Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating online lecture from ARTscapades introducing an exhibition recreating the First Impressionist exhibition. Anne Robbins, one of the curators of the exhibition at the Musee D’Orsay, set out the aims of the show and guided us through the display and its successful add-ons including a VR experience and the loan of other Impressionist paintings to other galleries in France. She began by looking at what was happening in Paris at the time from the building works by Haussman to the aftereffects of the Commune. She then moved on to what pictures were actually in the show and how they were hung. She spent some time discussing how the show was a reaction to the annual show at the Salon and yet how much the two shows had in common with 12 artists showing in both of them before looking at how it established a new school of art and is often seem as the starting point of the Avant Garde. It made me wish I had made the effort to go to Paris for this show. 

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition focusing on Degas’s “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando”. The co-curators Anne Robbins from the Muse D’Orsay and Chiara Di Stephano from National Gallery took us through the themes of the show and introduced us to new material which had been found. They looked at the life of Miss La La (Anna Albertine Olga Brown) using newly discovered photographs of her then moved on to discuss the circus itself and how it became an inspiration for artists. They then took us through the studies for the painting and talked about how he developed the image. These included sketches made at the circus as well as drawings of Miss La La in his studio. Some time was spent on the time Degas spent with family in New Orleans and the influence of seeing black people there and the effect of figures silhouetted against the bright light had on his art. Finally they outlined the ownership of the work until it came into the Nation...