Bringing the Art to You Week #24 & #25 Untitled (Surrealist Nuns) , c. 1945, mixed media on paper, 15” x 21” and Untitled (Surrealist Composition with Nuns) , c. 1945, oil on canvas 18” x 22”, and Untitled (Surrealist Composition with Nuns) in the Studio , c. 1945, photograph. Our apologies for missing last week, we were out of the office. We are back on track this week with an interesting trio. It is always fascinating to get a glimpse of what an artist may think of their own work. Did they like a particular work, and make a point to document it? Did they do preliminary sketches or studies? Did they muse about a certain theme or concept at one point and then revisit it again and again, or years later with a very different approach? In the long career that Dusti Bongé had, she did all of these. Thus, we are sharing one example of a work for which Dusti did a study first, a subsequent painting, and which she documented as a work in progress by photographing it on her easel. It also features a thematic object, one she used in many of her surrealist works: a white bird. The work is: Untitled (Surrealist Composition with Nuns ). Although many of Dusti's surrealist explorations were inspired by dreams, she also often depicted everyday scenes, especially those that were somehow incongruous, such as nuns in full habit on the beach. This painting and its preceding sketch each depict three forms resembling nuns in black habits and white cornettes, as worn by the Daughters of Charity, along the waterfront. In the sketch the figures are slightly more easily identifiable as nuns, in the painting they have achieved a certain degree of abstraction making the work more surreal. The white bird features prominently in both, in the upper left corner, becoming almost confused with the shapes of the cornettes, which incidentally were often referred to as wings. The sail boats in the sketch disappear in the painting. Finally, the reduced color palette of the painting adds yet another layer of abstraction, accentuated by the patterns of waves, stripes, and stippling replacing the water, sand, and greenery. HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE! Perhaps that was what these nuns were enjoying, the longest day of the year. Have you seen this work? Do you or someone you know have this work in their collection? If so, we would love to hear from you. We are continuously working to maintain as complete a record as possible, and to determine the location of all of Dusti Bongé's work. If you have any information on this or other works, you can contact us at
[email protected] We appreciate receiving any referrals to the existence and whereabouts of artworks by Dusti Bongé. Thank you. Available in our store: The definitive volume on artist Dusti Bongé, by J. Richard Gruber Dusti Bongé, Art and Life: Biloxi, New Orleans, New York Hard bound, 12” x 9”, 350 pages, over 500 color and b&w illustrations Limited edition lithographs of two original Dusti Bongé drawings. Shrimp Boats & Factories, Back Bay Biloxi I and Shrimp Boats & Factories, Back Bay Biloxi II 12” x 16” drawing, 15” x 22” paper size https://www.dustibonge.org/store.html support us Our mission: to promote the artistic legacy of Dusti Bongé (1903-1993)
