The Mediterranean sea, as seen by major painters, is the central theme of an exhibition held at the Grand Palais in Paris between September 19th 2000 and January 15th 2001. Not many painters, excepted Vernet, Volaire or Lacroix de Marseille, were inclined to represent the Mediterranean sea and its coasts before the 19th Century but a new turn in the history of painting was to take place after 1850 when many great masters went on the spot to record what they saw and felt. Titled “The Mediterranean, from Courbet to Matisse”, this exhibition organised by Françoise Cachin, head of the Musée d'Orsay, is however likely to take visitors by surprise as a result of a mixture of many genres.
The first painting to be seen is a work by Courbet, which seems much classical alongside other conventional painters before one reaches the rooms where works by Renoir and Monet are hanging. Still, Impressionist paintings and even those by Cézanne rather look out of tune when one discovers Fauvist and post-Impressionist works a few metres away and the overall impression is that of a brutal rupture when the viewer is confronted to the audacious works painted by Cross, Signac, Matisse, Derain or van Rysselberghe. The only apparent link resides in the sea and the sun splashing in front of one's eyes. Still, this exhibition brings a plus as it enables visitors to take stock of a major evolution in painting with works by Matisse, the Fauves, Dali and even Vallotton emerging as the best shown at the Grand Palais.
Early paintings by Picasso even seem from another age, excepted “Two Bathers” dated 1924 and visitors are sometimes baffled before works by Edvard Munch produced in the 1890s that are not “Munch-like” paintings. There are also some works by lesser-known artists that seem superfluous in this exhibition as if organisers had been at a loss when it came to hang as many paintings as they could though a pair of canvasses by Puvis de Chavannes suddenly appear quite modernistic in style. Those by Jean Puy, Marquet or Camoin are somewhat uninteresting compared with some flamboyant and buoyant works by Matisse, Braque, Cross, Signac, van Rysselberghe or Derain.
This exhibition has been organised according themes: the sea, rocks, trees, harbours and bathers but most regrettable is the absence of a painter like de Stael or works produced by Picasso during the 1930s though a work showing rocks he painted at 15 tells us how an accomplished painter he was at that age.
Felix Vallotton
"Mimosas en fleurs à Cagnes, 1921",
RMN Presse
Monet does not seem at ease regarding his representation of waves, Vallotton looks somewhat disconcerting concerning his skies while Cézanne however manages to escape criticism in proving his obvious influence on modern painting. As for Matisse, his window opened on a black background suggesting night gives a clear idea of an incredible but ephemeral attempt to juggle with abstraction.
Nevertheless this exhibition gives a good clue of Matisse's renouncement to Fauvism, which also briefly attracted Braque, who was also opposed to the tenacity shown by Signac, Cross or van Rysselberghe to stick to the principles of dots. Many of those artists showed an interest in the Mediterranean region simply for its light, landscapes and pure air, which confronted them with new challenges. The one good point of this exhibition has been to show that they did suffer a lot to bring about a new revolution in art but one is not sure that most visitors would have understood such fact.
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