LARTIGUE EXHIBIT
Lartigue captured France’s fast cars and faster women
In the late 19th and early 20th century, France enjoyed peace, prosperity and pleasure.
There were cars to race, planes to fly, tennis matches to watch and elegant fashions to parade in the Bois de Boulogne, a large park in Paris. Into this world stepped Jacques Henri Lartigue, an obsessive photographer who captured the last dozen years of the Belle Epoque (Beautiful Era).
“Fast Cars and Femmes Fatales,” an exhibition of 135 photographs by Mr. Lartigue, opens today and runs through May 15 at The Frick Pittsburgh in Point Breeze.
The show surveys the French artist’s fascination with auto racing, airplanes, members of the leisure class and athletes, including star tennis players Suzanne Lenglen and Rene LaCoste.
Some of these pictures are so evocative that they could inspire an HBO series. You won’t soon forget the picture of actress Anna la Pradvina, who wears a large hat and furs while walking her two small dogs in Paris.
Mr. Lartigue’s playful first wife, Bibi, is shown working out at a gym, and there are arresting portraits of Renee Perle, his exotic, darkeyed model and companion during the 1930s.
One of the funniest pictures shows Mr. Lartigue’s older brother, Maurice, nicknamed “Zissou.” Wearing a suit, hat and sunglasses, he floats in a lake surrounded by a rubber pocket used to aid duck hunters. The image has a Chaplinesque quality.
A son of the one of the richest families in France, Mr. Lartigue was mostly unknown as a photographer until 1963, when more than 40 of his pictures were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The exhibition mythologized him as a naive, unschooled genius who operated on instinct. In fact, he had been obsessively shooting his entire life, and as a young man he had studied painting at the Academie Julian in Paris.
Later that same year, his work reached a far larger audience when it appeared in the same
Where: The Frick Pittsburgh, 7227 Reynolds St., Point Breeze.
When: Through May 15. Information: www.thefrickpittsburgh. or 412-371--0600.
France first acknowledged Mr. Lartigue’s work in an exhibit in 1975. Four years later, he donated his entire collection of albums, prints and negatives to his native country. The following year, a show called “Bonjour Monsieur Lartigue” was held at the Grand Palais in Paris and drew 35,000 visitors in its the first month.