Jean Charlot | |
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| Born | Louis Henri Jean Charlot (1898-02-08)February 8, 1898 Paris, France |
| Died | March 20, 1979(1979-03-20) (aged 81) Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S. |
| Known for | Fresco,lithography,murals,sculpture |
| Movement | Mexican Mural Movement |
| Spouse | Zohmah Day |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowships, National Council on the Arts,[1] Living Treasures of Hawai'i |
| Website | jeancharlot.org |
Louis Henri Jean Charlot (February 8, 1898 – March 20, 1979) was a French-born American painter and illustrator, active mainly in Mexico and the United States.
Charlot was born in Paris. His father, Henri, owned an import-export business and was a Russian-bornémigré, albeit one who supported theBolshevik cause. His mother Anna was an artist. His mother's family originated from Mexico City; his grandfather was a French-Indianmestizo.[2] His great-grandfather had immigrated to Mexico in the 1820s shortly after the country's independence from Spain, and married a woman who was half-Aztec.[3]
From an early age Charlot was fascinated with the Mexican manuscripts and art in the collection of his great uncle Eugene, and by the pre-Columbian artefacts of a neighbor and family friend,Désiré Charnay, who was a well-known archaeologist. As a teenager, he began learningNahuatl. He studied art in Paris before serving in the French Army duringWorld War I. In 1920, his scale drawings for the mural decorations of a church were included in an exhibition of religious art at theLouvre.[4][5]
Charlot spent an extensive period of his life living and working in Mexico. In 1921, after his father died, he and his mother left Europe to settle in Mexico City. He metFernando Leal (1896–1964) and shared his studio with him. Charlot was deemed "a fine person who is doing important work" byDiego Rivera, the renowned Mexican painter and muralist. Rivera introduced Charlot to other young artists, such asPablo O'Higgins (born Paul Stevenson Higgins and who came to live in Mexico in 1924, having grown up in Salt Lake City, Utah).[6] O'Higgins would later recall that he met Charlot at the former's studio, when he was painting a nude ofLuz Jiménez, a very beautiful Mexican Indian woman who modeled for Diego Rivera. Luz's native language was Nahuatl, which she taught to Charlot as she posed for him. Charlot and O'Higgins shared an interest in learning about Mexico and traveled together exploring the country, sometimes withAnita Brenner, a Jewish 19-year-old at that time, with whom Charlot seemed in love and collaborated in several literary and illustration projects.[7]
Charlot married a close friend of O'Higgins, Dorothy Day, an artist who had also grown up in Salt Lake City. Her family was Mormon but later left the church. At age twenty, Dorothy had changed her name to Zohmah and traveled to Mexico. She got involved in the Mexican art movement of the 1920s and 1930s, and became close friends with young Mexican and American artists, such as Charlot and O'Higgins, in the circle of Diego Rivera.[6]
Charlot and O'Higgins had a long-lasting friendship, sharing their interest on each other's work even after Charlot went with his mother to live in New York in 1928. When in Mexico City, Charlot would stay in a humble room Pablo rented in downtown Mexico City on the roof of a dilapidated building on the street of Belisario Dominguez. In December 1930, to prepare for his solo exhibit in early 1931 at the John Levy Gallery in New York, O'Higgins lived with Charlot for six months in his small unheated apartment on Union Square and 14th Street, near theArt Students League, where Charlot was teaching. At the same time, mid-January 1931, a few blocks away,José Clemente Orozco was painting murals for The New School at 66 West 12th Street.[8] Charlot and Orozco had maintained frequent correspondence in previous years.[9][page needed]
Both commented on each other's murals in Hawaii in 1952.[10]
In 1940, Charlot applied for and was accorded American citizenship. A dual citizen of the United States and France, he retained passports from both countries.
Charlot is generally recognized as having brought international attention toJosé Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican printer who had produced more than 15,000 prints and lithographs, devoted mostly to the popular readers of newspapers in pre-revolutionary Mexico, in which he would present political satires using cartoon-like skeletons; these are a variety ofcalavera. The original style and plastic language of Posada's art struck Charlot when he saw his prints being sold in 1922 on street corners, and he went on to find his forgotten printing blocks (woodcuts, leadcuts, zinccuts, etc.) in the workshop of Posada's former publisher. With O'Higgins and the son of Posada's publisher, Charlot participated in 1928 and 1930 in the publication of catalogues of Posada's prints, a project conceived by Frances Toor which piqued public interest in Posada.[11] Posada's skeletons and skulls, rooted in pre-Hispanic religious ritual, were later adapted by Rivera,Frida Kahlo, O'Higgins, and many others, and are now icons acknowledged worldwide as being at the heart of Mexican popular art and handcrafts. Charlot himself was much interested in and also startedavant-gardewoodcut.
After the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917), post-revolutionary governments sought to educate the public on the principles of social justice, as consecrated in the new constitution. Mural painting became an extraordinary visual vehicle, for occupying public spaces like government buildings, schools and markets where it was accessible to all people and spoke even to the illiterate, in contrast to traditional easel painting aimed at private art consumption by the educated. During the government of PresidentAlvaro Obregon (1921–1924), mural painting was actively promoted by Minister of EducationJose Vasconcelos. Diego Rivera's strong personality and political connections led to many important early commissions. His first commission from Vasconcelos was to paint a mural in the Preparatory School, where four young artists dared to accept Vasconcelos' challenge. Jean Charlot was one of them, and also his friend and roommate Fernando Leal who invited him to get involved. Charlot'sfrescoMassacre in the Templo Mayor (1921–1922), depicting themassacre in the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan, is in front of Fernando Leal'sThe Dancers ofChalma (1921–1923). In his fresco, Charlot portrayed himself, Leal and Diego Rivera. Charlot's was the first mural finished and the first in the fresco technique.[12] Thus, Charlot participated in the founding ofMexican muralism.
The next project Rivera took on was in the Court of Labor at the Ministry of Education building; other young artists, including Charlot, Xavier Guerrero, and Amado de la Cueva, were assigned walls in the Court of Fiestas in the same building. Charlot considered it a first attempt at "communal painting". Rivera, however, eventually wrested control of the project, acquiring more space for himself and recasting the other artists in the role of assistants, even painting over one of Charlot's finished murals,Danza de los Listones (Dance of the Ribbons) to create room for his ownMarket Place.[13] According to John Charlot, son of Jean, in the beginning only younger artists dared to undertake commissions for large mural paintings. While Vasconcelos himself preferred non-political allegorical works, he carefully avoided guiding the artists, who increasingly became more political in reflecting the ideas of the revolution.[12]
In 1928, works by Charlot were included with those of 21 other artists (including Rivera, Orozco, O'Higgins,Siqueiros, andCarlos Mérida) in an exhibition at the Art Center Gallery in New York organized by Frances Flynn Paine, the manager of a Rockefeller fund to sponsor Mexican artists. The exhibition had the co-sponsorship of the Mexican Ministry of Education and the Mexican National University.[14]
Between 1926 and 1928 Charlot spent three seasons deeply immersed in the excavation of Mayan temples atChichen Itza. Hired bySylvanus Morley of theCarnegie Institution and under the field direction of Earl H. Morris, Charlot meticulously traced and copiedbas-reliefs and painted surfaces as they were unearthed, creating an invaluable guide to the reconstruction of some of the key structures of the temple complex. The work had a major influence on his own art, and led to a long friendship with Earl Morris and his wife Ann, a fellow painter-copyist at Chichen Itza. The Morrises took care of Charlot after his mother died in New York City in the winter of 1929, and together the three co-authoredThe Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá, Yucatan, published in two volumes in 1931 and considered a classic in its field[4]
In the U.S., Charlot executed commissions for theWork Projects Administration'sFederal Arts Project, including the creation of murals forStraubenmuller Textile High School in Manhattan during 1934–1935,[15] and, in 1942, an oil on canvas mural for the post office inMcDonough, Georgia titledCotton Gin, 4.5 ft × 11 ft (1.4 m × 3.4 m).
In 1944,Josef Albers invited Charlot to teach at the first Summer Institute ofBlack Mountain College.[16] During his time there, Charlot completed two frescos, titledInspiration andKnowledge (sometimes also calledStudy), on the pylons beneath the college's Studies Building. These frescos are likely the only intact artwork to remain on the historic site of Black Mountain College's Lake Eden campus.[17][18]
Charlot went toColorado Springs, Colorado in 1947 to take a job at theColorado Springs Fine Arts Center, where he taught fresco painting and worked with Lawrence Barrett on several editions oflithographs. While there he also taught art at The Fountain Valley School, an independent school for boys (at that time), founded in 1930. Charlot left the Fine Arts Center in 1949 under a cloud of misunderstandings between himself and the Arts Center's Board of Trustees and the Art Center's director, Mitch Wilder. Charlot then went to teach at theUniversity of Hawaii, where he stayed for over 30 years. There, he developed a close friendship with the world-famous local artistMadge Tennent and collaborated withJuliette May Fraser, an accomplished muralist in her own right, on several major commissions in and around Honolulu.[19] During the summer of 1969, Charlot worked withTony Smith at UH and Smith thanked him by creating a piece in theFor... series namedFor J.C.
TheFine Arts Museums of San Francisco, theCleveland Museum of Art, theHawaii State Art Museum, theHonolulu Museum of Art, theIsaacs Art Center (Waimea, Hawaii), theEast-West Center and theUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa library are among the public collections having works by Jean Charlot.
In 1940 he illustrated the bookTito's Hats (Garden City Publishing),[20] which was written by the future actorMel Ferrer.Anthony Boucher andJ. Francis McComas praised his 1951 collection of captioned drawings,Dance of Death, as "superlative macabre humor in a welcome modernization of a great ancient art-form."[21] Charlot also illustrated the bookSpringtime, Tales of the cafe Rieu by J.B. Morton in 1956.
In 1972, Charlot publishedAn Artist on Art: Collected Essays of Jean Charlot, which discussed Mexican art history.[22][23]
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