| The Thread of Art | |
|---|---|
 The cover of volume 1 of the French edition | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Delcourt (France) System Comics (Serbia) |
| Publication date | 2012 (Volume 1) 2015 (Volume 2) |
| Creative team | |
| Written by | Ivana Smudja |
| Artist(s) | Gradimir Smudja |
The Thread of Art (French: Au fil de l'Art, Serbian: Nit umetnosti) is a graphic novel created by Serbian artist Gradimir Smudja and his daughter Ivana Smudja. The novel was originally published in French in two volumes, in 2012 and 2015.
The script for the novel was written by Gradimir Smudja's daughter Ivana, an art historian. [1] Gradimir Smudja dedicated the graphic novel to Aleksa Čelebonović, his professor of art history on the Belgrade Faculty of Applied Arts. [2]
The Thread of Art was originally published in France by Delcourt, in two volumes, the first one appearing in 2012 and the second in 2015. [2] In Serbia it was published by System Comics, in a single 200-page volume, in 2015. [3] In Serbia the novel was also published in sequels in Politikin Zabavnik magazine. [2]
Teenage girl Luna and her anthropomorphic cat Vincent (who originally appeared as a character in Gradimir Smudja's 2003 graphic novel Vincent and Van Gogh) are spending a day outdoors, where Vincent is posing for Luna's drawings. After running across the field, the two trip over a red thread and fall into a cave. They find themselves in the Lascaux Cave, where they meet a prehistoric man who created its famous wall paintings. From there, following the red thread, Luna and Vincent travel through space and time, meeting some of the greatest artists in the history of mankind. The story consists of 21 chapters, each one opening with a biography (or biographies) of the artist(s) met by Luna and Vincent in the chapter:
During the story, Luna and Vincent find themselves in surreal situations, often helping the artists they meet complete their famous works or get out of trouble, meeting various historical figures that artists portrayed or that had some influence over artists' work, like Marie de' Medici, Louis XIV of France and Jean-Paul Marat. Salvador Dalí appears briefly in the chapter in which Luna and Vincent meet René Magritte.
After meeting Picasso in Nazi-occupied Paris, Luna and Vincent take him to see the paintings in Lascaux Cave. It is revealed that the prehistoric man who painted them was Picasso's ancestor. After taking a train with Picasso to Gare d'Orsay railway station, Luna and Vincent wake up in the Musée d'Orsay in the present day. Luna tells what she dreamed about to a museum guard, who tells her that she is not the first to tell him something like that and that Musée d'Orsay is a place of magic. Upon exiting the museum, Luna and Vincent once again see the red thread.
Through the graphic novel, Smudja pays tribute to the great artists by reproducing their famous works or painting people and objects presented on them from different perspective. [2]
In a 2015 interview, Smudja stated that he wanted to include Serbian painter Sava Šumanović and Russian painter Ilya Repin into the novel, but eventually did not do so because the novel was conceived as a small history of West European art. [4]
The graphic novel was excellently received by critics and readers in France and Belgium. [2] [5]
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.
The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe.
Charles-François Daubigny was a French painter, one of the members of the Barbizon school, and is considered an important precursor of impressionism.
Paul Victor Jules Signac was a French Neo-Impressionist painter who, with Georges Seurat, helped develop the artistic technique Pointillism.
Jeu de Paume is an arts centre for modern and postmodern photography and media. It is located in the north corner of the Tuileries Gardens next to the Place de la Concorde in Paris. In 2004, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Centre national de la photographie and Patrimoine Photographique merged to form the Association Jeu de Paume.
Gradimir Smudja is a Serbian cartoonist/painter in Italy and France. He is currently resident of Lucca, Tuscany, (Italy).
Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic doctor and artist with whom van Gogh resided following a spell in an asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Gachet took care of Van Gogh during the final months of his life. There are two authenticated versions of the portrait, both painted in June 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise. Both show Gachet sitting at a table and leaning his head on his right arm, but they are easily differentiated in color and style. There is also an etching.
Bedroom in Arles is the title given to three similar paintings by 19th-century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.
Paul-Ferdinand Gachet was a French physician most famous for treating the painter Vincent van Gogh during his last weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise. Gachet was a great supporter of artists and the Impressionist movement. He was an amateur painter, signing his works "Paul van Ryssel", referring to his birthplace: Rijsel is the Dutch name of Lille.
Vincent van Gogh lived during the Impressionist era. With the development of photography, painters and artists turned to conveying the feeling and ideas behind people, places, and things rather than trying to imitate their physical forms. Impressionist artists did this by emphasizing certain hues, using vigorous brushstrokes, and paying attention to highlighting. Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh's portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and Van Gogh's own relationship with them.
Luxe, Calme et Volupté is a 1904 oil painting by the French artist Henri Matisse. Both foundational in the oeuvre of Matisse and a pivotal work in the history of art, Luxe, Calme et Volupté is considered the starting point of Fauvism. This painting is a dynamic and vibrant work created early on in his career as a painter. It displays an evolution of the Neo-Impressionist style mixed with a new conceptual meaning based in fantasy and leisure that had not been seen in works before.
Fauvism is a style of painting and an art movement that emerged in France at the beginning of the 20th century. It was the style of les Fauves, a group of modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1904 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years, 1905–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were André Derain and Henri Matisse.
Dr. Gachet's Garden in Auvers and Marguerite Gachet in the Garden were both painted in 1890 by Vincent van Gogh in the gardens of his homeopathic physician, Dr. Paul Gachet. Both paintings reside at the Musée d'Orsay.
Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Paris) is the subject of many drawings, sketches and paintings by Vincent van Gogh in 1886 and 1887 after he moved to Montmartre in Paris from the Netherlands. While in Paris, Van Gogh transformed the subjects, color and techniques that he used in creating still life paintings.
Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh painted a self-portrait in oil on canvas in September 1889. The work, which may have been Van Gogh's last self-portrait, was painted shortly before he left Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France. The painting is now at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Landscape at Auvers in the Rain is an oil painting on canvas by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.
Imperial Fritillaries in a Copper Vase is an oil painting on canvas created by the Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh in Paris, 1887. The painting is now part of the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France. This work was made at a time of the life of Van Gogh when he first encountered influences from Impressionists and became aware of light and color, implementing it in his paintings. This painting presages some of his most famous subsequent works, and stands out from other still lifes because of the implementation of mixed techniques and complementary colors.
Marguerite Gachet was a French woman who was painted by Vincent van Gogh in two paintings.
The Siesta is an oil on canvas painting by Vincent van Gogh painted between December 1889 and January 1890 while he was interned in a mental asylum in the French town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It is part of the permanent collection of the Musée d'Orsay, in Paris.