As an art historian, I always had some favorites when it came to artistic movements. The 18th and 19th century are for sure the periods I prefer, and I tend to stick to really 'classical' artists. However I tried since a year now to broaden a little bit my horizons and to look at the 20th century, a period that I never really enjoyed studying at uni for no rational reason. Yet this year for my master degree I needed to find a case study for one of my essay, and I turned myself to the Chtchoukine exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Chtchoukine was a rich Russian art collector, proud owner of 278 master pieces from French based artists of the start of the 20th century, and while going through his collection I stumbled upon several art works that caught my eye, yet this painting by Manguin got all of my attention.
Fauvism has never been an artistic movement I've liked, but when I saw this art piece I didn't think of the art history classification of genres, and just took the time to look at it. I don't know what I enjoyed more about it, the pastel colors, the delicacy of these scenes depicted in such loud tones. Whatever it was, I couldn't help but admit that there was a beauty in this painting that I never knew how to see in art from the Contemporary period. The 20th century has always been kind of enigma for me art wise, and I was bit annoyed by all of those innovations, going against my taste for classical landscapes by Constable or portraits by Boldini. I always have been bothered by the 20th century in plastic arts, yet, since I've discovered this Chagall painting I've really wanted to open myself to this patchwork kind of era. However with Manguin 'Woman sat by the Cavalière Gulf' I didn't have to make any effort. I juste loved it at first glance. In a sense I cannot really decide to love art from this period. Because to fall in love with an art work has nothing to do with rationality, feelings just cannot be controlled when you face a master piece.
xo
Amy
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