Drawn into Daumier's World

                                                   
                                                                  Rue Transnoniuan, 1834
                               One of his few realistic works, showing the massacre by the French Government
                                                             (Source - The British Museum)


Every once in a rare while we come across an artist who just draws us in, very inexplicably yet in a very natural manner.
As I stood staring for hours at Daumier's works at the Royal Academy some months ago, I knew I was in that rare sphere of time; of having discovered something so very precious and brilliant, something which would help me tackle some of my persistent questions and yet something so simple and lucid that it wouldn't be a hard brick on the head.

At first you are just swept off your feet; you just stare at the genius in front of you. You can never have enough of his drawings (and there are over 1000's of which only few were on display at the show) and you keep sourcing them and looking at them not just to get artistic inspiration but also for some artistic relaxation; and as you train your eyes to gradually look through this master's draftsmanship, the things that make him 'Daumier' reveal themselves to you.

Daumier's most loved works are his caricatures of the different sections of society, particularly of the ruling class and their repercussions on the 'lower' stratas of society. Of course, at the time that he produced them it had caused embarrassments and offenses, and as you look at them now, you realise nothing seems to have changed much in their ingrained characteristics, irrespective of the time period and the culture (except the outward appearances and affectations). But our job here is not a historical study of him, his works and their significance, but rather an artistic inquiry into why they are so strong.

'Ecce Homo' , 1848-52

'Les honneurs du Panthéon' , 1834

(source - swaen.com)

Gargantua, 1832

(Source - Wikiart)

Beauty and grotesqueness seem to share the same footing in his works. In spite of taking direct reference from life and people and turning them into caricatures, he seems to be able to strike a perfect balance between one extreme and the other - he neither holds reality too strongly so as to shove it down people's throats, and nor is he too eager to veil it with too much of symbolism and 'just for fun' tones to achieve a 'safe' zone.
An an artist he would have had his vexations and his personal perceptions of the things/people he drew, but he is clever enough to camouflage that disgust, and at the same time honest enough to portray the situation in all of its completeness.

This same quality is in his lines too. Every line of the artist carries the artist with it - if he draws it in frustration, the line is frustrated; if he draws it in joy, the line is joyful. There are no two ways about it. And here again Daumier seems to strike a perfect balance, a perfect dividing line between Daumier the artist and Daumier the person.
The energy of neither lets the eloquence of the other suffer.

                                          'The unfortunate state of the pancake merchants' , 1850

                                                                     

The text at the bottom says ' The unfortunate state of the pancake merchants along the boulevard in the days when dirt/mud dint allow parisians to walk past without the aid of stilts'

                                                          (Source - WTF arthistory.com)

Take the third class carriage (but of course! which other work so exemplifies him).
It is not a finished work; and yet as you look at the lines and the forms and the mellow expressions, you see a completeness of intention, a finished thought that knew itself well enough to be allowed to be expressed to everyone else.
He did not need to add tears, or resounding, indignant slogans to show the day-to-day sufferings of the lower class. Simply called 'The Third Class Carriage', the crowded space and the tired expressions of its passengers says it all.
Not one of them is engaged in conversation, not one of them is seemingly interested in their co passengers.
All of them are in their own thoughts, in their own silent reveries.
And it is not a luxurious or a meditative reverie as well, as is made clear by their static stares, submissive gestures, the dull tones and the jagged lines used.
The woman in the front, feeding her child and seemingly the only one with a smile on her face, seems to be thinking 'Well, life goes on...'

                                                      'Third Class carriage' , Oils, 1864