Framing An Era: 200 Works at the Art Institute
By Ellen Fox
Framing an era; With more than 200
works, `Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde' shows
the foresight and influence of the French art dealer
It seems like a con: what better way for a pug-looking man to get his picture
painted--his unsmiling, bearded face immortalized again and again by
artists--than to run the hottest art gallery in turn-of-the-century Paris.
"The most beautiful woman who ever lived never had her portrait painted, drawn
or engraved any oftener than Vollard -- by Cezanne, Renoir, Bonnard, Forain,
almost everybody," Picasso said. "My Cubist portrait of him is the best one of
them all."
There are some 16 portraits of French art dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939)
lurking like Hitchcock-ian cameos throughout the new show at the Art Institute
of Chicago, "Cezanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde,"
and many of them lend insight into what kind of relationships he had with his
artists.
But far from being just a wheeler-dealer with a good eye and an ear for buzz,
Vollard is also presented as a catalyst who encouraged artists to work in media
-- illustrated books, ceramics, sculpture -- they might not have theretofore
considered.
It's a big exhibition -- 18 rooms with almost 250 works, all of which passed
through Vollard's hands -- so we've put together a cheat sheet to lead you
through.
Contrary to the title, the show starts with works by Vincent van Gogh, who,
though deceased and still marginalized, was the first important artist given a
solo exhibition by Vollard after he opened his gallery in 1894.
"These were the first shows at commercial galleries that were devoted to him,"
says curator Douglas Druick, "so it announces the intention of the dealer to
focus on the artists who had not yet been acknowledged."
Note a trio of paintings with red borders -- "Banks of the Seine with Pont de
Clichy in the Spring," "Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnieres)" and
"Woman in a Garden" -- that were likely intended as a triptych but which have
only recently been, like The Police, reunited.
Next up are paintings by Paul Cezanne, who put Vollard on the map -- and vice
versa. Cezanne's work was appreciated by both the older guard -- Claude Monet
bought "Bathers" -- as well as by then-struggling artists, such as Henri
Matisse, who, at great expense, bought "Three Bathers" in 1899 and considered it
a lifelong inspiration.
This is also your chance to check out two great Cezanne loaners, "Boy in a Red
Waistcoat" from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and "The
Smoker" from the Hermitage in Russia, hanging alongside Art Institute fave
"Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Armchair."
Next are dainty-looking lithographs by the Nabis, an up-and-coming artists'
collective Vollard nurtured, as well as some hauntingly dreamlike noirs
(charcoal drawings) by Odilon Redon, who began working in color at Vollard's
suggestion.
One of the big to-dos at the exhibition is Paul Gauguin's Tahitian epic "Where
Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" (from the Museum of Fine Arts
in Boston). Gauguin had a tetchy relationship with Vollard, and would have
preferred the painting to wind up in some one else's hands -- but the exhibition
tries to give it its due with an around-the-corner reveal and a bench where you
can sit and take it all in. (It looks better from a distance, though.)
Another group of artists that Vollard fostered was called the Fauves or "Wild
Beasts." Vollard suggested they put their flamboyant colors and brushwork on
ceramics; the results are bold, primitive-looking plates and vases by Andre
Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Henri Matisse.
Matisse was actually one of the artists who was overlooked by Vollard, lest you
get the idea that the dealer always won.
"He bet on a lot of losers," says curator Gloria Groom. "There are ridiculously
unknown artists that he gave shows to. He had a show every three weeks in his
gallery in the beginning years. But what we wanted to show was his contribution
to the spread of modern art. It's not so much, `Oh, he bet on a lot of bad
artists.' The amazing thing is how many good artists."
Finally you reach the work of Picasso, and a mini-timeline of his rapidly
developing style: starting, in 1901, with the earliest, Toulouse Lautrec-type
works he did as a 19-year-old ("Gustave Coquiot" and "The Divan Japonais")
through his Blue Period ("The Old Guitarist") to, in the next room, works from
his Vollard Suite, a group of prints the dealer commissioned in 1927.
But it's Picasso's Cubist portrait that serves as the last word on Vollard, who
died in a car accident in 1939. "If the description of Vollard from most people
is of being rather enigmatic and cagey and solemn, and sometimes completely
moody, gloomy," says Groom, "Picasso's got him right."
WHERE: The Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave.