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Gustav Klimt
Austrian 1862 - 1918
Hope I 1903
oil on canvas |
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| The collection of Modern Art traces the development of international art from 1900 to the 1970’s. The collection is presented on two floors, beginning with paintings and sculptures testifying to the rapid succession of avant-garde movements that characterize early 20th century European art, which are displayed on the upper floor in several rooms at the end of the chronological sequence of European galleries. The sequence is punctuated by a magnificent room whose ten-meter high walls create an ideal setting to view the works from the 1950’s and 60’s by important American Abstract Expressionists. Paintings, sculptures and installation works by American and European artists from the 1960’s and 70’s are displayed in the spacious contemporary galleries on the lower level.
Symbolist works from the turn of the century inaugurate the Modern collection. Belgian artist James Ensor depicts his strange and fantastic subjects in the painting Skeletons in the Studio (1900). In Gustave Klimt’s Hope I (1903), the Viennese artist reveals the profoundly symbolic and visionary aspect of his painting, in which he expresses the struggle between life and death and his confidence in the continuity of life. Bright colours often applied straight from the tube were the hallmark of the artists nicknamed the Fauves, or the wild ones, as can be seen in a group of landscapes including Vlaminck’s The Locks at Bougival (1908), André Derain’s Landscape by the Sea: the Côte d’Azur near Agay (1905) and Georges Braque’s Port of Antwerp (1906). The Dutch artist Kees van Dongen exploited their vivid palette for dramatic effect in his Souvenir of the Russian Opera Season (1909), which commemorates the famous 1908 season when Diaghliev’s Ballets Russes were in Paris. Although Henri Matisse was the leader of the Fauves, his Nude on a Yellow Sofa (1926) belongs to a later period, in which the sensuous female nude, vigorously modeled and placed in a decorative setting, takes precedence over avant-garde experimentation. In sculptures such as Large Head, Matisse shows himself just as absorbed by the study of form. A major figure in the École de Paris, which brought together artists from many countries, the Belarussian artist Marc Chagall depicts richly painted folkoric images in Memory of My Youth (1924) and The Eiffel Tower (1934).
The Cubist paintings made by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso between 1909 and 1914 radically changed the course of 20th century European and American art. Braque’s exquisite painting The Glass of Absinthe (c. 1910-11), made during this early critical period, employs a palette of earth tones and a grid-like linear structure to analyze the objects of a traditional still-life, coming close to complete abstraction. The subject is more recognizable in the Synthetic Cubist painting The Small Table (1919), in which Picasso has constructed a unified composition from abstracted fragments of objects. The impact of Cubism on other artists is evident in French artists Jacques Lipchitz’s stone sculpture Seated Figure (1917) and Russian artist Liubov Popova’s The Pianist (1914-15). Its influence can also be seen in the abstract linear scaffolding in the background of Fernand Léger’s The Mechanic (1920).
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Fernand Léger
Argentan 1881 - 1955
The Mechanic 1920
oil on canvas
© Estate of F. Léger/ADAGP (Paris) SODRAC (Montreal 2002)
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Cubism led other artists to adopt a purely abstract geometric vocabulary: El Lissitzky conceived his painting Proun 8 Stellungen (8 Position Proun) (1923) as a model of a new reality, while the grid structure of Piet Mondrian’s Composition No. 12 with Blue (1936-42) aims at beauty and universality through a dynamic equilibrium of opposing forces. The works of American artists such as Arthur Dove’s Rising Tide (1044), Arshile Gorky’s Charred Beloved II (1946), Lyonel Feininger’s Yachts (1950) and Alexander Calder’s mobile Jacaranda (1949) are witness to the diversity of styles and philosophies falling within the idiom of abstract art. Surrealism, which sought to depict the reality of dreams and the unconscious, encompassed both realism and abstraction, as can be seen in such enigmatic works as Salvador Dali’s Gala and the Angelus of Millet Immediately Preceding the Arrival of the Conic Anamorphoses (1933), and René Magritte’s Perspective: Madame Récamier by David (1951), or in the private world evoked by Joseph Cornell’s The Hotel Eden (1945), and Jean Arp’s suggestive Cyprian Sculpture (1951). The Dada artists were the iconoclasts of the early 20th century, breaking the rules and conventions of even modern art. Marcel Duchamp’s invention of the “readymade” in 1913, which declares the intellectual act of choice more important than an artist’s technical skill, was intended in this spirit. A complete set of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades (re-issued by the artist in 1964) is in the Gallery’s collection, on display on a rotating basis.
Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire (1967) is the focal point of the impressive high-ceilinged gallery featuring works by Abstract Expressionist or New York School artists. Commissioned for the American Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal, the 18-foot tall painting is displayed along with three other works by Newman: the sculpture Here II (1965), as well as the paintings The Way I (1951) and Yellow Edge (c. 1968). The collection also includes a unique piece by Jackson Pollock, No. 29, 1950, a painting executed on glass for Hans Namuth’s documentary film about the artist and David Smith’s Wagon (1963-64), a welded steel sculpture on wheels. British art from the first half of the 20th century is featured in the adjacent side galleries. The collection is substantially the result of two major gifts: the Canadian War Memorials Collection, which was presented to the Gallery by Lord Beaverbrook and his committee in 1921, and the subsequent donation in 1946 of the Massey Collection of English Painting, comprising over 75 works by the leading artists of the early 20th century, collected by Vincent Massey and his wife Alice while Massey served as High Commissioner in Britain between 1935 and 1946. Notable works include Ben Nicholson’s Still-Life (Abélard and Héloise) (1950), Paul Nash’s Solstice of the Sunflower (1945), and Graham Sutherland’s Large Vine Pergola (1948). The Gallery built on the foundation of these important gifts with purchases of two masterpieces of modern British art, Francis Bacon’s Study for Portrait No. 1 (1956), a stunning portrait after Velásquez’s Portrait of Innocent I, and Henry Moore’s Reclining Woman (1930), which eloquently uses the human figure as a metaphor for landscape. In the adjacent side gallery, changing installations of 20th century prints and drawings alternate with works from the Asian collection.
The Modern collection continues in the contemporary galleries on the lower level, where much of the art is exhibited on a rotating basis, demonstrating the diversity of international art movements of the 1960’s and 70’s. On permanent display is a room dedicated to American Pop Art: interest in popular culture can be seen in the billboard painting techniques of James Rosenquist’s Painting for the American Negro (1962-63), the hip West Coast motel décor of Claes Oldenburg’s Bedroom Ensemble (1963), the mundane activity of George Segal’s The Gas Station (1963), and the supermarket imagery of Andy Warhol’s iconic Brillo Boxes (1964). A particular strength in the collection is American Minimalist sculpture, which includes extensive holdings of works by Donald Judd, typically fabricated of industrial materials like galvanized iron or plywood and laid out or stacked in non-hierarchical formations. Among the notable works by other Minimalist artists are Carl Andre’s 144 Copper Square (1969) and Dan Flavin’s the nominal three (to William of Ockham) (1963). On permanent display, the expansive fresco-like Wall Drawing #623 (1990) by Conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, painted directly on the gallery’s wall by a team of draftsmen carrying out the directions supplied by the artists, illustrates a famous dictum of Conceptual Art coined by LeWitt: the idea is the machine that makes the art.
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For access to high-quality reproduction, artists' biographies, video interviews and information on the entire collection of the National Gallery of Canada visit http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/
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