Set to open Friday, May 24, 2019 at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, “Monet and the Modern City” explores the enduring theme of industry in art through the lens of Claude Monet and his contemporaries.
Remaining on view through September 2, 2019 in Gallery One, viewers will be able to see the scientific analysis of the canvases by art conservators through in-gallery digital interactives. Findings include the identification of which pigments Monet used and the process by which he rendered his compositions.
Impressionists are often remembered for their bright landscapes and scenes of everyday life. Monet and others were equally fascinated by the modern industrial landscapes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a focus on Paris and London. Artists such as Camille Pissarro and James Abbott McNeill Whistler frequently captured the atmosphere of the urban environment, turning the billowing smoke of industry into hazy, dreamlike clouds that evoke the power and promise of modernization.
Organized by Akemi May, assistant curator of fine arts at the Carnegie, this show has works from “Monet’s Waterloo Bridge: Vision and Process,” an exhibition by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester and on loan from Worcester Art Museum, also includes “Waterloo Bridge, London” (1903) from CMOA’s collection.
The show also includes works by the Norwegian Impressionist Fritz Thaulow, French printmaker Jean-Emile Laboureur, who depicted the city’s industrial aesthetic in his “Ten Etchings of Pittsburgh” and Americans Aaron Gorson and Joseph Pennell, among others. These works place the city’s landscape into conversation with depictions of Paris and London, and present other examples of artists working in a serial mode.
For more information, see: www.cmoa.org.