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Claude Monet, “The Customhouse”, 1882, Oil on
canvas, 61 x 75 cm, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Annie Swan
Coburn, 1934, Photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard
College.
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January 22 – May 28, 2017
To
mark its twentieth anniversary, the Fondation Beyeler is presenting one of the
most important and best-loved artists: Claude Monet. The exhibition will be a
celebration of light and color, illustrating the great French painter’s
development from Impressionism to his famous paintings of water-lilies. It will
feature his Mediterranean landscapes, wild Atlantic coastal scenes, different
stretches of the Seine, meadows with wild flowers, haystacks, water lilies,
cathedrals, and bridges shrouded in fog. In his paintings, Monet experimented
with changing light and color effects in the course of a day and in different
seasons. He succeeded in evoking magical moods through reflections and shadows.
Claude
Monet was a great pioneer, who found the key to the secret garden of modern
painting, and opened everyone’s eyes to a new way of seeing the world. The
exhibition will show 62 paintings from leading museums in Europe, the USA and
Japan, including
the
Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern
Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Art, Boston and the Tate, London. 15
paintings from various private collections that are seen extremely rarely and
that have not been shown in the context of a Monet exhibition for many years
will be special highlights of the show.
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Claude Monet, “The Terrace at Vétheuil”, 1881,
Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm, Private Collection, Photo: Robert Bayer.
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In
the year of its 20th birthday, the Fondation Beyeler is devoting an exhibition
to Claude Monet, one of the most important artists in its collection. Selected
aspects of Monet’s oeuvre will be presented in a distilled overview. By
concentrating on his work between 1880 and the beginning of the 20th century, with
a forward gaze to his late paintings, the show will reveal a fresh and
sometimes unexpected facet of the pictorial magician, who still influences our
visual experiencing of nature and landscape today.
The
leitmotif of the “Monet” exhibition will be light, shadow, and reflection as
well as the constantly evolving way in which Monet treated them. It will be a
celebration of light and colors. Monet’s famed pictorial worlds - his
Mediterranean landscapes, wild Atlantic coastal scenes, various locations
places along the course of the River Seine, his flower meadows, haystacks,
cathedrals and fog-shrouded bridges - are the exhibition’s focal points. In his
paintings, Monet experimented with the changing play of light and colors in the
course of the day and the seasons. He conjured up magical moods through
reflections and shade. Claude Monet was a great pioneer in the field of art,
finding the key to the secret garden of modern painting and opening everyone’s
eyes to a new way of seeing the world.
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Claude Monet, “In the Norvégienne”, 1887, Oil on
canvas, 97,5 x 130,5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, legacy ofPrincesse Edmond de
Polignac, 1947, Photo: © RMN-Grand
Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski.
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LIGHT, SHADOW AND REFLECTION
Following
the death of his wife in 1879, Monet embarked on a phase of reorientation. His
time as a pioneer of Impressionism was over; while by no means generally acknowledged
as an artist, he was beginning to become more independent financially thanks to
the help of his dealer, as is documented by his frequent journeys. Through
them, he was, for example, first able to concern himself with Mediterranean
light, which provided new impulses for his paintings. His art became more
personal, moving away from a strictly Impressionist style.
Above
all, however, Monet seems to have increasingly turned painting itself into the
theme of his paintings. His comment, as passed down by his stepson Jean
Hoschedé, that, for him, the motif was of secondary importance to what happened
between him and the motif, should be seen in this light. Monet’s reflections on
paintings should be interpreted in two ways. The repetition of his motifs
through reflections, which reach their zenith and conclusion in his paintings
of the reflections in his water-lily ponds, can also be seen as a continuous
reflecting on the potential of painting, which is conveyed through the
representation and repetition of a motif on a canvas.
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Claude Monet, “Water-Lilies”, 1916–1919, Oil on
canvas, 200 x 180 cm, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Basel, Beyeler Collection,
Photo: Robert Bayer, The restoration of this art work is supported by the, BNP
Paribas Swiss Fondation.
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Monet’s
representations of shade are another way in which he represented the potential
of painting. They are both the imitation and the reverse side of the motif, and
their abstract form gives the painting a structure that seems to question the
mere copying of the motif. This led to the situation in which Wassily
Kandinsky, on the occasion of his famous encounter with Monet’s painting of a
haystack seen against the light (Kunsthaus Zurich and in the exhibition), did
not recognize the subject for what it was: the painting itself had taken on far
greater meaning that the representation of a traditional motif.
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Theodore Robinson, “Portrait of Monet”, c.
1888–90, Cyanotype, 24 x 16,8 cm, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, gift
of Mr. Ira Spanierman, 1985, Photo: © Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago
/ Art Ressource, NY. |
MONET’S PICTORIAL WORLDS
The
exhibition is a journey through Monet’s pictorial worlds. It is arranged
according to different themes. The large first room in the exhibition is
devoted to Monet’s numerous and diverse representations of the River Seine. One
of the most notable exhibits is his rarely shown portrait of his partner and
subsequent wife Alice Hoschedé, sitting in the garden in Vetheuil directly on
the Seine.
The
next room celebrates Monet’s representation of trees: a subtle tribute to Ernst
Beyeler, who devoted an entire exhibition to the theme of trees in 1998.
Inspired by colored Japanese woodcuts, Monet repeatedly returned to the motif
of trees in different lights, their form, and the shade they cast. Trees often
give his paintings a geometric structure, as is particularly obvious in his
series. The luminous colors of the Mediterranean are conveyed by a group of
canvases Monet painted in the 1880s. In a letter written at that time, he spoke
of the “fairytale light” he had discovered in the South. In 1886 Monet wrote to
Alice Hoschedé that he was “crazy about the sea”. A large section of the exhibition
is devoted to the coasts of Normandy and the island Belle-Île as well as to the
ever-changing light by the sea. It includes a fascinating sequence of different
views of a customs official’s cottage on a cliff that lies in brilliant
sunlight at times and in the shade at others. On closer examination, the shade
seems to have been created out of myriad colors.
Monet’s
paintings of early-morning views of the Seine radiate contemplative peace: the
painted motif is repeated as a painted reflection in such a way that the
distinction between painted reality and its painted reflection seems to
disappear in the rising mist. The entire motif is repeated as a reflection. There
is no longer any clear-cut differentiation between the top and bottom parts of
the painting, which could equally well be hung upside down. In other words, the
convention about how paintings ought to be viewed is abandoned and viewers are
left to make their own decision. It is as if Monet sought to convey the
constant flux (panta rhei) that is such a fundamental characteristic of nature,
capturing not only the way light changes from night to day but also the
constant merging of two water courses.
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Claude Monet, “Rocks at Belle-Île, Port-Domois”,
1886, Oil on canvas, 81,3 x 64,8 cm, Cincinnati Art Museum, Fanny Bryce Lehmer
Endowment, and The Edwin and Virginia Irwin Memorial, 1985, Photo: Bridgeman
Images.
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Monet
loved London. He sought refuge in the city during the Franco-Prussian War of
1870/71. As a successful and already well known painter, he went back there at
the turn of the century, painting famous views of Waterloo and Charing Cross
Bridge as well as of the Houses of Parliament in different lights, particularly
in the fog, which turns all forms into mysterious silhouettes. A tribute not
only Monet’s famous hero/forerunner William Turner, but also to the world power
of Great Britain with its Parliament and the bridges it built through trade.
Monet’s
late work consists almost exclusively of paintings of his garden and the
reflections in his waterlily ponds, of which the Beyeler Collection owns some
outstanding examples. The exhibition’s last room contains a selection of
paintings of Monet’s garden in Giverny.
FURTHER INFO
www.fondationbeyeler.ch
Fondation
Beyeler, Beyeler Museum AG, Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen, Switzerland
Fondation
Beyeler opening hours: 10 am - 6 pm daily, Wednesdays until 8 pm
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Claude Monet, “View of Bordighera”, 1884, Oil on
canvas, 66 x 81,8 cm, The Armand Hammer Collection, Schenkung der Armand Hammer
Foundation, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
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MONET SERGİSİ FONDATION BEYELER’DE
22
Ocak – 28 Mayıs 2017
Avrupa’nın
önemli müzelerinden İsviçre Basel’deki Fondation Beyeler, kuruluşunun 20 .
yılında “MONET” sergisi düzenledi. Işık ve renk şöleni sunan sergide, Fransız
ressamın İzlenimcilikten, ünlü nilüfer çiçekleri serisine doğru gelişimi de
izlenebilecek. Akdeniz manzaraları, vahşi Atlantik kıyı görüntüleri, Seine
nehrinin farklı kolları, kır çiçekleri, saman yığınları, nilüferler,
katedraller ve sis içindeki köprüler sergide görülebilecek izlenimci temalardan
bazıları. Monet resimlerinde, bir gün içinde ve farklı mevsimlerde değişen ve ışık
ve renk etkilerini denemiştir. O, yansımalar ve gölgeler aracılığıyla, büyülü
ruh çağrışımları yaratmada başarılı olmuştur.
Claude
Monet, modern resmin gizli bahçesinin anahtarını bulan büyük bir öncü oldu ve herkesin
dünyayı farklı açılardan görmesi için yeni bir yol gösterdi. Sergide Musée
d’Orsay, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art,
New York; the Museum of Fine Art, Boston and the Tate, London gibi Avrupa,
Amerika ve Japonya’nın önemli müzelerinden bu sergi için ödünç alınan 62 eser
görülebilir. Ayrıca daha önce Monet sergisinde yer almamış, özel
koleksiyonlardan bu sergi için seçilen 15 eser de sergi de önemli bir yere sahip.
DETAYLI BİLGİ
www.fondationbeyeler.ch
Fondation
Beyeler, Beyeler Museum AG, Baselstrasse 77, CH-4125 Riehen, Switzerland
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Claude Monet, “Jean-Pierre Hoschedé and Michel
Monet on the Banks of the Epte”, c. 1887–90, Oil on canvas, 76 x 96,5 cm, National
Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Gift of the Saidye Bronfman Foundation, 1995, Photo:
© National Gallery of Canada. |