Exhibition Review: “Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is the exhibition “Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia.” Also the name of a region in Greece, Arcadia became a designation in art and poetry for a mythical, idyllic, rural paradise in which the sensual pleasures of wine, music, and love are exchanged freely in a lush, natural setting, while society’s ills – such as war and death – are mysterious presences relegated to the margins. Such themes have been a mainstay of Western cultural production since antiquity, when the first-century Roman poet Virgil fleshed out the fabled region and its inhabitants most enduringly in his Eclogues.

And endure it did: In France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Arcadian imagery abounded in painting. Dozens, if not hundreds, of artists, working in disparate styles and according to diverse philosophies, sought to visualize the region evoked so tantalizingly in antique poetry, as well as by their artistic ancestors, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) primary among them. “Visions of Arcadia” brings together about 60 works by roughly 25 artists – most of them French and active in the years between 1875 and 1930 – that share a common preoccupation with this mythical realm, which is as much an idea as it is a place. This collection of works is set in orbit around the three stars of the show: Paul Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1898; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts); Paul Cézanne’s The Large Bathers (1900-1906; Philadelphia Museum of Art); and Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River (1909-1917; Art Institute of Chicago). In uniting these three monumental canvases by the show’s titular artists, the organizers of this exposition sought to create a conversation in which three of modernism’s most influential voices articulate distinct visions of the persistently present, yet seemingly unattainable ideal that is Arcadia.

Unfortunately, however, the discussion generated is disappointingly superficial. While the exhibition ably displays the abundance of Arcadian imagery in France at the fin-de-siècle, it does little to illuminate reasons behind the potency of the theme to European artists during this period, the motivations of specific artists in painting it, or provide suggestions as to the wildly dissimilar renditions of a common subject. Myriad other avenues of possible investigation and inquiry are left largely unexplored in what may be characterized as a missed opportunity to plumb the depths of a primal subject that has continually fascinated artists and provoked some of modern art’s most intriguing paintings.

Before delving into the specific reasons behind the assertions made above, I should note that this review deals only with the exhibition itself: The artwork included (and excluded), its layout and organization, the wall text, and other aspects of the experience of the museum visitor. I have not had the opportunity to examine the exhibition catalogue, and I apologize if the shortcomings I perceive are addressed in the accompanying publication. However, as the vast majority of people that experience this exhibition will do so without consulting the catalogue (a safe assumption, I think), I believe that the following criticisms remain valid.

That said; a brief description of the exhibition is in order. Visitors enter first into a low-ceilinged hallway gallery. Here, the uninitiated are introduced to the inhabitants, particulars, and pedigree of Arcadia. This is accomplished mainly via explanatory wall text, including snippets of Virgil and nineteenth-century emulators. On the left, illustrated editions of Virgil, translated into French and German, and published in the period under examination, demonstrate the relevance of the antique texts and their accessibility to the artists included in the show. Drawings by Matisse that served as illustrations for contemporary pastoral poetry line the right wall. Two sculptures, both nineteenth-century bronze replicas of works found in Pompeii, fill space in the center, toward the end of the hallway galleries: the famous Dancing Faun, from the House of the Faun, and an exquisitely beautiful nude youth, Narcissus, or possibly Bacchus, due to the leopard skin draped over his shoulder.

Upon tearing oneself away from this latter figure, the space opens up into larger, brighter galleries. Two rooms precede the apex of the exhibition where the three stars of the show reside. The works of artists such as Camille Corot and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes populate the first. The second contains Arcadian landscapes painted primarily in the south of France by Pointillists and Fauvists: Matisse, Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross, and André Derain among them.

The climax of the exposition comes as the visitor approaches the bottom of the “U” shaped exhibition space: A massive gallery that contains, clockwise from left, a forgettable painting by Émile Bernard (but what by Bernard isn’t forgettable?), Henri Rousseau’s The Dream (1910; New York, Museum of Modern Art), Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From?, Cézanne’s Large Bathers, a painting of three bathers by Derain, Matisse’s Bathers by a River, and a Rose Period Picasso. Finally, opposite Cézanne’s canvas, on a wall immediately to the right of a visitor entering the gallery, is Poussin’s Le Grand Bacchanal or The Andrians (1628-1630; Paris, Musée du Louvre).

Apparently, after gorging visitors on the feast offered in the main gallery, the show’s organizers felt that scraps would provide sustenance adequate to sustain them the rest of the way. The first of the final two rooms contains some Salon Cubism – in all its soporific splendor – and a gigantic canvas by Robert Delaunay, The City of Paris (1910-1912; Paris, Centre Pompidou), which is impressive only for demonstrating that a painting of such size (about 9 feet tall by 13 wide) can be so underwhelming. The last gallery contains Arcadian scenes by German Expressionists, in addition to a few mildly intriguing works by relatively unknown Russian painters.

The previous paragraph illustrates a basic flaw of the exhibition: the extremely uneven quality of the works contained therein. Other than the masterpieces in the main gallery – which also contains some clunkers – there are very few pieces that cause one to pause in happy amazement. Canvases by Corot are always a welcome sight, and I cannot emphasize enough the delicate loveliness of the bronze Narcissus, but outside of those works, only a small picture by Cross of a dancing Faun, located in the hallway galleries at the beginning of the expo, stands out in my memory. Paintings by Bernard and Maurice Denis – who, at best, can be characterized as second-rate painters – are exemplary of some of the disappointing filler found on the exhibition’s walls.

In keeping with this sentiment, Ken Johnson, writing in the New York Times, has accused the PMA of false advertising; for the show’s title – in which the names of three crowd-drawing masters are foregrounded – gives visitors the impression that they will be surrounded by Gauguin’s Polynesian fantasies, Cézanne’s beautifully inscrutable landscapes, and Matisse’s frenetic idylls. However, only ten paintings in the expo are by those artists. While Johnson’s criticism centers on the fact that the blockbuster, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition that is ostensibly proffered is not in fact delivered, the absence of more works by the supposedly featured artists calls attention to a more serious flaw: “Visions of Arcadia” fails to highlight the extent to which its chosen theme was a decades-long preoccupation for Gauguin, Cézanne, and Matisse. A show that limited its scope and focused more closely on why and how these three painters continually reinvented the ancient, mythical realm could have been powerfully illuminating; perhaps calling attention to previously unnoticed commonalities between the artists’ disparate oeuvres, providing possible explanations as to why their visions of the common theme diverged so sharply, or opening up new angles of inquiry into the stubbornly mysterious feature paintings. Instead, we are left with single works to stand for the entire careers of these visionary figures and, as spectacular as those paintings are, no single canvas is truly up to such a task.

Rather than discussing what might have been, though, we should turn to the exhibition as it came to fruition. As it stands, the show feels like a disjointed hodge-podge of paintings from roughly the same time and place, linked only by the fact that they happen to feature the same subject matter. After perusing the previous sentence, the moderately engaged reader might justifiably ask, “Well, isn’t that what an exhibition often is generally?” While there is a kernel of truth in that notion, I believe that the unimaginative organization of the expo – specifically, missed opportunities for provocative, contrasting juxtapositions – stifles possibilities for stimulating discourse that could still arise from a group of artworks that, as I’ve said, is less than impressive overall.

This criticism occurred to me when confronted with one of the few provocative, contrasting juxtapositions in the show: that between Corot's Goatherd of Terni and Puvis' Summer.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Goatheard of Terni, c. 1871; oil on canvas; Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Summer, 1891; oil on fabric; Cleveland Museum of Art.

In front of this pair of paintings there arose a spirited and invigorating discussion between my good friend Nisa and I, in which we debated the appeal of each artist’s Arcadian vision. Nisa preferred (and I hope I am not putting words into her mouth) the emotional connection that she felt with Corot’s canvas. The lone figure meandering down a deserted path under the soft, warm luminescence of the setting sun struck a chord with her own experience, allowing her to place herself in Corot’s semi-mythical space. (Many of Corot’s “Arcadian” landscapes were based, directly or indirectly, on those he experienced painting in the countryside around Rome.)

While I do not disagree with Nisa’s sentiment, I took up Puvis’ cause for the sake of argument. I proposed that the static, fresco-like nature – both in the muted tones of Puvis’ painting and the fact that its figures and landscape features appear as if they are fixed in plaster – exemplifies admirably an undeniable, but frequently avoided, aspect of the Arcadian ideal; namely, its distance from our everyday experience. In a realm in which the negative aspects of life are unknown, what then happens to the experience of positive pleasures? Does time still pass if aging and death are absent? (If not, there are no sunrises or sunsets, strictly speaking.) Or do Arcadians remain preserved in a state of healthy, youthful perfection? And if perfection is the norm, does it become a bland, stagnant way of being? I think that the work of Puvis provides – whether intentionally or not – potentially disturbing possibilities to those dreaming of Arcadia: In seeking to achieve ideals such as perfection, beauty, and unity, variety and change – two things without which it is difficult to imagine existence itself – may very well have to be sacrificed. Whereas Corot evokes Arcadia by encapsulating powerfully, but subtly, the mythic, magical character of particularly poignant encounters with nature, Puvis attempts to construct the realm as an otherworldly alternative to quotidian experience. Thus, two starkly disparate formulations of the mythical region sparked a lively debate as to its very nature in a way that other galleries in the exhibition, such as the following one filled with fairly indistinguishable Pointillist works, did not.  

The previous criticism may come as a surprise, as the apparent raison d’être of the exposition is the provocative, contrasting juxtaposition of the three monumental canvases named at the outset, in addition to Rousseau’s The Dream, which populates the same gallery. In spite of this obvious intention, the arrangement of the centerpiece paintings in the main gallery works against the visitor’s ability to compare and contrast them closely and carefully. For one, they are all fairly far apart. The gallery is quite wide; the Rousseau and the Matisse face each other on opposite walls that have perhaps 20-30 yards between them. On the back wall bridging those upon which the aforementioned paintings are hung are the Gauguin, Cézanne’s Large Bathers, and a gaudy Derain (sorry Sam, I didn’t think much of it). The Derain’s nearly neon hues rupture violently any visual link a viewer might seek to make between Cézanne’s and Matisse’s chromatically subdued works, which are also a good distance apart. Additionally, the section of wall upon which the Gauguin is hung is set back slightly from that which supports the Cézanne, preventing an easy, side-by-side viewing experience. Finally, Poussin’s Andrians, a masterful, but relatively small, painting, hangs alone on a large section of blank white wall, opposite and, again, fairly far from the Cézanne. While these may seem like minor quibbles, I believe that the exhibition’s organizers could have devised an arrangement more conducive to comparative viewing, especially when I recall the “Cézanne and Beyond” show of a few years ago, with its brilliant hangs and elegantly fluid spaces.

In discussing the exhibition’s crown jewels, I am compelled to call attention to inaccuracies in the manner in which they are presented on the PMA’s website. The text on the show’s page reads:

In France during the early 1900s, this idea of a mystical place of contentment and harmony [Arcadia], was especially potent – illustrated in mural-sized paintings which were often commissioned for public viewing. This exhibition explores the theme in three such paintings of the time: Paul Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From?, Paul Cézanne’s The Large Bathers, and Henri Matisse’s Bathers by a River. [Emphasis mine.]

In reality, not one of these paintings was commissioned for public viewing. Gauguin was working by himself in Tahiti, and sent works back to his dealer in Paris, hoping that they would find a public. Similarly, Cézanne lived and painted reclusively in his native Provence, in the south of France. Only a handful of people saw the Large Bathers prior to the artist’s death. Intentions that the artist had for its display, if any, are unknown, and the painting was certainly not commissioned by any public (or private) entity or individual. Matisse’s canvas began as a private commission from a rich Russian collector. Though it was rejected early on, Matisse finished the work, apparently for his own edification. While I realize that the language quoted from the PMA’s website does not explicitly state that the three paintings were commissioned for public viewing, it strongly implies just that, which consequently suggests incorrectly that these works were known widely at the time of their completion.

An additional statement on the same page strengthens this misrepresentation, “This exhibition (…) includes masterpieces (…) that emphasize the French tradition of grand public paintings.” While correct strictly in regard to the primary works by Gauguin, Cézanne and Matisse, this claim requires qualification. Of all the artists included in the show, only Puvis received and executed major public commissions to decorate buildings in Paris, such as the Hôtel de Ville and the Pantheon, of which Summer is a smaller version of one such mural. Even Poussin, who in 1640 was enticed by Louis XIII to leave Rome, where he lived for nearly all of his artistically active life, and come to Paris to decorate the Louvre, promptly returned to Italy, leaving the project incomplete. The Arcadian subject matter of the works in the show, coming as it does from Greco-Roman poetry and mythology, and the large size of the three centerpiece canvases in particular, could be said to link them to the French tradition of grand public paintings, which is constituted largely by “historical” subjects drawn frequently from the literature of classical antiquity and painted in grands formats; but, considering the small scale of most of the works in the expo, as well as their general genesis as private commissions or speculative pieces intended for dealers to sell, the claim quoted above applies to only a handful of paintings in the exposition. I cannot say why the PMA would publish such misleading statements, but they serve to confirm my impression that, conceptually, the exhibition was pulled out of the oven when only half-baked, so to speak.

I make such a harsh statement because numerous possible avenues of inquiry invited – indeed, demanded – by this group of artworks were left largely unexplored, and even unacknowledged, by the exhibition’s organization and accompanying wall text. The Corot-Puvis comparison discussed above raises the question of whether there were significant differences between publically commissioned Arcadian works and those executed by artists working entirely under their own auspices. Do the large public projects of Puvis and other state-patronized artists possess certain common characteristics that the works of, say, Cézanne do not? Or are there similarities? (Of course, in order to investigate such questions thoroughly, more pieces commissioned by the French government – or perhaps sketches and studies for such pieces, as many are in situ in public buildings in France – would need to be included.)

Additionally, I was struck by how many artists who sought to articulate Arcadia in their work felt the need to do so away from Paris; the south of France was a popular destination, and Gauguin of course retreated further, to Tahiti, after his own sojourns in northern and southern French regions (Brittany and Provence, respectively). The apparent originator of French Arcadian imagery, Poussin, was a stranger to the French capital as well. And, as I mentioned above, Corot’s Roman experience was essential to his idyllic landscapes. This begs the question: Why did so many modern artists, preoccupied by a subject with a distinguished classical pedigree, abandon Paris in order to pursue their artistic goals? On a superficial level, the question may appear to answer itself – artists attempting to portray rural, antique subject matter likely felt that the peripheral regions of France, which were less urbanized, were more conducive to doing so. However, when one considers that painters such as Gauguin, Cézanne, and Matisse – long entrenched as foundational figures of modern art – all fled Paris, the manifest Mecca of modernism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, to formulate what would become monuments of avant-garde painting, long-held assumptions and generalizations about the genesis and characteristics of modernism, modern art, and its practitioners are called into question.

Finally, the works displayed in the exhibition provoke queries concerning gender and sexuality. It cannot escape even the minimally engaged viewer that the show consists primarily of depictions of nude female figures painted by male artists. This characteristic of modern Arcadian scenes is a departure from those of Poussin. Why did modern artists so consistently imagine Arcadia as populated nearly entirely by feminine figures? However, this question is complicated by the frequently distorted anatomies of the ostensibly female figures, which is evident in each of the featured works of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Matisse. What impulses compelled these artists to mold and reshape the female form into something that could be interpreted as masculine (Gauguin’s Tahitian women often possess broad shoulders and slim hips), asexual (Cézanne’s Large Bathers), or even threatening (Matisse, as well as Cézanne’s Large Bathers in the Barnes Collection)? And does the malleability of the body – and, consequently, gender and sexuality – play a part in the appeal of Arcadia itself?

Ultimately, as one may have gathered from the criticism above, I believe that the exhibition as it is constituted could have been more intellectually probing and stimulating if the works were arranged according to different themes, rather than grouping them by common style or decade of origin. Such an arrangement would also have prepared the visitor for the diverse group of paintings in the main gallery, which is a stark anomaly in the expo because of the wide variety of its offerings. Hypothetically, this space could have been even more impactful as a staging point where the questions and issues articulated above, if posed by thematic combinations of works in earlier galleries, met and mingled. Wall text more challenging than the generally expository narratives that currently guide visitors through the exhibition, providing the “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and little else, would be a necessity. Finally, the font of said text would also need to be changed, as the current iteration inexplicably irked me.

“Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia” seeks to “take visitors to the very foundations of modern art” as expressed through various renditions of Arcadia, a subject with a venerable antique lineage that resonated powerfully with numerous avant-garde titans. Regrettably, this tantalizing anachronism is simply and superficially presented. Intriguing issues and nagging questions provoked by the works in the show are largely unaddressed in favor of a straightforward staging that seems to say little more than, “Look! Pointillists painted Arcadia; so did Fauvists; Cubists too; and even some Russian and German artists got in on the act!” While attention is rightfully called to the curious potency of this rich subject to a wide range of modern artists, I believe that the exhibition would have benefited greatly from more sustained and focused consideration into the reasons for Arcadia’s relevance and the stunning diversity of its manifestations. This failing is even more egregious considering the insightful, salient scholarship that has already been done on the subject by art historians such as Margaret Werth and Nina Kallmyer, to name just a couple. The constitution of the expo also feels incomplete, but I do not want to slam the PMA for not securing scintillating loans that it likely cannot afford at the moment. All in all, while uniting Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From?, Cézanne’s Large Bathers, and Matisse’s Bathers by a River, is a nice little coup that will undoubtedly sell (extremely expensive) tickets, the exhibition as it stands is a disappointment to those seeking to venture deeply into the figurative forests and fields of the Arcadian ideal. Perhaps fittingly, the vision of the intangible realm provided by the show is disjointed and abridged, jumbled and unfocused. Arcadia remains as elusive as ever.