Masterpieces from ParisVan Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne
& beyond
Post-Impressionism from the Musée
d’Orsay
National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra,
ACT
From 4 December 2009 – 18 April
2010
For many of the almost half a million
people who have queued to see the Masterpieces of Paris
exhibition,
it would be their first visit to the National Gallery. I spoke to
families
who had travelled interstate by plane and paid higher than average
prices
to stay in lower than average hotels, just to view Van Gogh’s “Starry
Night”. As a teacher of Art History and Theory, it was inspirational
to see Australians eager to view these paintings and to learn about
them. There was a one hour queue just to buy the catalogue in the shop.
Gangly teenagers stood in front of Gauguin’s Femmes de Tahiti
(1891) making notes and older visitors gathered close to Cézanne,
having read long ago that he was ‘the master’.
What a pity then, that the viewing
experience was such a debacle. Everyone is raving about this being ‘the
greatest show’ ever to hit Australia and headlines in the press
boast about the numbers. Forget that many visitors had such a rough
time of it that they won’t be coming back. Not only did they have
to queue up to three hours outside, even if they had gone to the trouble
to purchase pre-paid tickets online, but once inside they had to shuffle
past the masterpieces in a pack six persons deep. Children and people
in wheelchairs saw practically nothing. It was hot, noisy, over-crowded
and the atmosphere was hostile. Having travelled so far and waited so
long to get in, visitors did not easily step aside to let others have
a peek. Exhaustion was visible by the time people reached the final
room, a strangely anomalous Nabis melange called ‘Decoration’. I
caught two men having a bit of a rest, leaning up against a Bonnard
panel at the back of the room. I wondered if the strange high-toned
beeps were an alarm, but nobody bothered to fight through the throng
and move them on.
The lighting was the worst I have ever
seen in an international show of this calibre. Many works were behind
glass and no care had been taken to minimize reflection. Paintings
appeared to be flat and lifeless and were hung tightly together in a
series of six bland rooms. I had to point out to my son the thick
impasto used by Monet to render the sun and its reflection in London,
Parliament: sun through the fog
(1904) because the lighting had rendered the paint surface featureless.
The entire experience from arrival
at the gallery and the walk through dimly lit, dusty, out-dated
galleries
is uncomfortable and bordered on the claustrophobic. What an unfortunate
time to host such an important exhibition. The National Gallery is
undergoing
extensive renovation and reconstruction. It is in the midst of Stage
1 of a long-term expansion project that has the place looking and
feeling
like the construction site it is; there is no disguising it. Surely
it would have been more appropriate to time the exhibition with the
predicted completion of Stage 1 this winter?
I lament the shambolic organization
of the exhibition and I lament the repercussions this may have for
first-time
visitors to our nation’s Capital. We need to encourage and nurture
a respect for and understanding of works of art, not deter people or
worse still, relegate the observation of art to the more accessible
realm of the printed press.
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