Artistes maudits, le récit de 30 destins tragiques

The process of using anecdotes and tragedies is worthy of praise if it helps to awaken the public at large to art. It seems it is what this book dedicated to damned artists aims for. We regret certain “nominees” we have already seen in this category still appear: Van Gogh, his ear and his gun, Camille Claudel, her craziness, her brother and Rodin, Frida Kahlo and her steel vertebrae. Fortunately, there are the other, less mediatized ones, such as depressive Hugo van der Goes or Hercules Seghers, who was so poor he had no canvas to paint on so he did it on his bed sheets and died as he fell down the stairs. Others have disappeared from our memories. Constance Mayer, the daughter of a wash woman and Greuze’s student. She became the mistress of Prud’hon, signed half of his drawings and slit her throat when he refused to marry her. Bresdin the visionary, who “lacked talent, but had genius” according to Baudelaire, could never sell his hallucinated prints and fed his family pickled herring. There is also Méryon, who was persuaded Napoleon III persecuted him, and he starved himself to death. Their bumpy existence illuminated their work with a strange light …

• Artistes maudits, le récit de 30 destins tragiques by Karim Ressouni-Demigneux, Beaux Arts éditions, 2013, 216 p., €29.