GUY PENE DU BOIS 1884-1958
Trapeze Performers, 1931
Oil on canvas, 25 X 20" (63.50 x 50.80 cm.)
Signed, lower left
Museum purchase, 964-0-113
The circus was still a vital part of contemporary life, in both Europe and America, in the 1920s. For the generation of American artists who came of age in the shadow of the dancers and cabaret performers of Impressionism, and who had been instilled with Robert Henri's maxim "art for life's sake," the circus presented a perfect subject. A testament to its popularity was the success of the Whitney Studio Club's 1929 exhibition, Circus in Paint, which included, among numerous others, the work of Guy Pene du Bois. In his review, Lloyd Goodrich proclaimed the exhibition, which was installed in an elaborate circus setting replete with a sawdust covered floor and a big top canopy, "the gayest and most original show of the season." Pene du Bois turned to the subject of the circus on more than this one occasion, most notably in Carnival Interlude (1935, private collection), which won a prize at the 1936 National Academy of Design Annual.
Trapeze Performers was done the year following the, artist's return from a five year sojourn in France.
Significantly, the painting draws on Pene du Bois's memories of Europe and depicts a French, rather than an American, circus. Pene du Bois had been happy as an American in Paris. His return to the United States in 1930 had been both abrupt and reluctant, necessitated by the collapse of the stock market, which made it impossible for his dealer to continue his support.
During his years in France, the artist had been freed for the first time from the demands of his dual career as an artist and New York critic. He had been able to concentrate on painting, refining his mature style.
However, his return brought this fruitful period to an end. Faced once more with
financial difficulties, P6ne du Bois was forced to return to teaching and writing
criticism. He found the country to which he returned considerably changed. Like his friend,
Marsden Hartley, who had returned from Europe the same year, P6ne du Bois felt estranged
from an America characterized by a newfound nationalism, too often expressed in
isolationist and xenophobic terms. Four months after his return, he complained that he
felt "like a complete stranger" in New York.
The haunting, enigmatic mood that pervades Trapeze Performers is characteristic of much of
Pene du Bois's work, as is the simplified, highly-stylized figure style used to portray
the three aerialists. The painting, however, possesses a particularly disturbing
undercurrent that may well be related to the psychological and emotional anxiety the
artist felt on his return to New York. Quite literally, the picture could be seen as a
metaphor of the high wire act that P6ne du Bois no doubt felt his life had once again
become. This metaphor was one with which many modern artists identified. They saw in
themselves the skill and desire to push to the limits of human potential in their own
quest for artistic perfection.
A great part of the visual tension in the painting is created by the handling of space,
which juxtaposes the three frozen figures compressed into the immediate foreground with a
dramatic plunge to the circus ring below. Moreover, the interlocking figures are only
partly visible, cut off by the edges of the canvas. They are suspended in midair, with the
artist denying the viewer even a reassuring glimpse of a trapeze or platform. Here, as in
so many of his paintings of high society, P6ne du Bois invites us to play the not-
altogether- comfortable role of the voyeur. He offers us a disquieting intimacy with the
performers, a view quite different from that of the distant, barely visible spectators
below. We experience not the thrill of a daring performance but the precariousness of the
aerialists' life.
NANNETTE V. MACIEJUNES