CMA brings home masterpieces
By Roger Durbin
CLEVELAND — Visitors to The Cleveland Museum of Art’s (CMA) Impressionist and Modern Masters From The Cleveland Museum of Art exhibition can bask in the splendor and preciousness of the 142 works on display through Jan. 13.
Most of the pieces in the showing are CMA pieces that are part of a traveling exhibition that went on display in Seoul, South Korea; Tokyo; Beijing; and Vancouver, British Columbia. After this temporary Cleveland showing, the exhibition will travel on to Nashville, Tenn.; Salt Lake City; and Detroit before returning to CMA to be installed in the permanent collection galleries in early 2009. The exhibit in Cleveland has been expanded to include works seen only at CMA. So this is the best opportunity to catch these works.
This exhibition covers a century of art-making, from 1864 to 1964, and showcases important works by the major Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, early modern sculptors and avant-garde artists interested in Dadaism, Cubism and Surrealism. The exhibition is divided into four thematic groupings in several galleries on CMA’s second floor, beginning with the “Impressionist Epoch,” followed by “Beyond Impressionism” and “Rodin,” and ending with “Picasso and the Avant-Garde.”
Remarkably, several prominent artists — Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, among others — have rooms to themselves. It’s a great opportunity to contemplate the individual artists and to gauge their range of interest and technique.
Also, wall colors change in this exhibition to reflect the shift in subject and for appropriateness to the artist. Van Gogh’s pieces are placed on walls of sunflower yellow, for example.
Quite dramatically, the display
kicks off with the large “Thinker” by Auguste
Rodin that formerly was placed outside of CMA in a courtyard
but has been moved for the museum’s reconstruction
phase. The concept of this subject, according to curator
William Robinson, was designed for a larger work called
“The Gates of Hell,” with the character
of the Thinker being Dante himself. There are several
versions in different sizes, of course, but this one
is clearly linked to the
supervision of Rodin himself in its execution.
CMA’s exhibition is replete
with masterworks that everyone knows and appreciates
— and now has the chance to see again since they
are back in Cleveland. Among the many splendid creative
works on display are Claude Monet’s “The
Red Kerchief,” Degas’ “Dancers,”
Rodin’s “Heroic Head of Pierre de Wiessant,
One of the Burghers of
Calais,” Amedeo Modigliani’s “Portrait
of a Woman,” Henri Matisse’s “Festival
of Flowers,” Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Romaine
Lacaux,” Paul Gauguin’s “In the Waves,”
Pablo Picasso’s “Still Life With Biscuits,”
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Monsieur Boileau
at the Café” and Salvador Dalí’s
“The Dream.”
Their impact — in being
all together — is quite astounding.
However, there are other artists
that are good to see in this context. As an example,
there are three wonderful pieces by artist Odilon Redon
— his “Violette Heissmann,” “Orpheus”
and “Vase of Flowers.” Works like these
seem to jump out as surprises among the plethora of
luminous artists on display. Their presence gives a
kind of satisfaction with the display and a sense
of its completeness in the presentation
of the various themes.
The exhibition is free but requires
a timed ticket, available at the CMA Box Office. CMA,
11150 East Blvd. in University Circle, is open Tuesdays,
Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
and Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Allow
at least an hour and a half for this exhibition. CMA’s
parking garage is closed,
but parking is available at nearby University Circle
institutions or at metered parking along the street.
For details, call (888) 262-0033 or visit www.clevelandart.org.
Roger Durbin is associate dean
and professor of bibliography for University Libraries
at The University of Akron and an avid art enthusiast.
To contact him, e-mail r.durbin@sbcglobal.net.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Monsieur Boileau at the Café” is on view in The Cleveland Museum of Art’s Impressionist and Modern Masters From The Cleveland Museum of Art exhibition.
Photo courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art
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