This week I am going to feature dog art that inspires my own work. As I mentioned, I want to create an interior/exterior piece for my February Darby collage. No one does interiors and exteriors better than Pierre Bonnard, and he is also one of the premiere Dachshund painters in history. I endlessly return to his Dressing Table and Mirror to study his composition, use of light, and patterns. And, of course, his Dachshund sleeping on a brown pillow. How does he make this work without sinking the whole piece with a brown blob in the middle?
Poking around looking for more, I found this video (below) of Dita Amory, the associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who mounted the 2009 Pierre Bonnard Late Interiors exhibition. In it, she discusses her mission of "giving Pierre Bonnard his due." She also tells a tale of a tragic love triangle and a Dachshund painting that survived his wife's destructive rage. It is a piece I never saw before called Young Woman in the Garden…
Hopefully, you have the day off so you can take a moment (it's a little over 18 minutes) and listen to Dita Amory discuss Bonnard's overlooked place in art history, his fascinating work methods, his lover, and his wife. If you receive this post in an email, click through to Dog Art Today to view it.
I finally discovered the name of Bonnard's Dachshund, Poucette, which is a French female name. I always thought it was a little guy Doxie. Now, I'm looking anew, again.
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