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aesthetics, art, art blog, art criticism, art history, Claudia Moscovici, contemporary art, cosmopolitan art, David Graux, Eastern influence, fineartebooks, fineartebooks.com, French art, French contemporary art, French Cosmopolitanism: The Postromantic Art of David Graux, French postromantic art, French postromanticism, French Symbolism, Japanese influence, Oriental motifs, painting, postromantic movement, postromantic painting, postromanticism, postromanticism.com, Romantic art, Romantic painting, Romanticism, Romanticism and Postromanticism, sensual art, sensuality, Symbolism, the art of David Graux, the postromantic art of David Graux, women in art
Born in Besançon, France, David Graux is a truly cosmopolitan artist. His art evokes Romantic motifs, but is edgy, innovative and postromantic in style. His paintings epitomize the best of both worlds: they are Eastern in inspiration, but have a European flair. Above all, David’s Graux’s art is evocative and poetic. Even the titles he selects– The shadow of the wind, Grazed sigh, The echo of a dream–suggest the last breath of Romanticism as it meets the impenetrable mystery of Symbolism.
As in Symbolist poetry, Graux’s art combines the accessible with the unintelligible. The beautiful nudes are palpably accessible: sensual, classic, in private poses that excite the curiosity, stimulating dream, but not desire. Yet the Oriental symbols—invented by the artist and belonging only to the language of his own imagination–are ungraspable. They touch upon the playful and the abstract, never fading into mere background or ornamentation. On the contrary, they travel the surface of the paintings, functioning as background and foreground alike–as an enveloping atmosphere–to the ethereal nudes.
David Graux’s art, like all forms of poetic expression, is inherently philosophical. It captures the essence of a significant aspect of human existence: the way in which what seems most transparent, accessible, real and temporal is simultaneously illegible, distant and unattainable. His spectacularly beautiful and innovative paintings cross geographical, stylistic and temporary boundaries, aspiring to a universal appeal.
Claudia Moscovici, postromanticism.com
