From Good Art to Bad Art. French moderns Monet to Matisse exhibition

The Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition French moderns Monet to Matisse from February 21 to May 20 of 2019 present many paintings and sculptures from the early 19^th century to late 21^st century. The exhibition is made in a way that you will enter into the exhibition on the first floor, walk on the right to start the exhibition. Here the Gallery show us the beginnings of the 19^th century paintings, and it ends in today’s contemporary art. You can look at the paintings and have a brief history behind in some of them, about the authors, important aspects of the style and themes of the era. While you advance you can see the change in style and colors inside the paintings. On the final room of the exhibition there is a contemporary art room which seems out of place, specially knowing that you were looking at very well made paintings, it abruptly changed into sculptural and printed works with less aesthetical value in composition and more interested in abstraction. Making the exhibition end in such way that you start to argue yourself how art devolve from skillful techniques and knowledge in aesthetic, composition, and history into conceptualism and aboutness (Clark, 173) were expressiveness of the artist and philosophical value is more important than the work itself. The exhibition changes from talented artist into people who are exploring the meaning of art. From a pleasant visit to the gallery to a distasteful experience. At the end of the exhibition it gives the idea that the definition of art is so ambiguous that instead to make it evolve, contemporary art prefer to experiment the form and composition making the art hard to appreciate and understand. Making people more confuse to know what art is.

The exhibition at the beginning is interesting and engaging showing brush techniques and the philosophy of the artist. The paintings of the impressionism and the modernism demonstrate their ability with the materials and knowledge in art for its composition, light, color, and art history to fight against art institution and academy. The technique and the talent that each artist had its impressive and give us the opportunity to contemplate their art with its controversial ideologies. While you are reading the story of the modernist the gallery explains that at this time impressionist and modernist artist were fighting against classical art and the academia, to create their own style and meaning. Their own style consisted to show paintings with different visible brush techniques . One of them was to show the brush path wich makes the painting look unfinished, another technique was to do not mix a color to a certain color scale in the palette but to put it on the painting directly so the viewer mix the colors unconciously and makes the painting look realistic. Artist start using these and more techniques and extrovert themes to portray dissatisfaction toward classic paint which was the sense of high art for people and critics at that time. One of the best paintingss of the exhibition to express this was Madame Boursier and Her Daughter by Berthe Morisot. Because this painting looks incomplete and kind of foggy which shows the ability of Morisot in painting. Using simple strokes to create a realistic feeling of Madame Boursier and the little child in a way that feel alive after centuries of being painted. Even though, the brush strokes are strong and very visible it still gives the painting a realistic feeling and a sense that Morisot gives these two figures life without the perfectionist classic style, the traditional painting worry too much about making the brush invisible and smooth. This show that with less you can do more. The work creates interest to know more about the artist, his paintings the movement and a better sense in why these artists were against classic art. Here the exhibition is engaging and make the viewer want to know more about the artists, their work and art itself.

 But at the end of the postmodernism room the start of the contemporary art room the paintings start focusing more in the idea and the expression of the artist making the paintings less realistic, less impressive, and less figurative. From here the exhibition show that artists were more interested to explore their feelings and expressions than improving their abilities. The painting start to look plain and careless because they were prints, the works were a photograph print on a canvas of Marcel Duchamps work Bottle Rack in a museum and a photo of a museum hall. The work fails to demonstrate any kind of important meaning or critic towards institution because this idea was already explored by Marcel Duchamp and also people who do not know art history would not understand the background of the piece. Moreover, the Dadaism movement which was trying to kill art makes their work and ideologies to have stronger purpose than the contemporary art and its exploration of art. This movement was more fitting into that idea of critic than these contemporary art pieces. Also the compositions start to look simpler using simple forms such as spheres and squares to represent reality. An example of this is a sculpture made of lightbulbs which have the name Portrait, it did not contain the name of the author but the name of the piece was glue to the work. The sculpture was made in such a way that you can see that the artist glue the lightbulbs with no intentional form, very abstract. It has no care in aesthetic value and it do not show any idea. It is true that perfection and aesthetics in art is not the ultimate goal, Arthur Danto explains that art might not be appealing to everyone (133). But it has to embody an idea and show that it is a piece of art instead of a simple object (133). “We lived in a moment when it is clear that art can be made of anything, and where there is no mark through which works of art can be perceptually different from the most ordinary objects” (Danto, 139). Interestingly in this room there is no more explanation about the history of the pieces or the artist, compared with the information that the gallery gave us in previous rooms. Probably because the artist or the curators of the gallery want the public to give its own interpretation to the pieces.  And this do not help art at all because it gives no way for public and artist to criticize it and help evolve the subject and ideas as previous movements did, “it is the end of the possibility of progressive development” (Danto, 140) for art today.

 Show objects in a museum do not make them an artwork. You as a person can put any kind of meaning to anything, “flights of birds gets read as a sign from the gods until one stop believing in gods, after which a flights of birds is a flights of birds” (Danto, 130). People interpret these pieces as art, not because they think is a real piece of art but because they are located in a gallery. If we put the lightbulb sculpture outside the gallery people would probably look at it as a strange object with no art value. The sculpture does not show good quality and do not embody any important content or meaning by itself (Danto, 131). While if you put a impressionist painting people would react differently appreciating the piece and look at it as a piece of art.  The lightbulb sculpture and the photo print canvases really do not show anything new in art, those ideas have been already discussed and explored by other artist in a better ways. The works failed to show any meaningful idea in the exhibition, institution, art or todays society. Moreover, the contemporary room is the emptiest room from all the gallery. As if contemporary works not even work as decoration. The contemporary room has its pieces but the room was mainly ignore by spectators compared to impressionist rooms or the modernist rooms. Functional and Procedural Definitions of Art by Stephen Davies and The end of Art: A philosophical Defense by Arthur Danto explains that it is impossible to define art. That there won’t be any specific definition to an ambiguous word as art. But, even though there is no definition of art any person is able to identify art (Danto, 130). And from here I can say that at the beginning of the exhibition there was high art, and at the end there was an amorphous object made by lightbulbs and photo prints which I do not recognize them as art. And probably many others in the gallery because as I said this was the emptiest room from public from all the Vancouver Art Gallery, not only from the French moderns Monet to Matisse exhibition. Danto explains that we can put any kind of meaning on anything but that does not make a simple object into a piece of art (130). The exhibition success to show the change of art through different periods of time, and if this final phase is made as a way to criticize today's art they succeed to show that. How art have devolved from high standards to low standards.

The experience of the exhibition demonstrates how technique in art has decreased until now. The works of the impressionist and the modernist demostrate that artist were able to demonstrate their talent and also their ablility to fight against art institution. Making the exhibition interesting to learn and helped viewer to get involve in the history of art. Here Timothy James Clark and his article Modernism, Postmodernism, and Steam explains that in order for you to create art you have to have knowledge and techniques (173). In order to represent something or embody something you have to demonstrate it by the work and the knowledge behind the work (Clark, 173). Many of the impressionist and modernist paintings demonstrate that because most of them were painted to be seen far away, so paintings would look realistic and clean as traditional art. But when viewers get closer to the painting the brush work and the colors would be more visible, making the painting less realistic and more what they are, a painting. Which was exactly what the artists wanted to make spectators understand, that these paintings were the view of the artist to the world and not of real life. That paintings can be manipulated by the author and can be changed to give a different meaning and content. Manipulation of colors and light is what makes a masters work such as Rising Tide by Claude Monet. Clark explains “I do not know the art of the present to be able to ask questions of it with authority, but I think I know the art of the previous era well enough to know what questions ought to be asked” (172), to criticize it and see if knowledge of the past art will help us to question todays art. Modernist and their view pressure the belief in their time make art evolve into more art manifestos and ideas. Clark discovers that artist by exploring art there was a point where the individual expression became extremist (173) and artist stop to paying attention in technique and composition. Ignoring any kind of knowledge of drawing, sculpture, painting or aesthetic in art. And start focusing more in the aboutness and the meaning behind objects and ideas. Exploring but not creating art.

 The exhibition is enjoyable until you face the time of contemporary art and judge how simple and ugly it is. From the exploration of expression artists start to manipulate the meaning of art. Modernist were exploring the essence of painting (Danto, 139) using controversial techniques to explore and improve art for and by the artist. Though, at some point possibly in the postmodernist time artist ended up in the state that anything can be art (Danto, 139). And it cannot be diferenciated by any other kind of simple objects (Danto, 139). Fountain by Marcel Duchamp was groundbreaking in art history because it was a strong critic against low standard art. Unfortunately, the popularity of the piece and the misinterpretation of it is what killed art. Duchamp who was a Dadaist wanted to kill art and with the creation of the ready-mades he did it. More and more artist started to use simple objects with the idea that any kind of interpretation to them is suitable making easy pieces of artwork. To create and sell expensive pieces of art which are easy to do and make in todays industrial capability. The lightbulb sculpture and the contemporary prints at the end of the exhibition demonstrates that. A BBC documentary The Great Contemporary Bubble Ben Lewis the director demonstrate that the artist Damien Hirsh have a catalog of “already made” works to sell in the art market as new with expensive value. The lack of knowledge in sculpture and painting, the unskillful way they are made compared to the impressionist and modernist, the idea that simple objects can be art and meaning is more important than skill is showed in this exhibition gives you a very bad experience. It is hard to face but it is important to know, because this way the exhibition and curators show a critic towards art critics, the art market, art institution and artworld today.  As I said previously the ideas behind contemporary room pieces have been better explore by other artist it makes them less impressive and help to see them as examples of low art. The idea of what is being shown in galleries and museums today instead of well made paintings and sculptures with more important values in ideas and talent. This is why the experience of the exhibition end unpleasantly because you start to question how artist ended up doing this kind of art but at the same time it gives you power to question and think. The experience of the devolve in art and technique into expression and object helps you to empowering your critical view and hability to identify art. The beginning of the exhibition leaves you with no breath for how beautiful and skillful the artists were. At the end it leaves you with no breath because makes you question how and why art today is like this.

Works cited

Clark, T.J. “Modernism, Postmodernism, and Steam”. October, vol. 100, 2002, pp. 155-174. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/779097.

Danto, Arthur C. “The End of Art: A Philosophical Defense”. Wiley-Blackwell, vol 37, n. 4, 1998, pp. 127-243

Davies, Stephen. “Functional and Procedural Definitions of Art”. Philosophical Perspective on Art, 5 Jan. 2007, pp. 43-50. Research Gate, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199202423.003.0004

Monet, Claude. Rising Tide. 1882. Vancouver Art Gallery, http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_frenchmoderns.html

Morisot, Berthe. Portrait of Mme Boursier and Her Daughter. 1873. Vancouver Art Gallery,  http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_frenchmoderns.html

“The Great Contemporary Bubble”. BBC documentaries. Written by Ben Lewis, directed by Ben Lewis, BBC, 2009. Urcl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJyYGKV8GM accessed April 2 of 2019.