October 20, 2007

COURBET
to January 28 2008 @ le Grand Palais

This exhibition presents 120 paintings, about 30 graphic works and some 60 photographs in an area of 1500 square metres. Since 1977 (when the last major monograph exhibition on Courbet was held in Paris) extensive research in France and abroad has enabled us to re-evaluate Courbet's (1819-1857) oeuvre in the context of the art of 1840-1860. The exhibition will be an opportunity for a new generation to discover the work of a painter who was a major figure in the history of nineteenth-century art in all its breadth and diversity.

This retrospective brings out the complexity of Courbet’s work and its sometimes paradoxical links with the representation of reality and the pictorial tradition. It reassesses his place in his time and analyses his links with other art forms, particularly photography. The exhibition therefore gives the keys to understanding a many-facetted oeuvre, the manifesto of realism in 1848-1855 and its consequences for art history. This approach provokes thought about the nature of Courbet's realism and the role of Romanticism in his work. It sheds light on an influence which was decisive for the adepts of “New Painting” in the 1860s and the beginnings of Impressionism.

The exhibition is divided into eight sections:
1. Inventing Courbet: Youthful Self Portraits
For the first time, this section brings together an important set of self portraits painted or drawn between 1840 and 1855. In a romantic vein, the artists put himself at the centre of his work giving his self portraits an importance that reminds us of Rembrandt.

2. From Private Life to History. Throughout his life Courbet remained true to his family origins and his native land. They inspired his first great canvases which asserted his talent as an artist.

3. The Manifestoes. This section focuses on the Burial at Ornans and The Artist's Studio, exceptionally transferred from the Musee d'Orsay to the Grand Palais; it brings out the coherence of Courbet's artistic ambitions in the early 1850s and the mise en scène of those ambitions by the painter himself.

4. Landscapes. The landscape section is arranged around two fine series on the grottoes along the Loue River and the waves on the Normandy coast, including the most important versions. This theme offers a pertinent examination of parallels with contemporary photography – especially the work of Le Gray, Le Secq and Giroux.

5. The Modern Temptation. During the 1860s, Courbet, then at the peak of his fame, was a key reference for the rising generation of New Painting and early Impressionism; the work of these young painters stimulated Courbet in return, particularly in his portraits and modern subjects.

6. The Nude: Flouting Tradition. The female nude was a major stake for Courbet who painted his first nudes in the 1840s. His presentation of Bathers in 1853 (Musée Fabre, Montpellier) gave him a chance to assert his faithfulness to tradition and his desire for a realist renewal. Around The Origin of the World (1866, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), this section brings together all his major canvases in this genre from Sleeping Bacchante (1844-45, UNICEF foundation, Cologne) to Woman with a Parrot (1866, The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

7. The Artist as a Melancholic Hunter. Courbet’s works on a hunting theme have often been overlooked by art historians. And yet they are an important part of history painting, highlighted in the exhibition by a display of large pictures – The Death of the Stag (1866, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Besançon), Stags Fighting (1861, Musée Départemental Gustave Courbet, Ornans) – surrounded by all the key works on this theme.

8. Personal Experience of History: Courbet and the Commune. Courbet’s relations with politics were complex. He took action for the first time during the siege of Paris and the Commune, when he was the president of the Artists’ Federation. He paid dearly for his political commitment, particularly for his part in pulling down the Vendôme column. Thrown into prison, in poor health and forced into exile in Switzerland from 1873, Courbet as an artist was thereafter a survivor. Except for his self-portrait at Sainte Pélagie (1861, Musée Départemental Gustave Courbet, Ornans), he did not deal directly with events he had witnessed or taken part in. The gloomy series of still lifes painted between 1871 and 1873 was an outlet for his distress.

The exhibition closes with an unusual presentation of the three paintings of Trout from the Loue River, which are metaphors for the artist and his desperate fate.

An exhibition organised by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and the Musée d’Orsay with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Communauté d’agglomération de Montpellier / Musée Fabre.

It will be shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 27 February to 18 May 2008 and at the Musée Fabre from 13 June to 28 September 2008.

Media partners : Le Figaro, France Inter, Le Point and Paris Première.

Galeries nationales du Grand Palais
www.rmn.fr/galeriesnationalesdugrandpalais/
3, avenue du Général-Eisenhower
75008 Paris
Tél.: +33 (0)1 44 13 17 17 (voice mail)
Fax: +33 (0)1 44 13 17 19
e-Mail: information.gngp@rmn.fr

Dates : From October 13 2007 to January 28 2008
Everyday except Tuesdays

Address: Clemenceau entrance

Access : M° Franklin-Roosevelt or Champs-Élysées-Clemenceau

Admission : 10€
Concession: 8€ - (13-25 years, large families, job seekers)
Free for children under 13

Hours : Every day from 10am to 10pm, except on Thursdays to 8pm
(tickets office closes
45mins before closing time).

Audioguide : French, Englih and Japanese: 5€


Digg!

October 14, 2007

Fragonard, a century of pleasure
until January 13th, 2008 at the Jacquemart-André Museum

Following the bicentenary of the death of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), the Jacquemart-André Museum pays homage to one of the greatest painters in the history of art, highlighting a greatly neglected aspect of the artist’s work: illustrations.

From 3 October 2007 to 13 January 2008, the Jacquemart-André Museum will be presenting a unique collection of around one hundred works by the painter Fragonard from all over the world. The exhibition paints the picture of an artist who was far more cultured than one could imagine and who, beyond the atmosphere of an age of which he is the most brilliant interpreter, knew how to illustrate and translate the thoughts and tastes of his time: alternating between pleasure and artistic refinement.

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the death of Fragonard (the artist died in Paris in 1806 at the age of 74), it was important that Paris, the city where Fragonard spent his entire career, should pay homage to one of the greatest painters of the eighteenth century. In France, this anniversary celebration was not marked by any major events and no major exhibition of the artist’s work has been put on for twenty years.









Through around one hundred works taken from around the world, the exhibition highlights the work of one of the greatest painters of the eighteenth century who is an eminent representative of the tastes and the culture of his time. The Jacquemart-André Museum, which has a wealth of works from this period, was designed in an entirely natural manner so as to provide an appropriate setting to host an exhibition which proposes to revisit the artist’s work and show it in a completely new light. Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, an art historian and author of two books on Fragonard, is the curator of the exhibition.


Photo credits:
Les débuts du Modèle - Musée Jacquemart-André Institut de France © Culturespaces - C. Recoura - JL Tamisier
Jeune Fille délivrant un oiseau de sa cage © Photo Jean-Jacques L'Héritier
La Petite Sultane - Ball State University Museum of Art_E. Arthur Ball Collection_Gift of the Ball Brothers Foundation 1995 © Trustees of Ball State University. Photo Steven J. Talley


Jacquemart-André Museum
www.musee-jacquemart-andre.com
158, bd Haussmann
75008 Paris

Tel. : +33 1 45 62 11 59
Fax : +33 1 45 62 16 36

contact

Access:
RER Charles de Gaulle - Etoile
Metro Miromesnil or Saint Philippe du Roule
Bus : 22, 28, 43, 52, 54, 80, 83, 84, 93

Coach parking:
Coaches can park outside the museum for free, on the boulevard Haussmann.

Situation:
The Jacquemart-André Museum is situated in the 8th arrondissement in Paris, close to the place Charles de Gaulle-Etoile and the Champs-Elysées.

Opening hours:
Open daily throughout the year, without exception, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The Jacquemart-André Café is open daily from 11.45 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.