From the Phillips Collection—The Poetry of the Nabis

From October 26, 2019 through January 26, 2020, the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, is featuring “Bonnard to Vuillard: The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life—The Nabi Collection of Vicki and Roger Sant.” The Dresser sensitive to the title of this vibrant exhibition of works promised by the Sants to the Phillips decided to include literary colleagues and poets Margo Stever and Susana Case in this review.

The Nabis were initially a group of art students who came together in the fall of 1888, after seeing a small abstract by Paul Sérusier. For this painting, Sérusier had been instructed by Paul Gauguin about using colorful paints straight from the tube to express what he saw in nature and to elicit an emotional response.

Sérusier’s “Talisman,” painted on the lid of a cigar box, became the flashpoint for this brotherhood that came to include Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, Aristide Maillol, Paul Ranson, Ker-Xavier Roussel, and Félix Vallotton. The group named themselves Nabi which is a transliteration of the Hebrew word navi, meaning prophet.

While the works of the Nabis began with Gauguin’s vision of nature, these painters expanded their boundaries to find beauty in the everyday life and the decorative arts (such as screens, stained glass windows, book illustrations, murals, posters, and advertising).

Among the favorite works of the Dresser, Margo Stever and Susana Case is Bonnard’s eye-catching screen “Le Maraboutet les Quatre Grenouilles” (“Stork and Four Frogs”). The screen, which introduces the exhibition, has a distinct Japanese layout except that the color is much bolder and the size of the stork, frogs, and flowers are much larger than what a Japanese painter would have portrayed. Japanese subtlety had no place in the work of the Nabis.

The richly red “Intérieur au lit rouge” or “La Chambre nuptiale” (“Interior with Red Bed” or “The Bridal Chamber”) by Édouard Vuillard caught the visiting poets collective eyes not only for that red bed but also for the patterned wallpaper, festive rug, and sophisticated gray-green chair upholstery with dark, possibly brown or black, irregular splotches. Certainly the three women in the room add energy as well as intimacy as they prepare the room for the bridal night.

The poets lingered over a sobering set of Bonnard works that included a study for “La Petite Blanchisseuse” (“The Little Laundry Girl”) and the actual painting as well as a more full-blown canvas showing the little laundry girl walking in the dusty street at a slight remove from a group of well-dressed high-society denizens. This was one of the few instances in the exhibition of social commentary.

On a more abstract level, the exhibit included a number of works that spoke primarily to design. Two works stood out—one of a tiger drawn with disconnected lines in a landscape that looks more like wallpaper than jungle, Paul Ranson’s “Tigre dans les jungles” (Tiger in the jungle) and the other a young woman reading a letter wearing a blouse that possibly imitates primitive hieroglyphs and which echo behind her in an ethereal backdrop, Vuillard’s “La Jeune Femme lisant un lettre” (“Young Woman Reading a Letter”).

To conclude, the Dresser  asks how does The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life read? Here are two examples. In Margo Stever’s poem “Surfaces,” the poet explores the subtleties of shadow and light—what moonlight or a dark summer storm reveals in the sleeping chamber, what shapes can be discovered like the blanket imitating the body, what sounds are heard such as the paws of the cats tapping out their desire for food until the sea of rumpled covers calm and the cats, and most likely their humans, curl into sleep.

SURFACES

          by Margo Taft Stever

Take possession

of the blanket, the feel

of it, the smooth

and the lean, the lying

down of it, the way it

imitates the body.

This is the promise

I keep—to rest on the

bed under moonlight.

Yet so many cats

knead the surfaces;

their paws tap-dance,

wishing for food.

Th dark summer

storm rips across

the bed, rumpling

covers like waves,

whitecaps against

each other.

Cats’ paws skim

the sheets as if

called by a higher spirit.

Their willowy bodies

curl together in sleep.

from Cracked Piano

In Susana Case’s poem excerpt “No Sign of Activity,” the intimacy of morning between husband and wife turns lethal but also explodes with profound color and intense feeling. Moreover, color in this everyday life is gender coded in the expected way: blue for male and pink for female.

NO SIGN OF ACTIVITY [an excerpt]

                by Susana H. Case

Every day, the shoe factory and then,

one day, inevitably, the shotgun.

Blood blooms more robust

than the flowers stenciled

on the yellow, blue, and white

kitchen linoleum.

Blood stains redder

than the Libby’s tomato juice

next to the Heinz Home Style soup.

A box of bullets sits on a kitchen shelf.

That morning, the weather was so clear.

She thought she was a good wife,

set the table for breakfast the night before,

dusted around the easy chair

where he usually reads the newspaper—

this is a gendered household:

blue and pink, blue and pink.

In bed, blood pooled beneath her,

she wears a pink nightgown

under a pink blanket.

On the floor, next to her, is the husband,

face down, in blue pajamas

on a blue comforter.

from Body Falling,Sunday Morning

As the exhibit displays, the Nabis were commissioned to illustrate books of poetry by such prominent authors as Paul Verlaine and André Gide. Collaborations among artists deepen the audience experience. The Dresser thanks her poetic colleagues for the light, color, and contours they added to the experience of seeing “Bonnard to Vuillard: The Intimate Poetry of Everyday Life” and to the writing of this review.