Renoir, Picasso, Van Dongen - Le Moulin de la Galette

PARIS ...
Time is of groups. Friends. New Ones. We go to a place together. We are never left. Big roaring gangs in cafes with the midst of other roaring gangs. Godard films it all as if combined, mirrored into a single side angle.
Clark Coolidge

Le Moulin de la Galette. The beauty of Renoir's painting resides in the rendering of the happiness of so many people - look at the foreground: each one is so well personalized.



Le Moulin de la Galette viewed by Picasso: patrons and prostitutes gathered together in an atmosphere of lust and glamour. The work of Picasso is a replica to Renoir - a provocative antithesis. All women here share the same sensual look - les femmes fatales de Picasso. He was 19 - and he already had the force to tell the world his vision and to impose his replica.

La femme fatale of Picasso will be replicated by Van Dongen.

But Renoir himself would give a replica to his Le Moulin de la Galette.
One month ago I was visiting again the Phillips Collection, near the Dupont Circle in Washington. The Renoir replica to Renoir was on view - The Luncheon of the Boating Party - was it any more possible to tell the world again your vision, with the same creative force? The answer was in front of my eyes.