Review by Mitchell Oldham.
Flying under the radar for much of her long and extraordinary career, Lebanese artist Huguette Caland’s daring interpretations of life as she saw it are beginning to gain considerable notice and recognition now, several years after her death at 88. It wasn’t until the year she died, in 2019, that she received her first solo museum show at the Tate St. Ives in England. More recently, one of her paintings, Visages, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection.
The Arts Club of Chicago is giving the city a chance to see what makes Caland such a seminal artist in its new Huguette Caland—Bribes de corps exhibition. The exhibit demonstrates that Caland’s works are as stimulating and exciting to the mind as they are to the eye.
Born into great privilege in 1931 Beirut, with all the expectations that fell on a Middle Eastern woman of rank at that time, Caland found ways to brilliantly walk a tightrope—one that allowed her to satisfy her own needs for self-expressive autonomy while broadly adhering to the norms of her family and society.
Her father was Bechara el-Khoury. When Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943, Khoury became the country’s first President of Lebanon as an independent state. Caland understood, and in many ways accepted, her responsibilities as the daughter of an esteemed national figure and bent to the “marriage, children and Chanel” dictates that accompanied them. But she would do them her way.
She married her childhood sweetheart, Paul Caland, the French-Lebanese nephew of one of her father’s political rivals. Shortly after their marriage, they both took lovers. One of hers was her husband’s best friend. Caland and her husband would go on to have three children together and remain married until death.
Although always an artist at her core, Caland didn’t begin studying art seriously until after her father died when she was in her 30s. It was then in 1964 at the American University in Beirut that she found techniques and a language to indulge one of her most “abiding fascinations,” her own body. The majority of the 30-odd works in the Arts Club exhibition reflect that focus and similar interests.
Lebanon was not a fertile ground to pursue the type of art that fulfilled her. And, as an unintentional celebrity, she was tiring of the confines her family name mandated. In 1970, she left her husband, her lover and her three teenaged children and moved to Paris to become the Huguette Caland we know today; the freethinking libertine who creates blissfully phenomenal art. With only a small handful of exceptions, the works in the Arts Club’s Bribes de corps show are from her Paris interlude. Many of them are some of her best-known works.
In interviews and with friends, Caland was famous for saying she was “born happy.” “I love every minute of my life…I squeeze it like an orange and eat the peel, because I don’t want to miss a thing.” Every painting in the exhibition glows with that spirit. And you sense it most acutely when you’re in their presence.
Dreamily arresting, her style is completely idiosyncratic. Aspects of it casually nod to surrealism and abstraction, but it’s often representational enough for her forms to be either vaguely or quite recognizable. Because the human body is so frequently her focus, her work can often take on an erotic context. But it’s clear the intent isn’t to shock or titillate. At least not primarily or exclusively. The perspective, sophistication of technique, and mood of her pieces overpower any prurient sense. Our bodies are aspects of ourselves; elemental parts of life. To be interested in them is simply to acknowledge that truth.
Bribes de corps translates to “body parts” or “body bits” and nearly half of the pieces in the collection carry that title. Virtually all are oil on linen, which helps ensure their longevity. It’s also believed that painting on linen allows better control and is preferable for doing detailed work; which much of Caland’s is.
That sameness of title belies how different the personalities and impact of the paintings can be from one another. Usually a subtle colorist, her pieces tend to speak softly, pulling you in to observe them closely. Close observation lets you appreciate the fineness of her line drawing, better detect the humor she folds into her mischief, and discover stories she’s telling within stories.
Some works like Faces are more forceful, but still terrifically enigmatic. A square canvas is divided into quadrants with a head in each one. The bottom two face forward. They’re not ordinary faces. Strangely shaped, they look amorphous, otherworldly, with huge eyes at the top of their head, elongated yellow noses and ambiguous mouths. You’re not quite sure, but the top two are either facing away or are completely devoid of features at all. So fanciful, they seem comical but there’s an inescapable seriousness about them that makes them captivating. That same sense of low humming awe runs rampant throughout the exhibition. Explosions of imaginative insight expressed brilliantly on canvas.
Articulate in a variety of art media, Caland exercised her gifts within the fashion world as well, turning caftans into singular, and sometimes daring, works of art. Two are included in the Arts Club Bribes de Corpsshow along with the sculptural mannequins designed to display them. Her vision and talent in this realm caused fashion designer Pierre Cardin to take notice and seek her out as a collaborator.
Still another example of the artist’s formidable talent can be found in Apple Green and Green Tomato, a sweeping mixed-media-on-canvas work Caland created during the winter of her years, in 2010. Elaborate, dense, meticulous and stunningly beautiful, it proves age is no impediment to creativity and that artistic vision endures a lifetime.
Huguette Caland: Bribes de Corps is on display through August 2 at the Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario St. For more information, see the Arts Club website or call 312- 787-3997. The first floor galleries are free and open to the public from 11am to 6pm, Tuesday through Friday, and 11am to 3pm on Saturdays.
Mitchell Oldham, a self-acknowledged culture vulture, has been enjoying writing about Chicago's dynamic arts scene for over a decade.
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