Category: France

Sébastien Le Fol blogs about culture and arts for Le Figaro. His most recent piece was on the subject of why the Parisians seem to similarly adore both Claude Monet and Basquiat whose exhibitions are currently going in two different parts of the French capital.

I still vividly recall my own experience of going to Monet’s exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow in early 2002. It was the last day of the exhibition, and I queued outside from 1pm until 6.30pm, in minus 10 in Moscow winter. Thankfully, there was no snow or sharp wind, and, to the Museum’s credit, they eventually started letting us in without a compulsory journey into the cloakroom. I must admit that the impression of the genius of the French Impressionism (excuse the pun) after all those hours outside was somewhat slated. And yet I can confirm – retrospectively – Sébastien’s report of the inexplicable love for the art of Monet.

At the same time, Basquiat who is almost on the opposite end to Monet attracts a similar amount of interest, and Sébastien justly wonders if artistic exhibitions, biennials etc. have now substituted the religious pilgrimages of the past. It no longer matters whether we go to Lourdes, Cologne, Jerusalem, or Santiago de Compostela – or, to substitute those religious sites with artistic, to the Louvres, Uffizi, a Leonardo or a Picasso exhibition. What matters is that we do visit those sites because such activity becomes a conscientious cultured person.

Back in 2004 when I visited exhibitions of Rafael and Degas at the National Gallery in London I was struck with the fact that Rafael’s halls were flooded with both Brits and tourists, while Degas’s halls were mostly – and not very densely – packed with Far-Eastern Arts students. My conclusion then was that Rafael’s “happy genius” attracted the attention of those who were tired of endless searching for truth, revolutions and reforms and who wanted something simple yet subtle to contemplate. Rafael was the antidote to the contemporary art that is often too self-absorbed, aloof, and intellectual for its own – and ours – good.

The same, perhaps, is the case with Monet, given that his work was described as the “the myth of happiness à la française composed of recklessness and legerity preserved in Nature“. Such description flies in the face of facts about Monet’s personal life, his experience of the loss and grief that also spilled over onto canvas. To the majority, however, he is the one who painted the lilies in the pond and the Rouen cathedral at different times of day.

The question remains: why do we go to these artistic shrines, be they exhibitions, salons, museums, or private collections hidden in a splendid mansion protected by the British Heritage Fund, e.g.? In my opinion, the quasi-religious fervour is somewhat improbable, at least not on the grand scale. Two scenarios are more likely. In one, we need an opportunity to relax our brain, to let out thought float effortlessly, like the sweet naughty angels on the Rococo paintings. Contemporary art, with its mission to engage the viewer, fails to give this relaxation. In another scenario, we need an opportunity to rebel or to convince ourselves that contemporary art is necessary to drag the Art out of its classic predicament.

What is obvious is that in both scenarios it is our intellectual needs that dictate the choice and form the artistic taste. The needs of the soul and spiritual searchings remain hidden under the landslide of information and mental effort to tackle it. We visit the Prado because it is on the tourist map and because it would be strange to visit Madrid and not to visit Prado, but not because the museum houses Picasso’s Guernica or because we want to see in Guernica what Picasso had tried to convey. The list can go on, but the point is, and I’m sure to be correct on this: there are very few pious dedicated “artistic pilgrims” who visit the “shrines” to receive a “communion” with Inspiration, Beauty, Love, not merely to tick the boxes on the map of the Grand Tour d’Art.