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The Art of Being a Great Collector: Shchukin Collection at Fondation Louis Vuillton

December 19, 2016 by Patrick Legant

claude-monet-le-dejeuner-sur-lherbe

Patrick Legant is an independent art advisor in London for 19th and 20th Century art as well as specializing in German & Austrian Expressionism.  This essay is based upon the show “Icons of Modern Art. The Shchukin Collection” at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (Oct 22, 2016 to Feb 20, 2017.) Subscribers to AMMpro may read the entire work. All subscriptions begin with a free month, so feel free to register to read and cancel as you see fit.

“I am ashamed of my weakness and lack of courage. One must not desert the battlefield without trying to fight. For this reason, I am resolved to exhibit your panels. People will shout and people will laugh, but since I am convinced you are on the right path, maybe time will be my ally. And I will achieve victory in the end.”

Shchukin in a letter to Matisse

Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936), a textile merchant, was one of the most important contemporary art collectors in Russia, if not Europe, until the outbreak of the Russian revolution in 1917. It is his “art of collecting” that is as fascinating to observe and to experience as it is to learn about the developments of the French and Russian avant-garde during the first decades of the 20th Century.

The recently opened, sensational exhibition “Icons of Modern Art. The Shchukin Collection” at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is an overwhelming experience to see one of the most iconic collections re-united again with holdings of masterpieces from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to understand and realise the genius and magic of one of the most extraordinary collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modern Art of the early 20th Century. It ranges from Paul Cézanne’s major Mardi gras (Pierrot et Arlequin) of 1888-90 and his Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves (1904-05) to Claude Monet’s monumental Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1866) to Paul Gauguin’s Aha oé fee? (Eh quo, tu es jalousie?) (1892) to Picasso’s early major Cubist oil Trois femmes (1907 or 1908), to name only a few stand-out works.

The current exhibition can be seen as the mapping of a collecting journey. It starts off with Shchukin’s so-called “First Collection” (gathered between 1898 and 1905). It clearly represents the approach of a well-to-do, successful businessman who collects art for its decorative value as it was expected of his class. The works ranged from a large and decorative Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones tapestry to a pleasant Armand Guillaumin Impressionist landscape painting. The decorative and the narrative were clearly the guiding points throughout his “First Collection”.Continue Reading

Max Beckmann, A True Citizen of the World

December 2, 2016 by Patrick Legant

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Max Beckmann, Family Picture (Museum of Modern Art)

Patrick Legant is an independent art advisor in London for 19th and 20th Century art as well as specializing in German & Austrian Expressionism.  This essay is based upon the show Max Beckmann in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 19, 2016–February 20, 2017.) Subscribers to AMMpro may read the entire work. All subscriptions begin with a free month, so feel free to register to read and cancel as you see fit.

Today there appears to be yearning for turning inwards, fearing a loss of identity. There is a rise of nationalism and anger toward the outside world. Those voices are becoming louder and louder in the Western world. And it is in that light that a German artist, who died in New York in 1950 on his way to see an exhibition of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, should remind us how powerful, inspiring and important it is to be a citizen of the world. 

Max Beckmann (1884-1950), one of the most significant and influential artists of the last century, a German citizen who used to live and teach in Frankfurt and Berlin, spent time in his beloved Paris and eventually escaped Nazi Germany in 1937, the day before Hitler opened the infamous exhibition of so-called “degenerate art.”Continue Reading

Still Causing a Stir in London

October 24, 2016 by Patrick Legant

still-museum-photo-of-royal-academy-still-room

Patrick Legant is an independent art advisor in London for 19th and 20th Century art as well as specializing in German & Austrian Expressionism.  This essay is based upon the show Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy, London (September, 24 2016 – January, 2 2017)

London saw its first major survey exhibition of the then relatively new phenomenon of Abstract Expressionist Art at the Tate (in collaboration with MoMA) in 1959. The show was titled “New American Painting.” Works by Clyfford Still and William De Kooning could have been seen in London already a year earlier in the small but significant show “Some Paintings from the E.J. Power Collection” at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art), curated by the pioneering and influential curator Lawrence Alloway. The show paved the way for the major Tate and MoMA collaboration in 1959—an absolutely new artistic territory for the British audience.

Due to the absence of American Expressionist Art exhibitions in the UK since, the newly opened show “Abstract Expressionism” in London causes again such a stir—possibly as much as it did in 1959. It is almost like a fresh discovery of this “ultimate American” 20th Century movement that finds its origin in German Expressionism and Surrealist art as well as in the notion of the Abstract developed and challenged by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso. This time, the esteemed Royal Academy of Arts in London has “taken on” the Americans—to tell the story and to re-introduce the British to the development of Abstract Expressionist Art.Continue Reading

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