Volume 42, Number 17 · November 2, 1995
Impressionists on Stage
By Robert L. Herbert
Landscapes of France: Impressionism and its Rivals 1995
an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, May 18 to August 28,
Impressions of France: Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and their Rivals October 4, 1995 to January 14, 1996.
the same exhibition, retitled, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,, Catalog of the exhibitions by John House, with contributions from Ann Dumas, by Jane Mayo Roos, by James F. McMillan
Hayward Gallery/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/South Bank Centre, 304 pp., $29.95
Claude Monet 1840–1926 26, 1995
an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, July 22 to November, Catalog of the exhibition by Charles F. Stuckey, with the assistance of Sophia Shaw
Art Institute of Chicago/Thames and Hudson, 282 pp., $50.00; $29.95 (paper)
Monet to Matisse: Landscape Painting in France 1874–1914 Edinburgh
an exhibition held in 1994 at the National Gallery of Scotland,, Catalog of the exhibition by Richard Thomson, with an essay by Michael Clarke
National Gallery of Scotland, 199 pp., £35.00; £15.95 (paper)
Floating on the sea of memory is an anecdote about a young artist—I think it was Géricault—whose teacher told him that his paintings resembled nature the way a violin case resembles a violin. So, too, an exhibition of paintings and its catalog are related in much the same way as a violin case and a violin. To the extent that a catalog molds an exhibition, it is like a violin case, and because viewing an exhibition is a temporal and mostly visual experience, it can be likened to a musical performance, temporal and mostly auditory. There is some resemblance in the shapes of exhibition and catalog, but one cannot substitute for the other. Sometimes the case is more elaborate than the instrument.
Review, 4431 words
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