Hedonist, womanizer, cross-dressing showboater, Parisian super-celeb. … How did a Japanese transplant who reveled in scandalous behavior find time to create works embraced by critics, collectors, commoners and the School of Paris?
And why on earth would he desert a painter’s utopia to illustrate propaganda for his homeland’s war machine?
Phyllis Birnbaum tells all in “Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita.” Her newly released book’s title refers to Tsuguharu Foujita’s hallmark: a single, fluid line that morphed into seductive femmes and sensitive felines. The glow illuminating these vibrant figures comes from Foujita’s secret-recipe white oil paint.
He drew attention for carousing with creative contemporaries, but Foujita emulated the art masters whose biographies he had studied. “I practiced getting a deep sleep out of a short number of hours. I worked from 10 in the morning until 12, and in the afternoon from 1 until 8. At night, after eating supper, my study hours were from 10 until 5. I slept like a log.’”
You need not know Foujita’s gift with a line to enjoy this ride through his careening career. In measured prose based on interviews, written accounts and correspondence, Birnbaum’s portrait of an artist of the early 20th century captures the devil-may-care decadence of Paris to the totalitarianism of militarized Japan. Zesty photographs — guess who’s the man doing the can-can? — and lovely reproductions of Foujita’s paintings bring you into the artist’s world.
Birnbaum’s book brims with lessons for anyone with artistic aspirations. Take self-discipline: The fastidious expat eschewed drugs and drink, made the Louvre his second home, and “studied as many eyes as he could find, ancient, modern, Eastern and Western, in terra-cottas of the Etruscan period and eyes from Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and up to Toulouse-Lautrec. He took in eyes looking up, eyes looking down, angry eyes, laughing eyes, crying eyes, eyes with a faraway look in them.”
The bio-epic spills secrets about maverick megastars from Picasso to Hemingway. What did Foujita find beneath Modigliani’s bed? Which abstract art icon appropriated his peers’ ideas? Which world-famous muralist inspired Foujita’s big flop? Hang with this enigmatic painter awhile and discover how artists earned their wild reputation.
