If we may assume that Picasso saw himself in his Boy Leading a Horse – a solitary figure with no possessions, moving across an arid plane under the blind sky, following a road only known to him, ruling a beautiful beast – it probably won’t be a far stretch to imagine that William S. Paley, who bought the painting on the spot when it was offered to him in a skiing hotel lobby in Switzerland in 1936, also felt a definite affinity toward the subject matter. In 1905, when the painting was created, Picasso was just entering the Parisian world of modern art, where Henri Matisse’s scandalous fame challenged him, Fernande Olivier’s big heart embraced him, and Gertrude Stein’s friendship supported him, helping him realize that his Blue Period was over, and that the future held plenty of roses for the boy and his art (horse).
Paley, a son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, rose to power in America as a broadcasting titan of the 20th century, the founder of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and made his name known in the world of modern art as a trustee and then chairman of the Board of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
He donated Picasso’s Boy Leading a Horse to the Museum, as well as many other masterpieces by Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Andre Derain, Paul Gauguin, Pierre Bonnard, and others from his private collection.
Paley’s manner of collecting in the 1930s reflected his individualist spirit and his appreciation for the new art, mostly characterized by irreverent bold colors and brushstrokes, bohemian subject matter, and the prevailing mood of pushing the boundaries of public acceptance.
Characteristically, the affluent collector limited his acquisitions in the 1950s, when the market for modernism became safe, inflated, and overcrowded by late-bloomer fans of previously dubious artists.
It’s a well –documented fact that Paley was first mostly impressed by Cezanne, buying his Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat from the artists’ son, and thus starting the private collection geared toward his personal taste and kept in his primary residence where he could cohabit with the art he loved.
Among the Cezanne paintings from Paley collection, presented at the current de Young exhibition, there is Milk Can and Apples, a still life that reads like a mountainous landscape with descending horizon line, fruit scattered like boulders around the snowy peaks of a crumpled napkin, and wallpaper flowers coming out of their natural environment. It’s paintings like this – intimate in scale, densely saturated with life (still or otherwise) that made the overall mood of Paley collection so intriguingly pervasive, reaching out to a contemporary viewer with the immediacy of here and now.
Renoir’s Strawberries, Matisse’s Odalisque with a Tambourine, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Mme Lili Grenier, and Manet’s Two Roses on a Tablecloth are just a few of the significant modernist artworks the collector felt so strongly about and kept so close to his heart and sight throughout his life.
Gauguin’s The Seed of the Areoi holds a special place in the exhibition. The painting that has a long and controversial history all its own, reflects the artist’s fascination with the Tahitian landscape that he said “dazzled and blinded” him, as well as with the special beauty of the islander women, the legends of the land and the lifestyle of the tribe the artist believed was informed of a higher truth, or the better world. If William Paley’s dream world came true in his collection of modern art, all the art lovers in the world benefit from it today, and with the traveling show originated by MOMA, The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism is currently reaching the Western frontier at the de Young Museum, San Francisco.
The show runs through December 30 at de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, California. Call for more information: 415-750-3600 or visit www.deyoungmuseum.org. Images courtesy FAMSF.
0 comments:
Post a Comment