ISABELLE BONZOM

MAKING ART, BARUCH

A lecture by Isabelle Bonzom, September 13, 2012,

 

invited by art historian and Distinguished Professor, Gail Levin,

at Baruch College, the City University of New York

Art historian and Distinguished Professor, Gail Levin, is an expert on the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with diverse research interests which include the works of Edward Hopper and Lee Krasner. She is the former curator of the Hopper Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Among other books, she is the author of the Catalogue Raisonné and the biography on Edward Hopper. On September 13, 2012, Gail Levin invited Isabelle Bonzom to talk to her students at Baruch College about the work process of a painter.

 

Isabelle Bonzom is an artist born in France. After earning a doctorate in art, she pursued post doctorate studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris, focusing there on fresco and art philosophy. She completed her studies at the Sorbonne. In 2010, she authored a reference book about buon fresco, "La fresque, art et technique" (Eyrolles Publishing house). She is an oil painter, a watercolorist and fresco painter. Her painting has been exhibited in art centers, museums and galleries since 1987 and is held by public and private collections, notably in France, Belgium, Mexico, South Korea and the United States. See Biography.

 

She has given lectures at various prestigious institutions, among them are the National Museum of Modern Art (Pompidou Center) in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington as well as the Institut d'Études Supérieures des Arts, in Paris and the New York Academy of Art. Isabelle Bonzom was awarded a grant from the Kress Foundation in support of her talk « Goya affresco » given at the annual College Art Association conference, in Los Angeles on February  2018, a spart of the « Working out of medium » panel organized by David Pullins, curator at the Frick Collection.

Making Art – The business of a Painter

 

The title of this lecture is a play on words with the financial and economic language, a wink at the audience composed of students in economics and business. In etymology, the term "art" contains the verb "to make".

 

Isabelle Bonzom studies the links between the matters and materials, the work of the artist and power and symbols of the images. In this lecture, she talks about the support, the mediums and the paint. She likes it fluid and plays with the transparencies. She especially focuses on the links between her three specialities as a painter (watercolor, fresco and oil). She also tackles the notions of representation, illusion, flesh, motion, story, composition and fragmentation. She talks about some of the artists she likes and who have nourished her work, such as Seurat, Goya, Chardin, Masaccio, Rubens and Hopper. 

 

Isabelle Bonzom talks about the relationships between the techniques - the materiality of the paint, the physicality of the painting - and the thought which transforms this matter and the material into art. This talk is also about the artistic approach which is blooming endlessly. 

List of the works commented during this lecture:

 

1- "Preparing the wooden panel"

2- "The paint and the medium in the palette, thinned with turpentine"

3- "While painting "After the Tate" with the liquid paint and the large brush"

4- Bonzom "After the Tate" 2010-2011 - oil/wood- 140 x 140 cm

5- Bonzom "Short rib" 1997 - watercolor, ink/canvas, 42 x 58,5 cm - Private collection, USA

6- Bonzom " Meat" - 2000 - watercolor, oil/canvas - 75 x 56 cm - Private collection, France

7- Hopper " Automat" 1927 - oil/canvas - 71,4 × 91,4 cm - Des Moines Art Center - USA

8- Chardin " La Raie" circa 1726 - oil/canvas - 114 x 146 cm - Musée du Louvre - France

9- Rubens " La chasse au tigre" circa 1616 - oil/canvas - 253 x 319 cm - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes - France

10- Rubens " La chasse au tigre" detail - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes - France

11- Bonzom " La siesta" 1993 - ink, watercolor/wall, in the garden of a mansion - Neuilly/Seine - France

12- "Slaked lime and sand for the buon fresco"

13- "Pigment of Caeruleum blue"

14- Bonzom "Break" 2011 - buon fresco/wall - 140 x 87 cm - France

15- Bonzom "Break" detail - buon fresco

16- Goya "Frescoes of San Antonio de la Florida" - Detail of the dome :"Miracle of San Antonio" detail - 1798 - fresco/wall - Madrid - Spain

17- "Dripping on the canvas, while painting "Gush, IV" 2010" 

18- Bonzom" Gush, IV" 2010 - oil/canvas - 140 x 140 cm

19- Still of the movie Kaos - Taviani Brothers - 1984

20- Seurat " Poseuse de profil" 1887- oil/panel - 25 x 15,9 cm - Musée d'Orsay - France

21- Bonzom "Arborescence,V" 2007 - distemper/paper - 31 x 41 cm- Private collection - France

22- Bonzom "Octopus" detail - 2008 - buon fresco wall - Private reisdence - Provence, France

23- Bonzom "Octopus" sinopia

24- "Making "Octopus", 2 giornate"

25- "Making "Octopus", 3 giornate"

26- "Making "Octopus", engraving the lime coat"

27- Masaccio " Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise" circa 1425 - buon fresco - 208 x 88 cm- Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence - Italy