Salla VartiainenParis – Suzanne Valadon at Centre Pompidou
Something is going on, strange noises are rising from the small stage inside the Paris Pompidou museum. O o o o aah! Voices sounding like strange instruments fill the large hall. We stop briefly to look at the human instruments before we proceed to the ticket counter.
We are here to see the Suzanne Valadon exhibition. It´s been a couple of days since we snooped around her studio in the museum of Montmartre, and now we are going to see more of her work!
A replica of Valadons studio
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou is a French institution, founded by the then president Georges Pompidou together with his wife Claude. Their vision for the building was a place that could house both traditional and contemporary art and where the artist could spark conversations with other artists and the public. The museum was opend in januari 1977.
There are several parallell exhibitions going on here and you have to buy separate tickets for each exhibition. The tickets to the Suzanne Valadon exhibition cost 17 euros per person (year 2025).
Who was Suzanne Valadon?
Suzanne Valadon was a Parisian croquis (nude) model and a artist. She lived 1865–1938 and during this time women generally were not encouraged to paint or pursue any of their dreams. They were merely seen as models and mothers so Suzanne Valadon was quite unusual for her time.
Valadon started modeling at a very young age, probably around the age of 15. She was a single mother and had to find a way to feed her son and her elderly mother. She was well known around Montmartre which was bustling with creative energy at the time and she became the model of the impressionists such as Degas, Renoir and Toulouse Lautrec.
Valadon painted by Matisse
Some of these artists encouraged her ambition to paint while others diminished her pursuit merely because she was a woman. She was though, appreciated as an artist by most of her peers at time, but then she (like som many other women) was kind of forgotten. And now finally – Suzanne Valadon at Centre Pompidou.
The Susanne Valadon exhibition at Centre Pompidou
This is the first time I see a large collection of Valadons work and it is very interesting. Most of the works are portraits and there are also a lot of nude studies here, including the scandalous painting Adam & Eve where she, as the first woman in the world, depicted a naked MAN from the front view! This turned out to be too much for the audience though, so she later had to cover the mans private parts with a fig leaf. (The womens private parts were totally ok to display).
Photo by Didier Descouens
I wonder why she painted so much nudes? Was it to fit in and prove her position as an equal to her fellow artists? Or was it because it was trending at the time? Or maybe because it always is a challenge to capture the human body and make it look natural? All periods have their own trends and artists usually follow them unconsciously. We are too close to see the overall patterns that crystalize in hindsight.
In addition to portraits and nudes Valadon also painted landscapes, still lives and self portraits. One thing that stands out is how the vast majority of the portraits are painted from a profile view. Not many of the painted subjects look back at us (or the painter). Why is that?
One exception is Portrait de Famille from 1912 where she painted her self with her son, mother and her lover André Utter. In this painting we see Valadon, in the middle of the family group, looking back at us with piercing blue eyes and a thoughtful expression on her face.
I look at her nudes (mainly women) and wonder if the fact that she, her self, used to be a model affected the way she saw the subject she was painting?
I also try to compare other artists paintings of her with her own model paintings and self-portraits, but I can´t detect any specific differences.
Conclusion
It is always interesting to see what artists (female or others) who have been marginalized and erased from the art history have chosen to depict, and how they have chosen to render it.
Valadons way of painting does´nt do much for me but I do appreciate the exhibition and understand why it can be seen as an important piece of the puzzle. My favorites here are her still lives, maybe because I am so middle aged haha.
xoxo/Salla V