Light & Passion
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
The Age (Australia)
Light and passion
June 10, 2004
Look past the dancing images of impressionism and you will
find the angst of an era mired by war, writes Robin Usher,
as the NGV prepares to open its blockbuster exhibition The
Impressionists next week.
Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir and Paul Gauguin. We know the
names of the impressionist painters like the days of the
week. Their sumptuous paintings of buxom women in flowery
dresses, shimmering streetscapes and glowing haystacks
captured the elegant hues of 19th-century France in a style
that resonates with light and life more than a century later.
But for all that the artists are household names, less well
known is that the beauty of impressionism was born in blood
and chaos. The German state of Prussia humiliated France in
the war of 1870-71, only three years before the first
impressionist exhibition. First, the Prussians occupied
Paris after a brutal siege in which starving people were
forced to eat rats and horses and, according to some
sources, even each other.
Then the peace agreement led to the city being taken over by
socialist workers in the Commune who were bloodily
suppressed by government troops, killing more than 10,000
people.
It was in this climate of public humiliation that a group of
rebellious young artists -- including Renoir, Monet, Camille
Pissarro and Edgar Degas -- gathered to exhibit their paintings.
These had been rejected by the conservative selection
committee of the annual Salon, France's most popular annual
exhibition.
This show in 1874 was to become known as the first
impressionist exhibition. The novelist Emile Zola described
the movement as "painting a slice of nature as seen through
a temperament".
The story of impressionism and the birth of modern art is
told in an exhibition of more than 90 paintings opening next
Thursday at the National Gallery of Victoria International.
The NGV's director, Dr Gerard Vaughan, describes it as the
finest collection of impressionist paintings ever to come to
Australia. "In fact, it is one of the finest collections
ever to leave France," he says.
Such masterpieces as Edouard Manet's The balcony, Paul
Cezanne's The card players and Vincent van Gogh's Starry
night over the Rhone, popularised by Don McLean in the song,
Vincent, will be on show in Australia for the first time.
The core of the exhibition is made up of 43 paintings from
the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, which were selected over the
past four years in discussions between representatives of
the musee and Vaughan to mark the NGV's reopening.
"Because of their status and importance, these works have
rarely left the walls of the Musee d'Orsay," he says.
The musee is situated in the heart of Paris on the left bank
of the Seine opposite the Tuileries gardens, not far from
the Louvre. It is a former railway station that has been
transformed into an art gallery featuring impressionism and
related art movements with a collection unrivalled anywhere
in the world.
The French paintings, which will be on display at the NGV
for the next three months, are not travelling anywhere else
in Australia. A major promotional campaign by the State
Government will extend to Singapore and South-East Asia.
The Musee d'Orsay's director, Serge Lemoine, says the
exhibition -- which is rounded out by paintings from
regional French galleries and private collections in
Australia and New Zealand, including that of Kerry Stokes,
owner of Channel Seven -- is the "fullest possible survey"
of impressionism.
It includes all of the movement's core painters, as well as
the movements that evolved from it, such as pointillism
(Georges Seurat), symbolism (Odilon Redon), the Pont Aven
School (Gauguin) and the Nabis (Pierre Bonnard).
The show's NGV curator, Dr Ted Gott, says the breadth of the
show not only demonstrates how impressionism came about, but
also how it paved the way for the evolution of modern art.
He believes that impressionism remains alive to modern
audiences because of its vibrant treatment of everyday life,
unlike abstract work, which has no subject matter.
"We feel the paintings speak directly to us," he says. "We
also have the intimate details of the artists' lives, so we
feel we know them intimately. Earlier great artists such as
Leonardo and Michelangelo are more removed, mythic figures."
He says Paris retains its iconic status as the first modern
city -- Baron Haussmann's grand boulevards were in the
process of sweeping away the city's slums in the same
period, making possible the introduction of electric lighting.
"This made the nights safe for the first time and the city's
bars and cafes around Montmartre attracted artists such as
Toulouse-Lautrec," he says. The paintings were revolutionary
in their scale, treating ordinary people and events in ways
that had been reserved for such great historical figures
such as Napoleon and saints. Grand literary figures whose
names are still revered today -- Zola, Flaubert, Mallarme
and the Goncourt brothers -- were also active.
Gott says the poet Charles Baudelaire had first called on
artists to paint modern life 20 years earlier and this
challenge was taken up by Manet and other early impressionists.
The artists were also friends and colleagues who painted
together and at times fell out with each other. "We know
that Monet and Renoir painted side by side and then went out
drinking at night," he says.
Despite their friendships, the painters were often divided
by issues such as wealth and politics.
Gustave Caillebotte, who, like the female painter, Berthe
Morisot, is less well known in Australia than elsewhere
because none of their paintings are on permanent show here,
was independently wealthy and bought his colleagues' art to
support them.
Caillebotte died in 1894 and donated his collection to the
French nation but it took three years to overcome
conservative opposition before the paintings went on
display. During that time various works, including two by
Manet, were sold.
Poverty was a problem for some artists. Monet was so poor in
the early years that his family was unable to pay their
servants, who eventually walked out. The artist lived in the
country because, like Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, he
couldn't afford to stay in Paris. But from the mid-1880s,
Monet's art became popular and his life changed. He ended up
very wealthy, although he never returned to Paris.
Gott says Gare Saint-Lazare, one of eight Monet paintings in
the exhibition, symbolised the artist's escape by train from
the confines of Parisian life.
Pissarro never sold well, in part because of his involvement
with the socialist and anarchist movements, a reminder of
the divisions in society following the bloody suppression of
the Commune.
Van Gogh, of course, committed suicide and famously died in
poverty never having sold a painting, an ever-poignant fact
when his major works sell for $100 million.
Other artists, like Renoir, walked a tightrope by
occasionally exhibiting with the impressionists but usually
favouring the more conservative Salon, because it was seen
by many more people.
For other painters, the Prussian war cast a long shadow.
Jacques Tissot fled to London after the Commune's
suppression and stayed until 1882 when his partner and
model, Kathleen Newton, died.
She is featured in a luxurious yellow dress in the painting,
The Ball, which is in the exhibition.
Gustave Courbet was imprisoned for taking part in the
Commune and on release fled to Switzerland where he died in
exile.
And one of France's then most promising painters, Frederic
Bazille, died fighting the Prussians, aged only 29. Gott
says his huge painting in the show, Family reunion, painted
two years before his death, symbolises the radical change in
direction taking place in art.
"It shows a family gathered on a terrace but the scale was
so vast that it would have suited a portrayal of the Battle
of Waterloo," he says. But in an ironic twist of history,
the humiliation felt at the defeat in 1871 played a part in
the growing success of impressionist art.
"The shame caused by the war gradually gave way to a
resurgent pride in French culture and there was no better
symbol of this than the new style of painting," he says. "As
concern grew about Germany's resurgent militarism in the
1890s, sales of impressionist art boomed."
But the fears of war were realised in 1914 when Germany and
France again met on the battlefield only 43 years after
their previous conflict.
The Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay is
at NGV International from June 17- September 26. An all-day
symposium will be held on Saturday, June 19, from 9.30am for
$50.
--
Dan Clore
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