Spring 1986: TIME: 30 seconds
Renoir...Monet...Rodin...Gauguin...van Gogh...Toulouse-Lautrec...Now that I’ve got your attention--go to The Brooklyn Museum to see works by all these great artists and more in the exhibition FROM COURBET TO CÉZANNE: A NEW 19th CENTURY/PREVIEW OF THE MUSÉE d’ORSAY, PARIS including more than 130 paintings, sculptures, photos, objects, furniture and early films.
See a new French museum before it opens--at The Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway--from March 14th through May 5th.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1986, 014.
Spring 1986: From Courbet to Cezanne: A New 19th Century/Preview of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, an exhibition of more than 130 works consisting of paintings, sculpture, architectural drawings, drawings, photographs, decorative arts, and early films, will open at The Brooklyn Museum on March 14 and be on view through May 5, 1986. A number of the objects in the exhibition have never been seen in this country.
This preview exhibition, which will be shown first at The Brooklyn Museum and subsequently at the Dallas Museum of Art, will, like the Musée d’Orsay itself, present a cross-section of the artistic production from the middle of the nineteenth century to the early years of the twentieth century. This complex and multifaceted period was one of immense creativity not only in painting but also in decorative arts, architecture, and the new medium of photography.
The new Musée d’Orsay will house the Louvre’s collections of art from this period and will be installed in the former Gare d’Orsay, a monumental “railroad palace” built along the Seine in 1900. Included in the exhibition will be a model of the Musée d’Orsay with documentation about its transformation from a grand railroad station to a grand museum. The immense structure, which has retained the monumental glass-and-cast-iron gallery of the railway hail, has been planned so as to be accessible to all elements of the public. From Courbet to Cézanne: A New 19th Century/Preview of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris will enable Americans not only to see an important selection of works of art but also to become acquainted with what is bound to be a major landmark among the museums of Paris and the world.
Paintings by Monet (including The Magpie, a new acquisition not previously on public exhibition) and by Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Bonnard will represent the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections which have for years been exhibited in the Musée du Jeu de Paume and which will now form a significant part of the Musée d’Orsay. This great collection will be seen not in isolation but together with Realist, Naturalist, and Symbolist paintings of the same period.
The arts of painting and sculpture, embodying all the contradictions and conflicts of the time, will also be seen in relation to a broader view of the visual arts and their social context. Included in the exhibition will be such varied works as the cast-iron models of Hector Guimard’s designs for the entrances of the Paris Métro; chairs by Frank Lloyd Wright and Michael Thonet; fabric designs by Viollet-le-Duc; posters and architectural drawings; photographs by Félix Nadar, Jean-Charles Langlois, Charles Nègre, and Julia Margaret Cameron, among others; models for theater and opera decor; books by Wilde and Flaubert; and the early films of Louis and Auguste Lumière.
The exhibition has been organized by Guy Cogeval, a French scholar who has written the accompanying catalogue analyzing the six thematic areas of the exhibition. One of these themes will be an exploration of the Baudelaireian idea of correspondances, the affinities between the arts of painting, literature, and music that were so important to the Symbolist generation. In this section will be grouped paintings by Moreau and Redon, sculpture by Rodin, first editions by Wilde and Mallarmé, and the Wagnerian drawings of Fantin-Latour. A quite different section will show artists’ testimony to the major events of their time, including Manet’s Escape of Rochefort, Clairin’s The Burning of the Tuileries, Daumier’s caricature sculpture of Ratapoil, and Langlois’s photographs of the Crimean War. Other themes explored in the exhibition will be the significance of Japonisime, the effect of theater and opera on the art of painting, and the role of art in an industrial culture.
This exhibition is supported by a generous grant from American Airlines Inc.
In conjunction with the exhibition, a variety of special programs have been planned. On Saturday, April 19, the Museum will present a concert featuring works by important nineteenth-century French composers. A half-day symposium on Saturday, April 26, will assess nineteenth-century art from a new perspective; among the speakers will be distinguished scholars Linda Nochlin of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and Robert Rosenblum of The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. In addition, a four-session seminar entitled “Impressionism and Post-Impressionism” will be offered by Assistant Curator of European Paintings and Sculpture Ann Dumas; pre-registration is required. Walk-through, tours of the exhibition will be conducted by Museum curatorial staff on Sundays, March 16 and 23 and May 4. For further information and registration, please call (718) 638-5000, ext. 232.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1986, 110-111.
