The building itself has a long-lasting history. It reminds the visitors not only of the institutional frame, but of the way it occupies a larger space — the train station and the Hotel.
The train station, Gare d’Orsay, was built for thr 1900 Expo. By 1939, the station is too short for the longer trains and was abondoned for decades. There were numerous proposals to reconstruct, including a AirFrance headquarters (having plans in the center of the city), adminstration center, international hotel. However, people started to realize the need to perserve the 19th century architecture.
The plan to build a museum for the 19th century was accepted by Georges Pompidou in 1974. ACT Architecture, three young architects was luckily enough to get the contract. However, Gae Aulenti, an Italisn architet, was chosen to design to interior. There were strong objection to her plan but eventually the museum was open in 1986.
Eugene Delacroix (1798–1863, 65)
A Romantic artist who has expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. Romantism emphasises on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature,He had attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form.In the words of Baudelaire,
“Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.”
His most famous work would be Liberty Leading the People in the Louvre.
Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)
A realist painter, Courbet portrayed real and typical contemporary people and situations with truth and accuracy. Courbet’s subsequent paintings were mostly of a less overtly political character: landscapes, seascapes, hunting scenes, nudes and still lifes. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death.
He would created these large scale paintings to be recognized by the public. The Artist’s Studio was the artist’s manifesto of
Édouard Manet (1832–1883, 51)
A painter of modern life, and a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Weirdly enough, I didn’t see the painting in the museum. I believe it is traveling. This painting is said to be inspired by Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538).
Edgar Degas (1834–1917, 83)
More than half of his works depict dancers. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation.
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
He has a repetitive, exploratory brushstroke ans splanes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. Cézanne was also known for forming the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century’s new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. The Montagne Sainte-Victoire became the subject of a number of Cézanne’s paintings.
And he was not patient with models — drawn many fruits in his life.
Claude Monet (1840–1926, 86)
Founder of French Impressionist painting who had a philosophy of expressing one’s perceptions before nature.
Auguste Renoir (1841–1919, 78)
The warm sensuality of Renoir’s style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently reproduced works in the history of art.
Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894)
A Impressionist painter, but more in a realistic manner, also noted for his early interest in photography as an art form. His style and technique vary considerably among his works, as if “borrowing” and experimenting, but not really sticking to any one style.
Caillebotte’s originality laid in his attempt to combine the careful drawing, modeling and exact tonal values encouraged by the Académie with vivid colors, bold perspectives, keen sense of natural light and modern subject matter of the Impressionist movement. Caillebotte’s interest in the male nude, set in a modern context, has been linked to his presumed homosexuality. Instead of the heroes of antiquity, here are the heroes of modern life — sinewy and strong — in stooped poses that would appear demeaning if they did not convey a sense of masculine strength and honest labor.
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)
Underappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism.Gauguin was inspired and motivated by the raw power and simplicity of the so-called Primitive art of those foreign cultures.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)
Van Gogh’s highly expressive paintings, and spontaneous vivid colours, broad oil brushstrokes, emotive subject matter and early death have led to his position in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius.
Georges Seurat (1859–1891, 31)
He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism. His artistic personality was compounded of qualities which are usually supposed to be opposed and incompatible: on the one hand, his extreme and delicate sensibility; on the other, a passion for logical abstraction and an almost mathematical precision of mind.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte in Art Institute of Chicago is his most famous work.
Paul Signac (1863–1935)
Worked with Georges Seuratm helped develop the Pointillist style.
Other famous artists includes Les Nabis.
Some argued that there is a mix of claustrophobia and confusion with a hierachies of value (The gallery of the Impressionism was extremely small and has lowest ceilings). And some believed the curator’s choices in the main galleries is too arbitrary that it should offer different points of view.
Other critics also challanged the way of showing: by presenting them simply as variations of style, it suppressed any meanings these works might possess — encouraging it to become a political space. According to Patricia Mainardi in the Postmodern History at the Musee d’Orsay, she described the museum as
A reading of history that reinforces the authority of the statem, even in aesthetics.
However, with the redone in 2009, the museum has improved greatly. As a bridge of the Louvre and Centre Pompidou, the Orsay Museum hosted incrediable collections of 19th century art, as I have showed above. It also become a part of the history itself.
Also, it is interesting to see how before the Orsay museum opened, all the paintings were originated from other museums. But currently all the french museums are independent of each other, hence curators are debating intensely to which museum does the painting belongs to.
