Series - Hats in Art


Great photo of Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, at "their" table at the Colombe d'Or in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
Montand and Simone lived part of the year at La Colombe where they were married, they had their apartment there, their habits, their friends, their books and, of course, for Simone her Scrabble and her dictionary and for Montand his pétanque balls, playing cards and poker chips!
At La Colombe, between a Calder and a Picasso, just before arriving at the swimming pool, there was a pile of straw hats for the guests, we chose ours of the day. Some left with this loot carrying memory, which enraged Titine, the soul of this place, but she always made sure that there were again and again these hats of friendship and sunshine.


Van Eyck, "The Man in the Red Turban", 1433. Probably a self-portrait.

On the edge of the frame is written in Greek letters "Jan Van Eyck made me on October 21, 1433" and on its lower part, his motto: "AlC IXH XAN", literally "I do what I can". At the beginning of the 14th century, the liripipion appeared for men, which is a kind of elongated, pointed hood; its tip will lengthen until it is worn like a turban towards the end of the century.
How bold this red hat and this shadow on this green background, for this portrait of a man by Jan Gossaert painted in 1515. Perhaps a self-portrait. Great also to have placed the subject against a green background, which allows this shadow which balances the composition and makes the character emerge towards us.


Albrecht Dürer, “Head of an old man wearing a red cap”, 1520. A marvel from the Louvre collections.


A marvel, “The Fortune Teller”, painted by Caravaggio in 1596.
The elegant young man has his future predicted by the gypsy who discreetly steals the ring on his right hand. The moralizing work condemns deception, but also naivety. The faces are shockingly youthful.

This beauty is kept in Paris at the Louvre Museum, another version of this subject is kept in Rome, in the collections of the Capitoline Pinacoteca in Rome. These two paintings were painted early in Caravaggio's career, shortly after his arrival in Rome.


"Antoinette-Elisabeth-Marie d'Aguesseau, Countess of Ségur", painted by Louise-Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun in 1785.

A fervent royalist, Vigée Le Brun was successively painter to the court of France, to Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI, to the Kingdom of Naples, to the Court of the Emperor of Vienna, to the Emperor of Russia and to the Restoration.
The color match is really subtle and perfect: light orange, for the edge of the hat, touches in the flowers, folds of the skirt.


For my hat series and to change a little from Japanese prints, here is a work from Korea. Very traditional, we find the tiger which is one of the two omnipresent subjects in Korean art.


Édouard Manet "Madame Manet at Bellevue", (Suzanne Leenhoff) 1880.


For my Hats series, Eugène Delacroix, “Four men wearing high hats”, 1824.


“Still life with a straw hat”, 1881.

How beautiful is this hat! Classic style and perfect technique, Vincent van Gogh then dilutes the paint enormously which gives an impression of blur. The thick, raised keys will be for later.
Vincent van Gogh was then 28 years old and returned to live in Holland in the family home after a short stay in Belgium. 1881 was also the year when his brother Theo was appointed manager of the Goupil & Cie branch on Boulevard Montmartre in Paris and where he then decided to provide for the needs of his brother Vincent.


For my hat series, perhaps my favorite, sometimes the self-portraits bear witness, with infinite seriousness, to the humor of the artists, such as this painting by James Ensor: "Self-portrait with a flowered hat", 1883.


“Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi with a white scarf” by Giovanni Boldini, painted in 1886. Boldoni knew how to sublimate women just as here he knew how to reveal the full personality of the Italian composer.


Vincent van Gogh painted himself a thousand times, but almost always had a haircut on his head. As in this “Self-portrait with a straw hat” from 1887.

This one is quite unique, with the barely painted background, this red border which attracts the eye, but quickly, our eyes escape to return to plunge into the black pupils of the artist.


Edmund Charles Tarbell, "The Blue Veil" painted in 1898.


Giovanni Boldini, “The Divine in Blue” circa 1905. This divine is, of course, Sarah Bernhardt.

Boldini is truly on the fringes of all the artistic movements of his time, an exceptional portraitist, he sublimates women and reveals characters. He develops a kind of totally descriptive figuration, where we recognize the designers, the jewelry, the faces, yet the painting seems thrown on the canvas, far from the French impressionists, he remains an unclassifiable artist.


Amedéo Modigliani, “Woman wearing a hat”, 1907.

Alexej von Jawlensky, "Schokko in the wide-brimmed hat", 1910.
I see a dialogue between still life - The hat looks like a bowl of fruit - and the portrait with this curious color.


Odilon Redon (1840 - 1916), "Man in a large black hat, dressed in a doublet"


Emil Nolde, "Self-portrait" from 1917 of this lover of nature and his roots, he also took the name of his native village as a pseudonym.

A surreal rarity for my hat series. Max Ernst "It's the hat that makes the man", 1920
A surreal rarity for my hat series.

Max Ernst "It's the hat that makes the man", 1920


“Woman with a Hat”. Nothing destined Jacqueline Marval, born in 1866, to become an artist. In 1884, a teacher, she painted as an amateur under the name Marie Jacques.
Married to a traveling salesman from whom she quickly separated, she chose to work in Grenoble as a waistcoat maker more suited to her fancy. In 1892 his meeting with the painters Joseph François Girot and Jules Flandrin would change the course of his life. She joined them in Paris, then, with the support of Rouault, Camoin, Marquet and Matisse, she really launched into painting. In 1901 she participated in the Salon des Indépendants to which she remained faithful until 1914.

In 1923, she created the poster, the invitation and the cover of the catalog for the Salon d'Automne. In 1929, the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen offered it recognition by presenting it jointly with Van Dongen. The following year, ill, she gradually gave up and died in 1932 in extreme solitude. His work will quickly be forgotten; we will have to wait for the rereading of art history by feminist historians for her to regain her place among the Fauves.

The friendly fools!
Well, it's true that he didn't smile often, but we must have had fun with him!

Man Ray, “Transvestite Self-Portrait”, 1938.


Joan Miró, “Portrait of Heriberto Casany”, 1918.

“Here, in Barcelona, ​​we lack courage,” wrote Miró at the end of 1917 to his workshop companion Enric Ricart. “We, the younger generation, could come together and exhibit every year, all together under the name “Salon Jaune Chrome”. We must be men of action.”
In the following months, Miró, Ricart and other artists founded the "Courbet" group, committed to both Catalan tradition and radical pictorial innovation. Among the three works presented by Miró during the first “Courbet” exhibition in 1918, this portrait of his friend Heriberto Casany.
Totally improbable in Joan Miró's work, this car hanging on the wall undoubtedly refers to Casany's father's taxi rental business.


Joan Miró, “Woman in a Red Hat”, 1927.

In 1924, Miró in Paris joined the group of surrealists. In 1926, he moved into a studio in Montmartre near other surrealist artists, including Max Ernst, René Magritte, Jean Arp and Paul Eluard.
Painted in 1927, this work, from the series of "dream paintings", is characteristic for its signs and symbols suspended in space.
This is one of a small group of paintings of the same size, sharing the same luminous blue background populated with enigmatic lines and shapes which are inspired by the Fratellini brothers who presented an act at the Cirque Medrano in Paris in the 1920s and who inspired Picasso or Calder. I will post the other paintings soon.

First of all simply titled "Painting", "Woman with a Red Hat" is not explicitly linked to the circus, I see it as a tribute to Miró's native Catalonia, with this typical hat called Barretina.
What a beauty !


Tamara de Lempicka, “Young Girl in Green”, 1930.


Many portraits of women with a bibi placed on their heads in the work of Picasso, genius of Malaga.
I have a weakness for this painting. “Woman in a Green Hat”, 1939.

Réné Magritte, the surrealist painter who worked tirelessly with his hat.


Rainy day !

It's raining men! Hallelujah!
It's raining men! Amen!
I'm gonna go out to run and let myself get
Absolutely soaking wet!
It's raining men! Hallelujah!
It's raining men! Every specimen!
Tall, blonde, dark and lean
Rough and tough and strong and mean

René Magritte, “Golconda”, 1953.
This “rain” of men in bowler hats, dressed in dark gray, became a metaphor for the human condition in the 20th century, the symbol of the loss of individual identity and the monotonous banality of everyday life.

Truly the most creative of the surrealists, his life is a work, or should I say a manifesto. to fantasy.


Giorgio de Chirico "Self-portrait", 1954

Chirico is primarily known for his metaphysical paintings, produced between 1909 and 1919. These melancholic renderings of dimly lit city squares with long shadows and empty walkways, deeply rooted in surrealism, influenced André Breton, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte .

When de Chirico abandoned the metaphysical style, he returned to traditional painting, as with this truculent self-portrait. The Surrealists then publicly criticized this anti-modern development, Chirico then broke with the Surrealist group.


Magnificent Kees van Dongen with this lithograph "Le Coquelicot", produced in 1960 for an exhibition in Albi.


“Seated woman with hat”, Pablo Picasso, 1961, Kunsthaus Zurich


Roy Lichtenstein very inspired by Fernand Léger. Tribute.


René Magritte, “The Pilgrim”, 1966

Whaaa, perfect for my hat series, how beautiful this haircut is in this “presumed portrait of Winston Churchill as a painter” by Eduardo Arroyo, from 1975, the sublime period of Narrative Figuration.
Perfect for my hat series, how beautiful this hairstyle is in this “presumed portrait of Winston Churchill as a painter” by Eduardo Arroyo, from 1975, the sublime period of Narrative Figuration.


In 1976, Gérard Gasiorowski invented the AWK, “the Worosis-Kiga Academy” an anagram of his name. Gasiorowski only appears as an observer in this Academy which receives its statutes, its orders and is placed under the absolute authority of Professor Arne Hammer.
Hammer bases his pedagogy on humiliation and mortification, inflicting a depersonalization treatment on student artists by imposing a single exercise; the representation of the professor's hat.
Then it is the teacher who assigns the students' signatures, we find the names of François Morrelet, Christian Boltanski, Gilbert & George, Richard Serra or even Anish Kapoor and more than a hundred others. Gasiorowski denounces a community which, accepting to be transported by the art world, risks sinking into primary academicism and intense production work.

Gasiorowski “AWK”


Andy Warhol, “Ingrid with Hat”, 1990.

After the success of the Campbell's Soup series in the early 1960s, Warhol deployed a series of portraits of movie stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor and Ingrid Berman.

The Ingrid Bergman series includes three screen prints of the Oscar-winning actress in 1983. Warhol presents her as in the 1942 film "Casablanca" (work presented here), in the 1945 film "The Bell of Sainte-Marie" (The Nun ), as well as a publicity photo (Herself).


Gérard Gasiorowski, “The hats of the Worosis-Kiga Academy”. 1976-1982


John Baldessari, "Two Profiles, One with Nose and Turban; One with Ear and Hat, from Noses & Ears, Etc.", 2006

Jacques Monory, “Photo novel”, 2008.

In narrative figuration, he remains one of the most important, with American collectors and museums now eyeing his most beautiful paintings.


Alex Katz “Black Hat”, 2010.

The most delicious, charming, elegant both physically and morally.
Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. This eight-Oscar-winning film is incredibly extravagant in its sets and costumes; it must be said, they are by Cecil Beaton!


To close my Chapeaux series, this painting by Fernand Léger that my grandfather always kept on his walls and then which entered the Center Pompidou thanks to my family. She appeared in the remarkable Charlie Chaplin exhibition organized by the Nantes Museum of Arts where this photo was taken.