Perfect Pairing: Expressionism + LACMA
Image Courtesy of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Image © The Cleveland Museum of Art
Image © Unknown Photographer / Art Institute of Chicago Image
Image © Portland Museum of Art
Image © Nachlass Erich Heckel/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG BILD-KUNST, Bonn © 2014 Museum Associates/ LACMA
Image courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Image © San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
An art critic writing in the magazine Die Kunst-Halle in 1905 penned the following gem: “Warning! A collection of paintings by the… obscure painter Paul Gauguin… is now advancing slowly towards Berlin. Following on the idiot Van Gogh comes now—Gauguin.” The statement is emblazoned on the walls of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Resnick Pavilion where the new exhibition, Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky opens Sunday, June 8. The show, curated by Timothy Benson, includes work by French and German artists (and such masters as Vincent van Gogh whose work was shown in Paris). The exhibition follows a generation of painters including Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Gabriele Münter whose work—completed before World War I—influenced a host of creatives including Pablo Picasso for years to come. Benson’s premise is that French and German Expressionists honed their artistic eye by studying the works of modern masters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin, regardless of the artists’ nationalities. These works made the rounds through private collections and across borders. “I wanted a geography of art, not just a history of art,” says Benson.
“German artists went to the Paris ateliers and got an education there,” says Benson. “They looked at Van Gogh’s and Gauguin’s work.” And now LACMA visitors are getting a look at the same canvases, including Gauguin’s Polynesian Woman with Children (Femme et deux enfants), 1901, on loan from Art Institute of Chicago. “These are not so easy to get,” adds Benson. The show also includes a piece that Benson describes as “one of my favorite Van Goghs.” The thick layers of paint in Pollard Willows at Sunset, 1888, appeal to the curator. “The brush strokes are so autonomous,” he says. “They describe grass and trees but they also say, ‘I’m a brushstroke.’” The work, depicting a landscape at sunset, was shown in Paris in 1908, before it traveled to Munich, Dresden, Frankfurt, and Berlin. It’s the sort of painting that influenced both German and French artists through its colors, shapes, and composition. “Kandinsky had this idea that the artist’s world moves between realism and abstraction,” says Benson. “He thought you were born in a realist period or an abstract period and that shaped the art you created.” The exhibition includes Neo-Impressionist canvases that influenced Expressionist works and drawings that inspired Cubism and were on view in Paris and later traveled to Germany. Benson clearly sees Expressionism as an international movement that spanned countries and cultures and led to the cultivation of a cosmopolitan aesthetic that was cut short by World War I.
By Elizabeth Varnell
Pictured: Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Apples (Nature morte avec pommes), 1893-94
Oil on canvas
25 3/4 × 32 1/8 in. (65.4 × 81.6 cm)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 96.PA.8
Image Courtesy of The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
