Gustave Caillebotte at Brooklyn Museum
http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/blog/museums/gustave-caillebotte-stealth-impressionist/690/
Impressionism occupies a funny space between bourgeois blah and revolution. A Monet can come across as genre-changing or as wallpaper; a Degas, visionary or musty, depending on the viewer’s mood. This is one of the more intriguing aspects of the movement—the Trojan horse aspect in which it brought pivotal change to modern art while often seeming simply lovely. Gustave Caillebotte’s (1848—1894) artwork is a good example of this, and the subject ofImpressionist Paintings from Paris to the Sea at the Brooklyn Museum, through July 5.

The exhibition focuses primarily on the artist’s fascination with water. While Caillebotte’s best-known works are likely his streetscapes of Paris, he spent a good deal of time in Yerres, a river town south of Paris. Some of his most evocative works contemplate the Yerres River—rain puncturing it, sculls angling across it. You can feel the difference between city and country in his approach to his designated subject; like one’s wardrobe, casual and sundry, versus formal and symbolic.

It is perhaps stretching the “liquid” tangent to include one of the artist’s more curiously fascinating subjects, that of men refinishing a floor. Sure, the glossy finish reflects light as water might. But more interesting is that the act of scraping of a fancy parlor floor becomes the intersection between upper and lower classes—a depiction of blue collar work shoehorned among scenes of upper class life.
Images: (top) Oarsman in a Top Hat, 1877-78. Oil on canvas. Private collection. (bottom)Garden Path with Dahlias in Petit Gennevilliers, 1890-91. Oil on canvas. Private collection.
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