PHOENIX ART MUSEUM HOSTS REVOLUTIONARY 'MASTERPIECE REPLAYED'
PHOENIX, AZ - Phoenix Art Museum is one of only two museums in the world to host the momentous international loan exhibition exploring the significance of artistic repetition through the art of 11 renowned French masters. On display through May 4, 2008, Masterpiece Replayed: Monet, Matisse and More features 34 paintings, 16 prints, 3 bronze sculptures and 1 pastel created by some of the biggest names in art, lent by 31 of the foremost collections from around the world, including Musée du Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery in London and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The exhibition is organized in association with the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
“The show will explore how France’s greatest painters created singular masterpieces by using different scales, media and compositions, and how they challenged the very notion of the business of art, the nature of originality and the preconception of what constitutes art,” said Thomas J. Loughman, Ph.D., curator of European Art for Phoenix Art Museum. “The exhibition presents a rare opportunity to discover a new story about how artists like Monet, Matisse, Degas and Cézanne worked.”
Featuring influential masters of early modernism (1790s–1930s), the exhibition includes works by Jacques-Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Dominique Ingres, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Henri Matisse. The works selected exemplify the many reasons for painterly repetition, whether as part of a creative process, in response to market demand or to the aesthetic shift that would eventually lead to the development of the now familiar Impressionist series.
“The exhibition includes some of the most recognizable imagery of the Western tradition,” said Loughman. “From a pair of works from Monet’s series of Grainstacks, to the multiple investigations of the theme of bathers by Cézanne, this is truly an unprecedented opportunity to enjoy French art at its finest, compare different versions of the artists’ masterpieces and explore the process of mastery.”
The exhibition is organized by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Md., in association with Phoenix Art Museum, and is presented with major support provided by The Ruddock Family Trust, Carolyn Dunkin Schulte, and the Museum’s Men’s Arts Council. Educational program support is provided by John C. Lincoln Health Network, promotional support is provided by The Arizona Republic and Barnes & Noble Booksellers, and the exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
About the Exhibition
In this fascinating exhibition, the changing significance of copying and compositional repetition in both academic and avant-garde painting is investigated. Masterpiece Replayed explores the varied motivations for repetition, including learning through copying, cultivating market demand by making duplicate originals, exploring artistic and reproductive printmaking and photography, as well as showcasing the 19th-century tactic of painting in series – still an artistic staple of 21st-century modernism. Visitors will learn why artists repeated themselves, how they technically achieved self-repetition and what the possible meanings associated with repetition are in modern painting.
This exhibition is unprecedented in its mission: to present to the broad public the problematic and intriguing issue of painters working in multiple. Given common attitudes about art – that it is the inspired work of genius working in isolation in a succession of brilliant, original ideas – the exhibition provides a window into the work of art and the process of a well-known and popular set of painters, and also lays out a series of case studies.
Highlights include four versions of Jacques-Louis David’s famed Death of Marat – all produced by the artist and his workshop in 11 months between July 1793 and the artist’s imprisonment the following summer – created for the repetition and dissemination of a political icon in support of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. From a century later comes a choice set of drawings, oil sketches, paintings and color prints by Paul Cézanne on the theme of male bathers – produced over the course of two decades as part of the artist’s slow process of editing and perfecting and revisiting particular subjects.
Phoenix Art Museum provides a special satellite store within the gallery, featuring books, unique jewelry and inspirational gifts relating to the exhibition. A fully illustrated catalogue, “The Repeating Image, Multiples In French Paintings from David to Matisse” (The Walters Art Museum & Yale University Press, 2007) is available as a companion publication.
About Phoenix Art Museum:
The classically progressive design of the 203,000 sq. ft. Phoenix Art Museum integrates art and architecture with the Southwestern landscape, accommodating large traveling exhibitions and a collection of over 17,000 works in American, Asian, modern & contemporary, European, Latin American and Western American art and fashion design. Visitors also can enjoy the Sculpture Garden, the Thorne Miniature Rooms of historic interiors, PhxArtKids interactive space for children, Arcadia Farms at Phoenix Art Museum and The Museum Store. Visitors can learn more about the Museum’s collection through its bilingual, random access MP3 audio guide, available at the admissions desk. The Museum recently opened its $50 million expansion project, which included the addition of a glass-enclosed lobby and entry plaza, four-level gallery wing, sculpture garden and expanded store.
For more information about this exhibition or Phoenix Art Museum, visit our dedicated exhibition Web site at: www.masterpiecereplayed.org or call the 24-hour recorded information line at (602) 257-1222. Website : www.phxart.org