CH 1: The Art Of Making A World

In Chapter One of The Accidental Masterpiece by Michael Kimmelman, the reader gets an inside view of the life of Artist Pierre Bonnard. The narrator starts us off with some comments of what Picasso thought of his work: “Don’t talk to me about Bonnard… He is not really a modern painter.” Kimmelman then goes on to say that Bonnard was thought to be too soft. His paintings are tender and require patience.
Deeper into the chapter the reader gets a better understanding of Bonnard’s work. We find out that he had two lovers but the one woman he could not leave was his wife Marthe. Bonnard actually painted Marthe nearly 400 times! His ex-lover Renee later commits suicide and his wife insists that he throw away all the paintings he did of Renee. We learn that Marthe became more paranoid throughout their relationship and she did not want Bonnard socializing with other people too much. Even though Bonnard didn’t seem to mind, there is one piece of evidence that shows his annoyance with her at one point of their relationship. He wrote in a letter to one of his friends that Marthe wasn’t letting him do much outside their home. Really the only time he ever got to be alone, was when he would take his walk in the morning and think about what he wanted to paint next. One of Bonnard’s most recognized paintings is Nude in the Tub. This scene includes Marthe getting ready to take a bath. One can tell that her face is a little blurred. Actually in most of Bonnard’s paintings of his wife, he blurs out her face. One critic described Bonnard’s repetitive use of Marthe in his work as: “the promise and the memory of the delights of handling her flesh, or bringing his body into contact with her body. He conveys that it is too precious, too fragile for him to dare to take hold of it: he holds back, leaving the flesh to be caressed by the light that plays over it, invades it, infuses and floods the surrounding space.”
In addition, Bonnard’s work was compared the work of Joan Mitchell. Kimmelman described them as “being in their own little world, where they were both inspired by ecstatic flights.” In one of Mitchell’s paintings, After April, Bernie, Kimmelman comments that they are abstract Bonnards. Both of their pictures provide a silence and warmth to them.
The question that is still yet to be answered is: Was Bonnard suffocated by marriage? There is one self portrait of Bonnard that could possibly express how he felt during his marriage with Marthe. It shows him as a skinny shadowboxer, fighting off demons. Besides this self portrait, Bonnard also put himself in some of his paintings. For example in one that he painted of Marthe looking at a tea cup in the kitchen, you also see Bonnard behind her. He his watching the viewer, who is watching Marthe, who is watching the cup. Or in other works, he will put an image of his thumb or finger to show his presence in the room. Overall, Bonnard explored his world everyday, and as he did so, it became more and more fantastical.