The Marmottan Monet Museum is one of the undervisited glories of the museumscape of Paris, no doubt due to its location toward the western edge of the city. The museum, formerly the home of Paul Marmottan, originally paid full homage to Marmottan’s passion for collecting art, furniture, and bronzes from the Napoleonic/Empire era of the early 19th century. But following a donation in 1957, the museum began to assert itself as an important recipient for Impressionist, near-Impressionist, and post-Impressionists works.
The confirmation of that shift came in 1966 when the museum inherited from Michel Monet his collection of works that he’d in turn inherited from his father Claude. That suddenly made the Marmottan Museum home to the world’s largest Monet collection.
Little by little over the next 50 years other donations and successive rearrangement of displays have succeeded in pushing Marmottan’s Napoleonia to a secondary role in favor of works that, somewhat ironically, were created during Paul Marmottan’s lifetime (1856-1932) but that would scarcely have interested him as a collector. The addition of Monet to the museum’s name is the consecration of that shift.
Nevertheless, while visiting the permanent collection recently before seeing the museum’s exhibit Fauves and Expressionists, which runs through Feb. 10, 2010, I was struck by what a soothing foil the straight lines, shiny veneer, and bronze edges of the Empire furniture is for the insubstantial density of the Impressionists.
On the ground floor of the mansion, beyond the portraits of scantily clad women and meritorious men that once held a prominent place on Marmottan’s walls, there’s a surprising decorative harmony between Marmottan’s furniture and the works of Morisot, Gaugin, Renoir, Caillebotte, Pissaro, and especially Monet.
Though the works from the late 19th century here may seem redundant if you’ve recently visited the Orsay Museum, the pleasure of an uncrowded view is anything but redundant while admiring such works as Pissarro’s “Outer Boulevards, Effect of Snow” (1879), Corot’s stunning “The Pond of the Town of Avray, View Through the Branches” (1865), in which you can feel the wind, and Caillebotte’s “Paris Street, Rainy Weather” (1877). For those who don’t know Berthe Morisot’s works, the Marmottan is the place to discover them, yet the museum is above all a window into the work of Monet.
There are astounding Monets from the master’s early burst of Impressionism, such as “Vetheuil in the Fog” (1879), not to mention “Impression, Sunrise” (1872), which isn’t impressive so much as significant since it’s the work whose name and effect gave verbal unity to an entire movement.
It’s upstairs that the Marmottan Monet Museum is truly unique because of the museum’s tremendous collection of late Monets. I personally find it unfortunate that there’s no Empire furniture upstairs as a reminder that this was once someone’s home rather than yet one more excuse for wall space. Nevertheless, the fact that one’s full attention is drawn solely to works is quite effective.
Anyone who has ever been to or is planning to go to Giverny would be remiss in failing to see this permanent collection. The same might naturally be said about the vast “Water Lilies” in the Orangerie, but there is something formal and stately about those magnificent stretches of canvas that makes them less personal. The works here allow for a better and more personal understanding of the relationship between Monet (1840-1926) and his garden.
See, for example, “Japanese Bridge” (one from 1919, another from 1923), “The Weeping Willow” (one from 1918, another from 1919), “The Roses” (1924-1925), and “The House in Roses” (1922—several versions), in which a man in his 80s looks toward his home but seeing only vegetation while being swallowed by roses. His “Wisterias” (1919-1920) aren’t flowers so much as the frustrated, obsessive mind of an artist wanting perhaps to lie down in his garden and allow it to grow over him. “Irises Yellow and Mauve” (1924-1925) shows a man in ecstasy before his palate following a cataract operation.
Only after visiting the permanent collection should you venture into the basement to see the temporary exhibit.
Fauves and Expressionists
This may not be the most extraordinary exhibit in Paris this fall and winter, but I find it the most naturally and effortless pleasing art museum experiences of the season due to the play between the permanent exhibit noted above and the temporary exhibit.
The eye makes a dramatic yet finally easy transition from the works described above to the deep variants of blue and red and blushing green of the Fauves and their cousin Expressionists.
There isn’t actually much unity to the exhibit, as the name of the show indicates, aside from the fact that the works come from the Von Der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany (which is concurrently and in exchange showing a Monet exhibit). There are some eye-catching pieces here—Braque, Dix, von Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Holde, Kirchner, Beckmann—yet there are better demonstrations of Fauvism at the Orsay and of Expressionism at the Pompidou Center. Nevertheless, this is still a dazzling exhibition because the air of the late Monets viewed upstairs hang over the exhibit like a primeval fog, even if those Monets were actually painted after many of the works on the exhibit.
Soulages Retrospective
Meanwhile, across town at the Pompidou Center, black dominates in the retrospective of the work of Pierre Soulages, the most famous living French artist.
“One day when I was painting,” Soulages is quoted on the exhibit wall as saying in 2005, “the block took over the whole surface of the canvas… Out of the darkness came light, a pictural light whose particular emotional force provoked in me a desire to paint… My instrument was no longer the black but the secret light it radiated, all the more powerful in its affect for its coming from the greatest absence of light.”
The depth of variety of the work in this retrospective builds in waves in the same way that Monet’s works from his garden and pond do. Though many of Soulages’ painting, particularly earlier works, allow white, off-white, beige, brown, and occasionally blue backgrounds to speak from the beyond, more recent works focus, often exclusively, on the way in which light attaches itself, reflects on, or hangs from the black.
There is both constancy and evolution in Soulage’s work as there is in Monets. Indeed, a parallel can be made between the brilliant obsession that has led Soulages, born in 1919, to remain inspired by black as he has been for decades and that led Monet, for the last 40 years of his life, to return incessantly to the light and colors in his backyard.
There is also a natural opposition between the two artists since while Monet inspires a garden party, Soulages calls for solitary contemplation, or not so much contemplation as consciousness.
“I think I make paintings,” he said in 2007, “so that those who look at them—myself, like everybody else—can find themselves in front of them, alone with themselves.”
Finally, just as the Fauves and Expressionists on display at the Marmottan are enhanced by the Monets, so Soulages benefits from the view of the gray rooftops and sky of Paris, one of the best views of the city.
Soulages says that has a beautiful, expansive view just outside his studio but that he works in a studio without a view because the exterior space only disturbs him. After allowing oneself to be submerged into Soulages black paint, the disturbance of a view from the top of the Pompidou is both welcome and all the more astounding.
© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut
Fauves et Expressionnistes at the Musée Marmottan Monet, Oct. 28, 2009 – Feb. 20, 2010. Open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., until 9 p.m. on Tues. Closed Mon. 2 rue Louis-Boilly, 16th arr. Metro La Muette. www.marmottan.com. Entrance: 9 euros, includes the permanent collection.
Soulages at the Centre Pompidou, Oct. 14, 2009 – March 8, 2010. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., until 11 p.m. on Thurs. Closed Tues. Place George Pompidou, 4th arr. Metro Rambuteau. www.centrepompidou.fr. Entrance: 12 euros.
When considering the pricing of exhibits in Paris it’s worth noting that the admission price for this exhibit includes access to all of the temporary exhibitions at the Pompidou Center plus the excellent permanent collection plus the view.
For more on Soulages in French see www.pierre-soulages.com.