We celebrated July 4th in Philadelphia this year. It’s been 18 months since we’ve traveled to see art, and I realized how much I’ve missed it. I just recently spent 9 weeks studying Cezanne and doing some master copies, so it was incredibly rewarding to spend time at The Barnes because they have the largest collection of Cezanne paintings in the world - 69 in all.
The museum feels like a rambling mish mash of star studded world class paintings. Van Gogh’s Postman is in a corner near what looks to be a kitchen chair. And then there are these assorted metal tongs and fixtures on the wall? It’s so odd to me, but if you are wondering why it’s that way it’s because Albert Barnes demanded it. After our 2019 visit to The Barnes, I read the story behind the man and his foundation and found it fascinating (Art Held Hostage).
Each room is jam packed with masterpieces from Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Chaim Soutine, Picasso, Degas, Modigliani and more. The museum is estimated to have an art collection valued at more than 25 billion dollars. So we saw more than 25 billion dollars of art in one afternoon. Needless to say, my head was spinning.
In addition to a phenomenal permanent collection, they also have outstanding special exhibitions. “Soutine/deKooning: Conversations in Paint,” is on view through August 8th, and it is a stunner. In 1952 Willem de Kooning visited the Barnes with his wife, Elaine, and was inspired by Soutine’s paintings. It was so cool to see de Kooning’s Woman series along with Soutine’s portraits and play compare/contrast.
I *love* seeing the line work and underpainting of de Kooning!! It’s like solving a math problem when you show your work, show how you arrived at your answer. Carry the 1, cross out the line, erase, re-mark it, etc. de Kooning is showing us his process, how he worked.
This is why you go see art in person. A photograph of a de Kooning will never tell the full story. You want to get up close (not too close or the security guards will freak out!), be still and carefully look at every inch of the painting and see what you can find. It’s a treasure chest of goodies!!
Soutine’s paintings also reveal a goldmine of goodness. It’s fascinating to see how artists paint hands. I can promise you that if I submitted a painting like this to a local art show it would be rejected in a heartbeat. But Soutine and de Kooning didn’t care about getting into shows or being accepted. They painted because they loved painting and had something they wanted to express. Emotion!! Yes! As Amy Sherald said several years ago about her portrait of Michelle Obama: “I paint for an audience of one.”
The special exhibition included a really nice collection of de Kooning abstract paintings. Our favorite was “Composition,” which is on loan from the Guggenheim. Red was clearly one of the connecting elements between Soutine and de Kooning.
The Soutine show stopper was his Carcass of Beef, which he was inspired to paint after visiting The Louvre and seeing Rembrandt’s
“Flayed Ox” painted in 1655. There are quite a few
stories about Soutine, including some interesting anecdotes about his carcass series. Let’s just say that his neighbors were not exactly thrilled by the smell of rotting meat, and it’s been written that his studio assistant doused the carcass with fresh blood as needed.
But enough about beef and blood … let’s go back to the permanent collection. Here’s one of Soutine’s still lifes. I love the yellow ochre in this painting. Yellow Ochre is one of my favorite colors.
This is a small but exciting figurative work from Picasso
And last but not least, the Cezannes!!
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I was so excited to see this painting because it is one of the copies we did
in my Cezanne course with Elizabeth Floyd |
I was looking at this painting slowly and carefully, paying attention to textures, edges, colors, lines and details. And that’s when I noticed two smudges of orange paint - one on the skull, one in the background.
It almost looked like a mistake, an accident. Did something bump into the painting while it was wet? Did someone bump into Cezanne as he was painting? And why didn’t he fix it??? I’d never noticed this before! When I turned around I saw a woman who was monitoring the room. I asked her about it and she said, “Oooohhh, you are looking very closely and noticing details!” I explained that I am a docent, so I’ve been taught to look slowly and carefully. She did not know the answer, but she asked around until she found out, then she tracked me down in a different room and told me that in fact, another painting bumped against this one and the marks were never removed. You can
see it up close on the Barnes website.
The last time I was at The Barnes I was mesmerized by their collection of Van Gogh and Matisse paintings. This time I was all about diving deep into the Cezannes. No matter how many times I visit a museum, there is always something new to discover. Isn’t that cool?
We also visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I’ll have a recap of that visit next.
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