Ceci n'est pas un clown, 19??,
oil on black velvet, by
Guillaume Voiture du
Marchandises (Fr., 18??-19??)
From the King's Cottages
and Marina collection.
| myeck's immigrant mother's second cousin was the noted French Siderealist painter Guillaume Voiture du Marchandises, who gave the stuffy noses of the Art Establishment a much-needed tweak with his strange, sometimes baffling works. Du Marchandises was banned from showing at l'Ecole des Bas Arts after his first entry. Told to enter a Landscape, a Portrait and a Nude, he provided a single painting: in the background, a mountain, with railroad tracks leading into what looked like a tunnel, but held a fireplace grate and a blazing fire; in the foreground, a portrait of the male Secretary General of the Academy but with a nude female's body, the breasts incongruously obscured by lemons and the pelvic region by a copy of du Marchandises' autobiography, Le Supplice et les Pois Chiche. |
Ceci n'est pas un clown, 19??,
oil on black velvet, by Guillaume Voiture du Marchandises (Fr., 18??-19??) From the King's Cottages
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| Probably his most influential work is Ceci n'est pas un clown ("This is not a clown"), a painting of a sad clown (a favorite subject of the Siderealists) with the words of the title painted across the bottom. | |
