At the weekend I went to the Royal Academy to see the French and Russian Master Paintings exhibition, which is actually a game of two halves. The stolen impressionist paintings which are causing so much trouble, are truly wonderful, particularly the two large Matisse in the main room -experts will quibble as to whether Matisse is an impressionist and not a member of the Fauve movement - and the Kandinsky in the final room was, for me, the outstanding picture of the whole exhibition. The other half, the Russian paintings, I thought were very average, and many would, I'm sure, have been rejected by the hanging committee of the Summer Exhibition.
If you're planning a visit, I suggest you get up very early. I went on a Sunday afternoon, and the other thing it had in common with a game of two halves was that it was so crowded - you had to wait very patiently to see whichever painting took your fancy. Nevertheless I recommend a visit.
If you're planning a visit, I suggest you get up very early. I went on a Sunday afternoon, and the other thing it had in common with a game of two halves was that it was so crowded - you had to wait very patiently to see whichever painting took your fancy. Nevertheless I recommend a visit.
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I think Matisse was a game of two halves - or possibly three. Impressionist, fauve, post-impressionist. Picasso had twelve halves of course.
experts will quibble as to whether Matisse is an impressionist and not a member of the Fauvre movement
I had an excellent lunch the other day, with Ian Warrell, the Turner expert and we both agreed that since Matisse was quite generally considered the leader of les Fauves, he would by necessity also have to be estimated to have been a member of this movement.
On the other hand, bearing in mind that Bertrand Russell once proposed to undertake to demonstrate whether “the class of such classes which are not members of themselves is or is not a member of itself,”* it could equally so, in the case of Matisse, contrive to invoke a great mass of semantic subtleties and ideological contradictions.
* The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. Allen & Unwin, 1967 p 147.
Dreamy
Nice one, Selena. Which of us has not wrestled with this one - Should a universal Bibliography of Bibliographies contain itself?
how early?
maybe they'll stay on for extra-time.
I shall certainly go the next time I'm passing, if you recommend it. Russian paintings are usually vastly inferior to those of the West. There are many reasons for this but one is the poor quality of Russian paints - until fairly recently, most Russian paint was in fact a sort of vodka mixed with cheap dye and sometimes thickening agents such as mud.
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