"Little Erin" on the poster of "The Highest Impressionism: E.G. Bouller Collection" in Tokyo in 2018
The Young Woman Playing the Piano, Auguste Renoir, 1875-1876
The Ball at the Pancake Mill, Auguste Renoir, 1876
◎ Wang Jia
February 25 marks Renoir's 180th birthday.
When we think of Impressionism, we always reflexively think of the founder Manet, Monet's dreamlike water lilies, Degas's elegant and light ballerina, and Renoir's sweet maiden. About ten years ago, I admired the sweetness of his pen the most. Yes, Renoir, as I understand it, is synonymous with "sweet": the characters are sweet, the tones are sweet, the atmosphere is sweet, and it is a very pleasant and warm beauty. Ten years on, my beloved is no longer Renoir, but it does not affect that he has several works that will always be at the top of my mind, such as "Little Erin" and "Young Woman Playing the Piano".
The day before yesterday, I read Maugham's "Looking for Fun" and was amazed at a golden sentence about painting appreciation. "When you see a painting, if you are interested and knowledgeable, you may see how the painter uses color, light, line and spatial relations, but this is not the aesthetic value of the painting for you. In fact, when you look at the painting, you use not only your eyes, but also your experience, your instincts, your love and hatred, your habits, your emotions, and so on, so to speak, using all your personality to interpret the painting. The more personality you have, the more meaningful that painting will be to you. "Yes, the value of the art of painting is that we appreciate paintings, but we appreciate far more than a simple picture. With the enrichment of experience and the deepening of research, the past ten years have also given me a clearer understanding of Renoir's art.
In the autumn of 2012, at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, I enjoyed Renoir's Young Woman Playing the Piano for the first time at zero distance under the dim light of the special exhibition "Impressionism and Fashion". A heroine in a white dress and a dark piano are mysterious and moving against a dark blue background. This masterpiece, which was on loan at the Art Institute of Chicago, was so haunting to me that when I was writing Voice By Picture years later, the cover of my head was chosen. The painting does not talk about any depth or background knowledge, whether it is tone or side face, it is intuitive, pure sensory beauty. Looking back years later, perhaps it was this painting that really made me fall in love with Renoir's art.
In April 2014, in order to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France, Guobo ushered in a special exhibition of "Famous Museums, Famous Artists and Masterpieces". Among the ten fine paintings of France's major museums, there are two Renoir paintings, including his undisputed masterpiece "The Ball of the Pancake Mill". Looking back today, whether it is the caution in the process of setting up the exhibition, the crowd of people who face the "pilgrimage" of famous works every day, or the fear of worrying about the safety of the paintings because of the excessive "congestion" in the exhibition hall, participating in that exhibition is still the most special experience in my career. It should be known that "The Ball of the Pancake Mill" is rarely borrowed, and there are two more well-known Picasso masterpieces "Living Next to Each Other", but the unique charm of the master's real handiwork "Driving" was fully appreciated in those two months.
In the spring of 2018, I finally saw the "Little Irene" of "Little Irene" in the "Supreme Impressionism: E.G. Bourler Collection" exhibited at the National Art Museum in Tokyo. As the promotional poster for this special exhibition, the Japanese praised Irene Jr. as "the strongest beautiful girl in the history of painting", such a domineering advertising slogan coupled with the Japanese art lovers' obsession with Impressionism, the "Supreme Impressionism" special exhibition is naturally attracting countless fans. The little Erin in the painting can be described as a perfect interpretation of what we often call "dolls". Renoir vividly recorded the innocence, immaculation, ignorance and vitality of the girl, and the pinnacle of this painter's portrait undoubtedly has successfully fanned many art lovers, including me.
In the summer of 2019 before the epidemic, I visited Budapest again for work, just in time for the official debut of Renoir's giant "Nude Woman Lying on the Side" just acquired by the Budapest Art Museum. This new collection, which was purchased at great expense, is a rather symbolic female theme of the painter's later years, not only large in scale but also soft and free in brushstrokes, which should be regarded as a huge work before he fell ill. However, Renoir's works of this period no longer impressed me.
The reason is that, in addition to the more stylized representation of female nude, the interpretation of the flesh reminds me of some of Rubens' nudes (although it is an indisputable fact that he was influenced by Rubens). Coupled with the fact that he was also deeply influenced by the sweet colors of the Rococo master Fragonard, it was equivalent to combining Rubens's "greasy" flesh with Fragonard's "sweet" hue - it felt like sugar was too much. Paying too much attention to the beauty of the appearance will also make the viewer feel tired.
Is it that I don't love Renoir anymore? Not. Time has passed, his paintings have not changed, it is me who has changed.
Maugham's famous quote above actually clarifies a problem. We always say that visiting museums and art galleries to see famous works, there is a sense of constant newness, in fact, the paintings are still those paintings, but this time we enter the museum we are not our last self, because during this period we have more new experiences and gain more knowledge. We are progressing, and the paintings are given more derivative information that is exclusive to us personally. Masterpieces often look at the basis of constant renewal, but in fact they stem from our own growth.
However, the Maugham's quotation I have excerpted is actually limited—it can only be applied to Western painting before Impressionism. The emergence of Impressionism caused an uproar because the painting abandoned the conservative tradition of academic historical painting. The Impressionists followed the direction of realism led by Courbet, from depicting fictional historical myths to focusing on the real daily urban life around them, from a realistic style that strictly focused on lines to capturing the unpredictable light and shadow scenery outside. As far as the history of Western art is concerned, Impressionism is an inevitable product of the development of Western academics after it reaches a bottleneck, which undoubtedly represents the subversive development of visual language.
But from another point of view, the birth of Impressionism actually lowered the threshold for people to view paintings. From the Renaissance to the first half of the nineteenth century, the most patron and academically admired history paintings required a strong intellectual attainment of the viewer due to the condensation of a large number of historical materials, fables and metaphors. The royal family and nobles buy paintings and raise painters, the appearance is to show off the position of power, but in fact, the rulers show off their quality and cultivation. Similarly, if you want to become a outstanding history painter, you must be familiar with the famous works of history books, and the contents and plot sections of the books are cleverly jumped on the paper with personal interpretations to show his outstanding cultivation. Given the complexity of historical painting from conception to expression, as well as the basic quality requirements for the viewer to "read and understand the painting", its unshakable status lasted for centuries until the emergence of Impressionism. Yet whether it's Monet's water lilies, Renoir's woman, the scenery of Sisley, Degas's ballet... The essence of the works of these Impressionists is the apparent beauty of life; it is the visual beauty that everyone can understand without any intellectual background. This low threshold of sensory beauty makes the world addicted, so that the auction price remains high, the fundamental reason is that everyone can understand the beauty of beauty, flowers and grass.
Having said that, the objective comments on Impressionist art have not affected me from remaining a fan of it, and I still love Renoir's paintings. Maugham's words, coupled with nearly a decade of in-depth study of Western painting, have allowed me to objectively distinguish between the good and the bad in addition to subjective love, which is a change in personal growth, not an aesthetic change. Just as beautiful women see more aesthetic fatigue and desserts eat more will be tired, appreciating paintings also needs to seek more spiritual nourishment and thinking after sensory pleasure. Nevertheless, Renoir, who was born 180 years ago, will always be the sweetness of my artistic life. Just as it's customary to have a sugar-free Espresso every morning, but in the winter you still covet a toffee hazelnut latte. If you eat too much bitterly, you will especially look forward to that little sweetness, just like life.