Exhibit of the week: birth of impressionism: masterpieces from the musée d’orsay

De Young Museum, San Francisco Through Sept. 6 While its historic building undergoes renovations, Paris’ Musée d’Orsay “is taking its act on the road,” said Charlie McCullom in the _San Jose

Mercury News._ The world’s most important collection of impressionist and other 19th-century French art “has packed up its Monets and Manets, its Cézannes and Renoirs, even that painting of

Whistler’s mom.” Two exhibitions assembled from the collection will be crisscrossing the globe this year, “but only one museum in the world will host both”: San Francisco’s de Young Museum.

The first show to visit the de Young attempts to trace the creation of the impressionist movement by showing some of its finest exemplars alongside lesser-known contemporaries. SUBSCRIBE TO

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best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. “Rather than presenting a mere hit parade,” the show illuminates what was truly so different about the impressionists, said Janos Gereben

in the _San Francisco Examiner._ The then-dominant art style, academic painting, rendered historical and mythological scenes in a polished but often lifeless style. The impressionists

introduced an appreciation of “visible brush strokes, an emphasis on changing light and movement, and a focus on everyday people.” Paintings such as Édouard Manet’s _The Fifer_ and Gustave

Caillebotte’s _The Floor-Scrapers_ challenged viewers by showing them humble subjects from the real world. Likewise, artists such as Paul Cézanne confronted them with a style that seemed

almost primitive, said Jennifer Modenessi in the Contra Costa, Calif., _Times._ The indistinct forms and rough surfaces of his _Gulf of Marseille Seen From L’Estaque_ “must have looked very

strange to people accustomed to slick, highly finished paintings.” It can be hard for today’s museumgoers, long accustomed to the impressionists’ innovations, to “look at these famous works

of art with fresh eyes.” It may be even harder for us to give the impressionists’ predecessors a fair shake, said Kenneth Baker in the _San Francisco Chronicle._ Take Adolphe-William

Bouguereau’s _Birth of Venus_—an airy mythological scene that has all the “calculated false feeling, historical irrelevance,” and other qualities that the impressionists hated. Even if you

agree with their judgments, however, you “must admire the technical dexterity” of such a work. This exhibition defines the fault lines between traditionalists and innovators, but also points

out the complex connections among, say, mythologists like Bouguereau, symbolists like Gustave Courbet, and impressionists like Pierre Auguste Renoir. “Forget nomenclature for a while, and

look hard at the rich range and variety of physical detail in the paintings.” Unless you travel to Paris, you’ll never see their likes again. A free daily email with the biggest news stories

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