Ellis

Menu

Skip to content
  • EXHIBITION: In The Garden
  • About
  • Artwork
  • Text
  • C.V.

Ismeal Smith – The Beauty and The Monsters

Text
The Beauty and The Monsters – Ismeal Smith (1886 – 1972) Exhibition at MNAC, National Museum of Catalan Art, Barcelona.

A portrait of the artist, through allegory of the Duck Headed Man.

‘Cabeza de Pato’ 1917
ismael smith dandy
I came away from this exhibition with the feeling that Ismael Smith is an artist who never found his style. Some artists are bound to spend a lifetime looking. Or perhaps he did find it, early on in his successful, satirical illustrations, but couldn’t convert it into the the grandiose mediums of the time, painting or sculpture, that were accepted as ‘fine art’. He tried his hand at everything from illustration to grand-scale painting, from architectural monuments to furniture design, from jewellery and classical sculptures to the highly unusual, brightly painted busts of Don Quixote that almost recall carnival masks. The best of those works retain a sense of his early caricatures, even as they lean, or strain, towards realism.
ismael smith literate sculpture
ismael smith don quijote head

Outside His Time

He was definitely an inspired man, of fluid capabilities, with a fire in his belly and an eye for the ambiguous and the androgynous, but these were not in line with contemporary tastes. Or perhaps it is more true to say that the grotesque, the dark and the exposure of society’s, or humanity’s, absurdities was accepted in satire… but not in seriousness, not as earnest, psychologically challenging artworks, as being far too unsavoury and disturbing. Some of his works were reportedly collected by the precursor to MNAC and destroyed whilst he was away in America. 
chesterfield
figures-ismael-smith-i-mari-1909-fundacio-palau

Over Abundance

In the displayed notebooks you can see his lovely, neat handwriting covering every inch of the page, squeezing right up to the edges and margins, like words being poured into an already exhausted breath. He was not a man short of ideas. But as for many artists this abundance of ideas and of directions may have hindered more than helped him in developing his style and finding success.

img_20170909_151903476.jpg

The Duck Headed Man

I fell in love with this illustration of the duck headed man. (‘Cabeza de Pato’ 1917) I feel it’s almost a self portrait. Not only does the face somewhat resemble Smith’s own under the duck features, but he too is a dandy, the detail embroidered on his clothes, his boot-strings prettily bowed, the heavily lashed eyes look out at the viewer, both coy and gentle as in the various portraits and self portraits of the artist himself in the exhibition. I have scoured the internet and cannot find the story of the ‘Cabeza de Pato’, originally a french tale. But from the illustrations the duck faced man also appears to be an outcast for his difference, and comes to a sorry end, like Smith himself.
Rejected by the establishment Smith retreated from the art-world into other obsessions and in 1962 he was committed to a mental asylum outside New York where he lived, due to complaints of his nudist tendencies. He spent the last years of his life there continuing his passions teaching art therapy workshops. Like the duck faced man, he is cast out for being different, for disturbing the norms, for being himself. It seems he was a man the world neither accepted in his craft, or let alone in his retreat. He wouldn’t have known his own story when he drew the illustration, but I feel there’s a sympathy to the character, an identification with the gentle, coy and curious duck headed man.
The exhibition is well curated, and well worth seeing. The space feels a little cavernous for the majority of his works which are small, rapid sketches, but it is a wide-ranging retrospective and his story is sensitively told. The narrative highlights his unique qualities, and his place within, and outside, the art movements of the time without hailing him or his works as having universal virtue, a trap that I think many curators fall into in order to justify showing an artist’s work. For myself, I am often as fascinated by the artist as by the art, and by the mark and measure of their supposed failures, as of their successes, so I appreciate this balanced view and recommend the exhibition which is on until 17th of September 2017.

ismael smith don quijote heads

yellow line@4x

Other projects, artwork & texts:

Art Burn

Types: Text

Burn art. Why?

Drawing

Types: artwork

Drawing is a dance. I search for the flow movement and of gesture and the structures from which they overflow.

Etchings

Types: artwork

Etchings of musicians and other strange familiars.

Hockney: Ode to Invisible Blue

Types: Text

After a long while of looking I felt very attached to this painting, not it’s miniature reproduction on screen, but the vibrating body of the canvas itself.

Interview The LondonY

Types: Text

Interview about my art and music with the lovely Nastasia at the LondonY

Ismeal Smith – The Beauty and The Monsters

Types: Text

A portrait of the artist, through allegory of the Duck Headed Man.

Lita Cabellut – Eye to Eye

Types: Text

Two floors of enormous canvases, head after head emerging from disrupted space or poised, static and clean, cut from a violence of abstracted shapes. It is wonderful to see such a great expanse of uncomfortable artwork.

Mythologies

Types: artwork

A mythological story world of strange people and creatures in which the drawings came first and the words follow…

Painting

Types: artwork

Falling light and rising colour. The lines and traces left by life and state of mind on the material matter of our being.

yellow line@4x

yellow line@4x

Post navigation

← Art Burn
Mythologies →
Widgets

Recent Posts

  • Songs For Sight – Exhibition 2020
  • Hockney: Ode to Invisible Blue
  • Noticias: What I’ve Been Up To…
  • Looking back, and forwards….
  • Strange Familiars on Market Day…

Archives

  • September 2021
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • June 2013
  • December 2012
  • October 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012

Categories

  • architecture
  • art
  • art notes
  • botanical
  • Camden
  • Camden Market
  • Design
  • drawing
  • Drawing in Public
  • Drawing in Public
  • Exhibition
  • exhibiton
  • Festival
  • folktale
  • Illustration
  • location drawing
  • location painting
  • London Underground
  • Market Stall
  • metamorphosis
  • natural observation
  • Painting
  • philosophy
  • poetry
  • portrait
  • press
  • Prints
  • Quotes
  • reportage
  • Sales
  • short story
  • sketchbook
  • Sketchnotes
  • text and image
  • Uncategorized
  • Underground Portraits

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com
  • Twitter BlancheEllisArt
  • Instagram BlancheEllisArt
  • youtube BlancheEllisArt
Create a website or blog at WordPress.com
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Ellis
    • Join 31 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Ellis
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...