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From: Rocco
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 08 March 2001
There are many things I hate about exhibitions.Two of them are: - not being able to get close to paintings because of noisy electronic devices that go off when you lean in to look at the paint itself. - crowds of bourgeoiss wearing audio guides so at to insure themselves from having to look at, or think about the work. These being the same borgeoiss who click their tongues when a youth listens to a walkman loud enough to drown out the tube. I queued for an hour to get in to this show. I enjoyed it actually because there were three oldish women, of international provenance, in front of me in the queue, discussing ,in French and English, the problems surrounding their jobs in various agencies of the UN. Mostly the solution is to know you should like the time you spend in an office, or do something else, and it helps if you live close to work and have a roof terrace overlooking Rome which you can return to for lunch. Also speaking your mind most often does no good, and obviously we are spending too much money on management consultants. Why would I queue to see the Impressionists? Because I have decided that I think they are really good and that their paintings no longer look like tedious poster reproductions. They look fresh, bold, and free, as though they are seeing things for the first time, the paint is incredibly varied and it drives me crazy thinking that so many choices are possible with the line, colour, combinations, surface etc. The first painting I saw was the most important , it was on the advertising poster for the show, Matisse's 'The Dance'. It's a big painting about 8 feet by 12 feet, but looked medium in the big gallery. The colours are a bit boring especially by Matisses's standards, only orange for the dancers, green for the ground, and blue for the sky.There are a few dirty yellowish stains on it as well.You notice first that one of the women dancers has quite a defined mount of venus relative to the schematically drawn figures. I kept coming back to look at 'The Dance' wondering whether it was really good or just that I had seen it before so many times that I thought I had to look at it. But it is good because it sucks you in, one of the figures in the circle of dancers is falling or trying to grasp the hand of the next dancer,but the rest of the figures are in the dance moving in their own particular way or pose. This is the trick. Your eye moves around the dancing figures until you come to the break , and it is upsetting, then you go round the holding hand dancers again and meet the flailing figure falling out of the tightly composed picture, and you start again round the dance. There were a lot of medium easel painting sized pictures filling up the papal stable sized galleries. You had to go where the work was,i.e where there was a break in the crowds and tour groups allowing you to get a peak. I walked round a bit dazed,waiting for something to happen, looking at people. I was interested in a girl in an electric wheelchair whizzing about, whilst her guardian encouraged her to study the masterpieces. Was the girl a metaphor or a counterpoint? What was she thinking about the paintings? Albert Marquet, Utrillo, Pissarro, and Gauguin were all good. Derain, Bonnard, Vuillard, Cezanne,Rousseau, even poor old Renoir, looked fresh. Picasso was a bit dull. As Italians sometimes say, I liked it too much. It makes me slightly giddy, even looking at the catalogue. They are all so good. Bonnard had strange street scenes and landscapes un-Bonnardy and not cloying like Bonnard can seem. Renoir had a couple of portraits which with their too warm colours seemed dangerous rather than silly. Boudin painted a beach scene perfectly lightly just like a beach when the weather is not too warm. Gauguin was ridiculous. What made him go to Tahiti and paint? I know it was normal then to paint exotica, but to go there and paint women and flowers, to stand there applying oilpaint to a canvas in the South Seas, it takes some nerve. Matisse was brilliant, drawings and paintings, so careless, one of the best ever. Only Picasso let the side down, dull because he looked too careful in this company. So that is the news. The Impressionists and friends are really good as well as popular. Perhaps this is the future of art.
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