Mirror Mirror. What is more beautiful the wall or the work? The colors of the walls of the museums are essential, they must have the correct texture, the right tonality, the perfect lighting, the appropriate setting.
The painting takes the look, the admiration and the tear. "I spent a lot of time looking for the tonality of the walls of the staircase," said the late Ger Luijten, historic director of the Fondation Custodia in Paris, one proud day.
"The walls had to be mauve velvet curtains," they explained at the Rijksmuseum to shelter and clothe the unforgettable exhibition of Johannes Vermeer that, surely, will never be exhibited again with so many works by the Delft master together.
The wall is a silent witness that can shine in a museum, but not cast a shadow. The focus is for the work. The posters have to be explanatory but brief. If they can be grouped "so they don't bother", much better. And there are hardly any exceptions to the rule, but when there are earthquakes, tsunami, cyclone, hurricane, mirage and sparkles in the eyes.
Everything trembles in Melbourne, everything explodes in the National Gallery of Victoria where the walls and paintings star in a paso doble, a tête-à-tête, a crush, a coexistence never seen before. The experiment is risky, but admirable.
One hundred works by one of the great masters of Post-Impressionism and the Les Nabis group, Pierre Bonnard, hang in the NGV accompanied by the patterns and drawings of the influential architect and designer India Mahdavi, who has covered the walls of the works with her designs.
The result, in addition to being revolutionary, is overflowing due to the intoxication of colors and the designed space, due to the doubt as to whether so much impact adds or subtracts. The show is wild and full of surprises.
It is organized by the NGV with the collaboration of the Musée d'Orsay and consists of works from the late 19th century and early 20th century, canvases, drawings, engravings, photos and decorative objects by Bonnard (1867-1947) together with some of the initial films. by the Lumière brothers as well as paintings by Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton and Édouard Vuillard, the artist's generation companions.
“He is a great painter for the present and definitely for the future as well,” Matisse declared of the Fontenay-aux-Roses painter's bright, interior scenes. And also of his landscapes that court a world where patches of color are gaining ground over shapes.
Mahdavi and Bonnard's landscapes speak to each other, sing to each other, harmonize, sometimes collide. It is the lack of habit. The lack of coexistence. It's a matter of getting to know each other.
The universal vision of space and time, his luminous and nuanced palette, his vibrant touch that allows us to see invisible worlds make him a key figure in French painting of the late 19th century and early 20th century”, analyzes Isabelle Cahn, head of emeritus senior of Orsay Painting and curator of the Australian exhibition.
“The power of his talent is expressed through the intimacy of the characters, Bonnard is a genius who crosses the ages,” adds Cahn.
'Pierre Bonnard and I share the same passion for colour, the way he invites us into his home and the intimacy he sublimates with his particular sense of colour', points out the architect Mahdavi.
For the exhibition, we immersed ourselves in his paintings, patterns and colors to recreate the backgrounds of his paintings, offering an immersive experience so that the visitor feels not in a museum but in the house where the painting hangs”, he adds.
The exhibition begins by showing the Parisian landscapes, what the artist called the "Theater of everyday life", continues with interior landscapes and a world inspired by his partner, Marthe Bonnard. It is curious to see the artist's paintings and not remember David Hockney.
The technique is different (Hockney ditched the brush for the iPad a while ago), but the palette, a century apart, is related. Bonnard is clearly influenced by Monet's Norman landscapes and, as it happens, Hockney has lived in Normandy for years, because spring is longer than in his native Yorkshire.
Later, the French artist settled in the south of France, where the canvases acquire more light or, as experts from the Musée Orsay and the National Gallery of Victoria say, “more iridescence”. A light that the curators have been collecting not only from France, but from various museums around the world.
