A feast of modern art from the Toledo Museum of Art has just opened at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Featuring some big names – Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Berthe Morisot, Henri Matisse and much more – the exhibition spans innovation, experimentation and social change from impressionism through to abstract expressionism from the 1870s to the 1970s in France and America.
It includes 57 key works from Toledo, augmented by works from the Adelaide gallery’s collection, displayed thematically. It surprises on many levels.
The sheer quality of the Toledo works is undisputable. And this is an exhibition that doesn’t suffer from padding of inferior work around a few masterpieces, as can happen in an exhibition of this kind.
Viewers see wonderful work at every turn such as Charles Sheeler’s Variation in Red (1949), acquired that year, and tucked away in the final gallery.
A trans-Atlantic art history
The Toledo collection tells a trans-Atlantic story. In the late 19th century and into the 20th, American artists were the largest group of expatriate artists in Paris.
Artists such as Everett Longley Warner headed for Paris in 1903. By the time he returned home in 1909, his close study of impressionism takes on a local inflection in Along the Riverfront, New York (1912).
His colourful, light-saturated portrayal of the busy, bustling warehouses and horsedrawn transports under the newly built and modern Brooklyn Bridge are enlivened by his loose, rapidly applied brush strokes.
The trans-Atlantic story shifts from Paris to New York after the second world war, and from then on the main players are American abstractionists like Hans Hofmann and Robert Rauschenberg. Emigres such Laszlo-Moholy-Nagy, a Bauhaus teacher, fled Germany in 1937 for the America.
The gallery is filled with stunning paintings such as Edgar Degar’s informal portrait of fellow artist Victoria Dubourg (c. 1868–9), who leans forward as if in lively conversation with Degas. Her professionalism is affirmed by the inclusion of one of her paintings in the composition.
Then there is Manet’s commanding rendition of his friend Antonin Proust (1880), who leans casually on his walking stick. Dressed in a black three-quarter length coat there are some distinctive touches such as his lapel flower, pocket scarf and gloves.
Immersed in the work
At every turn, there is much close attention to gradated wall colour moving from tones of white in the early galleries to more intense colour, and considered image pairing.
For Van Gogh’s Wheat Fields with Reapers, Auvers, (1890), hung on a white wall, curator Tansy Curtin wants viewers to stop, spend time looking and take in the painting in all its richness of colour, brush strokes, texture and composition.
She wants the direct encounter with a major artwork to count, as compared with a five second glance at a digital image.
On the day I visited, her method was working: viewers were immersed in the work, taking in all of its rich detail.
What intrigues throughout the exhibition is the materiality of each painting.
In Matisse’s stunning and overtly sexual portrayal of his mistress in Dancer Resting (1940), the bold areas of lively colour dominate.
In Picasso’s analytic cubist composition, Women in a Black Hat (1909), his loosely defined areas of contrasting colour and line permit the image to shine through.
In Berthe Morisot’s In the Garden at Maurencourt (1884), the lively loose thick paint strokes convey the lushness of the garden.
In Paul Signac’s delicate pointillist painting, Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice (1905), close looking reveals how each brush stroke was meticulously applied.
Then in Albers’ Homage to the Square, White Setting (1959) and Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow, Black and Gray (1922), areas of flat geometric colour dominate.
The highlight of the exhibition is Monet’s Waterlilies (c. 1922). A semi-abstract floating field of colour and line dissolves in light, while also radiating blues, greens and mauves.
It is thoughtfully displayed against a curved pale green wall, and underlit to enhance its luminous ephemerality.
A great story of American philanthropy
Viewers entering the exhibition could benefit from an introductory wall text about how the Toledo Art Museum in Ohio, has such a wonderful collection.
It is one of those great stories of American philanthropy. Turn-of-the-century glass manufacturer Edward Drummond Libbey, wealthy due to the new methods of large-scale glass production, and his wife Florence decided the city needed an art museum, which they built (it opened in 1912) and a collection which they began, and then funded in perpetuity.
The exhibition comes with a beautifully produced exhibition catalogue, carrying a full-page entry on 32 of the 57 artists, but short essays on important American artists such as Robert Henri and William Merritt Chase would assist Australian viewers. An essay on the origins of the Toledo collection is missing too.
A pity, because it is a story of philanthropy and foresight.
On a sober note, the exhibition is a reminder of the gendered nature of collections (and art history). Only 8 of the 57 paintings on display are by women, a mere 14%.
Feminist art historians have been completing the picture, adding women artists to histories of impressionism since the late 1970s. But galleries have been slower in redressing the gender imbalance in their collection areas. Toledo acquired four of the paintings on show by women in just the past decade.
But this is an important exhibition, beautifully displayed. The paintings require close looking – and for many, a return visit.
Monet to Matisse: Defying Tradition is at the Art Gallery of South Australia until November 8.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
