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The Louvre and the Masterpiece at The High Museum

Written By Ashley Anderson on October 29, 2008 in Reviews

Antoine-Louis Barye, Lion Crushing a Serpent

Despite being perhaps the weakest of the High’s three-year Louvre Atlanta series, “The Louvre and the Masterpiece” surprised me with several pieces that testify to the greatness of technical mastery and skill.

Klagmann

Jean Baptiste Klagmann’s cast silver ewer, for example, is covered with real and fanciful figures grouped in vast tangles reminiscent of statues carved into the outside of Indian temples. The detail is almost maddening in its chaos. Fauns, dolphins, mer-people, musicians, and even a pharaoh comprise the dazzling mish-mash encircling the vessel’s middle.

Upon entering the lobby level of the Chambers Wing, I encountered what is undeniably the most stunning piece of the exhibit. Antoine-Louis Barye’s Lion Crushing a Serpent is just as awe-inspiring as (if not more so) the Roman marble sculpture of the Tiber, the space’s previous occupant.

Lion Crushing a Serpent (detail)

Barye’s incredible lost-wax bronze casting is both terrifying and gorgeous from every angle. The animals’ anatomies are meticulously rendered in form as well as a variety of textures, demonstrating hours of study of both live and dead specimens. Barye’s small studies done in bronze, plaster, and terra cotta occupy the rear periphery of the space, providing further evidence of his technical skill and dedication to his work.

Francois Boucher, Rinaldo and Armida

Other impressive works included a self-taught French artist’s depictions of crystallized minerals and sea shells, Michelangelo’s satyr in profile (drawn over a student’s apparently subpar drawing of a woman), and Francois Boucher’s large painting, Rinaldo and Armida (above), with its wonderful composition and varied, painterly surfaces. Each piece is a steadfast testament to the fundamentals, regardless of subject or medium.

Although this final episode of Louvre Atlanta only took about two hours to wander through, it nonetheless served to bolster my belief in the value of craftsmanship. Almost every piece showed an intense effort on the part of the artist without seeming overworked. This show is both an encouragement and a much-needed spanking for any artist willing to pay attention.

“The Louvre and the Masterpiece” is on view at the High Museum of Art until Sun. Sept. 6, 2009.

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Tags: European Masters, Louvre Atlanta, The High Museum

Jerry Cullum

Well, now I’m curious. Considering how dismally disconnected the previous would-be crowd-pleasers were, why do you consider this the weakest of the Louvre shows? what made the previous ones so great? (Now I can ask, having finally found one I can celebrate.)

You basically like the handful of pieces I hated and I love the ones you didn’t mention. (I would include the Syrian vessel with the figurative work we don’t associate with Islamic art, alongside, of course, the crowd-pleasing Vermeer which also pleases me and those two glorious pieces of sculpture off by their lonesome, as well as those three-of-a-kind ceramic examples wherein the masses are meant to be able to tell what’s good versus what’s merely okay.)

I realize the big lion is a tour de force, hard as the dickens to pull off on that scale, and the Michelangelo is quite a tour de force in and of itself, but apart from the minerals and sea shells all the pieces you mention feel like they play into the intrinsic Western tendency to show-offery at the expense of insight. Of course, given when Boucher and Barye were working, this kind of histrionic sensibility is intrinsic to the culture, so it’s invidious to suggest they should have done otherwise.
Ashley

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “dismally disconnected”, but I will say I went to the last two shows without expectations of some thread flowing between the two separate shows; back then I went to enjoy art of a high quality and hopefully draw some formal knowledge on top of sheer visual delight.

That being said, I certainly got much more enjoyment out of the first two shows and especially the previous Roman/Greek/Egyptian/Josephine show. On top of the confounding experience of confronting images older than I could really comprehend, I’m a sucker for Greek pottery. Plus “The Eye of Josephine” had some absolutely amazing metalwork in it.

I’m also a sucker for simple drawing and sketches, so the first show had me from the word go. Granted it’s been two years since I went, but trust that I can recall a greater sense of satisfaction for having gone through “The Royal Collections” and “The Louvre and the Ancient World” than I did when I finished my first run through of “The Louvre and the Masterpiece” in only 2 hours. This show simply failed to engage me as much as the previous shows.

I liked the Vermeer, but I really didn’t care as much as I did about Barye’s lion. The lion was the first thing I saw and, subsequently, my subconscious ruler against which everything else I saw was measured.

As for the penchant for show-offery in the other pieces I mentioned, “Rinaldo and Armida” was basically a thesis piece for Boucher so he needed to really strut his stuff on that one. Similarly, Klagmann made that ewer on paid assignment, so it wasn’t up to him how gaudy or not the piece was; obviously, the person commissioning the work was all about mindless ostentation and boy howdy did he ever get it, thanks to Klagmann’s masterful work, good crafting, and solid fundamentals.

Also the pieces were, as you say, made in a different cultural climate where art was largely just another form of work with little room for individual insight on the part of the artist. So as far as I see, show-offery’s the point, and those artists did it well! It is most definitely invidious to suggest that Barye, Klagmann, and anyone else in that show should have put a more personal spin on what they were doing, but even moreso it is pointless since their motivations were largely vocational and financial.

Regarding, Muhammad Ibn A Zayn’s basin, I was definitely puzzled by the presence of figurative work on an Islamic object; I figured it must have been Persian in origin, since I have seen and was struck by the presence of figuration in Islamic Persian art despite the Muslim world’s strict adherence to nonrepresentational art.
no name

Great
Jerry Cullum

Touché. I liked many of the objects in “The Louvre and the Ancient World” and particularly the Pompeian wall paintings, but I found myself unfairly remembering all the past exhibitions at the Carlos (“In Stabiano” included) and wondering why the Louvre had to run so hard to outdo an archaeological museum that really only got started collecting thirty years ago and has climbed painfully to world-class. I also probably felt I had seen one too many shows of drawings over the years and just couldn’t face enjoying still more intimate moments with lines and stains in ink. So expectation and past experience does determine what pleases us most. But the paintings in the first year’s show were largely disappointing and yes, disconnected, one reason the show focused on what the Louvre did for artists in the years in which the royal collections were formed…it was a show about an institution, not a show about the art. Ditto for the second year, a show that delivered what it promised…a history of how departments at the Louvre acquired work and what attitudes the departments took towards them. “The Eye of Josephine” on the other hand was indeed unified by the clear sensibility of one collector.

I would say I took longer to look at the objects in “The Louvre and the Masterpiece” than the exhibitions in previous years, and was captivated to the point of paying money for the catalogue, which I haven’t always done with the previous renditions.

But as Robert Benchley’s witticism from the 1930s says, tastes differ, and that’s why they put erasers on the end of pencils.
Ashley

Amen
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The Louvre and the Masterpiece at The High Museum

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Meet the Collector: African Art Collector Michael Mack

Last Day to See: Seismic Reflection / Bethany Springer

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Closing Celebration: Something In Particular’s Exhibition 1

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