The rules of how to make art and what was considered art were rewritten in 19th- and 20th-century Paris. In remarkable bursts of creative energy coincident with revolutions and world wars, visionaries cast aside the staid rules of academic art and taught us to see the world anew. Visual culture has never been the same. “Degas to Picasso: Creating Modernism in France” (Nov. 4-Jan. 28, 2018 at the Milwaukee Art Museum) leads viewers on a journey through 150 works that trace the emergence of modern art.
The exhibition has been carefully curated to render influence and evolution visible. “Viewers can see the way that Cézanne began to use a structuring, almost geometric brushstroke in his work,” explains Britany Salsbury, associate curator of prints and drawings at the Milwaukee Art Museum. “In the next gallery, this proto-Cubism turns into actual squares, rectangles and angular forms in the work of Georges Braque, and then into boldly colored geometric forms in pieces by Fernand Léger in the following gallery.”
“Degas to Picasso: Creating Modernism in France” values depth as much as breadth. “A gallery toward the center of the show presents depictions of bathers by Edgar Degas,” says Salsbury, “Within the one space, the same theme is represented by Degas in pastel drawings, multiple printmaking techniques (lithography and etching) and as sculpture. You really get a sense of the fascination that Degas had with experimentation and with pushing the limits of the processes and materials that were available to him.”
While including oil paintings and bronze sculptures, the show emphasizes works on paper, an important and under-exhibited medium in modernism. Works on paper are finicky from a curatorial perspective. Because they are light sensitive, these works cannot be on view for extended periods of time—meaning that the exhibition affords the rare opportunity to see these works at all, not to mention in such insightful context. Some of the works themselves are quite rare, such as a drawing by Claude Monet, who despite being a prolific painter left behind few drawings, and the only surviving print by Vincent van Gogh, created just two weeks before his suicide, of the doctor who was treating his mental illness.
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“Degas to Picasso: Creating Modernism in France” was originally assembled at the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, but MAM has added 37 items, growing the exhibition by nearly one third. The museum will also host programs that invite the community to engage with modern art both intellectually and artistically. On Thursday, Nov. 16, Katie Hanson, assistant curator for European paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will give a lecture entitled “Traditional Painting Violated: Picasso and the Art of Emulation,” which explores Picasso’s relationship to various traditions in European art. And throughout November, the Kohl’s Art Generation Open Studio will furnish materials for visitors to follow in the footsteps of modern masters. Chalk pastels, charcoal, watercolors and an etching press will be available for experimentation and—who knows?—perhaps the next giant step in art history.
