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Friday, February 28, 2003

By Mary Thomas, Post-Gazette Art Critic

A scintillating exhibition that provides a visual feast while expanding the experience of its subject opens Sunday at The Frick Art & Historical Center with a full day of programming designed to encourage a family visit.

Still Life, Histoire Juives by Henri Matisse. 'Millet To Matisse' • WHERE: The Frick Art Museum, 7227 Reynolds St., Point Breeze. • WHEN: Free opening noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, including family art activities, children's tours of Clayton (reservations required, $5 nonmembers) and WQED-FM live broadcast; exhibition continues through May 25. • ADMISSION: Free. • HOURS: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m. Sundays. • EVENTS: Include music, film, performance, family programs and workshops. At noon March 26, Pitt art historian David Wilkins lectures on "Art, Morals, Music and Mayhem in France 1860-1920" (free). At 7:15 p.m. May 7, art historian Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, University of Toronto, lectures on "Van Gogh's World: Past, Present, Future" ($10, $8 members/students, reservations recommended). • INFORMATION: 412-371-0600 or www.frickart.org; for children's programs, 412-205-2022.

"Millet to Matisse: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century French Painting from Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow," in The Frick Art Museum, comprises 64 paintings created between 1830 and 1930, many of them rarely exhibited outside of Scotland.

Aside from the forenamed, the 44 artists include such favorites as Corot, Courbet, Cezanne, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh, Picasso and Braque. Mary Cassatt, a native of the Pittsburgh region (Allegheny City) who exhibited with the impressionists, is the only woman in the exhibition, her pair of "Young Girls" both signature and outstanding.

The paintings are delectably sensual, combining a diversity of brushstroke -- ranging from the dry, individual pointillist marks of Paul Signac's "Sunset, Herblay, Opus 206" to the thick, moist blendings in Maurice de Vlamiinck's "Woody River Scene" -- with a succession of color experimentation that culminated in works such as Andre Derain's glowing "Blackfriars Bridge, London," a painting considered so startling when first shown that critics dubbed Derain, and other artists employing similarly unrestrained palettes, the "Fauves" (wild beasts).

Among the landscapes, portraits and still lifes are many exceptional works, among them van Gogh's reverberating "Portrait of Alexander Reid," the Glasgow art dealer who championed these French artists, and his painting of "The Blute-Fin Windmill, Montmartre," the same structure that appears in his familiar painting in the Carnegie Museum of Art collection.

Also notable are Matisse's "Woman in Oriental Dress," a blend of exoticism and eroticism inspired by a visit to North Africa; three paintings by Seurat, including a profoundly spare "Boy Sitting in a Meadow" that appears to prefigure his grand "Bathers at Asnieres"; a wall of small paintings by Edouard Vuillard that have the rich, warm palette and patterning of an Oriental carpet; and three floral still lifes by Henri Fantin-Latour that are vaguely figural.

But even more interesting is the overview -- expanded by atypical pieces from famed artists and those of lesser knowns -- of the artwork that arose from a tumultuous time and place, inspired by social change, scientific and technical discovery and the economics of a rising middle class.

Selecting from a stylistic bouillabaisse unimaginable in earlier periods, the more gifted artists refined individualistic expressions that would establish their place in history. The sense of urgency and competitiveness to become the artist who could best translate/mediate the modern world continues to underscore the works with vitality today.

The bright colors and expressive brushstrokes of "Vetheuil," a landscape, resembles van Gogh's canvases, but was painted by Monet. A cubist work, "Still-Life in Front of a Balcony," at the exhibition's exit, is by Louis Marcoussis, not the artists associated with Cubism, Picasso or Braque, though each of the latter two have works in the exhibition, Picasso's "The Flower Seller" being surprisingly impressionistic. Similarly, Gauguin's impressionistic "Ostre Anlaeg Park, Copenhagen" reveals little of the forthcoming bold compositions and mysterious figures of his post-impressionist works.

The paintings are presented thematically rather than chronologically, which has the advantage of eliciting comparisons not evident in more standard presentation.

A large "Pastorale" by Corot greets the visitor entering the exhibition and the "Changing Styles in French Landscape Painting" sector. While eloquently painted, its population of romping nymphs is overshadowed by the grounded reality of Millet's peasant couple across the room, "Going to Work" in somber early morning light, their rustic dignity and shadowed palette an influence on early van Gogh, as well as other artists displayed in the "Figures Out of Doors" half of the gallery.

To the right of the Corot, Camille Pissarro's impressionistic peasant scene, "Banks of the Marne," quickly pulls the viewer into the shifting sensibilities of the times, continued by the soft tactility of Renoir's blurred view into "The Painter's Garden," Emile Bernard's expressionistically interpreted "Landscape, Saint-Briac," and a marvelous Cezanne, "The Star Ridge with the King's Peak."

Such comparisons and connections continue through this gallery, and others, each with their own seductions, that focus on "Light on Water," "Viewpoints" (cityscapes) and "Portraits and Still Lifes."

"Millet to Matisse" was organized by Vivien Hamilton, curator of European art at the Glasgow Museums and University of Glasgow Department of Art History lecturer. Kelvingrove Art Gallery is one of the divisions within the Glasgow Museums, an institution made up of several components, somewhat like the Carnegie Institute. (Hamilton; Mark O'Neill, head of museums, Glasgow Museums; and The Lord Provost of the city of Glasgow, Alexander Mosson, and Lady Mosson, will attend Sunday's reception.)

There is another parallel to Pittsburgh in that the benefactors whose gifts built the collection were, like Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie, often industrialists whose fortunes rose at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries within the changing cultural environment.

Frick director of museum programs Thomas Smart points out that the three drawing exhibitions that precluded "Millet to Matisse," which had related themes and artists, provided background that would contribute to the appreciation of the works in this show. "We've been preparing people for this [which is] part of a larger picture. This is really a concluding statement."

Altogether, it's an accomplished example of what individual institutions like the Frick, combining a firm sense of mission and the constancy to develop it, contribute to Pittsburgh's cultural landscape.

A label icon indicates a complementary work in the Frick collection, which may be found in cases outside the exhibition. There's also an audio tour, the first the Frick has recorded for an exhibition, made in consortium with other museums the exhibitions will travel to ($5 rental).

A very fine catalog published by Yale University Press and Kelvingrove Art Gallery, with exacting full-color reproductions of the paintings, a number of supplemental illustrations, and informative essays on the museum, Glasgow and the vibrancy of the art scene during the period represented in the exhibition, is available in the exhibition gift shop, handily located within the museum ($45 soft, $55 hard cover).