Misplaced Pages

#818181

96-528: In 1964, Dina Vierny donated Maillol's monumental sculptures to the state. André Malraux , Minister of Culture, installs them in the open air in the Tuileries Garden . The same year, she created her foundation, the aim of which was to make the work of Aristide Maillol known to the public. The museum was established in 1995 by Dina Vierny . On January 20, 1995, the Maillol museum was inaugurated in

192-638: A lung embolism . He was a heavy smoker and had cancer. He was cremated and his ashes buried in the Verrières-le-Buisson (Essonne) cemetery. In recognition of his contributions to French culture, his ashes were moved to the Panthéon in Paris during 1996, on the twentieth anniversary of his death. There is a large body of critical commentary on Malraux's literary œuvre , including his extensive writings on art. However, some of his works, including

288-429: A 75 millimeter in the sunlight. It was the magic of light on the white metal. That's all it took for me to forget the abstract art of 1912–1913. The crudeness, variety, humor, and downright perfection of certain men around me, their precise sense of utilitarian reality and its application in the midst of the life-and-death drama we were in ... made me want to paint in slang with all its color and mobility. This work marked

384-631: A battalion of former resistance fighters to Alsace-Lorraine , where they fought alongside the First Army . During the war, he worked on his last novel, The Struggle with the Angel , the title drawn from the story of the Biblical Jacob . The manuscript was destroyed by the Gestapo after his capture in 1944. A surviving first section, titled The Walnut Trees of Altenburg , was published after

480-485: A book on Malraux in 2005, suggests that he had Tourette syndrome , although that has not been confirmed. The young Malraux left formal education early, but he followed his curiosity through the booksellers and museums in Paris, and explored the city's rich libraries as well. Malraux's first published work, an article entitled "The Origins of Cubist Poetry", appeared in Florent Fels ' magazine Action in 1920. This

576-457: A conventional idea of China with coolies, bamboo shoots, opium smokers, destitutes, and prostitutes", which were the standard French stereotypes of China at the time. The work was awarded the 1933 Prix Goncourt . After the breakdown of his marriage with Clara, Malraux lived with journalist and novelist Josette Clotis , starting in 1933. Malraux and Josette had two sons: Pierre-Gauthier (1940–1961) and Vincent (1943–1961). During 1944, while Malraux

672-487: A deserter from the French Foreign Legion had been reduced to nothing as his captors blinded him and left him tied to a stake starving, a stark picture of human degradation. The three Europeans escape, but Perken is wounded and dies of an infection. Through ostensibly an adventure novel, La Voie Royale is in fact a philosophical novel concerned with existential questions about the meaning of life. The book

768-510: A high-profile minister. On 23 May 1961, André Malraux's two sons, Gauthier and Vincent, were killed in a car accident. Among many initiatives, Malraux launched an innovative (and subsequently widely imitated) program to clean the blackened façades of notable French buildings, revealing the natural stone underneath. He also created a number of maisons de la culture in provincial cities and worked to preserve France's national heritage by promoting industrial archaeology . An intellectual who took

864-577: A huge collection of books both as a cultural minister for the nation and as a man for himself. Malraux was an outspoken supporter of the Bangladesh liberation movement during the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh and despite his age seriously considered joining the struggle. When Indira Gandhi came to Paris in November 1971, there was extensive discussion between them about the situation in Bangladesh. During this post-war period, Malraux published

960-605: A lifelong friend. The "mechanical" works Léger painted in the 1920s, in their formal clarity as well as in their subject matter—the mother and child, the female nude, figures in an ordered landscape—are typical of the postwar " return to order " in the arts, and link him to the tradition of French figurative painting represented by Poussin and Corot . In his paysages animés (animated landscapes) of 1921, figures and animals exist harmoniously in landscapes made up of streamlined forms. The frontal compositions, firm contours, and smoothly blended colors of these paintings frequently recall

1056-473: A lot but very little read" (this is especially true in Anglophone countries) and the radical implications of his thinking are often missed. A particularly important aspect of Malraux's thinking about art is his explanation of the capacity of art to transcend time. In contrast to the traditional notion that art endures because it is timeless ("eternal"), Malraux argues that art lives on through metamorphosis –

SECTION 10

#1732788060819

1152-598: A mansion in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, the Bouchardon hotel. Its renovation, led by Dina Vierny and the architect Pierre Devinoy, lasted more than fifteen years. On this occasion, he rehabilitated the basement to accommodate the restaurant which had previously been the Cabaret La Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons since 1951, opened by the Les Frères Jacques and Pierre Prévert . The space of

1248-540: A novel influenced by his Spanish war experiences. In July 1937 he attended the Second International Writers' Congress, the purpose of which was to discuss the attitude of intellectuals to the war, held in Valencia , Barcelona and Madrid and attended by many writers including Ernest Hemingway , Stephen Spender and Pablo Neruda . Malraux's participation in major historical events such as

1344-864: A pair of Léger murals was installed in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations headquarters in New York City. In 1960, the Fernand Léger Museum was opened in Biot, Alpes-Maritimes , France. Léger bequeathed his residence (at 108 Avenue du General Leclerc, Gif sur Yvette, Paris) to the French Communist Party , which later hosted negotiations of the Paris Peace Accords between

1440-411: A process of resuscitation (where the work had fallen into obscurity) and transformation in meaning. This idea has also been extended into scholarship about the function of image datasets in art history. For a more complete bibliography, see site littéraire André Malraux. Fernand L%C3%A9ger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger ( French: [fɛʁnɑ̃ leʒe] ; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955)

1536-783: A progressive lawyer, he helped to organize the Young Annam League and founded a newspaper L'Indochine to champion Vietnamese independence. After falling foul of the French authorities, Malraux claimed to have crossed over to China where he was involved with the Kuomintang and their then allies, the Chinese Communists, in their struggle against the warlords in the Great Northern Expedition before they turned on each other in 1927, which marked

1632-452: A sensibility that was both tragic and awe-inspiring as one surveyed all of the cultural treasures of the world, a mystical sense of humanity's place in a universe that was as astonishingly beautiful as it was mysterious. Malraux argued that as death is inevitable and in a world devoid of meaning, which thus was "absurd", only art could offer meaning in an "absurd" world. Malraux argued that art transcended time as art allowed one to connect with

1728-423: A series of semi-autobiographical works, the first entitled Antimémoires (1967). A later volume in the series, Lazarus , is a reflection on death occasioned by his experiences during a serious illness. La Tête d'obsidienne (1974) (translated as Picasso's Mask ) concerns Picasso, and visual art more generally. In his last book, published posthumously in 1977, L'Homme précaire et la littérature , Malraux propounded

1824-582: A still life based on an advertisement in the popular press for the aperitif Campari, represents the high-water mark of the Purist aesthetic in Léger's work. Its balanced composition and fluted shapes suggestive of classical columns are brought together with a quasi-cinematic close-up of a hand holding a bottle. As an enthusiast of the modern, Léger was greatly attracted to cinema, and for a time he considered giving up painting for filmmaking. In 1923–24 he designed

1920-553: A suburb southwest of Paris. Vilmorin was best known as a writer of delicate but mordant tales, often set in aristocratic or artistic milieu. Her most famous novel was Madame de... , published in 1951, which was adapted into the celebrated film The Earrings of Madame de... (1953), directed by Max Ophüls and starring Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio de Sica. Vilmorin's other works included Juliette , La lettre dans un taxi , Les belles amours , Saintes-Unefois , and Intimités . Her letters to Jean Cocteau were published after

2016-538: Is believed to have disappeared some time between April 9, 2007, and November 19, 2007. A $ 100,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to the safe return of the painting. Léger's work was featured in the exhibition "Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis" from October 14, 2013, through January 5, 2014, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art . In 2022, it was announced that a lost painting of

SECTION 20

#1732788060819

2112-579: Is buried in Gif-sur-Yvette , Essonne . Léger wrote in 1945 that "the object in modern painting must become the main character and overthrow the subject. If, in turn, the human form becomes an object, it can considerably liberate possibilities for the modern artist." He elaborated on this idea in his 1949 essay, "How I Conceive the Human Figure", where he wrote that "abstract art came as a complete revelation, and then we were able to consider

2208-608: Is led by Hong, a Chinese assassin committed to revolutionary violence for the sake of violence, and only the Communists are portrayed relatively favorably. Much of the dramatic tension between the novel concerns a three-way struggle between the hero, Garine and Borodin who is only interested in using the revolution in China to achieve Soviet foreign policy goals. The fact that the European characters are considerably better drawn than

2304-546: Is narrated by an unnamed Frenchman who travels from Saigon to Hong Kong to Canton to meet an old friend named Garine who is a professional revolutionary working with Mikhail Borodin , who in real life was the Comintern's principal agent in China. The novel alternates between depictions of Chinese nationalist militancy and British imperial anxieties. The Kuomintang are depicted rather unflatteringly as conservative Chinese nationalists uninterested in social reform, another faction

2400-454: Is open daily, including Tuesdays; an admission fee is charged. This article related to an art display, art museum or gallery in France is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Andr%C3%A9 Malraux Defunct Defunct Georges André Malraux ( / m æ l ˈ r oʊ / mal- ROH ; French: [ʒɔʁʒ ɑ̃dʁe malʁo] ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976)

2496-522: The Organisation armée secrète (OAS), which set off a bomb to his apartment building that failed to kill its intended target, but did leave a four-year-old girl who was living in the adjoining apartment blinded by the shrapnel. Ironically, Malraux was a lukewarm supporter of de Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria , but the OAS was not aware of this, and had decided to assassinate Malraux as

2592-505: The Übermensch , the heroic, exalted man who would create great works of art and whose will would allow him to triumph over anything. T. E. Lawrence , aka "Lawrence of Arabia", has a reputation in France as the man who was supposedly responsible for France's troubles in Syria in the 1920s. An exception was Malraux who regarded Lawrence as a role model, the intellectual-cum-man-of-action and

2688-601: The Académie Moderne , a free school where he taught from 1924, with Alexandra Exter and Marie Laurencin . He produced the first of his "mural paintings", influenced by Le Corbusier's theories, in 1925. Intended to be incorporated into polychrome architecture, they are among his most abstract paintings, featuring flat areas of color that appear to advance or recede. Starting in 1927, the character of Léger's work gradually changed as organic and irregular forms assumed greater importance. The figural style that emerged in

2784-1373: The Académie Vassilieff in Paris, then in 1931 at the Sorbonne , and then developing his own Académie Fernand Léger , which was in Paris, then at the Yale School of Art and Architecture (1938–1939), Mills College Art Gallery in Oakland, California during 1940–1945, before he returned to France. Among his many international pupils were Nadir Afonso , Paul Georges , Charlotte Gilbertson , Hananiah Harari , Asger Jorn , Michael Loew , Beverly Pepper , Victor Reinganum , Marcel Mouly , René Margotton , Saloua Raouda Choucair and Charlotte Wankel , Peter Agostini , Lou Albert-Lasard , Tarsila do Amaral , Arie Aroch , Alma del Banco , Christian Berg , Louise Bourgeois , Marcelle Cahn , Norman Carton , Otto Gustaf Carlsund , Saloua Raouda Choucair , Robert Colescott , Lars Englund , Tsuguharu Foujita , Sam Francis , Serge Gainsbourg , Hans Hartung , Florence Henri , William Klein , Maryan , George Lovett Kingsland Morris , Marlow Moss , Aurélie Nemours , Gerhard Neumann, Jules Olitski , Erik Olson , Richard Stankiewicz , Theo Stavropoulos and Stasys Usinskas . In 1952,

2880-639: The French Protectorate of Cambodia . Angkor Wat is a huge 12th century temple situated in the old capital of the Khmer Empire . Angkor ( Yasodharapura ) was "the world's largest urban settlement" in the 11th and 12th centuries supported by an elaborate network of canals and roads across mainland Southeast Asia before decaying and falling into the jungle. The discovery of the ruins of Angkor Wat by Westerners (the Khmers had never fully abandoned

2976-579: The Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel to record all goods based on archival sources created by human kind throughout France. Film, television and music took less of Malraux's time, and the changing demographics caused by immigration from the Third World stymied his efforts to promote French high culture, as many immigrants from Muslim and African nations did not find French high culture that compelling. A passionate bibliophile, Malraux built up

Musée Maillol - Misplaced Pages Continue

3072-604: The Salon d'Automne in the same room (salle VIII) as Jean Metzinger and Henri Le Fauconnier . In his major painting of this period, Nudes in the Forest , Léger displays a personal form of Cubism that his critics termed " Tubism " for its emphasis on cylindrical forms. In 1911, the hanging committee of the Salon des Indépendants placed together the painters identified as 'Cubists'. Metzinger, Albert Gleizes , Le Fauconnier, Delaunay and Léger were responsible for revealing Cubism to

3168-540: The United States , Democratic Republic of Vietnam , Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of South Vietnam In May 2008, his painting Étude pour la femme en bleu (1912–13) sold for $ 39,241,000 ( hammer price with buyer's premium ) United States dollars . In August 2008, one of Léger's paintings owned by Wellesley College 's Davis Museum and Cultural Center , Mother and Child , was reported missing. It

3264-662: The vilayet of Aleppo in what is now modern Syria. As Lawrence had first made his reputation in the Near East digging up the ruins of an ancient civilization, it was only natural that Malraux should go to the Far East to likewise make his reputation in Asia digging up ancient ruins. Lawrence considered himself a writer first and foremost while also presenting himself as a man of action, the Nietzschean hero who triumphs over both

3360-643: The "law of contrast". His enthusiasm for such contrasts resulted in such works as The Tree in the Ladder of 1943–44, and Romantic Landscape of 1946. Reprising a composition of 1930, he painted Three Musicians (Museum of Modern Art, New York) in 1944. Reminiscent of Rousseau in its folk-like character, the painting exploits the law of contrasts in its juxtaposition of the three men and their instruments. During his American sojourn, Léger began making paintings in which freely arranged bands of color are juxtaposed with figures and objects outlined in black. Léger credited

3456-635: The 1930s is fully displayed in the Two Sisters of 1935, and in several versions of Adam and Eve . With characteristic humor, he portrayed Adam in a striped bathing suit, or sporting a tattoo. In 1931, Léger made his first visit to the United States, where he traveled to New York City and Chicago. In 1935, the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented an exhibition of his work. In 1938, Léger

3552-571: The 1950s and 1960s, but was never awarded. In 1969 he was the main candidate considered for the prize along with Samuel Beckett . His candidacy was supported by some members of the Nobel committee, but was rejected for political reasons by another member, and the Swedish Academy ultimately decided that Beckett should be awarded. Malraux died in Créteil , near Paris, on 23 November 1976 from

3648-762: The Arab Revolt and the British liaison officer with the Emir Faisal, but rather as a romantic, lyrical writer as writing was Lawrence's first passion, which also described Malraux very well. Although Malraux courted fame through his novels, poems and essays on art in combination with his adventures and political activism, he was an intensely shy and private man who kept to himself, maintaining a distance between himself and others. Malraux's reticence led his first wife Clara to later say she barely knew him during their marriage. In 1923, aged 22, Malraux and Clara left for

3744-594: The Asian characters reflected Malraux's understanding of China at the time as more of an exotic place where Europeans played out their own dramas rather than a place to be understood in its own right. Initially, Malraux's writings on Asia reflected the influence of Orientalism presenting the Far East as strange, exotic, decadent, mysterious, sensuous and violent, but Malraux's picture of China grew somewhat more humanized and understanding as Malraux disregarded his Orientalist and Eurocentric viewpoint in favor of one that presented

3840-617: The Chinese as fellow human beings. The second of Malraux's Asian novels was the semi-autobiographical La Voie Royale which relates the adventures of a Frenchman Claude Vannec who together with his Danish friend Perken head down the royal road of the title into the jungle of Cambodia with the intention of stealing bas-relief sculptures from the ruins of Hindu temples. After many perilous adventures, Vannec and Perken are captured by hostile tribesmen and find an old friend of Perken's, Grabot, who had already been captured for some time. Grabot,

3936-542: The French Government. Malraux himself was not a pilot, and never claimed to be one, but his leadership qualities seem to have been recognized because he was made Squadron Leader of the 'España' squadron. Acutely aware of the Republicans' inferior armaments, of which outdated aircraft were just one example, he toured the United States to raise funds for the cause. In 1937 he published L'Espoir (Man's Hope),

Musée Maillol - Misplaced Pages Continue

4032-453: The Maillol museum today offers some 4,250 m² of surface area. In addition to the rooms devoted to the works of Maillol and the permanent collections, there are spaces for hosting temporary exhibitions. In February 2015, the establishment was in crisis following the judicial liquidation of the company Tecniarte, which had organized all the gallery's exhibitions since the death of Dina Vierny in 2009. The exhibition on "Le Baiser dans l' art: from

4128-589: The Old Testament. Saudi Arabia and Yemen were both remote, dangerous places that few Westerners visited at the time, and what made the expedition especially dangerous was while Malraux was searching for the lost cities of Sheba, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen, and the ensuing Saudi–Yemeni war greatly complicated Malraux's search. After several weeks of flying over the deserts in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Malraux returned to France to announce that

4224-470: The Renaissance to modern times. Malraux also initiated the series Arts of Mankind , an ambitious survey of world art that generated more than thirty large, illustrated volumes. When de Gaulle returned to the French presidency in 1958, Malraux became France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs , a post he held from 1958 to 1969. On 7 February 1962, Malraux was the target of an assassination attempt by

4320-630: The Renaissance to the present day”, scheduled from March 25, is officially postponed. In 2016, the museum resumed its activities with a program entrusted to Culturespaces (Engie) which terminated its contract in 2020. In 2021, the reopening of the museum is managed directly by the heirs of Dina Vierny, with the support of the Belgian cultural operator Tempora. It presents the works of Maillol (drawings, engravings, paintings, sculptures, decorative art, original plaster and terracotta work) along with other works from Vierny's private collection: The museum

4416-576: The School of Decorative Arts after his application to the École des Beaux-Arts was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gérôme and others, while also studying at the Académie Julian . He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed

4512-524: The Spanish Civil War has tended to distract attention from his important literary achievement. Malraux saw himself first and foremost as a writer and thinker (and not a "man of action" as biographers so often portray him) but his extremely eventful life – a far cry from the stereotype of the French intellectual confined to his study or a Left Bank café – has tended to obscure this fact. As a result, his literary works, including his important works on

4608-456: The Spanish Civil War inevitably brought him determined adversaries as well as strong supporters, and the resulting polarization of opinion has colored, and rendered questionable, much that has been written about his life. Fellow combatants praised Malraux's leadership and sense of camaraderie While André Marty of the Comintern called him as an "adventurer" for his high profile and demands on

4704-660: The Spanish Republican government. The British historian Antony Beevor also claims that "Malraux stands out, not just because he was a mythomaniac in his claims of martial heroism – in Spain and later in the French Resistance – but because he cynically exploited the opportunity for intellectual heroism in the legend of the Spanish Republic." In any case, Malraux's participation in events such as

4800-442: The arts very seriously, Malraux saw his mission as Culture Minister to preserve France's heritage and to improve the cultural levels of the masses. Malraux's efforts to promote French culture mostly concerned renewing old or building new libraries, art galleries, museums, theatres, opera houses, and maisons de la culture (centres built in provincial cities that were a mixture of a library, art gallery and theatre). In 1964 he created

4896-619: The attack on Stuttgart . André's half-brother, Claude, a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent, was also captured by the Germans, and executed at Gross-Rosen concentration camp in 1944. Otto Abetz was the German Ambassador, and produced a series of "black lists" of authors forbidden to be read, circulated or sold in Nazi occupied France. These included anything written by a Jew, a communist, an Anglo-Saxon or anyone else who

SECTION 50

#1732788060819

4992-455: The beginning of his "mechanical period", during which the figures and objects he painted were characterized by sleekly rendered tubular and machine-like forms. Starting in 1918, he also produced the first paintings in the Disk series, in which disks suggestive of traffic lights figure prominently. In December 1919 he married Jeanne-Augustine Lohy, and in 1920 he met Le Corbusier , who would remain

5088-591: The beginning of the Chinese Civil War that was to last on and off until 1949. In fact, Malraux did not first visit China until 1931 and he did not see the bloody suppression of the Chinese Communists by the Kuomintang in 1927 first-hand as he often implied that he did, although he did do much reading on the subject. On his return to France, Malraux published The Temptation of the West (1926). The work

5184-407: The common man, as well as to create for him, was a result of socialist theories widespread among the avant-garde both before and after World War II. However, Léger's social conscience was not that of a fierce Marxist, but of a passionate humanist". His varied projects included book illustrations, murals, stained-glass windows, mosaics, polychrome ceramic sculptures, and set and costume designs. After

5280-504: The crime was of no consequence. Clara, his wife, started a campaign for his acquittal and a number of notable arts and literary figures signed a petition defending Malraux: among them were François Mauriac , André Breton and André Gide . Malraux had his sentence reduced to a year, and then suspended. Malraux's experiences in Indochina led him to become highly critical of the French colonial authorities there. In 1925, with Paul Monin,

5376-486: The death of Leger's wife Jeanne-Augustine Lohy in 1950, Léger married Nadia Khodossevitch in 1952. In his final years he lectured in Bern , designed mosaics and stained-glass windows for the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas , Venezuela , and painted Country Outing , The Camper , and the series The Big Parade . In 1954 he began a project for a mosaic for the São Paulo Opera, which he would not live to finish. Fernand Léger died suddenly at his home in 1955 and

5472-425: The death of both correspondents. After Louise's death, Malraux spent his final years with her relative, Sophie de Vilmorin. In 1957, Malraux published the first volume of his trilogy on art entitled The Metamorphosis of the Gods . The second two volumes (not yet translated into English) were published shortly before he died in 1976. They are entitled L'Irréel and L'Intemporel and discuss artistic developments from

5568-399: The death of the artist. The American literary critic Jean-Pierre Hérubel wrote that Malraux never entirely worked out a coherent philosophy as his mystical Weltanschauung (world view) was based more upon emotion than logic. In Malraux's viewpoint, of all the professions, the artist was the most important as artists were the explorers and voyagers of the human spirit, as artistic creation was

5664-409: The end of 1936 on both sides. The Republic circulated photos of Malraux standing next to some Potez 540 bombers suggesting that France was on their side, at a time when France and the United Kingdom had officially declared neutrality. But Malraux's commitment to the Republicans was personal, like that of many other foreign volunteers, and there was never any suggestion that he was there at the behest of

5760-402: The environment and men through the force of his will, a persona that Malraux consciously imitated. Malraux often wrote about Lawrence, whom he described admiringly as a man with a need for "the absolute", for whom no compromises were possible and for whom going all the way was the only way. Along the same lines, Malraux argued that Lawrence should not be remembered mainly as a guerrilla leader in

5856-406: The fighters proved to be airworthy, and they were delivered intentionally without guns or gunsights . The Ministry of Defense of France had feared that modern types of planes would easily be captured by the German Condor Legion fighting with General Francisco Franco , and the lesser models were a way of maintaining official "neutrality". The planes were surpassed by more modern types introduced by

SECTION 60

#1732788060819

5952-480: The filmmaker Alain Resnais . By the age of twenty, Malraux was reading the work of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who was to remain a major influence on him for the rest of his life. Malraux was especially impressed with Nietzsche's theory of a world in continuous turmoil and his statement "that the individual himself is still the most recent creation" who was completely responsible for all of his actions. Most of all, Malraux embraced Nietzsche's theory of

6048-644: The general public for the first time as an organized group. The following year he again exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and Indépendants with the Cubists, and joined with several artists, including Le Fauconnier, Metzinger, Gleizes, Francis Picabia and the Duchamp brothers, Jacques Villon , Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp to form the Puteaux Group —also called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section). Léger's paintings, from then until 1914, became increasingly abstract . Their tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in rough patches of primary colors plus green, black and white, as seen in

6144-456: The great political causes of the day, that the only truly great causes were the ones that one was willing to die for. In 1933 Malraux published Man's Fate ( La Condition Humaine ), a novel about the 1927 failed Communist rebellion in Shanghai . Despite Malraux's attempts to present his Chinese characters as more three dimensional and developed than he did in Les Conquérants , his biographer Oliver Todd wrote he could not "quite break clear of

6240-419: The heart than to the brain. Malraux was a proud Frenchman, but he also saw himself as a citizen of the world, a man who loved the cultural achievements of all of the civilizations across the globe. At the same time, Malraux criticized those intellectuals who wanted to retreat into the ivory tower, instead arguing that it was the duty of intellectuals to participate and fight (both metaphorically and literally) in

6336-405: The high culture of all the nations of the world, Malraux was especially interested in art history and archaeology, and saw his duty as a writer to share what he knew with ordinary people. An aesthete, Malraux believed that art was spiritually enriching and necessary for humanity. Malraux was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on 32 occasions. He was an annual contender for the prize in

6432-416: The highest form of human achievement for only art could illustrate humanity's relationship with the universe. As Malraux wrote, "there is something far greater than history and it is the persistence of genius". Hérubel argued that it is fruitless to attempt to criticize Malraux for his lack of methodological consistency as Malraux cultivated a poetical sensibility, a certain lyrical style, that appealed more to

6528-421: The human figure as a plastic value, not as a sentimental value. That is why the human figure has remained willfully inexpressive throughout the evolution of my work". As the first painter to take as his idiom the imagery of the machine age, and to make the objects of consumer society the subjects of his paintings, Léger has been called a progenitor of Pop Art . He was active as a teacher for many years, first at

6624-481: The influence of impressionism , as seen in Le Jardin de ma mère (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Léger's work after he saw the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. In 1909, he moved to Montparnasse and met Alexander Archipenko , Jacques Lipchitz , Marc Chagall , Joseph Csaky and Robert Delaunay . In 1910, he exhibited at

6720-416: The last two volumes of The Metamorphosis of the Gods ( L'Irréel and L'Intemporel ), are not yet available in English translation. Malraux's works on the theory of art contain a revolutionary approach to art that challenges the Enlightenment tradition that treats art simply as a source of "aesthetic pleasure". However, as French writer André Brincourt has commented, Malraux's books on art have been "skimmed

6816-621: The neon lights of New York City as the source of this innovation: "I was struck by the neon advertisements flashing all over Broadway. You are there, you talk to someone, and all of a sudden he turns blue. Then the color fades—another one comes and turns him red or yellow." Upon his return to France in 1945, he joined the Communist Party . During this period his work became less abstract, and he produced many monumental figure compositions depicting scenes of popular life featuring acrobats, builders, divers, and country outings. Art historian Charlotta Kotik has written that Léger's "determination to depict

6912-464: The past, and the very act of appreciating art was itself an act of art as the love of art was part of a continuation of endless artistic metamorphosis that constantly created something new. Malraux argued that as different types of art went in and out of style, the revival of a style was a metamorphosis as art could never be appreciated in exactly the same way as it was in the past. As art was timeless, it conquered time and death as artworks lived on after

7008-559: The present tense "...with its staccato snatches of dialogue and the images of sound and sight, light and darkness, which create a compellingly haunting atmosphere." The Conquerors was set in the summer of 1925 against the backdrop of the general strike called by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Kuomintang in Hong Kong and Canton, the novel concerns political intrigue amongst the "anti-imperialist" camp. The novel

7104-530: The romantic, enigmatic hero. Malraux often admitted to having a "certain fascination" with Lawrence, and it has been suggested that Malraux's sudden decision to abandon the Surrealist literary scene in Paris for adventure in the Far East was prompted by a desire to emulate Lawrence who began his career as an archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire excavating the ruins of the ancient city of Carchemish in

7200-641: The ruins he found up in the mountains of Yemen were the capital of the Queen of Sheba. Though Malraux's claim is not generally accepted by archeologists, the expedition bolstered Malraux's fame and provided the material for several of his later essays. During the 1930s, Malraux was active in the anti-fascist Popular Front in France. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War he joined the Republican forces in Spain, serving in and helping to organize

7296-485: The same time archaeologists, with the approval of the French government, were removing large numbers of items from Angkor - many of which are now housed in the Guimet Museum in Paris. On his return, Malraux was arrested and charged by French colonial authorities for removing a bas-relief from the exquisite Banteay Srei temple. Although he was guilty, his arrest and imprisonment were deemed inappropriate – for

7392-633: The series of paintings with the title Contrasting Forms . Léger made no use of the collage technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso . Léger's experiences in World War I had a significant effect on his work. Mobilized in August 1914 for service in the French Army , he spent two years at the front in Argonne . He produced many sketches of artillery pieces, airplanes, and fellow soldiers while in

7488-588: The set for the laboratory scene in Marcel L'Herbier's L'Inhumaine (The Inhuman One). In 1924, in collaboration with Dudley Murphy , George Antheil , and Man Ray , Léger produced and directed the iconic and Futurism -influenced film Ballet Mécanique (Mechanical Ballet). Neither abstract nor narrative, it is a series of images of a woman's lips and teeth, close-up shots of ordinary objects, and repeated images of human activities and machines in rhythmic movement. In collaboration with Amédée Ozenfant he established

7584-740: The small Spanish Republican Air Force. Curtis Cate, one of his biographers, writes that Malraux was slightly wounded twice during efforts to stop the Battle of Madrid in 1936 as the Spanish Nationalists attempted to take Madrid, but the historian Hugh Thomas argues otherwise. The French government sent aircraft to Republican forces in Spain, but they were obsolete by the standards of 1936. They were mainly Potez 540 bombers and Dewoitine D.372 fighters. The slow Potez 540 rarely survived three months of air missions, flying at 160 knots against enemy fighters flying at more than 250 knots. Few of

7680-519: The temples of Angkor) in the jungle by the French explorer Henri Mouhot in 1861 had given Cambodia a romantic reputation in France, as the home of the vast, mysterious ruins of the Khmer empire. Upon reaching Cambodia, Malraux, Clara and friend Louis Chevasson undertook an expedition into unexplored areas of the former imperial settlements in search of hidden temples, hoping to find artifacts and items that could be sold to art collectors and museums. At about

7776-560: The theory of art were to follow. These included the three-volume Metamorphosis of the Gods and Precarious Man and Literature , the latter published posthumously in 1977. In 1948, Malraux married a second time, to Marie-Madeleine Lioux , a concert pianist and the widow of his half-brother, Roland Malraux. They separated in 1966. Subsequently, Malraux lived with Louise de Vilmorin in the Vilmorin family château at Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne,

7872-737: The theory of art, have received less attention than one might expect, especially in Anglophone countries. At the beginning of the Second World War , Malraux joined the French Army . He was captured in 1940 during the Battle of France but escaped and later joined the French Resistance . In 1944, he was captured by the Gestapo . He later commanded the Brigade Alsace-Lorraine in defence of Strasbourg and in

7968-453: The theory that there was a bibliothèque imaginaire where writers created works that influenced subsequent writers much as painters learned their craft by studying the old masters; once they have understood the work of the old masters, writers would sally forth with the knowledge gained to create new works that added to the growing and never-ending bibliothèque imaginaire . (See also musée imaginaire ). An elitist who appreciated what he saw as

8064-517: The trenches, and painted Soldier with a Pipe (1916) while on furlough. In September 1916, he almost died after a mustard gas attack by the German troops at Verdun . During a period of convalescence in Villepinte he painted The Card Players (1917), a canvas whose robot-like, monstrous figures reflect his experience of the war. As he explained: ...I was stunned by the sight of the breech of

8160-463: The war. Shortly after the war, General Charles de Gaulle appointed Malraux as his Minister for Information (1945–1946). Soon after, he completed his first book on art, The Psychology of Art , published in three volumes (1947–1949). The work was subsequently revised and republished in one volume as The Voices of Silence ( Les Voix du Silence ), the first part of which has been published separately as The Museum without Walls . Other important works on

8256-625: The works of Henri Rousseau , an artist Léger greatly admired and whom he had met in 1909. They also share traits with the work of Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant who together had founded Purism , a style intended as a rational, mathematically based corrective to the impulsiveness of cubism. Combining the classical with the modern, Léger's Nude on a Red Background (1927) depicts a monumental, expressionless woman, machinelike in form and color. His still life compositions from this period are dominated by stable, interlocking rectangular formations in vertical and horizontal orientation. The Siphon of 1924,

8352-762: Was a French painter , sculptor , and filmmaker . In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as " tubism ") which he gradually modified into a more figurative , populist style. His boldly simplified treatment of modern subject matter has caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of pop art . Léger was born in Argentan , Orne , Lower Normandy , where his father raised cattle. Fernand Léger initially trained as an architect from 1897 to 1899, before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles , Yvelines , in 1902–1903, he enrolled at

8448-743: Was a French novelist, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs . Malraux's novel La Condition Humaine ( Man's Fate ) (1933) won the Prix Goncourt . He was appointed by President Charles de Gaulle as information minister (1945–46) and subsequently as France's first cultural affairs minister during de Gaulle's presidency (1959–1969). Malraux was born in Paris in 1901, the son of Fernand-Georges Malraux (1875–1930) and Berthe Félicie Lamy (1877–1932). His parents separated in 1905 and eventually divorced. There are suggestions that Malraux's paternal grandfather committed suicide in 1909. Malraux

8544-422: Was a failure at the time as the publishers marketed it as a stirring adventure story set in far-off, exotic, Cambodia which confused many readers who, instead, found a novel pondering deep philosophical questions. In his Asian novels Malraux used Asia as a stick to beat Europe with as he argued that after World War I the ideal of progress of a Europe getting better and better for the general advancement of humanity

8640-639: Was anti-Germanic or anti-fascist. Louis Aragon and André Malraux were both on these "Otto Lists" of forbidden authors. After the war, Malraux was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance and the Croix de Guerre . The British awarded him the Distinguished Service Order , for his work with British liaison officers in Corrèze , Dordogne and Lot . After Dordogne was liberated, Malraux led

8736-456: Was commissioned to decorate Nelson Rockefeller 's apartment. During World War II Léger lived in the United States. He taught at Yale University , and found inspiration for a new series of paintings in the novel sight of industrial refuse in the landscape. The shock of juxtaposed natural forms and mechanical elements, the "tons of abandoned machines with flowers cropping up from within, and birds perching on top of them" exemplified what he called

8832-460: Was dead. As such, Malraux now argued that European civilization was faced with a Nietzschean void, a twilight world, without God or progress, in which the old values had proven worthless and a sense of spirituality that had once existed was gone. An agnostic, but an intensely spiritual man, Malraux maintained that what was needed was an "aesthetic spirituality" in which love of 'Art' and 'Civilization' would allow one to appreciate le sacré in life,

8928-529: Was fighting in Alsace , Josette died, aged 34, when she slipped while boarding a train. His two sons died together in 1961 in an automobile accident. The car they were driving had been given them by Vincent's girlfriend, the wealthy Clara Saint. On 22 February 1934, Malraux together with Édouard Corniglion-Molinier embarked on a much publicized expedition to find the lost capital of the Queen of Sheba mentioned in

9024-678: Was followed in 1921 by three semi-surrealist tales, one of which, "Paper Moons", was illustrated by Fernand Léger . Malraux also frequented the Parisian artistic and literary milieux of the period, meeting figures such as Demetrios Galanis , Max Jacob , François Mauriac , Guy de Pourtalès , André Salmon , Jean Cocteau , Raymond Radiguet , Florent Fels , Pascal Pia , Marcel Arland , Edmond Jaloux , and Pierre Mac Orlan . In 1922, Malraux married Clara Goldschmidt . Malraux and his first wife separated in 1938 but did not divorce until 1947. His daughter from this marriage, Florence (b. 1933), married

9120-403: Was in the form of an exchange of letters between a Westerner and an Asian, comparing aspects of the two cultures. This was followed by his first novel The Conquerors (1928), and then by The Royal Way (1930) which reflected some of his Cambodian experiences. The American literary critic Dennis Roak described Les Conquérants as influenced by The Seven Pillars of Wisdom as it was narrated in

9216-549: Was raised by his mother, his maternal aunt Marie Lamy and his maternal grandmother, Adrienne Lamy (née Romagna), who had a grocery store in the small town of Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis). His father, a stockbroker, died by suicide in 1930 after the international crash of the stock market and onset of the Great Depression . From his childhood, associates noticed that André had marked nervousness and motor and vocal tics. The recent biographer Olivier Todd, who published

#818181