Word: whistler
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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AFTER BENJAMIN WEST IN THE 18th century, James McNeill Whistler was the first American artist to become really famous across the Atlantic: not only in London, like West, but in Paris as well. Since America loves to see its children imposing themselves on the world's culture--a less common sight 100 years ago than now--this perpetual expatriate, with his viperish tongue, large ego and delicately nuanced paintings, has long been an American favorite...
...Though Whistler never went to Japan, he was seen as a bridge between East and West, the voracious collector of blue-and-white porcelain who brought a Japanese aesthetic of hints and nuances into late 19th century painting. His abhorrence of narrative, his preference for the exquisitely designed moment over the slice of life, was new; it epitomized the idea of Art for Art's Sake. It was provocative, in 1871, to call a portrait of his mother Arrangement in Grey and Black. It implied that the hallowed sentimentality about motherhood in Victorian England was cultural baggage, that the aesthetic...
Rothko's "Untitled (Blue, Green)," Whistler's "Nocturne in Blue and Silver, No. 1," and Feininger's "Bird Cloud" are tucked in a pristine white oasis at the heart of the exhibition. They are presented like a stage set depicting display techniques in a modern museum. The paintings, all modern and somewhat abstract in tones of blue, crystallize the value of Cultures and Contexts. They are presented on white walls without the helpful explanations, without accompanying cultural artifacts, yet carry themselves with the solitary dignity of true masterpieces. There is a rising debate in American museums about the validity...
...Tinterow and the French art historian Henri Loyrette, chief curator of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, it has drawn in an astonishing number of major works -- nearly 30 Manets; more than that number of Monets; and work by a whole gamut of artists from Renoir to Cezanne and Whistler, from Frederic Bazille to academicians like Jean-Leon Gerome and even William Bouguereau. It focuses on the early years of the movement, the 1860s, before "New Painting" became controversial with the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874. It asks, What formed Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir and the rest; what ambitions coalesced...
...careers of struggling artists, many of whom she befriended and supported financially, either collecting works for herself or donating them to other museum. The artists indicated their gratitude by their fascination with her as a portrait subject and in the things they wrote to and about her. James McNeil Whistler described her in am inscription on a piece he gave her as a person "whose appreciation of the work of art is only equaled by her understanding of the artist." Although buying the work of up-and-coming artists probably seemed risky, Gardner had the finances and the gumption...