Latest / The Front / Monet’s Water Lilies: from the fringes to fridge magnets

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Monet’s Water Lilies: from the fringes to fridge magnets · The Front

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  Speaker 1: Let's forget this guy's name, Paul Jon Rell spelled Ruelle,
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  Speaker 1: but it's pronounced diron well durn.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just say John Rell.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I'm going to totally sound like an idiot to.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Duran Durann.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
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  Speaker 3: I'm Claire Harvey. It's hard to imagine now, but towards
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  Speaker 3: the end of the nineteenth century, the Impressionists Mone Sizzlely,
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  Speaker 3: Pesaro Sazan were viewed as a band of artistic deplorables.
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  Speaker 3: The term impressionism was itself a dig coined by critic
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  Speaker 3: Louis Leroy. It referred to works now regarded as masterpieces,
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  Speaker 3: as appearing merely as impressions, lacking focus, and feeling incomplete.
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  Speaker 3: If you look at an Impressionist painting now, it feels
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  Speaker 3: to our modern eyes more realistic than what they used
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  Speaker 3: to call realism, the overall feeling of seeing a lake
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  Speaker 3: on a spring morning, rather than just a flat depiction
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  Speaker 3: of shapes and outlines. Every idea needs a backer, and
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  Speaker 3: Impressionism's backer was one man who transformed it from a
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  Speaker 3: fringe movement into one of the most universally loved in
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  Speaker 3: Western art. Chief Culture correspondent Tim Douglas joins me today
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  Speaker 3: to discuss how water lilies went from being radical to
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  Speaker 3: printed on teetols. Tim, I was really interested in your
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  Speaker 3: story in The Australian. You wrote about the Paris Salon
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  Speaker 3: in the eighteen seventies, very powerful institution. I think I
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  Speaker 3: had always thought that if you were an artist, you
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  Speaker 3: were probably unconventional in someone who didn't necessarily play by
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  Speaker 3: society's rules. Turns out I've learned that's a very modern idea,
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  Speaker 3: isn't it.
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  Speaker 1: It is Back in the eighteen seventies until the eighties,
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  Speaker 1: really artists had to be appointed by a jury to
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  Speaker 1: the Academy of Arts and the government itself. They had
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  Speaker 1: to be awarded a medal in order to be officially
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  Speaker 1: sanctioned as an artist.
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  Speaker 2: And once they had that medal, then they.
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  Speaker 1: Could invite potential buyers viewers into their studios to perhaps
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  Speaker 1: acquire their works, a very different way of acquiring works
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  Speaker 1: as opposed to today. And that certainly changed in the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighties with one man in particular.
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  Speaker 3: That person was Paul durand Ruel.
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  Speaker 2: Who was he? So, Paul Girondrell is that okay, I
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  Speaker 2: didn't mean to correct you, then please do.
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  Speaker 3: I did German at schools turned out to be absolutely
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  Speaker 3: no use in my life to date. I wish i'd
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  Speaker 3: done French.
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  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't either, but it was impressed upon me that
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  Speaker 1: that's how it's pronounced, at least in kind of Australian.
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  Speaker 1: Paul Giaronrell was an art dealer in the eighteen seventies
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  Speaker 1: in Paris.
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  Speaker 2: Specifically, his own father.
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  Speaker 1: Ran a gallery, the Gallery Girondrell in Paris, and Paul
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  Speaker 1: Garonrell was particularly inamate of the Barbazon school your Rosso's
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  Speaker 1: also collected de Lacroix during that time. In the eighteen seventies,
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  Speaker 1: he was in London and a lot of artists and
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  Speaker 1: creatives had fled during the Franco Prussian War to London
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  Speaker 1: seeking exile. At that time, a lot of artists, Bonet included,
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  Speaker 1: learned from painters like Constable and Turner about painting light
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  Speaker 1: Money eventually returned to Paris and in eighteen seventy two
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  Speaker 1: painted the work that is regarded as the seminal work
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  Speaker 1: of Impressionism, called impression Sunrise.
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  Speaker 2: It's a painting of Haavara Port.
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  Speaker 1: Beautiful painting that was obviously a very different style to realism.
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  Speaker 2: It was all about light, color and beauty.
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  Speaker 1: When Jeron Well saw this painting at an exhibition that
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  Speaker 1: also included de Gard and Morisseau, he knew that this
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  Speaker 1: was radical. This was something he wanted to be a
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  Speaker 1: part of, and thus began one of the great periods
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  Speaker 1: of acquisition in art history. He went on to own
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  Speaker 1: one thousand more as fifteen hundred renoirs and began to
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  Speaker 1: really foster this art movement, which at the time was
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  Speaker 1: pilloried by the academy and by civil society.
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  Speaker 3: So did he do this kind of outside the confines
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  Speaker 3: of the salon and the establishment.
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  Speaker 2: He went rogue. He went outside the establishment.
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  Speaker 1: He began paying these artists, who previously had relied on
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  Speaker 1: the government for funds. He began providing them with the
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  Speaker 1: stip end. He promised them solo shows, but he demanded exclusivity,
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  Speaker 1: and that was the first time that that had really
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  Speaker 1: reared its head in France at the time, and so
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  Speaker 1: he in exchange for him finding buyers and good prices
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  Speaker 1: for their artwork, he demanded that they abe loyal to him.
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  Speaker 2: Mona was the one exception from that.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't sign over his exclusivity to pauls your o Unreill,
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  Speaker 1: but he has said, you know, without John Rell's support,
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  Speaker 1: he would have died of starvation.
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  Speaker 3: If you look at the Impressionist paintings in the context
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  Speaker 3: of what had come just before, so Romanticism, the Barber's
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  Speaker 3: on school.
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  Speaker 2: That you mentioned.
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  Speaker 3: It was radical, wasn't it. But yet when we were
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  Speaker 3: growing up, you and I, Impressionism was kind of naff.
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  Speaker 3: It was on details and fridge magnets and chocolate boxes,
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  Speaker 3: money's water lilies and here's a set of four really
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  Speaker 3: beautiful station items. We'll start with the address book quarter lilies.
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  Speaker 3: That's six pounds fifty and you can see that it
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  Speaker 3: was Why did Impressionism go from being understood as radical
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  Speaker 3: and different, challenging to being considered so conventional It was
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  Speaker 3: almost embarrassing.
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  Speaker 1: It was radical, but so was the world at that point.
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  Speaker 1: Things were changing, you know, it's becoming a more globalized society.
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  Speaker 1: There were opportunities overseas for artists to make their name,
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  Speaker 1: which is what happened with the Impressionists when John Rell
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  Speaker 1: took them to New York and found buyers for them
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  Speaker 1: and an audience that actually appreciated the work. And the
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  Speaker 1: difference it swings in roundabouts really with art movements, And
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  Speaker 1: of course what it did do was lay the ground
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  Speaker 1: for the abstract movement which would come after the twenties,
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  Speaker 1: and contemporary art and modern art, and you know where
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  Speaker 1: we find ourselves today.
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  Speaker 2: But what we can say is that that.
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  Speaker 1: Movement, that Impressionist movement, is probably the defining era for
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  Speaker 1: art over the last couple of hundred years, because it
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  Speaker 1: did open the doors for so many artists and so
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  Speaker 1: many conversations about what art is and how people or
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  Speaker 1: places should be represented.
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  Speaker 3: Did it become popular Impressionism straight away once it kind
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  Speaker 3: of was revealed to the world, or was it this
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  Speaker 3: one individual kind of continuing to believe that allowed them
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  Speaker 3: to do these works.
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  Speaker 1: It was Paul Jonrel who spent twenty years from the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen seventies to the eighteen night and he's trying to
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  Speaker 1: convince people in Paris and France that this art was
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  Speaker 1: worthy and that it was something. He got his own
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  Speaker 1: printing press and began printing his own journals and hiring
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  Speaker 1: critics to basically write advertorials about his philosophy and why
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  Speaker 1: this was important. When he couldn't find buyers as I said,
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  Speaker 1: he opened a gallery in New York, found an art
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  Speaker 1: market there. It didn't take long for Europe to catch up,
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  Speaker 1: and indeed France and then Jiondrell finally had found his
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  Speaker 1: market and his lifelong goal of making these artists something
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  Speaker 1: and conveying their message to the world was realized.
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  Speaker 3: Durand Rouell's vision has arrived in Australia. My name is
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  Speaker 3: Marion Matthew. I'm a French artist, sauriant.
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  Speaker 2: What a pleasure, what an opportunity to bring here at
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  Speaker 2: the Geelong.
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  Speaker 3: Gary Discovering the Impressionists, a vast exhibition of over seventy
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  Speaker 3: works Money, Morrissol and Renoir, alongside some lesser known artists,
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  Speaker 3: is now open at the Geelong Gallery and runs every
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  Speaker 3: day until October eleven.
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  Speaker 1: Seeing some of these works, especially in a regional setting,
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  Speaker 1: it's a great cupe for Geelong Gallery to have this
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  Speaker 1: sensational exhibition curated by two of the world's foremost Pissarro
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  Speaker 1: and Monet experts, respectively. Why I think it's really important
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  Speaker 1: to have it in that regional setting is that that
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  Speaker 1: is where these artists did their best work enplanaire. Monet
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  Speaker 1: himself fled the city for Javerni and found his passion
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  Speaker 1: for nature in the regions. I think it's amazing that
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  Speaker 1: these works are in Geelong, and having stood in front
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  Speaker 1: of a couple of them over the weekend, I felt
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  Speaker 1: that visceral kind of emotion. And I think part of
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  Speaker 1: it is the fact that you're seeing these works in Australia,
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  Speaker 1: but you're also seeing them in the sort of environs
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  Speaker 1: in which they'll. Let's take Manday for example, he began
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  Speaker 1: painting the haystacks. What he realized was that he could
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  Speaker 1: make light the subject of his paintings. So when you
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  Speaker 1: see those paintings of haystacks, it's almost like a geometric formation.
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  Speaker 1: He began painting series of work, so he painted multiple
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  Speaker 1: of these works at different times of the day and
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  Speaker 1: realized that light could change the way we view things.
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  Speaker 3: Even within the Impressionist movement, there were people pushing that idea,
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  Speaker 3: weren't there. Renoir was different in what he painted and
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  Speaker 3: the way he saw the treatment of light, right.
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  Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, And Renoi obviously a more romantic sort
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  Speaker 1: of painter, closer to that realism we spoke about earlier.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I just happened to I'm going to drop
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  Speaker 1: this and it's going to sound very wanky, indeed, but
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  Speaker 1: I was just at Misai d'Orsay a couple of weeks ago,
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  Speaker 1: and there's two fantastic Renoi exhibitions there. Why I think
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  Speaker 1: they're so interesting is that we see there's a drawing
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  Speaker 1: exhibition and then painting exhibition, and so you can see
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  Speaker 1: the way in which he constructs these images, and they
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  Speaker 1: are images of beauty and almost saccherin in their reproduction,
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  Speaker 1: but there is still a great element of joy in
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  Speaker 1: those images and light, and so I found it really
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  Speaker 1: really wonderful. And this exhibition, too, in Geelong, has a
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  Speaker 1: number of impressionists that you've never heard of. So there's
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  Speaker 1: an entire second generation of impressionists who Gerondrell also fostered,
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  Speaker 1: who were friends with the first generation. So there's an
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  Speaker 1: artist called Albert Andre who became Renoi's closest friend, and Renoy,
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  Speaker 1: in his declining years, really kind of mentored the young Andre,
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  Speaker 1: and so it's really interesting to see the relationships they had,
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  Speaker 1: and they were real friendships, real generous mentor and mentee relationships,
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  Speaker 1: and I think you can kind of see that love
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  Speaker 1: in the paintings we're.
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  Speaker 3: Kind of back at a point now where artists rely
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  Speaker 3: on government subsidies to work.
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  Speaker 4: A boost tonight for Australia's multi billion dollar art sector,
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  Speaker 4: with the Albernesi government launching its Cultural policy to help
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  Speaker 4: an industry creative.
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  Speaker 3: Australia is responsible for giving out grants. Some of those
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  Speaker 3: are very controversial, of course, as always art at the
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  Speaker 3: center of a political storm. Australia's Peak Arts body grilled
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  Speaker 3: for axing the team it's selected for next year's Venice
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  Speaker 3: be and Nully. I wonder now how the interaction of
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  Speaker 3: that kind of official source of funding and artistic freedom.
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  Speaker 3: How you consider that. Whenever we read about an art
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  Speaker 3: grant being given, it's usually in the context of there
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  Speaker 3: being some kind of controversy, And my impression from the
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  Speaker 3: outside is that the controversy is usually a God, they've
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  Speaker 3: given it to yet another woke person who's got exactly
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  Speaker 3: the same kind of group think as the people who
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  Speaker 3: are giving out the grants. That there's not a lot
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  Speaker 3: of challenge going on. That's the narrative that we read about.
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  Speaker 3: What's your sense of what government funding is doing to art?
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  Speaker 1: The real problem in Australia with these peer given grants
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  Speaker 1: is that the pool is so small. It really is
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  Speaker 1: quite small compared to the rest of the world. There's
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  Speaker 1: only a finite amount of money that can go around,
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  Speaker 1: and so I think there is a reckoning underway at
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  Speaker 1: the moment about how better we might award those monies.
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  Speaker 4: One of the countries most experienced and respected cultural leaders
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  Speaker 4: has called for a funding free He is an urgent
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  Speaker 4: review into Creative Australia. This is the mob that hands
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  Speaker 4: out government grants to the arts. It used to be
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  Speaker 4: called the Australia Council. Lynden Terracini is the former artistic
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  Speaker 4: director of Opera Australia.
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  Speaker 1: And Lynden Teracini shout out to me earlier in the
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  Speaker 1: year we had a story about it, saying the peer
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  Speaker 1: review system needs to go and we need to find
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  Speaker 1: better ways of doing it. He didn't really offer a
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  Speaker 1: better way, of course, to make that work, but what
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  Speaker 1: he was saying was that it's not working at the moment.
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  Speaker 1: All I know from reporting on the sector is that
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  Speaker 1: there are loads of Australian artists out there who find
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  Speaker 1: it very difficult to get that funding and to make
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  Speaker 1: a living as an artist.
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  Speaker 3: The lesson maybe from Paul Duran Royal is is that
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  Speaker 3: pronunciation again?
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  Speaker 2: Who knows?
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  Speaker 3: Is that maybe sometimes you need a visionary, you know,
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  Speaker 3: who's prepared to just piss everybody off to make it possible.
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  Speaker 3: But if that person doesn't have money, things never change.
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  Speaker 3: You're never going to advance art.
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  Speaker 1: The interesting thing about gerond Rell is that he almost
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  Speaker 1: went bankrupt multiple times. He didn't have that money until
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  Speaker 1: you know, he was established in the early twentieth century,
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  Speaker 1: and so he kind of stated not only his reputation
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  Speaker 1: but his bank account and his family's finances on the
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  Speaker 1: future of these artists. And so I think that's a
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  Speaker 1: great point that you probably need someone willing to risk
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  Speaker 1: it all to break open that new frontier, and certainly
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  Speaker 1: he was the one that did it in the late
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  Speaker 1: nineteenth century.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I can't wait to see the show thanks to him.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks Glen.
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  Speaker 3: Tim Douglas is chief Culture correspondent at The Australian. You
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  Speaker 3: can read his article on Paul Juran Ruel and the
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  Speaker 3: Impressionists in the Culture section of The Australian, available in
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  Speaker 3: every weekend paper or online at Theaustralian dot com dot
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  Speaker 3: u slash culture. This episode of The front was hosted
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  Speaker 3: by me Claire Harvey and produced by Jasper League. Our
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  Speaker 3: team also includes Kristin Amiot, Lee at Sammaglue, Tiffany Dimack,
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  Speaker 3: and Joshua Burton.