Jean-Jacques Audubon (1785-1851)
The famous ornithologist and naturalist painter Audubon was born in Saint-Domingue in 1785, to a wealthy planter and a chambermaid. After his mother's untimely death, his father remarried and returned to Brittany. His talent for drawing was evident from an early age. Unconcerned with academism, he left for America to look after his father's land. This nature lover spent his time painting. Soon bankrupt, he became a taxidermist in Cincinnati, where he studied anatomy and zoology and, above all, met the ornithologist Alexander Wilson. In 1821, he opened his first studio, where he gave painting lessons, and met Elizabeth Pirrie, who offered to tutor her daughter at Oakley Plantation, now theAudubon State Historic Site. For several months, he painted the surrounding countryside. He then moved to St. Francisville, with his wife and children. While his wife supported the family, he devoted his energies to painting the local planters. Having somehow managed to save some money, his wife Lucy urged him to go to Europe. There, he met the well-known flower painter Cuvier Redouté. In April 1829, Jean-Jacques Audubon returned to the United States, where he finally found recognition. Stricken by blindness in 1846, he died in 1851.
The work he left us is immense, in particular his formidable bestiary. These include Les Oiseaux d'Amérique, a masterpiece with 435 plates, Quadrupèdes d'Amérique du Nord, with 500 plates, and Biographie ornithologique, other masterpieces comprising 1,055 drawings with descriptive notes. His approach established him as a pioneer in the protection of the environment and the animal kingdom.
George David Coulon (1822-1904)
Born in France, he moved with his family to New Orleans. From childhood, he drew with original materials such as indigo and mixtures of herbs and berries. A teacher, painter and restorer, Coulon is known for his landscapes, still lifes and allegorical portraits, including Spirit of Louisiana, painted in 1884. Nourished by French neoclassical influences, he introduced various architectural elements into the background of his portraits. He enthusiastically welcomed the arrival of photography, which improved his technique as a portraitist, enabling him to capture even the most minute details of his models' clothing. He marries Marie-Paoline Casbergue, a New Orleans-born artist who distinguishes herself in the depiction of birds and still lifes. Their two children, Elizabeth Emma and George Joseph Amede, also had careers in art.
Edgar Degas, an impressionist in New Orleans
Born in Paris in 1834, Degas was the son of a Parisian banker and a Creole mother from New Orleans. Although he spent most of his life in Paris, he spent a year in New Orleans with his uncle (his mother was a planter's daughter), from 1872 to 1873, when war broke out with Prussia. He was the only Impressionist to visit the emblematic Louisiana city. Although his mother Célestine died when he was just 13, Degas retained ties to New Orleans, as his two brothers lived there. During his stay, he painted a portrait of his sister-in-law, Estelle, for whom he felt a certain fascination. He also highlights the cotton market on Carondelet Street. During this year, he lives at 2306 Esplanade Avenue, where it is now possible to visit the Degas House. His Portrait of Mme René De Gas is in the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).
Clementine Hunter (1886 or 1887-1988)
The first black woman to be honored in an exhibition at NOMA, Clementine Hunter is considered a major artist in the history of Louisiana art. Born on the Hidden Hill plantation in Cloutierville, this descendant of slaves began working at the age of 15 on the Melrose plantation, owned by François Mignon, a librarian. It was Mignon who inspired Clementine to take up painting, which she did to great effect, producing over 5,000 paintings. Naïve in style, her best-known canvases are formidable testimonies to daily life on the plantations, religious scenes and leisure activities in Louisiana's famous honky tonks. Some of his works can be admired at theOgden Museum of Southern Art. His style influenced many Louisiana painters, including the famous Alvin Batiste.
Primitive art
Born in 1962 in Donaldsonville, Alvin Batiste has been painting since the age of 3. Self-taught, he has become, through thousands of works, a Louisiana symbol of "primitive" rural art. He depicts joyful, but also spiritual and sometimes dramatic scenes of life in the Mississippi Delta of yesteryear, inspired in part by stories told by his mother and grandmother about life on the plantations or in the fields: work, harvest festivals, carnivals, births, funerals, voodoo ceremonies and gospels. Children and Big Mamas, omnipresent in his work, evoke the African tradition of storytelling, which he translates into images. Alvin is also a witness to his times: a black Louisiana community plagued by delinquency and drugs, portraits of modern-day Louisianans, and custom-made wedding ceremonies. Alvin paints on all kinds of supports: canvas, wood, glass, doors, pottery. Admired in Louisiana, his works are also seen around the world.
Primitive art is expressed in sculpture, through the art of Clyde Connell (1901-1998). A sculptor born in the Shreveport area, she is representative of movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Clyde Connell's work is also nourished by black culture, religion and primitive art. Her materials bring her closer to Louisiana nature and Southern identity.
Black culture is at the heart of the program at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans. Events and exhibitions pay tribute to African contributions to regional culture.
The legacy of George Rodrigue
George Rodrigue (1944-2013), born in New Iberia, beautifully depicted the folk culture of Cajun country in his 300 canvases. a "naïve surrealist" in his own words, in 1984 he painted Blue Dog, the first in a long series representative of his contemporary work and a ubiquitous commercial phenomenon in New Orleans. The government commissioned a series of paintings, including portraits of Ronald Reagan, George Bush (Sr.) and Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1989, he opened his first gallery in the French Quarter, the Rodrigue Studio, followed by another grand opening in Carmel, California, in 1991. Whoopi Goldberg took an interest in him in 1992, when she directed a documentary entitled Rodrigue: A Man and his Dog. Deeply involved in the rebuilding of his post-Katrina city, George Rodrigue succumbed to lung cancer in December 2013. A large audience gathered for his funeral at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.
Another renowned portraitist, his contemporary Garland Robinette was born in Boutte in 1943. He worked in a variety of fields: host-journalist of a radio program on WWL AM, The Think Tank; presenter and reporter on a local TV station. In 2005, he attracted national attention just after Hurricane Katrina, conducting an interview with Mayor Ray Nagin when Nagin challenged the federal government to keep their promise. His career as an artist took off during his years in broadcasting, as he nervously scribbled in the margins of his scripts. His first commission was for a portrait of Pope John Paul II, to commemorate his visit in 1987. His portraits are well known.
Contemporary trends
Exhibition-goers can choose between several major venues, such as the Shaw Center for the Arts, located in downtown Baton Rouge. This cultural complex is built around the LSU Museum of Art 's collection of over 6,500 objects of contemporary and ancient art. Also worth a visit is the Baton Rouge Gallery - center for contemporary art, which has been championing living art with new discoveries and well-known artists for nearly 60 years.
In NOLA, a visit to the New Orleans Museum of Art is complemented by the Sculpture Garden's hundreds of creations. Since 1911, NOMA has covered every medium, from pre-Columbian art to photography. Here you can discover George Dureau (1930-2014), the New Orleans-born photographer of the male body. His tender gaze on black men, often handicapped, conveys a skin-deep eroticism.
Art gallery open house
A special time when locals get together for a few cultural and social hours. Some Louisiana towns have one day or evening a month when the streets become pedestrianized and art gallery doors are wide open to let in art lovers or the simply curious. It's common for galleries to offer a small drink to draw in the crowds. In New Orleans, galleries are open every first Saturday of the month in the Arts District for the First Saturday event. Another event in the area is White Linen Night in August on Julia Street. For a taste of Baton Rouge's zeitgeist, head to Mid-City, the capital's beating heart. Government Street is dotted with trendy art galleries, conceptual eateries and vintage boutiques.
Street side
Louisiana readily lends its walls to artists. These include some of Louisiana's greatest activist artists (Banksy and Az), as well as public and private initiatives such as the anti-Trump mural created by Cashy-D on a facade loaned by resident Neal Morris. In response, he founded the NOLA Mural Project to promote street art. Since then, a multitude of paintings have graced the exteriors of New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Even more surprisingly, urban art reigns in Shreveport, the city of casinos. Mural frescoes, sculptures, tags and nuggets of all shapes and sizes make up a veritable open-air museum. Throughout Louisiana, art celebrates human rights, music and an exciting visual heritage.
