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.
This exhibition comprises more than 30 paintings, including a number of significant works from private collections, such as Oarsman in a Top Hat (1877-78). It comes three decades after BMA hosted the first significant American show of his work. It’s organized by Ordupgaard Copenhagen and Kunsthalle Bremen, and coordinated in New York by BMA’s Judith Dolkart.
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.
