garden, tapestry by Paul Ranson (1895)

Decorative fine art [edit]

1 of the stated objectives of the Nabis was to break down the barriers between art and ordinary life, and in particular the distinction between fine art and decoration. Much of the art they created was designed specifically to be decorative, for display in salons and dining rooms. They designed screens, murals, wallpaper, tapestries, dishware, lampshades, and ornamentation for piece of furniture, as well as theater decor and costume design, and graphic design for advertising posters. Paul Ranson, working with Art Nouveau architect Henry Van de Velde fabricated murals to decorate the dining room of art gallery owner Siegfried Bing. After a visit to the The states, where he saw the stained glass designs of Louis Condolement Tiffany and his firm, Bing invited the Nabis to submit their own designs for Tiffany glass. Roussel, Vuillard, Vallotton, Ranson, Denis, Bonnard, and Ibels all fabricated designs, which Bing displayed in his gallery in Paris in Apr 1895, along with designs of not-Nabis, including Toulouse-Lautrec. In the end the windows were not fabricated, but Maurice Denis connected to create window designs on symbolist themes, with bold designs and vivid colors. In 1895, Vuillard was commissioned to pattern a series of plates, which featured women in highly stylized costumes.^{[16] [15]}

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  The Ladder in the Foliage past Maurice Denis (1892), canvas on a wood console, fabricated for the ceiling of the dwelling of art patron Henry Lerolle. The aforementioned woman on the ladder is seen from four points of view.

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  Plate depicting a adult female in a striped blouse, by Édouard Vuillard (1895)

Graphic arts [edit]

Members of Les Nabis worked in a variety of media, using oils on both canvas and cardboard, and distemper on canvas and wall ornamentation, and they also produced posters, prints, book illustrations, textiles and piece of furniture. Considered to be on the cutting edge of modern art during their early period, their subject thing was representational (though often Symbolist in inspiration), but was design-oriented along the lines of the Japanese prints they so admired, and Art Nouveau. However, the artists of the Nabis circle were highly influenced by the paintings of the Impressionists, and thus while sharing the flatness, page layout, and negative space of fine art nouveau and other decorative modes, much of LesNabis' art has a painterly, non-realistic wait, with color palettes reminiscent of Cézanne and Gauguin. Bonnard'southward posters and lithographs are more than firmly in the Art Nouveau, or Toulouse-Lautrec way. After the plough of the century, equally modern art moved towards Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Abstraction, LesNabis were viewed as conservatives and, indeed, were among the last grouping of artists to stick to the roots and artistic ambitions of the Impressionists, pursuing these ends well-nigh into the middle of the 20th century. In their afterward years, these painters too largely abandoned their earlier interests in decorative and applied arts.

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  Félix Vallotton, La raison probante (The Cogent Reason), a woodcut from the series Intimités (1898)

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  Maurice Denis, Frontispiece lithograph from the series Amour (1899)

Breakup [edit]

In 1897, the Nabis were not present at the well-known Salon des Indépendants, but instead held their own exposition at the Galerie Vollard, more avant-garde than the Salon. Their last exhibition as a group took place in 1900 at the Galerie Bernheim, with works of Bonnard, Denis, Ibels, Maillol, Roussel, Sérusier, Vallotton and Vuillard. After that bear witness, each of the artists went his separate style.^[3]

Looking back in 1909, Denis described the accomplishment of the Nabis. "Art is no longer a visual sensation that we gather, like a photograph, as it were, of nature. No, it is a creation of our spirit, for which nature is only the occasion."^[17]

In 1937, Vuillard described the breakdown of the Nabis. "...The march of progress was and then rapid. Society was ready to welcome cubism and surrealism earlier we had reached what we had imagined as our goal. We establish ourselves in a way suspended in the air."^[xviii]

Members and associates [edit]

• Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), le nabi très japonard
• Maurice Denis (1870–1943), le nabi aux belles icônes
• Maxime Dethomas (1869–1929)
• Meyer de Haan (1852–1895), le nabi hollandais
• Rene Georges Hermann-Paul (1864–1940)
• Henri-Gabriel Ibels (1867–1936), le nabi journaliste
• Georges Lacombe (1868–1916), le nabi sculpteur
• Lugné-Poe (1869–1940)
• Aristide Maillol (1861–1944)
• Paul Ranson (1864–1909), le nabi plus japonard que le nabi japonard
• József Rippl-Rónai (1861–1927), le nabi hongrois
• Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867–1944)
• Paul Sérusier (1864–1927), le nabi à la barbe rutilante
• Marguérite Sérusier, wife of Paul Sérusier; a notable decorative painter
• Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), le nabi étranger
• January Verkade (1868–1946), le nabi obéliscal
• Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940), le nabi zouave

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Other members of the group included the playwright Pierre Veber, the musician Pierre Hermant, and the linguist Auguste Cazalis,^[19] chosen (by Ranson) le nabi Ben Kallyre.^[20]

Gallery [edit]

See also [edit]

• Pont-Aven School
• Henry Lerolle, patron
• Odilon Redon

Notes [edit]

1. ^ The French term nabi (as well used in English), referring to a person inspired to speak the word of God, is clearly related to the Hebrew term for prophet – נביא (navi) mentioned frequently in the Hebrew Bible – and the similar Standard arabic discussion نَبِيّ (nabiyy). The word appears in many languages, including Indonesian.

References [edit]

1. ^ Symbolist Art Theories: A Critical Anthology, edited by Henri Dorra, p.352
2. ^ Nabis, French artists in Encyclopædia Britannica online edition
3. ^ ^{a b c d e} Bétard, Daphne, La révolution Nabie, in Les Nabis et le décor, Beaux-Arts Éditions, pp. viii-21
4. ^ Enclopaedia Britannica on-line edition, "The Nabis", retrieved 19 April 2020
5. ^ Pierre Bonnard, the graphic art, p. 7
6. ^ Burhan 1979, p. 231: "In that location is, in fact, every reason to believe that the championship was chosen by these young painters as a reference to Islamic traditions, since when-e'er Serusier signed a canvass 'Nabi,' ... he wrote the discussion out in Arabic script." as quoted in Pierre Bonnard, the graphic art, notes
7. ^ Brooker, Peter (2013). The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Book 3, Role 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 91. ISBN 0199659583.
8. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, headword nabi
9. ^ Bouillon 2006, pp. 20–21.
10. ^ ^{a b} "The life and art of Édouard Vuillard". Christie's. vii Feb 2019. Archived from the original on 21 March 2021. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
11. ^ "In The Palm of Your Hand, My Words and My Thoughts". Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. 2017. Archived from the original on 11 January 2021. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
12. ^ ^{a b c} Lacambre, Geneviève, La déferlante japonaise, published in Les Nabis et le décor, Beaux Arts Editions (March 2019), pp. 38-forty
13. ^ ^{a b c} Raffali, Ludovic, Les Nabis - Un motion Symbolist? in Les Nabis et le Decor, L'Objet d'Art, March 2019, pp. 63, 64
14. ^ Jolin, Camille, Les Intéieurs de Vuillars- Entre Poésie Mystère, L'Objet d'Art, Les Nabis et Le Decor, March 2019, pp. 52-55
15. ^ ^{a b} Les Nabis et le décor - Musée du Luxembourg, Paris
16. ^ Jolin, Camille, Le Beau dans le quotidian, in Les Nabis et le Decor, pp. 29-41, in 50'Objet D'Art, March 2019
17. ^ Bouillon 2006, pp. 17–18.
18. ^ Pierre Bonnard and Ingid Rybeck, Chez Bonnard a Deauville, Konstrevy no. four, Stockholm (1937), cited in Fifty'objet de 50'Art, Les Nabis et le Decor (March 2019), page 65
19. ^ 1000. L. Groom, Édouard Vuillard: Painter-decorator: Patrons and Projects, 1892-1912 (Yale University Press, 1993), p.10
20. ^ Many of the attributed nicknames are cited in Willibrord (Jan) Verkade, Die Unruhe zu Gott: Erinnerungen eines Malermönchs, 5th Edition (Herder & Co., Freiburg im Breisgau 1930), pp.67–70.

Bibliography [edit]

• Bouillon, Jean-Paul (2006). Maurice Denis - Le spirituel dans 50'art (in French). Paris: Gallimard. ISBN978-ii-07-031929-9.
• Cogeval, Guy (2015). Bonnard. Paris: Hazan, Malakoff. (in French) ISBN 978-2-7541-08-36-2*

Farther reading [edit]

• Boyer, Patricia Eckert (1989). The Nabis and the Parisian Avant-Garde. Rutgers Academy Press. ISBN978-0-8135-1380-5.
• Chasse, Charles (1969). The Nabis and Their Period. London: Lund Humphries. ASIN B001387EYI.
• Clement, Russell T. (1996). Iv French Symbolists: A Sourcebook on Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Maurice Denis. Greenwood Press. ISBN978-0-313-29752-vi.
• Dorival, Bernard (1957). Les peintres du vingtième siècle; Nabis, Fauves, Cubistes (in French). Paris: Editions Pierre Tisne. ASIN B000PT18NY.
• Freches-Thory, Claire; Terrasse, Antoine (2003). Nabis: Bonnard, Vuillard and Their Circumvolve. London: Flammarion. ISBN978-2-08-011076-3.
• Kostenevitch, Albert (2005). Bonnard: and the Nabis. London: Parkstone Press. ISBN978-one-85995-015-9.

External links [edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Les Nabis

• The Prophets of Montmartre, an article on Les Nabis by Alamantra
• Pierre Bonnard, the Graphic Art, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Bonnard and others in the Les Nabis commonage

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Nabis

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