Virtual art tour (inspired by The Art Issue of The New York Review of Books): Félix Fénéon

Paul Signac: Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890, 1890. Museum of Modern Art / Paige Knight / © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. From: The New York Review of Books, 14 May 2020.

Georges-Pierre Seurat: Model in Profile, 1886. Musée d’Orsay, Paris / RMN-Grand Palais / Adrien Didierjean. From: The New York Review of Books, 14 May 2020.

The New York Review of Books: The Art Issue, 14 May 2020.
Corona lockdown art museum visits.

For the first time in the 125-year old history of the cinema, movie theatres are closed worldwide. The same with museums and galleries. In an innovative way, The New York Review of Books has dedicated an issue for art exhibitions that can be visited online. It's not the same thing but better than nothing! I started two weeks ago with my first one, Gerhard Richter: Painting After All (Met Breuer, New York). The visual quality of the museums' digital tours is high. They are worth visiting on a good television screen.

Following the NYRB Art Issue page by page, my next exhibition is Félix Fénéon, introduced by an essay by Jed Perl: A Rage for Clarity.

Virtual visit:
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City. Félix Fénéon. The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde—From Signac to Matisse and Beyond.

MoMA introduction: "Who was Félix Fénéon? The first exhibition dedicated to this extraordinarily influential but little-known figure explores how he shaped the development of modernism. A French art critic, editor, publisher, dealer, and collector, Fénéon (1861–1944) championed the careers of young, avant-garde artists from Georges-Pierre Seurat and Paul Signac to Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse, among many others. He was also a pioneering collector of art from Africa and Oceania. A fervent anarchist during a period of gaping economic and social disparities, Fénéon believed in the potential of avant-garde art to promote a more harmonious, egalitarian world."

"This exhibition is currently being presented here as part of our Virtual Views series, as we “museum from home.” Explore Fénéon’s life and the art that inspired him through highlights from MoMA curator Starr Figura, along with art, audio, and video features below." (MoMA introduction)

AA: Félix Fénéon's life story, as told by Jed Perl, is mind-boggling, but for me this tour is interesting as an excursion in pure colourism in art, and in this, Fénéon had soul-mates in Finland such as Sigurd Frosterus, who also loved Signac and Seurat, among others. Like Fénéon, Frosterus was interested in modernism as a transformation of the world. The interest in pure art was thus not a case of "art for art's sake". It may seem paradoxical that, to quote Perl, "what was essential to the new style was the emphasis on stability and timelessness". Fénéon saw that "for Seurat and his cohort, who were interested in new scientific ideas about color perception, 'objective reality is simply a theme for the creation of a higher, sublimated reality, suffused with their own personality.'" The post-impressionists were after "A time outside of time". But this higher reality was not an end in itself.


MOMA
How To See: Home Movies
https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/273

MOMA
How To See: The First Movies
https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/259