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To truly understand its origins, you must travel to the rugged coastlines of Normandy. Here, a group of visionary painters, including Eugène Boudin and a young Claude Monet, gathered in the 1860s to discuss radical new approaches to art.
This exhibition, in collaboration with the Musees D’Orsay and L’Orangerie, is so robust and comprehensive, each viewer will have to make his or her choices on where to focus. In addition to standout masterpieces by both artists, there are historical paintings, wartime depictions, beach scenes and seascapes, the latter luscious treats for any pair of eyes.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current exhibit, Vigee Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France, fast on the heels of its showing at the Grand Palais in Paris, is long overdue. Katherine Baetjer, Curator in the Department of European Paintings, remarked to Roberta Smith in the New York Times’ own coverage, that it was the first time in her 40 years in the Department that a monographic exhibition has been held for a woman artist.
The Paris of Toulouse Lautrec: Prints and Posters, the first Museum of Modern Art exhibition in 30 years dedicated solely to Lautrec, features over 100 examples of work created during the apex of his career. It is a giddy but never glum celebration of the most colorful and notorious characters that inhabited his world and his genius at depicting them. It’s primarily the dancers and aristocratic doyens, the prostitutes, publishers and pleasure-seekers of the night that captured his heart, and subsequently, his brush.