December 24, 2010
A painting by Franz Kupka, a Czech avant-garde painter living in Paris. The painting is a mixture of realism and abstraction. Called The Yellow Scale, it depicts a portrait, but the painting technique consists of a feast of violent slashes of yellow impasto. This was a work of the transitional stage of Kupka’s oeuvre when he moved from an impressionistic style to the world of abstraction. In the painting we see a supremely bored male individual, staring at us with a stern expression on his green-tinted face, a wisp of black hair sweeping across a wide brow, lounging back in a yellow dressing gown, his head resting against a large soft pillow in an oriental cane armchair. There is a self-rolled cigarette in the semi-salute of his upraised left hand, whilst his right hand’s first finger rests in the opening of a yellow-covered Charpentier paperback on his lap. Who is this lounger? It is no other than Charles Baudelaire, the French decadent poet, based on one of Nadar’s daguerreotype photographs.

A painting by Franz Kupka, a Czech avant-garde painter living in Paris. The painting is a mixture of realism and abstraction. Called The Yellow Scale, it depicts a portrait, but the painting technique consists of a feast of violent slashes of yellow impasto. This was a work of the transitional stage of Kupka’s oeuvre when he moved from an impressionistic style to the world of abstraction.

In the painting we see a supremely bored male individual, staring at us with a stern expression on his green-tinted face, a wisp of black hair sweeping across a wide brow, lounging back in a yellow dressing gown, his head resting against a large soft pillow in an oriental cane armchair. There is a self-rolled cigarette in the semi-salute of his upraised left hand, whilst his right hand’s first finger rests in the opening of a yellow-covered Charpentier paperback on his lap.

Who is this lounger? It is no other than Charles Baudelaire, the French decadent poet, based on one of Nadar’s daguerreotype photographs.

6:02am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZshkRy2HR2Uk
(Notes: 1,471)
  
Filed under: kupka modernism east european bohemia baudlaire portrait 
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    I fuuucking love this.
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  21. narrowfeet reblogged this from mechanized and added:
    The Art Museum where I live has this painting on display. I went and bought a print of it in the gift shop, I loved it...
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