Impressionism and Beyond @ Saint Louis Art Museum

Impressionism and Beyond

Saint Louis Art Museum

February 1 - July 31, 2022

“Due to a surge of COVID positive cases among our staff and the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, the Museum is closed to the public. At this time, we anticipate reopening to the public on Tuesday, February 1"

EDGAR DEGAS

French, 1834–1917

"Ballet Dancers in the Wings", c.1890–1900

Pastel; 28 x 26 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 24:1935

ODILON REDON

French, 1840–1916 

"Eyes in the Forest", 1882

Charcoal on pale brown paper; 

framed: 23 x 19 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches 

Saint Louis Art Museum 

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morton D. May 234:1959

The Saint Louis Art Museum presents “Impressionism and Beyond,” an exhibition of works on paper drawn exclusively from the museum collections.

Through 59 European drawings, pastels and prints dating from the 1850s to the 1930s, “Impressionism and Beyond” highlights the many conversations occurring in the art world between tradition and innovation, representation and abstraction, and the artist’s studio and the art market.

During this period, European life underwent dramatic social, political and psychological changes, which contributed to significant artistic developments. Artists responded to this fluid environment in many ways—visualizing modern life as it was, but also viewing the world through an imaginative lens.

The exhibition reveals that, at this same moment, new attitudes about artistic practice and expressions of modernity elevated drawing and printmaking to prominence among the avant-garde.

In France, which dominated progressive trends, the Impressionists broke with traditional academic modes of representation through formal experimentation and innovative print and drawing techniques. Mary Cassatt, for example, elevated color printmaking to new heights through her adaptation of the Japanese aesthetic that was taking Paris by storm in the 1890s, while her Impressionist colleague Edgar Degas sought multiple avenues for experimentation in print. Degas and other Impressionists also developed inventive drawing styles that allowed them to capture movement and intense effects of color and light in their works.

EDVARD MUNCH

Norwegian, 1863–1944 

"The Scream", 1895

Lithograph; image: 13 3/4 x 27 1/4 inches, 

sheet: 23 1/2 x 16 3/8 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum 

Private Collection 2019.348

EDVARD MUNCH

Norwegian, 1863–1944

"Moonlight", 1896; printed c. 1906

Color woodcut on Japan paper; 

image: 15 13/16 x 18 9/16 inches, 

sheet: 18 7/8 x 23 5/16 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum

Gift of General and Mrs. Leif J. Sverdrup 338:1952

This experimental impulse in turn provided a launchpad for later generations to push formal and technical innovations even further. Paul Cézanne’s early-20th-century watercolors transformed natural environments into abstract washes of color, while Odilon Redon focused on the expressive power of black to create images that blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. Edvard Munch rethought the ancient medium of woodcut printmaking, cutting his blocks into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle to print in multiple colors.

“Impressionism and Beyond” explores several themes that guided artists in their examinations of modernity. Subjects of modern urban life such as the domestic interior and the modern woman of fashion abound during this period. Meanwhile, experimental treatments of figures and landscapes highlight news ways artists viewed the world around them, sometimes giving way to quirky, even frightening, visions.

“Impressionism and Beyond” is curated by Abigail Yoder, research assistant, and Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings and photographs.

SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM

One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, Saint Louis, Missouri 63110

www.slam.org

Damon Davis @ Saint Louis Art Museum

Damon Davis 

Saint Louis Art Museum 

September 17, 2021 - March 27, 2022 

DAMON DAVIS, American, born 1985

Published by Wildwood Press, Saint Louis, Missouri

"All Hands On Deck #3", 2015

Lithograph; sheet (irregular): 32 x 58 3/16 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum, 

The Sidney S. and Sadie Cohen Print Purchase Fund 9:2016.3

© Damon Davis, courtesy Saint Louis Art Museum

Damon Davis’ “All Hands On Deck” is a powerful artwork that addresses social justice and the call for change. The Saint Louis multi-disciplinary artist conceived the original photographs of hands held up high during the months-long protests following the August 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown, Jr. in Ferguson.

The Saint Louis Art Museum displays six of the large-scale photolithographs in a special installation. A seventh work from the series will be on view in the exhibition “Art Along the Rivers: A Bicentennial Celebration,” which opens in October 2021.

Damon Davis and his fellow protesters pasted the images onto boarded-up storefronts along West Florissant Avenue, where they shared space with many other rapidly improvised textual and visual statements. Images of the storefronts were broadcast around the world. In the words of the artist:

“The project in itself was a protest to change the physical space of the street in the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown. The boarded-up buildings created a narrative of destruction before anything had even happened, and that fed into the media’s biased portrayal of the protesters. It was a way to weaponize art to create a counternarrative centered on the unity and love I saw every time I went out to protest. It sought to raise the morale of the protest community to continue the long fight.”

Damon Davis photographed a diverse array of individuals who were involved in the Ferguson protest movement. Recalling the protesters’ chant “Hands up don’t shoot” that was echoed throughout the protests—they were photographed with their “hands up.” That signal of surrender, however, is transformed in Davis’s photographs into one of resistance, fortitude and community.

Damon Davis’ documentary film about the Ferguson protest movement, “Whose Streets?,” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and received broad critical attention. Among his many other accomplishments, he is 2011 graduate of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission’s Community Arts Training Institute, and in 2020, he was named a Citizen Artist Fellow at Kennedy Center in Washington.

The installation is curated by Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings and photographs; and Hannah Klemm, associate curator of modern and contemporary art.

SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM

One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri 63110-1380

www.slam.org

Edgar Degas @ Saint Louis Art Museum & Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade
Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
February 12 - May 7, 2017
Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
June 24 - September 24, 2017

Best known for his depictions of Parisian dancers and laundresses, Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917) was enthralled with another aspect of life in the French capital—high-fashion hats and the women who created them. The artist, invariably well-dressed and behatted himself, “was not afraid to go into ecstasies in front of the milliners’ shops,” Paul Gauguin wrote of his lifelong friend.

Edgar Degas, French, 1834-1917

The Millinery Shop´, 1885

Oil on canvas; 39 3/8 x 49 9/16 inches

The Art Institute of Chicago DM003

Edgar Degas’ fascination inspired a visually compelling and profoundly modern body of work that documents the lives of what one fashion writer of the day called “the aristocracy of the workwomen of Paris, the most elegant and distinguished.” Yet despite the importance of millinery within Degas’s oeuvre, there has been little discussion of its place in Impressionist iconography.

Next year the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will bring new light to the subject with the presentation of Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade, a groundbreaking exhibition featuring 60 Impressionist paintings and pastels, including key works by Degas—many never before exhibited in the United States—as well as those by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and 40 exquisite examples of period hats.

“This groundbreaking exhibition will provide a stunning experience for visitors while advancing scholarship of a little known but important part of Degas’ legacy,” said Brent R. Benjamin, the Barbara B. Taylor Director of the Saint Louis Art Museum. “Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade will complement Impressionist works in our permanent collection, while giving proper context to Degas’ The Milliners, which the Saint Louis Art Museum acquired in 2007.”

Edgar Degas, French, 1834-1917

The Milliners´, c.1898

Oil on canvas; 29 5/8 x 32 1/4 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum, Director´s Discretionary Fund; and a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur D. May, Dr. Ernest G. Stillman, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney M. Schoenberg Sr. and Mr. and Mrs. Sydney M. Schoenberg Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Irving Edison, and Harry Tenebaum, bequest of Edward Mallinckrodt Sr., and a gift of Mr. and Mrs. S.J. Levin, by exchange

The exhibition will be the first to examine the height of the millinery trade in Paris, from around 1875 to 1914, as reflected in the work of the Impressionists. At this time there were around 1,000 milliners working in what was then considered the fashion capital of the world. The exhibition will open at the Saint Louis Art Museum on Feb. 12, 2017 and at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor on June 24, 2017.

“This exhibition underlines the many facets of our extensive collection, which comprises not only extraordinary paintings and drawings of French Impressionism but also exquisite hats of the same period,¨ says Max Hollein, Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “The show presents a highly important part of Degas’ work in its extraordinary artistic but also social and historical context. It will be a revelation for many!”

Works from the collections of the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will be supplemented by loans from international lenders.

The exhibition is curated by Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum and Esther Bell, curator in charge of European paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade will be accompanied by a scholarly, full-color catalogue edited by Kelly and Bell. The catalogue includes contributions by the exhibition curators, as well as Susan Hiner, Françoise Tétart-Vittu, Melissa Buron, Laura Camerlengo, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell and Abigail Yoder. The retail price of the catalogue is $75 for hardcover and $49.95 for softcover.

SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM
www.slam.org

FINE ARTS MUSEUMS OF SAN FRANCISCO
www.famsf.org