Merton Clivette

Merton Clive Cook (11 June 1868 - 8 May 1931), also known as Merton Clivette, was an American painter, magician, writer, vaudevillian and trapeze artist who spent most of his yet to be life traveling the world entertaining in the past settling in New York to paint permanently. As a categorically highly regarded American player of the prematurely 20th century by his peers (including Maurice Sterne, Waldo Pierce, Edward Bruce, Marcel Sauvage and Michel Georges-Michel of Paris, among others), his style can be identified considering the American expressionist movement. Clivette is with known to be one of several artists who most defined the Ashcan realism period in New York at that time. Clivette was demonstrated artistic power painting in a pardon flowing broadcast rarely painting over a extraction twice. During the 1920s his style evolved as he moved from certainty toward expressionism eventually moving on to symbolic and the abstract.

Clivette was born in 1868 in Portage, Wisconsin but grew happening in the Wyoming Territory. In this puberty he left home to participate in a Wild West statute which toured the Northwest US and during his grow old in it he was skillful to display his skills as an acrobat, juggler and amateur magician. He honed these skills into what would later be a Vaudeville touring show. Clivette moved to Seattle, then San Francisco in the late 1880s. Clivette was a student of Auguste Rodin from 1889-1890 and even painted a portrait of Auguste Rodin, said to be the greatest of everything portraits of the sculptor.

He started his own circus tour in 1890 and then associated the Orpheum Circuit to tour behind them from 1891-1900. At this get older he officially adopted the broadcast Clivette, and billed himself "Clivette, the Man in Black". He toured Europe in 1893, and Far East in 1894. He married a entertainer Catherine Parker Chamberlain, in New York in 1896, and her acts were incorporated into his show. They toured America, Europe and the East, until 1907 next a daughter, Juanita (also spelled Juanyta) Clivette, was born.

The associates of Clivettes moved to New York, where Merton gave taking place his stage career and began to paint full time. Merton was an sprightly part of the artiste community there, participating in symposiums and workshops at the Art Students League, being a aficionada of the Society of Independent Artists, and befriending new artists. The entire relatives was a share of the bustling Bohemian simulation of Greenwich Village in the youth and 20’s. From 1918 to 1923 Merton and Catherine ran an primeval store "Bazaar de Junk" on 1 Sheridan Square, telling outlandish stories virtually their products to the visitors. In 1920 they as a consequence announced that their daughter, Juanita, ever back the age of 5 claimed to be a reincarnation of Sappho, with the whole bill catching the attention of the press, and Juanita starting to publicly right to use her poems. Meanwhile her father's function was frequently exhibited during the 1920s from Los Angeles to Paris, and New York in-between. Clivette died in 1931, at the age of 62, in New York, after "a long illness".

Clivette modeled himself considering Ashcan School artists (including Robert Henri) utilizing realist subjects. Clivette used the Chiaroscuro style in both light and dark juxtapositions and at a loose end but forceful brushwork. This technique connections him and the Ashcan school. These were same to Robert Henri and other realist painters. Clivette was capably known for his Vamp series which portray show-business ladies in Burlesque attires. Contrasting these Vamp paintings Clivette painted numerous Native American portraits. Clivette inevitably moved away from this realistic see to a more distorted fashion in the vein of Chaïm Soutine. Over period he drifted away from reality toward expressionism. His later comport yourself turned toward figurativism, and eventually becoming abstract.

Clivette created his expressionist works painting in the same way as confidence similar to many strokes in succession; he utilized his skills he learned as an acrobat to disturb the brushes in the manner of precision. In his grander works, the marks looked later than they were created using his accumulate body. This style was one of his greatest strengths. Over time new New York artists such as Franz Kline, picked up on this supplementary type of perform painting to make their mark. During the 1920s New York art locale, Clivette was established and his art was well received. George S. Hellman writes that Clivette was the greatest American Painter ever after seeing Clivette's "Outriding the Blizzard" painting. Hellman was therefore convinced of Clivette's genius that he purchased a number of paintings from him and encouraged supplementary accomplished New York painters — Maurice Sterne, Paul Manship, Edward Bruce — to purchase paintings from Clivette as well. Sterne himself was amazed at this unknown player who he thought painted self-portraits similarly to Paul Cézanne but when less control.

To this dwindling is a hint from Henry Rankin Poore's book "Modern Art, Why, What and How" which talks more or less Clivette's impact including this Paris show. He begins, "Although France may affirmation the savings account of introducing protester art to the world it is not generally known that since Paul Cézanne had sponsored cubism and Henri Matisse freedom, an American citizen was practicing out kindred theories. Merton Clivette, although of vague French extraction, has been Americanized through generations back 1630."

Additionally it notes, "Only recently an invitation came for a large exhibition of his works in Paris, and had those pictures been seen there gone first produced, Henri Matisse would have had to take that his idea had already been preempted. The French Government, through its Director of Fine Arts, selected an example from this exhibition which is destined for Luxembourg. The valuable press of Paris extolled the newcomer from across the sea. It is quite proper subsequently that the makers of Modern Art should concern up and appointment Clivette a place in contradiction of them."

Clivette joins six further painters as the unaided American given a special article in the book, "Selections from the Collection of George S. Hellman", along taking into consideration Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse, Derain, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. Selected paintings tote up Rushing Waters, Flowers in a Pot, Still Life, Walt Whitman, Indian in a Canoe, Toucan, Seascape, Small Seascape, and Sunset in the middle of others.