19th-century artists on display at latest exhibit

  J. Paul Getty Museum Pierre Bonnard’s "Le Moulin Rouge"
is one of the many pieces on display at the Getty’s exhibit "To
Create a Living Art: 19th-Century Drawings."

By Mary Williams
Daily Bruin Staff

Long before there was Studio 54, there was Moulin Rouge.

With fame that has endured over a century, the Parisian music
hall is remembered today as a result of the art that was created as
an advertisement for it by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Examples of drawings by Toulouse-Lautrec and other famous
artists of the 19th century are featured in “To Create a
Living Art: 19th-Century Drawing,” an exhibit on display at
the Getty Museum through July 15.

Strangely enough, the only Moulin Rouge advertisement piece in
the exhibit is not by Toulouse-Lautrec, but Pierre Bonnard.

The piece, appropriately called “Le Moulin Rouge,”
is a pastel and charcoal sketch of a dancer kicking her leg high in
the air. It was created as a proposal for poster advertisements for
the club, and the commission was later given to
Toulouse-Lautrec.

With its coloration dominated by almost garish shades of red,
purple and yellow, this drawing, like many of rival artist
Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings, doesn’t shy away from
surrounding its figure with harsh, artificial nightclub
lighting.

Next to this drawing is one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s own, a
new acquisition by the museum titled “At the Circus: Entering
Single File.” This picture depicts an unconventional view of
the circus by showing a horse and girl walking away from the viewer
and toward the circus ring.

By examining other drawings the viewer can see there is no lack
of famous artists included in the exhibit, which focuses on the
clash between respect of old artistic traditions and new methods,
subjects and perspectives. One watercolor, “Bleachery at
Scheveningen” by Vincent Van Gogh, exemplifies this
contrast.

As a nod to traditional Dutch landscapes, Van Gogh filled almost
half of his composition with the sky and placed a town on the
horizon. Breaking away from the Dutch landscape tradition, the
foreground is filled with lower-class women working at a
bleachery.

This push and pull between old styles and new subjects,
innovations and concerns is also seen in the stunningly beautiful
painting, “Sir Guyon with the Palmer Attending, from
“˜The Faerie Queene'” by Samuel Palmer.

The scene depicted is a landscape featuring a literary scene in
the foreground and the poem from which the scene was taken. The
landscape and the poem, first published in 1590, are two factors
that represent the traditional side of the work. Palmer uses
watercolor, however, which was only just finding a place in
finished art at the time.

His use of watercolor is incredible and he achieves effects
similar to those of oil paintings. From the light, streaky sky and
reflections in the water to the deep shadows under the trees, the
range of color and depth that Palmer achieves shows his prowess
with the medium. The contrast between new and old in these two
works, and many others, make “To Create a Living Art:
19th-Century Drawing” an intriguing exhibit filled with a
variety of styles and subjects.

Works like “Study of a Female Nude” in black and
white chalk by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon show that the artists had
not given up the traditional practice of drawing the human figure,
no matter how far they removed themselves from many artistic
traditions. At the other end of the spectrum, “Poplars”
by Georges Seurat is a drawing in crayon that, with streaks of
light and dark, gives the impression, but not the image, of a field
of poplars.

The best aspect of this exhibit is its ability to tie in works
in a variety of styles from a variety of artists to illustrate the
struggle between the traditional and the innovative in 19th-century
art. Seemingly unrelated works are gathered into a cohesive
collection, and are successful in portraying the art world at the
time that they were created.

Although the exhibit is fairly small, fitting into one mid-sized
room, it is worth the time to see it. After all, a look around the
room might tell the visitor why those Moulin Rouge posters are so
famous.

ART: “To Create a Living Art:
19th-Century Art” is on display at the Getty Museum through
July 15. Admission is free and parking is $5. Reservations for
parking are required for weekdays, except for college students with
a school ID. Call (310) 440-7300 or visit www.getty.edu for information.