Not quite jaded yet

In many ways I’ve been museumed out. Having had a membership to the Museum of Fine Arts for years, been through most of Boston’s museums, many of London’s and Paris’s as well as visiting special exhibitions in New York, Boston, London, Paris and Geneva I have seen the work of all the great artists. Not all the work, but enough. This does not mean that I don’t appreciate their work, nor does it mean that I will never go to another museum. It is just the excitement of standing in front of a Renoir, a Picasso or a Rembrandt is no longer a novelty. A Chardin can still excite me, however. For some reason if there are a 100 paintings in a room I will be pulled to one of his.

And give me an unusual museum such as the Writer’s Museum in Edinburgh, the Olympic Museum in Lausanne or a patchwork quilt museum in Roussillon, or the Cluny Museum in Paris, and I can get shivers.

However when my hostess in les Marécottes suggested we go down the mountain to Martigny to see the Rodin and Claudel exhibition, I was content to go, not excited but definitely pleased.

One of the things that spoiled me in having a membership at the MFA and being in walking distance that it was possible to go in and look at just a few things and really absorb them rather than be inundated with the entire art world.

I had been to the Rodin Museum in Paris. Besides the art work I saw Lionel Jospin strolling in the garden while photographers snapped his photo that later appeared in Paris Match. He still lost the presidential race to Le Pen who lost to Chirac. In the eighties I’d enjoyed the film Camille (pronounced Cammy by the French) Claudel with Isabelle Adjani and Gérard Depardieu. I had seen both sculptors work in the Musée D’Orsay. Even for a person museumed out, their work was certainly worth a look-see.

The Musée Pierre Giandana is built on the site of Roman ruins. Although it is small, its exhibitions are of world quality. This was no exception. Despite a large crowd, there was milling around room. I've given web sites below.

I’ve always thought Claudel the better sculptor despite her subsequent madness. What I didn’t realize that she had done a number of small sculptors that made me think of her as the Mary Cassatt of stone. One was a woman in front of a fireplace, a second showed women gossiping and a third in green marbles had frolicking naked bathers about to be washed away by a wave. All three washed away any jaded points of view. They were breath stealing.

When I was at the Fragonnard museum in Grasse, I preferred the paintings of his daughter which were more homey than his grandiose classical ones. And then I realized what I like in art, including in Chadin is the homey, the woman cutting, bread, women sipping tea anything that shows daily life.

I have often wondered how art would have developed without Christianity. Okay we would live in a Madonnaless world (with the exception of the singer). And I am sure battles would have been painted and portraits. But I wonder if there would be a greater understanding of how people lived throughout the ages captured on canvas.

http://www.martigny.ch/
http://www.gianadda.ch/
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/chardin_jean-baptiste-simeon.html