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Bernard Buffet

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Bernard Buffet
Bernard Buffet in his studio in Tourtour, France (1989) Credits: Danielle Buffet
Born(1928-07-10)10 July 1928
Paris, France
Died4 October 1999(1999-10-04)(aged 71)
Tourtour,France
EducationÉcole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts,Marie-Thérèse Auffray
Known forPainting,drawing,printmaking
MovementExpressionism
AwardsMember of theSalon d'Automne,1947

Member of theSociété des Artistes Indépendants,1947
Prix de la Critique,1948
Prix Puvis de Chavannes,1950
Officer of theLégion d'Honneur,1973

Member of theAcadémie des Beaux-Arts,1974
Signature

Bernard Buffet(French:[byfɛ];10 July 1928 – 4 October 1999) was a Frenchpainter,printmaker, and sculptor. An extremely prolific artist, he produced a varied and extensive body of work. His style was exclusively figurative and is often classified asExpressionistor "miserabilist".[1]

Buffet enjoyed worldwide popularity in the 1950s and was often compared toPablo Picassofor his fame and talent. By the end of the 1950s, however, the public and art community turned strongly against him due to changing artistic tastes, Buffet's lavish lifestyle, and his extremely prolific output. The 21st century saw a renewed interest in his oeuvre.[1]

Early life

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Bernard Buffet was born in 1928 in Paris, where he spent his childhood.[1]He was from a middle-class family with roots in Northern and Western France. His mother often took him to theLouvre Museum,where he became familiar with the works ofRealistpainters, such asGustave Courbet.This is likely to have influenced his style.[citation needed]In 1955, he painteda work that paid tribute to Courbet'sLe Sommeil.[2]

Bernard Buffet was a student at theLycée Carnotduring the Nazi occupation of Paris. He travelled to drawings courses in the evenings despite the curfew imposed by the Nazi authorities. He then studied art at theÉcole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts(National School of the Fine Arts)[3]and worked in the studio of the painterEugène Narbonne.Among his classmates wereMaurice Boiteland Louis Vuillermoz. He met the French painterMarie-Thérèse Auffrayand was influenced by her work.[citation needed]

Buffet's mother, Blanche, died from breast cancer in 1945. Seventeen-year-old Buffet was devastated. Losing his mother at an early age remained a source of melancholy throughout his life.[citation needed]

Rise to fame

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Charles de Gaulle by Buffet

As a painter, Buffet produced religious pieces, landscapes, portraits andstill-lifes.Influenced byFrancis Gruber,[4][5]he often painted "Miserabilist" scenes of despair, including scenes of poverty andHolocaustvictims, but he also portrayed subjects as varied as ashtrays, clowns, and table lamps.[1][6]His work was characterized by thick black lines, elongated forms, and a lack ofdepth of field.[1][6]

In 1946, he had his first painting shown, a self-portrait, at the Salon des Moins de Trente Ans at the Galerie Beaux-Arts. In 1948, he won his first major prize, the Prix de Critique, sharing it with fellow ExpressionistBernard Lorjou.[7]

An extremely prolific painter, he had at least one major exhibition every year. By the age 26, it was said that he had completed more paintings thanPierre-Auguste Renoir's lifetime output.[6]In 1948, gallerist Maurice Garnier began showing Buffet's work, and by 1977, his gallery was devoted solely to Buffet.[1]

By the age of 21, Buffet was already considered one of the greatest stars of the art world, frequently compared toPablo Picasso.[3]A 1958 article inThe New York Timescalled him one of the "Fabulous Five" cultural figures of post-war France (the other four wereBrigitte Bardot,Françoise Sagan,Roger Vadim,andYves Saint Laurent).[6]

Buffet illustrated "Les Chants de Maldoror" written byComte de Lautréamontin 1952. In 1955, he was awarded the first prize by the magazine Connaissance des Arts, which named the ten best post-war artists. In 1958, at the age of 30, the first retrospective of his work was held at the Galerie Charpentier.

He was commissioned to make the portrait ofCharles de Gaullefor the 1958Time Man of the Yearmagazine cover.

Later career

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However, by the end of the 1950s, both the public and the art world had turned against Buffet. His lavish lifestyle--including aRolls Roycewith a chauffeur and a private castle in Provence[6]--made him seem out of touch with the still-struggling economy of post-war France, which he had memorably portrayed in his early paintings.[3][8]A 1956 magazine photograph of Buffet being helped into his car by the chauffeur was a particular turning point in the public's views of him.[1]Another magazine published photographs of Buffet's lifestyle--large castle, expensive furniture, well-fed dogs--alongside the miserable figures of his paintings to implicitly accuse him of hypocrisy.[7]

Picasso further worsened Buffet's reputation by publicly denigrating his work, and Buffet also attracted the enmity of novelistAndré Malraux,the powerful French Minister of Culture.[9]Finally, Buffet's critical reputation was also affected by his tremendous and sometimes indiscriminate output. In the 1990s, he claimed he had completed a painting a day for more than four decades. In the words of one art historian, many of these works were "unequivocally bad".[3]

Despite his reduced reputation, Bernard Buffet was named "Chevalier de laLégion d'Honneur"in 1973. On 23 November 1973, the Bernard Buffet Museum was founded by Kiichiro Okano, a private collector in Surugadaira, Japan.[1]

At the request of the French postal administration in 1978, he designed a stamp depicting the Institut et le Pont des Arts – on this occasion the Post Museum arranged a retrospective of his works.[10]

Buffet created more than 8,000 paintings and manyprintsas well.

Personal life and death

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Buffet was bisexual, and his paintings have been noted for theirhomoeroticthemes.[3]IndustrialistPierre Bergéwas Buffet's live-in lover for eight years from 1950 to 1958, recalling later that the two were "never apart for a single day."[11]In 1958, Bergé left Buffet for Yves Saint Laurent.[9]

On 12 December 1958, Buffet married the writer and actress Annabel Schwob. They adopted three children.[12]Daughter Virginie was born in 1962; daughter Danielle, in 1963; and son Nicolas, in 1973.

Buffet died bysuicideat his home inTourtour,southern France, on 4 October 1999.[9]He was suffering fromParkinson's diseaseand was no longer able to work.[1]Police said that Buffet died after putting his head in a plastic bag attached around his neck with tape.[13]

Legacy

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In the 21st century, there has been a renewed spike in interest in the work of Buffet.[1]His work is particularly popular in Asia and former Soviet Union nations.[8]In 2016, Paris'sMusée d’Art Moderneheld a large retrospective of his work, the first held in France since his death, though its curator acknowledged that it was a risky exhibition given Buffet's lingering reputation as the "ultimate in bad taste".[1]Also in 2016, British authorNicholas FoulkespublishedBernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega-Artist,in which he offers a biographical account of Buffet's life and work.[8]

Corresponding with this renewed interest, some of Buffet's work also saw rising appraisals in the early 21st century. In 2015, his paintingLe Cri du Clown(1970) sold for 3.15 million Hong Kong dollars ($410,000 USD) in an auction in Hong Kong. That same year,Christie'sauction house in London sold Buffet'sLes Clowns Musiciens, le Saxophoniste(1991) for £1,022,500, which set the record for the highest-selling work by the artist.[1]

Awards

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References

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  1. ^abcdefghijklLankarani, Nazanin (20 October 2016)."Buffet: A Life of Success, Rejection and Now a Celebration".The New York Times.Retrieved3 August2023.
  2. ^Buffet, Bernard (2016).Rétrospective Bernard Buffet.Paris: Paris musées. pp. 72–73.ISBN978-2-7596-0331-2.
  3. ^abcdeAtlee, James (14 January 2016)."Bernard Buffet: the Invention of the Mega-artist by Nicholas Foulkes, book review: Paris prodigy turned pariah".The Independent.Retrieved3 August2023.
  4. ^"Francis Gruber".Art UK.Retrieved1 August2023.
  5. ^"Francis Gruber".Berardo Collection Museum.Retrieved1 August2023.
  6. ^abcdeSmith, Roberta (5 October 1999)."Bernard Buffet, French Painter, Dies at 71".The New York Times.Retrieved3 August2023.
  7. ^abCornell, Kenneth. "The Buffet Enigma."Yale French Studies,no. 19/20, 1957, pp. 94–97. JSTOR,https://doi.org/10.2307/2930427.Accessed 4 Aug. 2023.
  8. ^abcFaloyin, Dipo (3 August 2023)."Q&A: Author Nick Foulkes on the Reinvention of painter Bernard Buffet".Newsweek.Retrieved3 August2023.
  9. ^abcLichfield, John (16 March 2009)."Bernard Buffet: Return of the 'poser'".The Independent.Retrieved3 August2023.
  10. ^Bernard Buffet Maler Painter Peintre(brochure),Museum für Moderne Kunst,Frankfurt,April 2008.
  11. ^"The Bernard Buffet years".The Yves St Laurent Museum.Retrieved3 August2023.
  12. ^Elisabeth Sancey (interview with Nicholas Buffett). (17 October 2009)."Survivre à des parents terribles (Deuxième partie)".parismatch.
  13. ^Friend, David (4 August 2023)."Forgotten French Artist Bernard Buffet Finally Gets a Re-appraisal".Vanity Fair.Retrieved4 August2023.
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