Rita Renoir, 1963
Mixed media on paper, signed lower right.
65.50 x 50 cm
History:
Private Collection, France
Hélène Bailly Gallery
Private Collection, France
Certificate of authenticity established by Ida Garnier and Céline Lévy
This work was used as a poster and cover for the program of the Nuit du Cinéma in 1963.
Rita Renoir, beyond the striptease
Star of the Crazy-Horse, Rita Renoir was one of the most famous French stripper of the post-war period. However, her stripteases had nothing comparable to those of the American pin-ups which were then in vogue, even if they took up some codes.
With the exhibitions of Rita Renoir, nicknamed in her time the "tragedy of the striptease", the public was in the presence of a real "happening", at the border of the theater, dance, performance art, exalting a sexual and carnal power that was expressed in scenes that were more "ritual" than the number of striptease.
Magic ritual, mystical ritual, almost Voodoo, or at least a creative force drawn from the mists of time, shaking the certainties and conventions of the bourgeoisie, each composition of Rita Renoir was much more than a naked.
In the years 1950-60, she is of all the Parisian socialites, piquant personality that we are proud to receive in bourgeois circles as we would do with an eccentric artist who would be asked not to conform to the rules of propriety.
In 1956, on the occasion of the Night of Medicine, she lends herself to a rather dubious scientific experiment, consisting of subjecting a poor spectator to one of her sexual trances while monitoring his blood pressure ... which soon rises to 40 if we trust what was reported!
Rita Renoir forbids nothing, in terms of pleasure as career, she takes what she wants, feminist before the hour. She did not even give up stripping when she began a career as an actress and comedian, declaiming Euripides without hesitation.
It would have taken less than that for the artists and the avant-garde to be interested in this fascinating character. Bernard Buffet in particular, who considered her a true genius of striptease, painted her portrait several times and we can guess that a certain savagery, that Rita Renoir did nothing to reject and that she even welcomed rather willingly in her, will have been inspiring for the artist, who has always been very interested in the natural sciences and the animal world.
This portrait, chosen to illustrate the program of the Nuit du Cinéma, in 1963, reflects this fascination all animal that symbolizes Rita Renoir, in connection with a sexual power that Western societies try so hard to relegate and hide under layers of pomp and circumstance that his numbers shattered.
Butterfly, bird or other wild and untamable beast dear to the artist, Rita Renoir, with her big feline eyes and her fleshy mouth, her mysterious aura, is frozen in the angular lines of Buffet, his violent and definitive hatching.
Like a high priestess, her eyes command respect in a game of domination that does not even need to display her body as her name imposes.