Pathways to Modernity

There is a new temporary exhibition going on at the moment at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, called 'Impressionism - Pathways to Modernity'. I have already delivered quite a few tours in this international exhibition, and I have really enjoyed every single one. It's a beautifully curated exhibition, which explores the many ways Impressionism came to be in the second half on the 19th century.

This exhibition shows around 150 artworks from about 40 different artists. Most of the loans comes from the collections of Musée d'Orsay, many, many masterpieces. No other exhibition abroad has involved this many paintings from its collection.
It starts with a dialogue between a Monet and a Manet:

The exhibition is unique in the way that it is multidisciplinary. It is a mix of paintings, etchings, photographs, movies, drawings - and even fashion.

One of my favourites, a Renoir - The English Pear Tree, 1873.

This painting by Claude Monet, The Magpie, is my absolute favourite one of this exhibition. I guess this snowscape reminds me of home somehow, that muffled, quiet and still feeling after a heavy snowfall. And that light..! Love!

For the next part of the exhibition, the scenography is absolutely spot on. I think they've illustrated this part of the story really well. The red wall shows how the Salon could have looked like at the time, and just next to that the white wall shows how the first impressionist exhibition would have looked like in 1874. The info panel on the wall says "The SHOCK", ha ha!

Masterpieces, masterpieces, here the Floor Scrapers by Caillebotte.

There are a lot of paintings by Monet in the exhibition. This Gare St Lazare has already been showed once here at Louvre Abu Dhabi, when the museum opened back in 2017.

I like the story about this Degas, The Absinthe, although I can not really present it to all types of audiences, for obvious reasons.

Another Monet, called The Ice Floats. It has fantastic reflections, and can you see the poplars? At a quick glance, it almost looks like a skyline!

This one is a premiere - this is the latest acquisition by the Louvre Abu Dhabi! This 1878 Renoir, was hidden away in a private collection for most of the 20th century, but now it will be a part of the permanent collections here in Abu Dhabi!

The second to last part of the exhibition talks about the many reasons that Impressionism came to an end; age, politics, geographical separation and maybe above all artistic differences. Here there started to be a divergence in the artistic claims of the different artists, for example Cézanne began to pursue other paths and very much became the father of Modernism as we known it.

A late Monet, from the period when he was suffering the most from his cataract, hence the explosion of brushstrokes and colours. This is not an abstraction, it is a Weeping Willow, painted in a mix between open-air and studio practice.

Finally some photos from the tour I gave to the SwedishLadies group today. I always enjoy giving tours in Swedish, as it's not that often.

The last part of the exhibition is a contemporary piece by a French artists called Ange Leccia. It's a video installation which is a tribute to the Water Lilies paintings by Claude Monet. It's a powerful and immersive experience, quite different to the rest of the exhibition. A rather lovely ending to the tour.