Jonathan Evens talks to Richard Nathanson about the significance of the clown in the life and work of Albert Houthuesen.
Among the major artists of the twentieth century, Marc Chagall and Georges Rouault were notably moved by the spirituality they saw in the pathos and joy of clowns. Chagall spoke of clowns, acrobats and actors “as tragically human beings … like the figures in some religious paintings” and saw the circus as an arena where the spirit and imagination could take flight and soar. Lionelli Venturi, the art historian, wrote ‘when Rouault painted clowns the grotesque became lovable[i] while a review of Rouault’s work in Time magazine suggested that he painted clowns in a glow of compassion in which they “ceased to be merely pathetic … and became Christ-like.”[ii]
In Britain, ‘the Fool’ became a major theme and life focus for the mystical painter, Cecil Collins. For Collins, the Fool represents “innate, inviolate, primordial innocence which sees clearly” with our purpose in life to recover that direct perception; the vision of the Fool. The Fool “is interested … in love and its manifestation in that harmony and wholeness which we call beauty” but because he is in “a state of creative vulnerability and openness” the Fool “is easily destroyed by the world.”[iii]
Albert Houthuesen, a contemporary of Collins and an ardent admirer of Chagall and Rouault, deserves to be seen with these three artists as a great painter of the spirituality of clowns. Yet, by comparison, he is largely unknown. Richard Nathanson, Houthuesen’s biographer, says that “Chagall and Rouault were both artists he loved”: “Chagall, for the richness and originality of his work, the way he drew upon Russian folk art and Jewish tradition, and was able to be completely himself. Rouault for the spirituality in his work, with its influence of puppets, and the abstraction yet human reality this gave his figures and portraits.”
The significance of the clown in Houthuesen’s life and work was however an entirely personal one. A clown portrait that moved and impressed him was Jean-Antoine Watteau’s Pierrot, in the Louvre. For Houthuesen, Watteau understood the other side of life; and portrayed it in a way that Boucher or Fragonard did not.
Nathanson says that Houthuesen had a natural empathy with clowns. And would spontaneously enjoy and be inspired when he saw a wonderful clown. Certain clowns stood out for him: Marcel Marceau; George Robey; Little Titch; Charles Cameron; and the Hermans - a family the Russian-Jewish musical clowns he saw in Doncaster towards the end of the war when he was recovering from a severe nervous breakdown. They helped inspired his first real clown studies.
[i] L. Venturi, Rouault, Lausanne, 1959, pp 21, 51
[ii] ‘The Glow of Compassion’, Time, Jul. 27, 1953
[iii] C. Collins, The Vision of the Fool and other writings, Golgonooza Press, 1994, p 119
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Delirious? - King of Fools.
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