Summary
Names like Honore Daumier and Eugene Boudin may cause the average art lover to shrug, especially when compared to Monet, [Everson-Renoir] and van Gogh. But they made a mark, just the same, and it's important that they are included here. "The great thing about an exhibition like this is you can use the [Margaret Davies] sisters as this raison d'etre, and then move on to consider their point of view," [Steven Kern] says. "Why was Daumier so incredibly famous but we never hear about him anymore? Exhibits like this work when they include artists and objects that are part of popular culture. So you look at this Daumier and then you go into the next room with the Monets and you go, 'Oh, yeah. I get that.' Once people are brought into these things they recognize, then they can talk about the Honore Daumier 'Head of a Man,' and say to each other, 'Have you ever seen anything like that?' Artists rise and fall in terms of popularity, but that doesn't make them any less influential."
In the exhibit's third and final gallery, a little- seen but instantly recognizable van Gogh, "Rain-Auver," draws you in with its blues and ochres delineating a strong geometry. The backstory there is that van Gogh completed this work weeks before he shot himself in the chest, dying three days later. Also compelling is Paul Cezanne's "The Francois Zola Dam." "To me," Kern says, "this is the perfect painting. It's not too big and not too small. It talks about this whole new way of looking at the world that Cezanne invented, or at least perfected- multiple perspectives and points of view, the geometry of the landscape, the trees. He's turning his brushstrokes into geometry."The Everson Museum has never strayed far from its mission of collecting and displaying American art, and that holds true for [Turner] to Cezanne. The fourth upstairs gallery shows off some of the classics in the Everson's collection, like Edward Hicks' "The Peaceable Kingdom," Eastman Johnson's "Corn Husking," William Ongley's "Early Autumn, Adirondacks," and Levi Wells Prentice's "Hopper's Gorge, Onondaga Valley." All the American work on display was created during the same time period as the paintings in the main show, except for one. Sarah McCoubrey's "Available" is a 2000 landscape included for its use of color and light so it can be compared with the Corot works in the main exhibit.See the full content of this document
Extract
Big Impression
For years, art lovers have wondered aloud why the Everson Museum of Art doesn't solicit traveling exhibitions to its storied, I.M. Pei-designed walls. This writer griped about it 10 years ago when a desire to see Monet at Giverny necessitated a drive to Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery, an overnight stay in the Queen City and the purchase of several meals. Such exhibitions are dreams come true for convention and visitors bureaus, what with their economic impact and all.
That Monet show seemed a perfect fit for the Everson. After I became editor-in-chief of this esteemed publication, I asked the museum's then-public relations director Melanie Franklin why the oldest arts organization in Syracuse wasn't seeking out these bloc...See the full content of this document
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