Salon Fantastique
By Tom Wachunas
SALON: Official exhibition of art sponsored
by the French government. It originated in 1667 when Louis XIV sponsored an
exhibit of the works of the members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de
Sculpture, and the salon derives its name from the fact that the exhibition was
hung in the Salon d’Apollon of the Louvre Palace in Paris. After 1737 the Salon
became an annual rather than a sporadic event, and in 1748 the jury system of
selection was introduced. During the French Revolution the Salon was opened for
the first time to all French artists, although the academicians continued to
control most of the exhibitions held in the 19th century. With the formation in
1881 of the Société des Artistes Français to take over the responsibility of
holding the Salon, and with the growing importance of independent exhibitions
of the works of avant-garde artists, the Salon gradually lost its influence and
prestige. - from Encyclopædia
Britannica
EXHIBIT: Salon Style: Works from the Permanent
Collection Vault, at the Canton Museum of Art, 1001 Market Avenue North,
Canton, Ohio / THROUGH OCTOBER 29, 2017 www.cantonart.org
DOWNLOAD HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES VIA THIS LINK
Talk about
ambitious, hard work. A few months ago, Canton Museum of Art (CMA) Chief
Curator & Registrar, Lynnda Arrasmith, along with CMA Assistant Registrar,
Kaleigh Pisani-Paige, took on the daunting (some might say absurd) task of
hanging, salon-style, well over 200 works from the museum’s permanent
collection. The pieces are presented in the museum’s large upper gallery,
placed very close together in a display method made famous by the French Salon
exhibits of the 18th and 19th centuries (illustrated
above in a 1785 etching by Pietro Antonio Martini).
These days the method is
considered inappropriate to optimal viewing of artworks mounted on a wall, and
otherwise passé. We’ve come to appreciate sufficient breathing room between our
pictures. Still, and interestingly enough, the gallery feels electrified by a
giddy what-was-old-is-new-again energy, as if the cloistered aesthetic spirits
of the past have come out of hiding to strut their stuff in a wild dance.
So what prompted the making of this wondrous
anachronism? You could call it a necessary labor of love. As the CMA press
release tells us,“…This wasn’t entirely
an aesthetic choice – the skylights in the collection vault are being removed,
so the paintings needed to be temporarily removed. Rather than store the
paintings in the gallery and close it off to the public, the CMA curatorial
staff decided to hang the works – all of them – for the public's enjoyment.
This exhibition doesn’t include every piece in the collection, but it provides
a good foundation of the CMA collection as a whole.”
Good foundation indeed. This
unprecedented exhibit is certainly a breathtaking overview of the museum’s
regionally and nationally acclaimed focus on American watercolors and works on
paper from the 19th century forward, along with contemporary ceramics from the
1950s forward.
But beyond that
remarkable enough distinction, what makes the exhibit – and the CMA collection
as a whole – additionally impressive is the significant and generous variety of
other iconographic genres, including nonobjective abstract works. They provide
an altogether exhilarating depth to this mad spectacle of beautiful plenitude.
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