Despite the weekend's downpours, the Beijing World Art Museum
greeted crowds of art lovers eager to see works from masters such
as Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Czanne, Rodin and Picasso with their own
eyes.
"From Monet to Picasso: Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of
Art" opened on Friday and will run until August 27.
"It is a rare occasion for art aficionados in Beijing to have an
intimate encounter with so many quality pieces of modern European
art at one time," said Zhan Jianjun, director of the Chinese Oil
Painters Society and one of the first people to get a glimpse of
this outstanding exhibition.
Zhan believes that exposure to such masterpieces of Western art
is a vital experience for China's art lovers.
The world's major art galleries normally prefer to hang on to
the masterpieces in their collections, only lending their less
important works, Zhan explained.
This limited number of high-quality works had disappointed
visitors to some of Beijing's recent and highly publicized
exhibitions of Western art.
But this time it's really different, said Zhan, standing in
front of Renoir's 1864 oil painting entitled "Romaine Lacaux,"
before moving to Van Gogh's 1889 work, "The Large Plane Trees," on
the second floor of the Beijing World Art Museum, also known as the
China Millennium Monument.
Divided into five sections, the art show encompasses 46
paintings and 14 sculptures ranging from French Impressionism to
Post-Impressionism, Fauves, Cubism, early modernist sculptures, and
the avant-garde, created by 43 Western masters from the late 19th
century to the early 20th century.
Featured artists include Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre
Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh,
Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Matisse, Pablo
Picasso, along with less famous ones, such as Albert Besnard, and
Giovanni Segantini.
"Together, the works illuminate the breadth of creativity in one
of the most extraordinary epochs in the history of art," commented
Chu Yangming, a veteran art researcher and deputy director of
Beijing World Art Museum.
Highlights of the show include Matisse's "Festival of Flowers,"
Amedeo Modigliani's "Portrait of a Woman," Picasso's "Fan, Salt
Box, Melon," Cezanne's "The Brook," Gauguin's "In the Waves," Van
Gogh's "The Poplars at Saint-Remy" and "The Large Plane Trees,"
Auguste Rodin's "Heroic Head of Pierre de Wiessant, One of the
Burghers of Calais," Berthe Morisot's "Reading," Monet's "The Red
Kerchief: Portrait of Mme. Monet," and Renoir's "Romaine
Lacaux."
"The works of European art in the exhibition are treasures of a
visual culture much enriched over its history by infusions of
aesthetic energy from Asia," said Timothy Rub, the newly appointed
director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, on Friday's opening
ceremony.
These include the beautiful objects brought to Europe over the
Silk Road, which had an influence on Renaissance and Baroque
paintings, and the ceramic masterworks of China that inspired the
exquisite porcelain of Meissen and Svres.
"In the 19th century, at the beginning of the period covered by
this exhibition, the reaction of European artists to the aesthetic
challenge of Asian art they saw in Paris became part of the
foundation of modern Western art," he said.
"So, we are delighted that our museum, which planned an
ambitious collection of Asian art from its inception, can
reciprocate by presenting to China a priceless portion of our own
legacy, and foster the enlightenment inherent in a mutual
examination of our cultures."
However, the exhibition is only made possible because the
Cleveland Museum of Art is temporarily closed for a massive
expansion and renovation project. It will fully reopen in 2011,
according to Rub.
For the next five years, the Cleveland Museum of Art will stage
six touring exhibitions in North America, Europe and Asia,
beginning with the show of "From Monet to Picasso," displaying at
least 500 paintings, sculptures and other items from its rich
collection of more than 40,000 exhibits covering 6,000 years of art
history.
After its Beijing debut, the exhibition is scheduled to visit
the Mori Arts Centre in Tokyo, and the National Museum of Tokyo,
and then move on to South Korea's Seoul Arts Centre, and finally go
to the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia in the summer of
next year.
In addition to "From Monet to Picasso," other shows will explore
the museum's collections of Medieval, Japanese and Chinese art.
As many of the precious works are shown to Chinese public for
the first time, the Beijing World Art Museum has prepared audio
guides, educational programs, well-designed souvenirs and
catalogues, art books, and high-quality duplications of some of the
masterpieces for visitors, said Wang Limei, director of the Beijing
World Art Museum.
Apart from Mondays, the exhibition is open daily from 9 am-6 pm.
Admission to "From Monet to Picasso" costs 50 yuan (US$7), with
discounts for students and senior citizens.
(China Daily May 30, 2006)
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