The Musée d'Orsay Tour: Part 3 - Sordid Tales of Post-Impressionism's Wild Men

[Music] i'm jessica the museum guide and welcome back to my channel today i'm telling part three of three of the story of impressionism focusing on the post-impressionists artists like van gogh gogan cezanne and talu subtract please remember to like and subscribe to my channel and let me know if you have any questions about impressionism or museums in paris in the comment section below now remember this is part three of my series on impressionism here at this wonderful museum if you haven't seen parts one and two which are linked in the description below i highly recommend that you watch them first part one explains the origins of impressionism and the works and artists who led to this massive paradigm shift in art and part two introduces you to the most pivotal figures in impressionism such as dega and many more today in part three we're exploring the world of post-impressionism these painters were often mentored by the impressionists such as pissarro and degas but they wanted to expand upon the style while impressionism was all about painting what you could actually see without additional elements the post-impressionists wanted to imbue their works with more emotion and subjectivity with the post-impressionists sometimes there was more to the truth of a subject than meets the eye so let's start with paul cezanne growing up i associated still life painting with boring subjects of plain old fruit and this painting might have bored me however as i get older i now know just how hard it is to create a successful still life and that's something cezanne has done here painted between 1888 and 1890 kitchen table still life with basket is an intricate composition every detail is carefully calculated look at the way that the pots fruits a basket and cloth are all carefully assembled on the kitchen table no detail has been spared however the table is tilted and some of the pots look unstable on the surface look at the gray pot and the basket they have no more surface left on the table top the table the cupboard and the chair all line up diagonally on the left but they also have a distorted sense of perspective while some accuse cezanne of a skewed perspective he is actually demonstrating that his main concern was geometric form and color more than representing reality in any sort of accurate way for instance the gray pot is presented from several viewpoints from above and the front he wants us to see the truth of the object even if it isn't realistic that's why he's considered a post-impressionist painter he isn't tied to realism cezanne wanted to present a more profound truth than could be presented in painting but not in reality he went on to paint more than 200 still lifes during the later stages of his career and told a friend quote the fruits love having their portraits done they exhale their message with their scent they reach you with all their smells and tell you about the fields they've left the rain that made them grow the dawns they watched he wanted to dazzle us with the simplicity yet perfection of everyday objects he also said i shall astonish paris with an apple this painting is considered part of cezanne's mature period but he had been palling around with the impressionists since their first exhibition in 1874. pizarro pushed hard for cezanne's inclusion even though many despised him and called him quote a mason who paints with a trowel in fact cezanne was the reason that monet declined to participate however cezanne would actually sell one of the only paintings at that fateful first exhibition yet the critics initially hated his work i know it's hard to tell from a still life of fruit and pots but his work was extremely controversial especially landscape in over and of course a modern olympia a modern olympia remixes many's 1863 painting olympia now remember that painting was already controversial on its own but cezanne made it even more vulgar i wouldn't put it past him in addition to the sex worker and the servant he also includes the male client which is thought to be his own self-portrait quite spicy as you can see it's done in a completely different style but by the time he begins painting fruit in the late 1880s he was a perfectionist back in the 1870s he was loose vulgar and messy and by all accounts so was his personality now here's a painting that will make most people smile it's called lesek or the circus and it's by georges serra in fact it's his final painting done in a neo-impressionist style in 1890 however it's not completed and it remained unfinished when he died in 1891. this was his third work about the circus showing us a female performer standing atop a horse at the circus fernando sarat loved to attend so did many other artists of the day the same circus was painted by renoir dega and toulouse-lautrec like so many other impressionists and post-impressionists sarat was inspired by japanese prince and he was specifically inspired by charles henry's theories on the emotional and symbolic meaning of contemporary colors this work is an example of divisionism as is another of his most famous paintings bathers adeniere where small dots of bright color create shapes and images he makes use of a technique called pointillism hear tiny dots some people credit this as an early inspiration for cubism but remember it is incomplete the white ground and grid of blue lines are still visible so who knows what other finishing touches he may have added it was later displayed at the 1891 days independent and surat died of diphtheria just a few days later after his death the painting was then returned to his mother eventually making its way here to the musee d'orsay on my way to see van gogh and goga i'm just walking through the beautiful restaurant here at the musee d'orsay if you'd like to eat a meal here it's a good idea to make a reservation as you can see this long queue of people now before i continue let me just say a little bit about my pronunciation of this artist's name see depending on where you're from people pronounce it a little bit differently if you're from the uk people say van gogh i think in his native dutch it's more like but i'm originally canadian as you might be able to tell and so i say van gogh and for consistency i'm just going to keep it that way van gogh is one of the most famous painters of the 19th century and this piece is commonly known as starry night over the rome at the time van gogh was renting the yellow house on the place la martine and he became obsessed with the night sky and the light in the area let's just start by saying that van gogh though inspired by the impressionists and their use of light and their loose brushstrokes is often considered a post-impressionist painter of course van gogh is now one of the most famous painters in the world but that was not the case when he was alive in fact he himself was not even a painter until the age of 30 and then his career in this field was incredibly short he died at age 37. what's incredible about van gogh's life is that until he turned to painting he failed at almost everything else he tried he failed at teaching preaching as an art salesman and of course he failed at love with a number of tragic love affairs van gogh moved to arle in the south of france in 1888 and he was incredibly inspired by the vivid colors of the countryside he hoped to start an artist's commune but his brother theo an art dealer could only convince paul gogan to come and stay with vincent the two men then had an intense friendship and lived together for 63 days of course this is also the time period when van gogh's mental health suffered which i'll explain more about in a few moments now vincent's brother theo was an art dealer and his biggest supporter and he arranged for this painting to be shown at the society des artiste in de pondel in 1889 along with van gogh's irises he was well received at the exhibition but of course he did not become famous or highly regarded until after his death like monet van gogh was obsessed with color and the new artificial lighting was fascinating to him in this painting he captures the reflections of the town's gas lighting as it hits the dark knight water of the rhone river you can also see two lovers strolling by the banks of the river in the foreground of the painting however even as he created wonderful works like this one his mental health was deteriorating this was where the fateful event occurred when van gogh cut off his own ear on december 23 1888 the events are fuzzy but here is what we think might have happened goga and van gogh had a massive fight which may have been about a model they both used who liked goga venga was jealous during the course of the argument van gogh severed much of his left ear and took the bloody mess to a woman called rachel at a local brothel he then returned home and passed out the next day the authorities were called and they thought van gogh was dead they arrested gauguin who was soon released when they realized what had happened gogan left arl in disgust and the two men never saw each other again i mean it really is a sordid tale teo was beside himself as he would be and he helped vincent check into a local hospital however vincent soon left aryl and spent one year in a mental hospital in san rami de provence so here is our second piece by the famous dutch post impressionist this is a self portrait which he painted in oil on canvas in 1889. this could be van gogh's final self-portrait of the 32 he produced over a 10-year period we've seen a lot of artist models today but van gogh usually lacked the money to pay for them so he often used himself most art historians think he painted this work just before he left the mental asylum at santorami de provence and brought it with him to ober serwaz near paris at this time he was seeing dr paul gashay who described the painting as absolutely fanatical you can compare this one which is quite somber and subdued to the works he created in arl which are exuberant and sunny you can also see the difference here between the other self-portraits he painted van gogh himself could certainly see the difference he sent the picture to teo and wrote you will need to study the picture for a time i hope you will notice that my facial expressions have become much calmer although my eyes have the same insecure look as before or so it appears to me art historians point to the almost trembling quality of the painting to show us van gogh's state of mind less than five months later he is believed to have taken his own life by shooting himself in the chest while painting wheat fields however there is another theory that two boys shot him by accident and he pretended to have shot himself so they would not get in trouble regardless he died two days later and was buried in over sur was this is one of the busiest rooms in the musee d'orsay you can see loads of people pressing in trying to get their photos and yes even their selfies with this one of the most famous painters of the 19th century and maybe even of all time let me preface this section on paul guga by saying that goga was not a good dude in fact he was a pretty bad dude in his own words he was a quote infidel a monster a savage a wolf in the woods without a collar he fled europe for a quote more exotic and primitive life where he could be free of money and also free of his wife and children when he arrived in tahiti when he was 43 gogan preyed on young polynesian girls and had sexual relationship with girls as young as 12 and 13. he likely died of syphilis 11 years later but not before spreading it to many women and girls including his so-called quote native wife a child of 13 called taha amana years later when gogan returned to this area tahamana refused to see him again and there is speculation that their relationship was non-consensual goga never divorced his wife mehta and he sent her his paintings from polynesia so he could arrange sales and exhibitions this painting titled ararea was displayed at his 1893 exhibition the painting was not received well by critics and the red dog was heavily mocked however it was one of gogan's favorite paintings and he bought it back in 1895 before he left gogal for good so peter now let's leave goga for good i mean can you tell i'm not a fan now let's make our way to the final room of our tour we are going to be talking about a quintessentially parisian painter henri de talus la trek he was known for his debauched lifestyle and storied personal life almost as much as he is known for his art he painted nightlife calling his scenes quote nocturnal paradises he was also known to drink a mix of 50 cognac and 50 absent that he called the earthquake i'm good i don't want to try that he even hollowed out his walking stick so he'd have a steady supply toulouse low check and needed to use a walking stick because he had a congenital defect in his legs which never grew beyond those of a child his parents wealthy aristocrats were first cousins which could explain his disability though he romanticized the life of the impoverished artist he also sold many of his pieces as advertisements and posters though this made him a bit of a sellout he was able to earn a good living and enjoy the best things in life for toulouse-lautrec that was going out to the mulan rouge and other establishments in bohemian malmart by the way if his name sounds familiar to you it may be because he was portrayed by john leguizamo in baslerman's 2001 film moulin rouge in this painting the star of the show is infamous dancer known for her frenetic can can louise weber or la golu the glutton because of her love of the drink she's with her partner no bones valentine even in a crowd scene like this one everyone is highly individualized and look we can even see toulouse-lautrec himself and the work of honoree de toulouse la trek is a perfect place for us to end our series on the musee d'orsay well that's it this is the end of our series on the musee d'orsay and impressionism i've really enjoyed walking through these paintings and this history with you and i've learned a lot i can't wait to take you through more museums in europe let me know which ones in the comments you're most interested in seeing and i'll see you the next time i'm in the museum you

Channel: The Museum Guide

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Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2022