Back to the Met---Americans in Paris
Seeing the exhibit "Americans in Paris, 1860-1900" I was on unfamiliar ground. In terms of the artists represented, it was a learning experience. A quote at the entrance from Mary Alcott caught the essense of Paris then and and today saying "Paris is apt to strike the new-comer as but one vast studio".
The story-line of the exhibit chronicled the two stereotypes of American artists in their precious and, for some, limited time in Paris. The pose could be either that of the bohemian or the flaneur. Flaneur, new to me, meaning well dressed gentleman, observer, stroller of the streets.
I learned that a fixture of the Paris art scene in those years was the annual "Salon", a giant showcase of art work based on judges' selection. In 1863 a rigid jury led to a dispute about which artists work was accepted. Napoleon III intervened and authorized a "Salon des Refuses", an annual exhibition of rejected works. It really is a different culture. What other national leader, then and of course now, would step into an artistic dispute.
As well as in Paris, American artists also joined the Parisian artist's summer migration to Brittany, Normandy, and small northern villages like Giverny. In this area of the exhibit I was taken by a painting, "Reading by the Shore", a woman reading on the coast below a rock formation, by Charles Sprague Pearce that was seemingly at the exact place in Normandy where I took a photo of Kathy in 1983. The Americans were perhaps not always well received in the summer retreats as Claude Monet threatened to leave Giverny in 1892 because Americans kept chasing his two step daughters.
Of the artists represented, most unfamiliar to me, I was most interested in Mary Cassatt and Childe Hassan.
The story-line of the exhibit chronicled the two stereotypes of American artists in their precious and, for some, limited time in Paris. The pose could be either that of the bohemian or the flaneur. Flaneur, new to me, meaning well dressed gentleman, observer, stroller of the streets.
I learned that a fixture of the Paris art scene in those years was the annual "Salon", a giant showcase of art work based on judges' selection. In 1863 a rigid jury led to a dispute about which artists work was accepted. Napoleon III intervened and authorized a "Salon des Refuses", an annual exhibition of rejected works. It really is a different culture. What other national leader, then and of course now, would step into an artistic dispute.
As well as in Paris, American artists also joined the Parisian artist's summer migration to Brittany, Normandy, and small northern villages like Giverny. In this area of the exhibit I was taken by a painting, "Reading by the Shore", a woman reading on the coast below a rock formation, by Charles Sprague Pearce that was seemingly at the exact place in Normandy where I took a photo of Kathy in 1983. The Americans were perhaps not always well received in the summer retreats as Claude Monet threatened to leave Giverny in 1892 because Americans kept chasing his two step daughters.
Of the artists represented, most unfamiliar to me, I was most interested in Mary Cassatt and Childe Hassan.
posted by John Borden at 11:07 PM
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