In addition to being a master painter among his contemporaries, Renoir was also a master of changing course. His early works, which depicted everyday scenes, were astonishing in their depiction of light, luminosity and shadow; in the 1880s, his style evolved away from modernism and revisited the classical techniques of Renaissance masters. And then from the 1890s onward, he re-adapted some of his earliest techniques, including outlines that dissolve rather than delineate, and applied them to domestic scenes and grand-scale nudes of a fleshiness rivaled perhaps only by those of Rubens. (Since the Venus of Willendorf is a sculpture, it doesn't carry any weight -- so to speak -- in this comparison.)
He was committed to painting, even if it meant suffering. Late in life he became bound to a wheelchair by arthritis, and was so afflicted that an assistant had to place a brush in his hand so he could paint.
This special-ticket exhibition will be on view through May 9, 2010.
Dancer with Tambourine, 1909, Pierre-August Renoir
Update 02.17.2010: Renoir in the 20th Century, was reviewed by Los Angeles Time art critic Christopher Knight. His blog post includes a number of descriptive terms, including the following:
hidebound
cloying
corny
fudged
manipulation
flabby
Update 02.19.2010: Renoir in the 20th Century, was covered by Time Magazine’s Richard Lacayo in an article, La Vie En Rose. Here are a few of his most illustrative comments:
“Pierre-Auguste Renoir went out in a blaze of kitsch.”
“ . . . cupcakes don't get much more scrumptious than this.”
“ . . . the old man's influential wet dream of classical form . . . ”
“For a time, Renoir worked with figures so strongly outlined that they could have been put down by Ingres with a jackhammer.”
“It's a fine line between charming and insipid . . . ”
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