Brehm Center

Please note: This essay is posted here by permission of its author. It was originally posted on November 17 on the author's personal blog, Refractions.

Myriads of Parisians, returning home from work, rushed about in the square in front of Gare de Lyon station. "He would have been able to see Seine river," Gilles Rouaut told me, and pointed to far horizon where the newer buildings now block the view. He stroked the chair his grandfather would have sat, and showed me a photo of Georges Rouault with Marthe, wife of over fifty years, to the opposite end of the window. Georges Rouault (1871 - 1954) was a keen observer of people, and he must have enjoyed watching the square from his window. He painted figures and portraits as "a fit object of grace, while more visibly born in and for suffering."[1] He sought out the marginalized poor, prostitutes, clowns, politicians; to him Kings and homeless were equally significant as his symbol of brokenness. But ultimately they, especially the misfits, were celebrated as God's chosen manifestation of light into darkness. I asked Gilles if this area was popular area for artists to live, having just walked about the gentrified "creative zone" nearby filled with design studios, art students, and cafes. "No," Gilles told me, " back then this area was not very popular among artists." Gare de Lyon area does not have the charm of Montmartre, where Rouault once painted with late-impressionsists like Degas, or the intellectual rigor of St. Andre-des-Arts, where Sartre and other existentialists would have discussed philosophy; no, what you see, and must have been from Rouault's studio were scenes of ordinary people mingled about in a theatre of life.

We should expect Georges Rouault to live where no other artists would live. His work, and his life seem distinct from the conventional creative forces of the time. Picasso, Braques, Brancussi, Matisse and others would have walked about the streets of Paris then, as well as Cezanne if not for the light of Provence in southern France to have lured him back. Georges seemed to live and work from a different sense of time and calling. When the French state began to close down monasteries and ban Bibles from schools, Rouault turned to Catholicism as a result, knowing that such decision would put him at odds with the authorities. He was not a person who accepted conventions at face value; he probed deeply into both the malaise and despair of those around him, and at the same time held to a deep abiding reality of greater hope.

Though he was not overly social, those who knew him, they got to know him well: and they testify to his trustworthiness as a friend. When the French salon master and teacher Gustuv Moreau died in 1898, it was Rouault who was asked to manage and run the estate. But he never seemed to seek attention, to demand the world around him, including the elite society, to pay homage to him. He seemed content to see himself as a craftsman or an artisan, given the task to capture the monumental struggles of a common person

Rouault was born on the day the ended Prussian-French war. As the casualty mounted for the French Commune, and with no hospital to go to, his mother gave birth to him by herself in the basement shelter. 'I believe [...] that in the context of the massacres, fires and horrors, I have retained (from the cellar in which I was born) in my eyes and in my mind the fleeting matter which good fire fixes and incrusts,'[2] Georges later recounted. His early memories included being taken to Victor Hugo state funeral march in Paris when he was 12. His "ground zero" began at the cellar of his Belleville home, and expanded as he saw the devastation and the fragmentation that would confront him them, and haunt him later as France faced the shadows of Nazis invasion, and then the ideological fragmentation that Modernist intellectual milieu would march forth for the remainder of his life.

He never felt comfortable in such a schism, and struggled with depression: the darkness or the broken realities would insist upon him to depict the oppressiveness as is, making some of the early paintings almost unbearable. But eventually his palette would find colors streaking through the somber darkness via the clown's faces, and blemishes of cheeks of the prostitutes. They were becoming his existential statement, as if to force back the darkness, or perhaps more accurately, give grace a chance to shine in the margins of stark and bold lines. Early on, he found refuge in the colors of the stained glass windows that he apprenticed to create, and in the prints that his grandfather, a postal worker, showed him of Manet and Rembrandt from Paris market influencing the young Georges.

In turn, today, Rouault has influenced many. As a student in Tokyo, I once asked a zen master of calligraphy who among the western masters he admired the most. He replied "Georges Rouault...because his lines contain the weight of life." And in many conversations among artists and intellectuals, especially in Japan, Rouault's name pops up as a major influencer for them. Recently I had the privilege of spending some time with contemporary American great Chuck Close[3], and he told me of his high admiration for Rouault. "I wanted to buy one of Rouault's prints as a student at Yale," he said, " but just could not afford it." For an art student to even consider buying an artwork, would be the greatest show of admiration.

***Due to the length of Makoto's essay and out of courtesy to him, we have posted only an excerpt  of it here. To continue reading please visit his Refractions blog by clicking here...

Makoto Fujimura's essay on Rouaualt follows an essay on Rouault written by Fuller professor, Wiliam Dryness titled "Seeing Christ in the Darkness: Rouault as Graphic Artist" To read Dr. Dryness' essay click here.