R.B. Kitaj, Houseboat Days (for John Ashberry), 1976

1976

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

8 × 24 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-153552

Kitaj's painting is based on the final scene of Marc Allégret's 1934 feature film 'Lac aux Dames' ('Ladies Lake'). The closing image shows the actress Simone Simon, in the role of Puck, rowing across a lake as she sings... 'Towards the other shore they light the lights, the parties the girl with the golden hair has brought them, the lake mirror of our faces, with lips joined, reflects me alone. A mouth that sings, eyes that stream with tears? No, no. Drops from the moon.' The film was written by the novelist Colette and was filmed at Lake Bodensee on the Rhine in Germany at the northern foot of the Alps. Jules Kruger's cinematography is informed by both German expressionism and film noir and his shots of the lake in particular have something of the brooding atmosphere of the paintings of German Neo-Romantic Caspar David Friedrich. The night time scenes of women rowing across misty lakes and the frequent shots of a semi-nude body Jean-Pierre Aumont, provide an unashamedly sensuous mood in this very 'painterly' film. 1 Lac aux Dames may have been suggested to him at this time as it was painted while he was working on The Rise of Fascism, 1975-9 (coll. Tate Gallery), which depicts three women bathing by a European lake. This painting, which shows a grotesque 'fascist' bather with a pistol and a Fortress bomber overhead suggests an allegory of wartime Europe and reads as a subversion of the imagery of Degas, Cézanne and Seurat. 1. Watch the film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufwVnWler6Q 2. John Ashbery (1927-2017) was an American poet whose essays on Kitaj are collected in the book 'Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957–87', published by Harvard University Press in 1989.