On July 15th, "Monet, Van Gogh and the Masters of Modernism - The Authentic Works Exhibition of the Italian National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art" was opened at the 798 Hall of the Encounter Museum in Beijing. The exhibition brings together 47 works by 36 modernist artists such as Monet, Van Gogh, Modigliani, and Miró, covering the period from the 60s of the 19th century to the 70s of the 20th century, from the impression of Paris to the abstract New York, showing the development of Western art in the past 100 years.
In the exhibition, Van Gogh's "Women of Arles (Portrait of Madame Ginnu)"
It is reported that all the works in this exhibition are from the "Italian National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art", which was founded in 1883 and is located in Rome, which is the richest collection of modern art in Italy, with tens of thousands of works including paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations.
Let's talk about "modernist art"
The exhibition presents works by 36 modernist artists, including the impressionist painter Monet, the post-impressionist painter Van Gogh and the cubist Roger della Fresnayer, the representative of the "surrealist" school, Marcel Duchamp, the representative of the New York New Wave, and the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. There are also Italian artists Telemaco Cignorini, Giacomo Barra, Giorgio de Chirico, Luzio Fontana, Umberto Bacciony – all remembered for their unique and outstanding artistic styles.
Exhibition view
The definition of "modernist art" is still widely debated, and "modern art" is traditionally said to refer to works made between about 1860 and 1970.
In a sharing session held before the exhibition, Zhang Chen, associate professor at the School of Humanities of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said: "Modern art is art created in pursuit of artistic independence. What is art for art's sake? We can understand it from two aspects: the first is to pursue the independence of art, and the second is to pursue the independence of artists. Modernism is not just our simple understanding, from realism to abstraction, artists like Fontana and Duchamp, they have created many different things and released many possibilities in these hundred years. From this point of view, modernism has not ended until now, and we still have to call for something new and original, which is still the continuing influence of the spirit of modernism on us. ”
Zhang Chen, associate professor of the School of Humanities of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, focused on "Space Concept - Waiting" in the salon, "Fontana's work "Space Concept - Waiting" is very meaningful, when modernist art follows such a logic of pursuing form to the canvas itself, towards the art itself, the artist can use a knife to cut the canvas, open the boundary of the two-dimensional canvas plane, and can liberate art from the canvas and expand to a richer real world. ”
Fontana, The Concept of Space – Waiting
Wang Chunyuan, a doctor of the School of Humanities of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said that there is a word called "lingyun" in art theory, we have long faced with replicas, its colors are processed and flat, and only in front of the original can we feel why modernist masters such as Monet and Van Gogh will have such a profound impact on the entire history of art. "These masters of modernism were selected from the tide of history because of their innovation and defiant talent, and they still stand in front of us after so many historical storms, allowing us to feel a spiritual force behind them, which is where modernism has enlightened the development of the entire history of modern art."
Wang Chunchen, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and director of Meet the Museum, believes that the purpose of this exhibition is to inspire us how to communicate with the outside world. "What is communication? I can use canvas, paper, objects to create, and I have to have an urge to see exhibitions, and after watching them, I want to go home and do something, which is the biggest meaning. Art is an open world, which means that you just want to express it, you want to do something, even if you think it's art, it's art. ”
Present all aspects of everyday life from a realistic perspective
In the name of "modernity", artists of all genres are experimenting and subverting, innovating in the concept, composition, techniques, tools and materials of art. They continue to break the rules of art and expand the infinite possibilities of artistic expression.
The creation of modernism is subdivided into various genres, and the book "150 Years of Modern Art" writes: "During this period, art changed the world, and the world changed art. Every movement, every 'ism', is entangled with each other, like a chain. However, they all have their own independent paths, different styles, and methods of creating art, which are the result of various influences, including artistic, political, social, and technological. ”
In "Monet, Van Gogh and the Masters of Modernism - The Authentic Works Exhibition of the Italian National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art", it is also roughly according to the time before and after, but mainly juxtaposes different artistic situations and forms, and modern art schools, and selects several representative works from each modern art school to present.
Before entering modernism, the exhibition introduces the social picture and artistic creation of nineteenth-century Europe.
The nineteenth century was a period of profound social change and technological innovation in Europe, and the advancement of the Industrial Revolution and the development of urbanization brought about great changes in the economic pattern of Europe. With the decline of religious and history painting, after experiencing the baptism of romanticism, artists felt the need to return to the depiction of everyday life and began to advocate the depiction of scenes of modern life that took place around them.
During this period, "genre painting" began to emerge, showing all aspects of everyday life from a realistic perspective – work, entertainment and social activities, and the street environment became recurring themes. Starting with the Spotted School, artists no longer painted with imagination and memory, but walked out of the studio with easels and tried outdoor sketching, transforming direct observation into pictures.
Works by the artist Ulvi Ligi
Ignacio Zuloaga was born in Spain and began his artistic journey in Italy and France. After becoming famous, he returned to Madrid, Spain, to study Spanish art at the Prado Museum, and his influence was most profound on the Spanish master Goya. In one of his "Irene", the unconventional texture of the character's face is very rare.
Ignacio Zuloga, "Irene" (partial)
A prominent artist of the Futurist school, Giacomo Barra first rose to prominence with academic painting, then spent a short time in Paris, where he became exposed to the methods of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism before focusing on the expression of light and color. "Outdoor Portrait" is Bara's work from this period, and the style of Seurat's pointillism can be clearly felt in the color and brush stroke processing of the picture. Barra's early use of the principle of pointillism and color separation also laid the foundation for his later flourishing in the Futurist movement.
Giacomo Barra, Portrait of the Outdoors (partial)
In the nineteenth century, the middle class emerged as an emerging social class, gaining political status through economic means and becoming dominant in fashion and culture.
Michel Camarano's Piazza San Marco in Venice depicts one of Italy's oldest cafés, Café Florian, more than 300 years old, and its interior is magnificently decorated without losing its artistry. Goethe, Dickens, Marcel Proust, Modigliani and other cultural and artistic figures have gathered here. At the end of the 19th century, Ricardo Sevati, then mayor of Venice, discussed with friends in a café to launch a world art and architecture event in Venice, which was later known as the Venice Biennale.
There is no grand narrative in this painting, Calamano focuses on the daily life of the Venetians, through the outline of the movements of the nearby characters and the capture of facial expressions, using the composition of stage art, from near to far, from light to dark, showing us the nightlife of the Venetian inhabitants in the early 19th century. This also reflects the significance of the realist painting style, which rediscovers the value of the human person.
Michel Camarano, Piazza San Marco in Venice
This leads to the discussion of realism, which emphasizes the principle that art reflects the real social life, and believes that art is an aesthetic understanding, representation and reflection on reality, so the work should pay attention to real life, society and nature. Realism celebrates nature and labor, paying particular attention to the lives and struggles of ordinary workers: it pays homage to workers and their living environment, and profoundly and comprehensively shows the humanistic spirit and ideas of the painter's time. The rise of this genre coincided with the development of science and industry in society at that time.
Telemaco Signorini, The Florentine Ghetto
The canvas conveys one's emotions and spiritual experiences
Through their creations, artists present their perception of the external world, which deeply interact with the viewer in different ways under different tools and themes.
Artists of the 19th century lost interest in faithfully depicting external reality, instead striving to transcend formal requirements and convey their emotions and spiritual experiences on canvas. For them, the world is no longer WYSIWYG, but the result of soul perception.
Among them, landscape painting gradually changes from a realistic style to an emotional retelling of the natural experience of life, and the tranquil and quiet natural landscape conveys the intimate emotions and inner hazy emotions experienced by the artist in daily life, which are delicately presented in Monet's "Pink Water Lilies": expressionist painting uses unrestrained shapes and strong colors to gradually transition perception to a tense, passionate and colorful rural style. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, art movements such as symbolism and metaphysics attempted to convey intuitive imagination by embedding symbols and symbols that transcended the material world into concrete contexts—such as Chirico's Hector and Androma Carving, a highly hallucinatory work of art that gave the viewer a special artistic experience.
Chirico, "Hector and Androma"
In the field of portraiture, such as Van Gogh's "Women of Arles (Portrait of Madame Ginnu)" and Modigliani's "Nude Woman Lying on Her Side", the relationship between the artist and the figure is shown with beautiful lines and rich color blocks: the artistic concept of the futurist artist Bocciony is strongly influenced by the ideas of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, and his works focus on the communication of intuition, forming a closely connected bond between the external scene and the inner emotion through a strong sense of rhythm and order.
Monet was a French painter and the most important representative of Impressionism, who left more than two thousand oil paintings during his lifetime. Among them, the "Water Lilies" series is the most representative painting, he brings out the beauty of light and shadow in water and color to the extreme. One of the "Pink Water Lilies" in the exhibition is an earlier work in the water lily group painting, in which the artist's attention is focused on the small scene, the beautiful water lilies expand towards the surface of the lake one by one, and the form dissolves into the reflection of the mist, the picture is hazy and poetic.
Monet, "Pink Water Lilies"
Van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter, a pioneer of expressionism, who deeply influenced 20th-century art. He suffered all his life but never succumbed to fate, like a lone missionary on pilgrimage in a world of colors. From Van Gogh's work, we can feel the love for nature and life, and his story continues to influence and inspire countless creators today.
The woman of Arles (portrait of Madame Ginnu) is painted by Van Gogh's former landlord, Madame Ginnu, and Van Gogh created six works based on it, which were the last group of paintings before the end of his life, and is now on display one of the pastels with reference to Gauguin, which Van Gogh mentioned many times in his letters, and the rest of the paintings in the same series are collected by the Musée d'Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutions.
Exhibition view, Van Gogh's Women of Arles (portrait of Madame Ginnu) (partial)
Modigliani is an outstanding Italian artist. In him, he has both the imprint of the Italian artistic tradition and the avant-garde spirit of the Paris School, and the nude image created by him is one of the most classic artistic symbols in art history. The Lying on Her Side is one of Modigliani's most iconic works. The classic posture echoes the goddess in classical European painting, erasing the deep eyes of the pupil, which is not only a study of primitive art, but also an expression of the "Parisian talent" of his deep loneliness and sadness.
Modigliani, "Lying on Her Side"
Pure lines, color and volume
In the 19th century, painting on shelves experienced a crisis. A modern invention: photography, as a tool to open up new scenes in portraiture, is a series of surrealist explorations of the human figure. Artists also began to think more deeply about how to use brushes to present the reality under the "image". Neo-Impressionist and Expressionist artists began to analyze and deconstruct the color expression and the inner state of the characters in portraiture, and the metaphysical school withdrew painting from the figuration, entered the inner maze of ideas, and reflected on the symbolic world—artists such as Sironi Chirico used simple brushstrokes to convey the turmoil and complex emotions brought about by the transformation of society to modernization in the 20th century in gloomy tones such as beige, gray and black.
At the same time, the Dada movement began to focus on everyday objects and transform them into works of art – Duchamp's readymade creations are the most avant-garde creations of the past century. This transformation is entirely dependent on the will of the artist, and the work is full of irony, provocation and speculation. In the work "Hat Rack", Duchamp completes the contextualization of the "image" of the hat frame, and when the space presented changes, the original theme and perspective also change, and the functional meaning of the artifact is transformed into the image of "octopus" in a new context.
Duchamp "Hat Stand"
As "images", portraits, everyday objects, and aesthetic symbols are no longer the copying and copying of external "images" in different genres of artworks, but the artists' real perception and thinking about them in different situations.
Renato Gutuso, Self-Portrait
Giacomo Barra, The Pink Veil
In the early twentieth century, a new way of depicting European painting emerged, which was different from the previous realist figurative creation, and instead filled the canvas with pure lines, colors, and volumes, so that the composition of the picture was full of geometric inspiration.
Before such a revolutionary art movement, the overall social environment and scientific concepts in Europe were also undergoing great changes. In physics, Einstein overturned the established laws of physics; Some scientists have raised questions about humanity's place in the universe, and Freud began to study human cognition and mental activity on a psychological and spiritual level; The political revolution initiated by Marx also became a powerful force in society. Under this trend of exploring human society from a new perspective, European art also began to replace the traditional perspective method with a different painting space, trying to convey the world through the eyes of artists.
Cubism, Futurism, and Abstraction are the artistic currents that developed in this direction: they decomposed the color blocks in the picture into multiple flat geometries such as diamonds, triangles, parallelograms, etc., stacked and crisscrossed in different light and dark orders, creating the effect of shadows, thus creating a strong sense of space. The concrete images, such as people, objects, and the natural environment, are highly abstracted and become illegible.
Gerardo Dottori "Flying Wonderland"
Although geometry and abstraction became the new darlings of art, the metamorphosis they used was still more or less associated with figurative expression—for example, after World War I, Futurism advocated abandoning the past and looking to the future, embracing machines and high-speed production, and promoting dreams of building a new world. Production industrialization and newly urbanized societies often appear in the works of this genre to express the tense rhythm of modern life. The artists use abstract symbols based on color and shape to express the aerial perspective, highlighting the treatment of movement, speed and power, presenting a strong sense of rhythm and movement.
Piero Dorazio "Release, in the moment of perception"
The exhibition will run until October 22