The most beautiful French come from New York
The most beautiful French come from New York was the popular title of an exhibition that ran from June 1 to October 7, 2007 in Berlin . Under the working title French Masterpieces of the 19th Century from the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the New York Museum showed around 150 works by French artists from its collection in the New National Gallery . The exhibition followed on from the great success of the MoMA exhibition in Berlin in 2004. Around 677,000 visitors saw the exhibition, some of which had been open around the clock last week.
The exhibition
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has the second largest collection of 19th century French art alongside the Musée d'Orsay in Paris . As a result of renovations and extensions, the New York Museum loaned out such an extensive block of collections for the first time. Berlin was the only stop in Europe for this comprehensive show. The exhibition was organized by the Association of Friends of the National Gallery , which had organized the successful MoMA in Berlin exhibition back in 2004. In contrast to the MoMA exhibition, which also took place in the new National Gallery, a new entry concept was designed to reduce queues. Since the same number of visitors and long queues were expected as at the MoMA exhibition, the organizers introduced an SMS notification system and had waiting cushions produced especially for the exhibition (rental fee). The chairman of the association, Peter Raue , expected at least 400,000 visitors before the start of the exhibition and estimated the costs at ten million euros. Exhibition posters in the form of an air mail postcard advertised the show in Berlin as well as in New York and Paris. A song specially produced for the exhibition by the band Vivie , entitled AMERIKA , also promoted the one-time exhibition. As with the MoMA in Berlin exhibition, an extensive brand campaign was intended to interest visitors in the exhibition.
The Metropolitan Museum, founded in 1870, is not a state institution, but rather goes back to an initiative of New York business people, artists and intellectuals. It owes its extensive holdings above all to private patrons, such as the museum co-founder Catharine Lorillard Wolfe (1828–1887), from whose purchase fund works by Ingres were acquired that were on display in the Berlin exhibition. About a quarter of the exhibited works came from the gift of Louisine W. Havemeyer . The exhibition thus also showed parallels to the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, whose important collection of French impressionists was built up by Hugo von Tschudi, also with the support of private collectors and patrons. At the same time as the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition, the Alte Nationalgalerie showed its own holdings of French Impressionism under the title “France in the Alte Nationalgalerie”. In addition to painting, there were also rarely exhibited drawings and prints. The French artists were juxtaposed there with German artists.
Exhibition reviews
The majority of the media celebrated the opening of the exhibition as a major cultural event and thus largely took over the press releases of the organizer. German President Horst Koehler expressed on the occasion of the exhibition opening ". It is an intellectual, a cultural and historical event of great significance" and ". Europe is coming home to oneself" After visiting the exhibition, showed the President in an interview with the television RBB particularly enthusiastic about the picture "Jeanne d'Arc" by Jules Bastien-Lepage .
One of the critics of the exhibition was the culture editor of Deutschlandfunk , Stefan Koldehoff. He pointed out that the exhibition was not only showing masterpieces and spoke of a “sham package” in this context. These statements were in connection with some restrictions of the organizers in the selection of the works of art and reflect, probably not without reason, the disappointment that some of the most important artists are represented with marginal works and that a large number of unimpressive works by at most historically interesting artists can be seen was.
In addition to works of art that could not be loaned for conservation reasons, all works of the Walter Annenberg and Stephen C. Clark foundations were also not available. The former foundation forbids borrowing, works of art from the Clark Foundation were required for an exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum in the summer of 2007. For example, a portrait of Manet (Annenberg), which was once in Max Liebermann's collection , could not be loaned for the exhibition, as could a portrait of the actress Tilla Durieux from Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Clark). Both pictures could have set a special accent through their relationship to Berlin.
The ARD culture magazine ttt - titel, thesen, temperamente pointed out that the original idea of the organizer to exhibit the works of art from New York together with the French works of art from the Alte Nationalgalerie was rejected by the Metropolitan Museum. In the discussion of the culture editor of the Frankfurter Rundschau , Elke Buhr, an originality of the exhibition concept was missed: What may once have been radical and new about the French is no longer perceptible today - what remains is a number of the originals that are well known Poster motifs.
The artists
A total of around 150 works by 44 artists represented in the exhibition were on display. The show showed paintings and sculptures from 1801 to 1920: from Romanticism to Impressionism to early modernism . In addition to French artists, the exhibition The Most Beautiful French Come From New York also showed works by the Dutch Vincent van Gogh , who works in France , the Spaniard Pablo Picasso and the Italian Amedeo Modigliani . With eight or more paintings, the artists Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , Gustave Courbet , Edgar Degas , Édouard Manet and Claude Monet were particularly well represented in the exhibition. While the first stop of this exhibition in Houston, Texas, was limited to painting, sculptures by Degas , Maillol and Rodin were also on view in Berlin .
The sorting of the artists carried out here is taken from the website of the exhibition.
Classicism and RomanticismMarie-Denise Villers 1774–1821 Academic paintingThomas Couture 1815–1879 OrientalismThéodore Chassériau 1819–1856 realismGustave Courbet 1819–1877 Open-air painting / The Barbizon SchoolCamille Corot 1796–1875 |
impressionismÉdouard Manet 1832–1883 Post-impressionism, pointillismOdilon Redon 1840–1916 The fathers of modernityPaul Cézanne 1839–1906 The beginning of the 20th centuryHenri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864–1901 sculptureAuguste Rodin 1840–1917 |
Exhibited works (selection)
Marie-Denise Villers:
Young woman drawing
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres:
Odalisque in grisaille
Jean-Léon Gérôme:
Pygmalion and Galatea
Gustave Courbet:
Woman with a Parrot
Claude Monet:
La Grenouillère
Edgar Degas:
The dance hall
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec:
The sofa
Camille Pissarro:
Boulevard Montmartre, spring
Paul Gauguin:
Hail Mary
Paul Cézanne:
Still life, geranium stick with fruits
literature
- Angela Schneider, Anke Daemgen, Gary Tinterow : French masterpieces of the 19th century from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York . Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-89479-381-3
- Anke Daemgen; in Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH (ed.): Museums-Journal , No. 2, April – June 2007, 21st year, Berlin. ISSN 0933-0593
- Pictures of the summer vacation . In: Die Zeit , No. 22/2007
- In the metro intoxication of the senses . In: Die Welt , November 12, 2006
- Exhibitions: New York art conquers Berlin . In: Die Zeit , No. 11/2006
Web links
- Information on the museums at the Kulturforum
- Website of the Association of Friends of the National Gallery
- French masterpieces of the 19th century from the Metropolitan Museum of Art - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Individual evidence
- ^ French from New York . pr-inside.com, May 12, 2007
- ↑ Copy of Horst Köhler's speech ( memento of the original from October 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Office of the Federal President, May 30, 2007
- ↑ 1000 guests greet the French . ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Berliner Morgenpost , May 31, 2007
- ^ "Jeanne d'Arc" by Jules Bastien-Lepage , Metropolitan Museum of Art
- ↑ Something like a basic art history course . Deutschlandradio , May 30, 2007, interview with Stefan Koldehoff
- ^ Art as an Event: The Most Beautiful French in Berlin . TTT - title, theses, temperaments, June 3, 2007
- ^ MET in Berlin. Impressionism as an event . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , May 31, 2007; about pearl divers
