Georges Seurat
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 (1884–86)
Art Institute of Chicago
Claude Monet
Women in the Garden (1866)
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity in Chicago After Showing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Breaking Records at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the exhibition ‘Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity’ lands at the Art Institute of Chicago.
June 26, 2013 – September 22, 2013
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Source: Art Institute of Chicago
Featuring over 75 major figure paintings by the Impressionist painters and their contemporaries in tandem withthe couture that inspired them, “Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity” demonstrates how, inthe hands of the Impressionists, the movement of a perfectly executed dress, the seasonalchange in styles, and the increasing availability of fashionable clothing all became instruments in definingmodernity. When this exhibition was presented in New York, New York Times critic Roberta Smith called it a“thrilling, erudite show” with “visual fireworks, historical clarity, and pitch-perfect contextualizing.” Vogueproclaimed the show “breathtaking” for its portrayal of “art’s passionate love affair with fashion in theboulevards and salons of late 19th-century France.”
“Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity” takes visitors deep into Paris in the second half of the 19th century. The French city was then the bustling center of a rapidly changing Europe and home to scores of artists seeking to capture the pulseand nuances of modern life. The Impressionist artists found fashion to be the perfect vehicle for definingand expressing modernity. The daring shapes and cuts of dresses and suits, rapidly changing styles, andthe birth of department stores and fashion magazines all embodied a modern spirit that was lived andcaptured by artists drawn to the dynamic city. The first exhibition to draw this connection betweenfashion and painting during this period, “Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity” charts the economic,commercial, social, and artistic changes that upended the existing order and replaced it with somethingmore closely resembling life today.
The exhibition features iconic paintings by Impressionist artists such as Monet, Renoir and Pissarro; as well as work by notable contemporaries James Tissot, Alfred Stevens, Carolus-Duran, and Jean Béraud. Many of thepaintings, on loan from museums around the world, are rarely seen outside of Europe. Conversely,beloved works in the Art Institute’s of Chicago’s permanent collection, most notably Gustave Caillebotte’s”Paris Street; Rainy Day” (1877), returns home to Chicago, joining Georges Seurat’s monumental “ASunday on La Grande Jatte—1884” (1884–86), which was not displayed as part of the exhibition in Parisor New York.
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