Without a major art museum in San Francisco, and the steady stream of quality traveling exhibitions that such institutions present, the recent ‘Birth of Impressionism’ show at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park, of paintings on loan from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, was an event to be savored by us locals. Not a “blockbuster” but an outstanding show that we were fortunate to have –  it taught while it displayed the art; it was duly crowded but not mobbed. The show did a very good job of fleshing out the story of how Impressionism emerged in opposition to official Salon art, inspired by earlier realists and forced to create its own venues to garner the attention it deserved. It gave a sense of the communal energies involved – the cafe life that threw artists together on a regular basis. It highlighted the intense relationship of two of the most brilliant minds of the period, Manet and Mallarme, who met nightly to exchange ideas for 10 years. There were enough show-stopping paintings to make it spectacular enough, but many works were not particularly famous, just good examples to illuminate the narrative being presented.

As noted in the wall texts, ‘Impressionism’ is a broad term if you consider the wide range of work associated with that label, and forget for a moment the homogenized picture that emerges from the ever-present reproductions of a small number of works.

After a selection of more conventional paintings

seeing a room of Manets is a shock.                                                             

Could it be said that Manet saved the art of painting? He said it was his sincerity that caused his rejection by the salon. As remarkable as the salon favorites can be, that is the crux – the emotions projected by them veer towards unreality. A religious image full of false sentiment is presented as pious. Indulgent fantasy is presented as myth. Manet diverted painting from continuing down this path, and the later Impressionists acknowledged him as their leader though he never exhibited with them.

It is a truism that Manet is the beginning of the modern. His forward-looking approach makes a even a revolutionary like Courbet seem more like an old master  than a contemporary painter. He ‘blew the lid off ‘ of painting in paris by grasping the present moment as an arena for art. For him finding an historical subject meant looking at telling current events. He transposed compositions painted by the old masters into contemporary Paris. His people often look back at you; they occupy the same space as you, breath the air you breath. He peeled away the veneer of varnish typical of the salon: his art is not of timeless truths preserved in amber, but fragments of present time, freshly painted in colors that play directly on the eye . The canvases still look wet.  His pleasure in painting was exceptional, even among great painters. We americans (hedonistic puritans?) may have a hard time believing that that degree of pleasure can co-exist with demanding intellectual content. Despite his deftness and mock superficiality (an affront to the false profundity of the salon) his perceptions of imperfect people are lasting and moving. Standing in front of the Fifer is like emerging from a plunge in an alpine lake: your circulation is buzzing and your eyes are washed clean. Now you can see how vivid reality really is.

Monet pursued something quite different. Looking at this landscape, it occurred to me that there is ‘nothing’ there. No thing. No figure, no ground. I looked at the water thinking, ah, there is the water underneath the reflection of the tree. But there is no water. There is no tree either, just the blue-green light that we see where the tree presumably is.

And down where the water also presumably is (the painting doesn’t exactly care one way or another), this blue and green reflected light plays on the reflected light from the sky, interrupted by flecks of light from clouds and  hills and rooftops. Only light is painted here, and the light is not truly grounded in anything or on anything, it is just there where we see it. And we sense it is constantly changing though there is just unmoving pigment in front of our eyes.

None of the other Impressionists painted like this, only light, into light. They painted things immersed in light or caressed by light or changing in light. This is something else, a world of relativity, of vision that delights at a very high level while posing very challenging questions about the fluid nature of realty.

if Monet painted nothing, Degas painted everything.

Degas’ work is visually dazzling, but while his eye, and ours, are mesmerized by the beauty of color and line that he sees, his mind is churning with social observation and physical analyses. It takes some time before you see what is going on in front of you – is this a charming view of the magic and color of ballet behind the scenes? or is it a picture of a roomful of all-too-young girls, many distracted, many having to work and please their families without alot of options open to them. One girl has her moment in front of the ballet teacher. a good job. many others are unflatteringly seen – Degas is not generally polite in his observations – scratching their back, bored, adjusting their shoulder strap, hanging out.

Degas is humane to observe all this – he’s not alone in a field or by the seine looking at clouds – but he can be remarkably dry, sharp in his view of his fellow creatures, while immersed in a controlled intoxication of seeing. He is fascinated by the aspirations of art and the near lack of its realization in the real world. He is fascinated by the ‘art workers’, the way time weighs on the hours of their day and how awkward their movements are when they are not achieving Dance.

Is that a mother in the background consoling her daughter for today’s poor performance?

‘Whistler’s Mother’ does draw crowds; in reproduction or parody it’s everywhere.
It’s intriguing to spend time with it to think about why. The title provides a start: it is really two paintings in one, neither one by itself would have become the icon this one is. “Arrangement in Gray and Black, the Artist’s Mother” – each “half” of the painting is so well done; together “they” make a literally unforgettable painting.
There is a penetrating portrait of a puritanical, or at least a strict Protestant, New Englander, an American archetype, by an outstanding portrait painter with a uniquely sympathetic viewpoint. Then there is a very sophisticated aesthetic orchestration of shapes and values by a very gifted 2-dimensional arranger. Here Whistler approaches the asian masters he admired.
Which fascinates us more, the mother (consciously) or the luminous complex gray negative space (subliminally) surrounding her?   Our subject is seen from the side, dressed in black and white, subtly modulated black on black and translucent loosely brushed white, which tells of her sobriety and restraint. But at the same time it makes her into a pattern which is integrated into the shapes surrounding her. On the wall is another work of Whistler’s, a Nocturne, all muted grays and vague outlines. While nothing could seem more clear in our minds than that memorable silhouette of Whistler’s mother sitting on her chair, looking at the painting, we see almost no hard lines at all, even in the still cloak and wooden chair legs.
Her fingers are made of mostly of one fluid stroke of oil paint each. We might expect the lace to be suggested, but it is remarkable how softly the face is painted also.
Her expression, strict but in no way hard, is beautifully described in areas of adjacent colors loosely laid in. Whistler’s pursuit of poetic visual beauty and his mother’s seriousness make an unlikely but wonderful combination in this painting. It’s a reflection of the mutual regard these two very different people had for each other during her long stay with him in London.

Impressionism is quintessentially French, like Edith Piaf or coq au vin. what would an impressionist be like who was a jew, raised in the Danish Virgin iIslands and who ran away from home to Caracas to pursue art before coming to Paris?  That would be Camille Pissarro.

For me, critics, historians and the art audience undervalue him.

Pissarro was a student of Corot and Courbet and a mentor of Cezanne, Seurat and Gauguin. In art, allegiances are rarely so broad. Pissarro represents a kind of  balance that goes largely uncelebrated now – we are fascinated by extremes. Among so many painters of the countryside, he truly cared for rural workers, but does not push their case. He is sensitive to light but does not isolate it. He is brilliant at creating structure, but doesn’t emphasize form at the expense of feeling and color. He uses lots of neutral pigments in his colorful translations of light. Cezanne wrote in a letter to his older colleague, “You are perfectly right to speak of grey, for grey alone reigns in nature, but it is terrifyingly hard to get it.”. His work shares formal qualities with Courbet, Cezanne,  Monet, Seurat, Renoir. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish that it is his work at first glance:

He did not create a signature style, yet the combination of all the elements of his work, none asserted at the expense of others, make his art more compelling and meaningful to me than Cezanne, whom i love,  for example. It has taken me quite a while to arrive at this heresy!

His self-portrait really speaks, a reticent arrangement of paint, both colorful and tonal, a balance of  psychological scrutiny and art as art.

The 2nd half of this exhibition of loans from the d’Orsay, focussing on the Post-Impressionists, has just opened at the deYoung. I think this show may be even more remarkable, and I hope the paintings will be visible behind and between the visitors. There are very good books of each exhibition.

The artworks pictured above are: Delaunay “Diana.”  Bouguereau “Venus.”  Manet “Woman with Fans,” “Clemenceau,” “Madame Manet,” “Fifer.”  Monet “The Seine at Vetheuil.”  Degas “The Dancing Lesson.”  Whistler “Arrangement in Gray and Black, the Artist’s Mother.”  Pissarro; Pissarro and Cezanne.  Pissarro ” Hoarfrost,” “Harvest at Montfoucault,” “Small Bridge, Pontoise,” and “Self-Portrait.”