Flock of Sheep at the Edge of the Field by Charles Émile Jacque, 1856, Oil on canvas
I'm spending a few days in Houston this week. My first stop was at the Museum of Fine Arts to see "In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet". The show just opened today and will stay up until October 19, 2008.
The exhibit features landscape paintings and photographs from the Forest of Fontainebleau from the early 1820s to the mid-1870s; just before Impressionism. It is a big show with 96 works. I spend a couple hours going through the exhibit twice.
Some impressions:
- The photographs seemed anemic next to the painted versions of the same scenes. The photographs were smaller, lower in contrast and of course all in black-and-white.
- I was surprised by the range of work by Rousseau. Each painting seemed to be a totally different color palette and technique. His work stood out for the most bold use of color.
- Many of the works fit what evidence-based art says is appropriate for patient rooms in hospitals: Open verdant landscapes, sometimes with water, often with a path to lead you in to the picture.
- Every single painting was surrounded by ornately carved gold wooden frames. They were quite wonderful. Too bad they can't be used with work being made today.
- I learned that the Barbizon school (which is what this show was all about) was named after the village of Barbizon which is near Fontainebleau Forest. It was here that many of the artists lived and socialized during their trips.
The show originated at the National Gallery in Washington DC and they have the best presentation of the show online: Click here
The catalog of the show is on Amazon.com: click here.
Hi Henry, you must mean someone other than Rousseau.
The Jacque painting is very photographic! I can't think of the painter (Rosa Bonheur?), but Washington University has a large pastoral scene that is positively cinematic.
Not many oxen, or peasant farm laborers around to make art from these days. Things have certainly gotten uglier on the farm since farming has been de-humanized and de-animalized.
When Danto writes that the mechanized killing fields of WWI turned the artist into a social critic, I thought, yes, but that was once, and now long ago, so why are artists still, in this day and age, critic outsiders? Thinking now of the Barbizon and of how food production has now been outsourced to machines, how alienated we are from what we eat (and wear), I can sense that the motivation for any thinking person to take on the role of Cassandra has not faded away.
Registering alienation and being receptive to beauty seem to be such opposite activities. But, OTOH criticism, observation, and discernment seem closely related.
As a student, I took refuge in the Barbizon woods in the company of books of Corot's drawings in the Art History Library.
Did WWI really take everything away? Was it the Fin de Siecle, the end of an age? Are the Barbizon woods still standing?
Posted by: Bill Knight | July 14, 2008 at 08:30 AM
Bill,
"you must mean someone other than Rousseau"
No, it was Rousseau, but the link I provided was to the wrong one. The artist in the show with several works was Théodore (and not Jean-Jacques) Rousseau. Sorry about the mistake. I just fixed the link.
"Registering alienation and being receptive to beauty seem to be such opposite activities." Yes! How odd that portraying alienation and cynicism has remained the dominant form of high art expression. To what end?
"As a student, I took refuge in the Barbizon woods in the company of books of Corot's drawing"
Beautifully said! Corot also had a few minor paintings in the exhibit.
Posted by: Henry Domke | July 14, 2008 at 03:18 PM