Ok let’s keep going.I am here on this public platform sharing my discoveries in hopes that you are following along and developing interest in the work of Natalia Gontcharova. I share it, many times, as I discover it. I guess to a degree it’s the discipline of weekly sharing that pushes the process forward and I continue to challenge myself to think of new ways to express what I know about this great artist’s contributions to the world of art. The main point being though is showing how appreciation of her is not mysterious or based in individual feelings but is an issue of comprehension and learning. She writes her work like an author writes her articles. Perceptive, concise, truthful and matter of fact, Gontcharova is like a chronicler of the first half of the 20th c. When you adopt this perspective your looking becomes clearer and more acute and any doubts about what you are witnessing should dissolve. At any rate, here is today’s data.

It has to do with this idea of her as a copyist. I started to think that ‘copyist’ isn’t quite right as a descriptor. She doesn’t usually copy in the academic sense that way artists have for centuries. She is not trying her hand at emulating ‘the work of the master’, in fact she is challenging the meaning of the thing she is repeating. This is not the typical practice. It’s more like she is pointing out the emptiness of, the fallacy of, originality as a concentration of artistic work. She re-makes the subject with a different outcome. It’s amazing.

Here is a comparison between Maurice Utrillo’s ‘Rue du Chevalier de la Barre, les Cupoles du Sacre Coeur et le Clocher de Saint Pierre de Montmartre’ from 1926 and Goncharova’s remake of the same view. Utrillo was the great romanticizer of the Paris street scene. All of his Paris scenes are sentimental, sweet and seemingly designed with the ex pat American in mind who has come to Paris with the intention of finding inspiration from the streets alone.

Natalia, as an entirely different sort of ex pat, has a much more skeptical view of the qualities of the Paris streets. Remember she is there involuntarily, trapped in the West by the forces of history, and is not especially happy about it. For her Paris is a prison and a cultural cesspool full of charlatans and money grubbers. She paints le Sacre Coeur from a totally contrasting perspective but using the same language as Utrillo. Please take a look at the visual aid and see for yourself. The superficial similarity between the two paintings is incredible and you need to look carefully in order to differentiate but your effort will not go unrewarded. Which do you relate to more?