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October 12, 2006
Ambroise Vollard at the Met
The best (but most exhausting) show I hiet in New York City this past weekend was Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde (runs through January 7, 2007).
The show was (or should be) particularly humbling to artists and art historians. It's really hard to spend time in an exhibition like that and think that we have as much to do with making taste as do the gallery owners. Vollard handled something like a third of the known Cezannes. He sold a lot of the van Gogh's anyone's ever heard of. He was Gauguin's dealer. Picasso's dealer. Bonnard's dealer. Roualt's dealer.
Here's a summary view of the images in the exhibition.
The most exciting two walls for me were three paintings by Andre Dreain across from 3 by Maurice de Vlaminck. This image of Derain's Charing Cross Bridge, London (1906) from the Met site is as good an example I can give you of why Dr. Barnes might have been right - color reproductions are more than poor. They're evil.
The real painting is so fresh I wanted to lick it - the reds and oranges and greens are amazing. It's in most surveys of 20th century art I've ever seen - and I never quite understood why. Now I know. It is a great painting, capital G capital P. And next to it View of St. Paul's Cathedral from the Thames and Houses of Parliament by Night. Next the corner and then three de Vlamincks. I finally understand what the critic meant when he called them les fauves, the "wild beasts." Matisse really was the staid one in that set.
One of the fun aspects of the show was the number of portraits of Vollard - from Renoir's portrait of Vollard in a toreador suit of lights to Picasso's desperately famous analytical cubist version with a number of other ones in between. Bonnard painted Vollard with a cat in his lap at least twice.
This little description only scratches the surfact of the exhibition. If you have a chance, go.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at October 12, 2006 10:06 AM