Body Art Didier

John White Alexander

The Green Gown




John White Alexander (1856 – 1915) was an American portrait, figure, and decorative painter and illustrator. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where he had first-hand knowledge of the tough life of steel workers, John White Alexander became one of the most prominent, fashionable artists in New York City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is especially noted for female subjects, which he rendered with fluid, sweeping lines and "an almost abstract, decorative rhythm of shape with a graceful and voluptuous expressiveness" (Baigell "Dictionary" 8).

An Idle Moment

Alexander's stylistic development falls into several distinct stages. His early landscapes and genre scenes of the 1870s bear the stamp of Wilhelm Leibl's Munich realism as espoused by Duveneck and William Merritt Chase. His fluid brushwork resembled that of Frans Hals and Diego Velázquez, painters he deeply admired. After his return to the USA in 1881 and under the influence of Whistler, he favoured a more limited palette and experimented with the evocation of mood through shadow and gesture. His portrait of Walt Whitman (1886–9; New York, Met.) is one of his finest works of the 1880s. Many of his later portraits, notably of women, were psychological studies rather than specific likenesses, as in The Ring (1911; New York, Met.). His brushwork became less painterly and more concerned with suggesting abstracted shapes. He also adopted a very coarse-weave canvas, the texture of which became an important element in his mature work. By applying thinned-down paint to the absorbent surface, his pictures appear to have been dyed in muted tones, in marked contrast to the glossy, impasted surfaces of his earlier work. Throughout his career Alexander favoured compositions with a single figure placed against a sharply contrasting background. The sinuous curvilinear outline of the heroine standing full-length in Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1897; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.) evokes contemporary Art Nouveau forms. Like the Symbolists, he sought by gesture and strong lighting to intensify the viewer's response to his sensuous treatment of the subject.
Source: Art Sender

Didier Massard

I love this piece by Didier Massard. It somehow reminds me of early morning, when everywhere is still quiet, a time when even the birds are nestled in their little nest. I love that time of day, because it is so peaceful. I wish I could step into this image and just sit down, do nothing, hear nothing, just sit and breathe in the air.

Didier Massard was born and raised in Paris where he received his Baccalaureate degree in art and archeology from the University of Paris in 1975. For twenty-five years he executed commercial work as a still photographer for clients in the world of fashion and cosmetics including Chanel, Hermes, and many others. After the completion of his series Imaginary Journeys, executed over almost ten years, his career was launched and he now works exclusively on his personal projects. These wonderfully staged photographs have a very painterly feel about them.



Massard works for long periods on each of these tableaux, and ruminates that “each image is the completion of an inner imaginary journey.” Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times “color and space combine with fastidious detail to create a sense of illusion and artifice that is more usual to painting, Magic Realist painting in particular…one’s willingness to suspend disbelief is a measure of Massard’s skill.”
Source: Giornale Nuovo

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