Terpsichore in Paint
Winter, Midnight - 1894, by Childe Hassam 
Drifting with the Tide, Venice - 1884, by Ralph Wormeley Curtis 
Near the Beach, Shinnecock - 1895, by William Merritt Chase 
On the Sands - 1915, by Edward Potthast 
A Windy Day - 1910, by Alice Schille
By Tom Wachunas
“For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to
paint the subject, but to realize sensations.”
- Paul Cezanne
“The pleasure we derive from the representation of the
present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its
essential quality of being the present.” - Charles Baudelaire
Terp·sich·o·re | tərp-ˈsi-kə-(ˌ)rē / - the Greek
Muse of dancing
EXHIBIT: Dancing in the LIGHT: Masterworks from The Age
Of American Impressionism / at the CANTON MUSEUM of ART (CMA), 1001 Market
Avenue N., Canton, Ohio / Through March 7, 2021 / 330-453-7666 /Advance
Timed Ticket Reservations Required – Visit www.cantonart.org/reservetickets
Hours and Admission link:
https://www.cantonart.org/contact/hoursandadmission/hours
Click on these links for more comprehensive background and
commentary (including videos):
https://www.cantonart.org/exhibits/dancing-light-masterworks-age-american-impressionism
Canton Museum of Art MAGAZINE:
https://www.cantonart.org/sites/default/files/CMA%20Winter%20Magazine%202020%20low%20res.pdf
This post is very
late in arriving, and for that I can only offer my sincerest apologies. Still,
it’s not too late - the exhibit’s final day is March 7. If you haven’t
seen it yet, I highly encourage you to get interactive and click on the
hyperlinks above before your visit.
This important – and in a word, magnificent –
exhibit was guest-curated by James M. Keny, of Keny Galleries in Columbus. It’s
a stunning selection of 51 American Impressionist works, gathered from museum
collections in Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown; from museums
in Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, as well as from private collections.
The exhibit is an enthralling remembrance of one
seminal passage into Modernist painting, which first emerged in a time when
growing numbers of European painters were breaking free of the rigid academic standards
that had been imposed on their medium for centuries.
It’s interesting to
note that the name, Impressionist, was originally a derisive reference
to an 1874 Paris exhibit of paintings by 30 artists, including Claude Monet. Among
his works in the show was his 1872 painting titled Impression: Sunrise, and
one of many works skewered by French art critic Louis Leroy. His sardonic review
mercilessly ridiculed this new style as too raw, too unfinished, too unrefined.
Here’s a link, and if you read it, I think you’ll agree that Leroy’s scathing
assessment was, while oddly funny, a monumental failure of perception:
Undaunted, the
style became a movement that would further impact and inspire notably eminent painters
in America. Impressionism was a metamorphosis - a deeper probing and expansion
of Romanticism’s spontaneity, the earthy physicality of Courbet’s Realism, the
gestural fluidity of Manet. Making a painting no longer had to be a matter of
duplicating or imitating the exactitude of observed nature; no longer just a varnished
window framing a static illusion for the gaze of spectators standing still.
Impressionist paintings
offer an immersive sensory experience invested with a lyrical materiality all their
own. You could call it a kinetic expressivity, or a visceral choreography, performed
by the quick prancing of staccato brush strokes, or the broader strides of a
palette knife. There’s a palpable cadence in all that gestural, painterly
motion. The rhythmic placement of vibrant color harmonies transforms the tactile
reality of paint into an alluring ephemerality that seems to pulse, even dance,
in shimmering, transient light.
So, Impressionism. An art “movement” indeed. Savor the dance.
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