Kelly Weill

DISCRIMINATION?

05.04.16 11:05 PM ET

White Student Sues Diversity Internship For ‘Discrimination’

She didn’t get the diversity internship. Now she’s suing.

The Getty Foundation’s Multicultural Internship for arts studies had strict guidelines. Only undergraduate students of African-American, Asian, Latino, Native American, and Pacific Islander descent—groups frequently underrepresented in the arts—were eligible.

But one white applicant missed the memo.

Samantha Niemann, an undergraduate at Southern Utah University, is suing the Getty Foundation for discrimination, claiming the group wrongfully barred her from its program aimed at increasing diversity in the arts. In a lawsuit filed last Friday in Los Angeles’ Superior Court, Niemann accused Getty of “harassment, discrimination, and retaliation” for failing to hire or consider her for an internship.

“The internship positions are intended specifically for students who are members of groups traditionally underrepresented in the staffs of museums and visual arts organizations,” the Getty Foundation’s internship description reads, “those of African-American, Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander descent.”

The Getty Foundation isn’t understating the art world’s diversity issue. Analysis of 2012 U.S. census data found that nearly four out of five people who make a living from art are white. Arts administration jobs also skew overwhelmingly white. A National Endowment for the Arts study of cultural institutions found that “91 percent of board members were white, 4 percent were African-American or black, 2 percent were Hispanic, and 3 percent were in the ‘Other’ category.”

Still, Niemann says she was qualified for the internship, with a 3.7 GPA at her southern Utah college.

But “despite Plaintiff’s qualifications, Plaintiff was not hired and excluded from consideration,” Niemann’s lawsuit reads, adding that the Getty Foundation and its staffers “harassed, discriminated, and retaliated against Plaintiff due to and substantially motivated by Plaintiff’s race/national origin.”

The lawsuit does not describe any “harassment” outside of Getty’s failure to hire Niemann, though it helpfully describes her national origin as “German/Italian/Irish.”

Niemann’s suit seeks unspecified compensatory damages, and significant punitive damages, which would eclipse the pay she might have earned through the internship program.

The Multicultural Internships, available at a number of arts centers in Los Angeles, offer a $4,500 stipend for students enrolled in the 10-week program. Niemann is seeking damages “including, but not limited to loss of earnings and future earning capacity, medical and related expenses for care and procedures both now and in the future, attorney’s fees, and other pecuniary loss not presently ascertained.”

She is also seeking a stiff penalty under California’s anti-discrimination code, which could require offending parties to pay her $25,000 each for every damage she allegedly suffered. The fee could pay nearly six interns’ stipends.

Reached by email, Getty defended its internship program’s record, but did not comment on the pending litigation.

“The Getty is very proud of the highly successful Multicultural Undergraduate Internship Program launched by the Getty Foundation in 1993 in order to increase the diversity of professional staff in museums and visual arts organizations in LA County,” Ron Hartwig, vice president of communications for the J. Paul Getty Trust, told the Daily Beast in a statement. “Over the past 23 years, Getty grants have supported over 3,000 internships at 152 organizations throughout the county.”

But Hartwig added that Getty had decided to open the internship to white applicants in recent months.

“Prompted by inquiries from potential applicants as well as internal and external discussions, several months ago we modified the eligibility criteria for 2016 as follows: applicants must be members of an underrepresented group including but not limited to those of African American, Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander descent,” he wrote.

How Crowdsourcing Brought an ISIS-Destroyed Museum Back to Life

Artsy Editorial

By

Abigail Cain

May 9th, 2016 9:52 pm

RecoVR: Mosul exhibition with the Economist Media Lab. Photo courtesy of Rekrei.

In February of last year, Islamic State militants stormed the Mosul Museum in Iraq with drills and sledgehammers in hand. Once inside, they proceeded to topple statues and pulverize artifacts on display, including an Assyrian lion carved from limestone around 860 BC.
Fourteen months later and 5,800 miles away, that lion was resurrected for an evening in a seventh-floor gallery at the Museum of Art and Design in New York. It wasn’t the only destroyed artifact from the Mosul Museum on display—a first-century Nirgul tablet and a statue of a priest from the ancient Persian city of Hatra were perched on nearby pedestals, fashioned out of what appeared to be gleaming white marble. A closer look, however, revealed thin concentric rings from the 3D-printing process that brought these objects back to life.
These recreations are the work of Rekrei, an organization that uses a process called “photogrammetry” to produce digital 3D models of cultural artifacts from crowd-sourced photographs. The brainchild of Ph.D. students Chance Coughenour and Matthew Vincent (studying in Germany and Spain, respectively), Rekrei was initially intended as a response to the ISIS-led demolition of the Mosul Museum.
“I made the comment to Matthew: Why don’t we try to crowdsource the images and the data from people who had visited the museum previously, use those images to reconstruct the artifacts, and then place them back into a virtual museum at some later date?” Coughenour explains.
It took just two weeks for the pair to get Rekrei online. Although there had been previous efforts to digitally reconstruct single objects—such as the Bamiyan Buddhas, blown up by the Taliban in 2001—Coughenour says Rekrei is the first photogrammetry initiative of this scope. Originally christened Project Mosul, “we quickly realized that the platform we were developing would work for the entire globe,” Vincent says. The project changed its name to Rekrei, which means “recreate” in the international language of Esperanto. “At this point, the idea is that the global community prioritizes the sites or monuments or artifacts for reconstruction. The process is very organic, in the sense that not long after Palmyra was occupied by the Islamic State, all kinds of tourist photos were being uploaded to the site because so many people have been through the city,” Vincent notes.

Left: Nimrud Entrance, Nimrud, Iraq; Right: Hatra Relief, Nimrud, Iraq. Images courtesy of Rekrei.

The destruction of Palmyra, the extent of which was revealed when Syrian troops reclaimed the city in March, focused public attention on the ethics of recreating destroyed cultural artifacts. In a recent Guardian editorial, Jonathan Jones insisted that Palmyra “must not be turned into a fake replica of its former glory.” But Rekrei offers the possibility of another sort of reconstruction: the crowd-sourced museum. Rather than a hollow reproduction, the platform could create a rich, culturally diverse alternative that—while not replacing the original—will allow for new voices to help in curating and understanding these objects.
Since it was founded in March 2015, Rekrei’s website has attracted the attention of some 40,000 unique visitors, who together have uploaded 5,000 images. Using photogrammetry, also dubbed “computer vision,” these different 2D images are combined—much in the same way our eyes do—to create depth. Unlike our eyes, however, this process could involve 50, even 100 images of the same scene to create that third dimension. It’s a process that has been around for over a century, but has only recently been automated by computers. Rekrei boasts a small but dedicated group of online volunteers who sort the image submissions and even aid in the creation of 3D renderings.
So far, Rekrei has more than 40 reconstructions on their website, each of which can be rotated and viewed from any angle. A number of these objects will be utilized in a partnership with the Economist Media Lab, which is in the process of finalizing a virtual-reality version of the Mosul Museum accessible via Google Cardboard.
“For us, that was sort of closing the loop,” Vincent says. “When we launched the project, if we would have imagined what would be the completion, it would be exactly this—a virtual version of the Mosul Museum. At this point in time, the project could shut down and I think we’d feel like we achieved what we had set out to do in the first place.”

RecoVR: Mosul exhibition with the Economist Media Lab. Photo courtesy of Rekrei.

The initial version of the virtual reality museum was launched at Amsterdam’s International Documentary Film Festival in November. The six-minute experience was accompanied by narration that incorporated Rekrei’s crowd-sourcing ethos, Vincent says, by stringing together a series of voices that told the museum’s story from different perspectives. This multiplicity of views may serve to address criticisms that cultural reconstruction projects could become a sort of “visual colonialism.”

An Iranian Artist Is Using 3D Printing to Combat ISIS

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For instance, a recent scaled-down replica of Palmyra’s toppled Arch of Triumph—shaped by robotic arms from a computer-generated 3D image and now touring the globe—has Iranian artist Morehshin Allahyari particularly concerned. “The gesture is so simplistic,” she told Hyperallergic. “This is about histories, about institutional relationships. We have to talk about power structures—how it’s different when westerners or tech companies save cultural things compared to someone else who actually comes from the culture—and how they influence the conversation.”
Vincent and Coughenour hope that the next stage of the project gives those displaced by conflict an active role in the reconstruction of their heritage. Users will be given the tools to curate a personal collection on the Rekrei site, displayed in an online gallery accessible via a virtual reality platform.
“At the end of the day, this is what we want to be able to do,” Vincent says, “to preserve the memory of this lost heritage by providing the opportunity for people to tell their own stories.”

—Abigail Cain

Jeff Koons’s Newest Artwork Is a $40 Google Phone Case

Artsy Editorial

By

Abigail Cain

May 10th, 2016 6:19 pm

If you were following Lady Gaga, Marc Jacobs, or U2 on Instagram over the past week, you may have noticed a shiny blue Jeff Koons gazing ball bouncing between their posts like a star-studded game of “hot potato.” These photos were the build-up to Koons’s latest artwork, which is unveiled today—but unlike most of his pieces, it won’t be displayed in a gallery or a museum. This work of art can only be seen on a smartphone.

Courtesy of Google.

A Google Nexus, to be exact. (Those of us with iPhones are, sadly, out of luck.) The work, commissioned by Google, marks the first time the internet giant has partnered with a visual artist on a tech accessory. It also marks the first time Koons has experimented with video. The American artist created a series of 33 choreographed scenes from the classic 1875–76 ballet Swan Lake to be incorporated into a limited edition Google Live Case. When snapped onto a Nexus, these cases offer a set of phone backgrounds and additional content that cannot be accessed anywhere else.
Koons’s live wallpapers feature two dancers—Ashley Laracey and Troy Schumacher of the New York City Ballet—pirouetting and pliéing with his gazing ball in hand. The “Gazing Ball” series dates back to 2013, when Koons first paired these reflective blue baubles with blindingly white classical sculptures. In his show at Gagosian Gallery in New York last November, these spheres found their way into iconic paintings: da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503-1517), Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (1862-1863), Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819), and Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait Wearing a Hat (1640) among them.  

Photo by Victor Theilan. Courtesy of Google.

Looking back on the artist’s previous comments about the series, the collaboration between Google and Koons seems especially fitting. Much like cell phones, Koons has called the gazing balls “devices of connecting” that allow viewers to consider their relationship with an artwork. And with these limited edition cases—at just 40 bucks a pop, his most affordable work to date—it appears he’s found a way for the everyday consumer to be in near-constant dialogue with the art world.

—Abigail Cain

What Sold at Frieze New York

Artsy Editorial

By

Alexander Forbes

May 9th, 2016 11:44 pm

Frieze New York, 2016. Photo by Adam Reich for Artsy.

An hour and a half into the VIP preview of Frieze New York last Wednesday the news hit. John Kasich would end his bid to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States, leading Donald Trump, against all predictions, to become the party’s presumed candidate for the White House. Trump’s promises to “make America great again” have won over a plurality of the country’s voters who choose to sport an elephant lapel pin. But for many in the art world, the business world, and the world at large, the prospect of a Trump presidency has, at best, generated unease.
The possibility of President Trump and near certainty among analysts that an economic down cycle is pending has sent jitters across the art market and wider macroeconomy spanning from New York to Hong Kong. Around half as much art, by value, is estimated to sell at New York’s major spring auctions this week as this season last year. And at art fairs (among which Frieze New York is no exception), purchases of higher-priced works have been slower and less abundant than in years past. Young galleries sold well at Frieze last week, with works priced at around $15,000 or below. For established galleries, results were more modest than in past years. With much of the market’s froth tamped down due to uncertainty, it was a better schooled and pickier upper echelon of collectors who made most of the week’s high-priced purchases.
“Collectors right now can spend money and they will, but they want the best work available,” said Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s José Castañal on Friday. The gallery had, by that time, sold three works by Georg Baselitz, a medium-sized sculpture from Tony Cragg, and an Erwin Wurm “Fat Bus.” (Wurm, along with Brigitte Kowanz, will rep Austria at next year’s Venice Biennale.) Though the director noted that even one sale of a major artist such as Baselitz can put a gallery in the black for a fair like Frieze, boomtimes these are not. “Sometimes people think that just because you have established artists, it’s easier to sell, but people buying established artists also have a different way of buying,” said Castañal.

Frieze New York, 2016. Photo by Adam Reich for Artsy.

Over at Almine Rech’s stand, managing partner Paul de Froment noted a similar trend in the gallery’s sales. “For the past two years, it’s been a little bit slower, both at Frieze and in the art market in general,” said Froment. The gallery’s booth at Frieze presented a trio of major artists from the Neo-Geo movement—Peter Halley, John M. Armleder, and Olivier Mosset—as well as a pair of works by a younger artist from its program, Mark Hagen.
Froment noted on Friday that he had sold works by each of the artists presented (among which several by Mosset), despite the slowdown in the market. And he credited that success to the gallery’s consistent focus on quality. “When you see what happened on Wall Street two days ago based on the announcement that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee, it certainly adds insecurity into the market,” said Froment, noting that he was keeping a particular eye on the markets during this period of instability. “But I think if you put good art on the walls, it’s not something that you have to worry about too much. That’s what we try to focus on, because that’s where we have influence.”

The 20 Best Booths at Frieze New York

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Hauser & Wirth has no doubt taken a similar approach to quality in recent years. Its biggest success at Frieze New York came by way of two works from the Philip Guston estate, which the gallery began representing last September. Guston’s oil Black Coast (1977) and a drawing from his series of sleeping figures from the same decade both sold for undisclosed prices. “Frieze New York has grown up,” said gallery partner and vice president Marc Payot. “The fair has taken its place among the best in the world,” he added, with the gallery’s sales throughout the week being characterized as “robust.” Those included a pair of Roni Horn’s cast glass sculptures at $975,000 apiece as well as Paul McCarthy’s SC Western Red River, Red (2016), the first work in a new series entitled “Stagecoach,” for $750,000.

Frieze New York, 2016. Photo by Adam Reich for Artsy.

Collectors last week remained ready to pull the trigger on works at the lower end of the spectrum. This was evident by the strong, early sales seen across Frieze’s fresh-faced compatriot, NADA New York, and at Frieze itself in the Frame and Focus sections, which host younger galleries and artists, offering curated presentations.

NADA New York Kicks Off with Speedy Sales and Art You Can Touch

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Lower East Side gallerist James Fuentes sold no fewer than 12 works by Benjamin Senior at Frieze New York this year, priced from $6,000 to $15,000. “We’ve always known Benjamin is really special,” said gallery director James Michael Shaeffer. Fuentes began working with the artist while he was still at the Royal College of Art, giving him his first show at the gallery in 2011. “Even though that was only five years ago, thinking about what art was doing at that time, to choose this was not at all cool,” added Shaeffer. (That has, of course, changed thanks to the strong trend back towards figurative painting that has taken over the conversation around emerging art in the past couple of years.) Shaeffer noted that while they’re not eager to react to trends in the market, Senior will have a solo show at the gallery this coming winter. “We work with each of our artists one on one,” he said. “It just happened to sync up with what was happening in the market,” he said.
Even more effusive about his positive experience at the fair was Sultana founder Guillaume Sultana. “It’s totally a dream,” said the Parisian gallerist of his third outing at Frieze New York. “Things are very busy and I’ve only been selling to new people.” Sultana had sold all of the new works by Pia Camil featured in the booth for €9,000 to prominent collections from Miami and London. “She’s had a great amount of visibility because of her recent New Museum show, but these ceramic pieces are completely new,” he said of the works, which consist of ceramic masks placed on plinths created out of the slatted walls stores use to hang their wares. Also selling well were new paintings by Jacin Giordano, priced between €5000–12,000. The works are based on Native American culture and see the artist carve into many layers of acrylic in a way that recalls woodcutting. (So smitten with his purchase was one collector that he had to stop back by the booth to admire his new work: “I’m looking at it and thinking to myself. Oh my god, what did I buy; it’s wonderful. Tell Jacin I love him.”)
Sultana said the success at Frieze New York was a welcomed relief. “In Europe, it’s a very bad time in the economy,” said the gallerist. “We had a very hard time last winter in Paris. Nobody was coming to the gallery.” While the election might have some spooked from major acquisitions in the U.S., in his hometown Sultana has felt the continued effects of the November 13th terrorist attacks, which killed 130 individuals. “American collectors don’t want to travel to Europe at the moment. It’s so sad because terrorism can happen anywhere,” noted Sultana, adding that galleries had reported that Americans had shied from traveling to Brussels during Art Brussels and Independent in April and that some had discussed canceling their plans to attend Art Basel. “I hope it’s going to change with time,” he said, suggesting that in the meantime, this might be accounting in part for his added success at Frieze, as New York collectors continue to spend closer to home.

Frieze New York, 2016. Photo by Adam Reich for Artsy.

Galerie Max Hetzler’s Samia Saouma noted a similar contraction in the number of American visitors to the previous week’s Gallery Weekend Berlin, despite record attendance overall. “People are insecure about what the elections will bring, not only in this country but also the Brexit, and the refugee crisis across all of Europe. It’s a transition period,” explained Saouma. The gallery showed works mainly by three artists, Albert Oehlen, Edmund De Waal, and Raymond Hains, in its first outing at Frieze New York. And while she reported making some sales during the fair’s run, Saouma also suggested that this transitional moment in the political and economic scene should spark transition in the art world as well. “We need to rethink the whole thing as gallerists,” she said. “There is an art fair fatigue. There’s an inflation of art” in New York, added the dealer, who noted the auctions as well as the “many excellent galleries with very, very good shows” in Manhattan taking attention away from those at the fair in a way that happens less so in places like Miami and Basel.

The 12 Young Painters You Need to Know at NADA New York

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Sean Kelly Gallery director Janine Cirincione had a different perspective on how the art world should react to the changing macro-environment. “We know that from now until the election it’s going to be dukes up. We don’t know what to expect on any given day. We don’t know how that will affect world markets,” said Cirincione. And while the rest of the world gets nervous about what might transpire, “we just have to fasten our seatbelts a little bit and get ready for a bumpy ride. We all knew the constant trajectory upward wasn’t realistic in the long term.”

Cirincione equates the current jitters as something of an art world recency bias. Players feel particularly down now because they’re biased to compare their performance to the recent several-year-long sprint upward, rather than to economy’s consistent cyclical patterns of growth and contraction. Selling Antony Gormley’s sculpture Daze II (2014) for £350,000, Callum Innes’s painting Exposed Painting Delft Blue (2016) for £40,000, Los Carpinteros’s watercolor Espuma Cúbica (díptico) (2016) for $50,000, and Hugo McCloud’s mixed media work on paper Untitled (2016) for $37,500, as did Sean Kelly on opening day, isn’t a bad day’s work, after all. It just reflects the activation of a core base of art lovers without the added bonus of buyers brought on by surging economic indices. “Hedge fund guys will be the first ones out of here when they get nervous,” said Cirincione. “But working with people who are buying for the right reasons, for the love of collecting, is something that is very sustainable, even in uncertain times.”

—Alexander Forbes

Explore Frieze New York 2016 on Artsy.

French Art History in a Nutshell

Artsy Editorial

By

Kate Haveles

Sep 26th, 2015 2:59 pm

• 

  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

  La Grande Odalisque, 1814

  Musée du Louvre, Paris

French art in the popular imagination is often characterized by the dreamy, dauby landscapes of the Impressionists and the bolder, more vibrant work of 20th-century greats living la vie bohème in Paris. But still more of the genres that we associate with the art historical canon were pioneered in France. Pinpointing the very beginning of “French” art may prove an impossible task, but the region has been rich in creative expression since cave paintings were rendered at Lascaux an estimated 17,300 years ago, making them some of the earliest artistic traces in human history.
Fine art was finessed by the artists of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, an art school established in 1648 as an accessory of the French court. In 1699, the Academy mounted its first exhibition at the Louvre, where it continued to show for 100 years. From 1725 onwards, exhibitions were held in the Salon Carré, and became known simply as “salons.” The art presented in the salons dictated national and international tastes and formed the basis of what we have come to know today as traditional European art.
France’s story following the fall of Louis XVI in 1793 is one of revolution, and its art runs along that same axis. The Academy’s suspension, along with the dissolution of the court and its ultimate restructuring, destabilized the country’s artistic center. French artists responded to the atmosphere of social upheaval and growth with ceaseless innovation. Beginning with the undisputed master of Neoclassicism, Jacques-Louis David, through such ubiquitous art historical standouts as Gustave Courbet, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, and Louise Bourgeois, we present a capsule review of French art history from the 18th century to today.

Neoclassicism

• 

  Jacques-Louis David

  Oath of the Horatii, 1784-1785

  Musée du Louvre, Paris

Obsession with the idealized forms and mythology of ancient Greek and Roman cultures made a comeback in fine art from the late-18th to the mid-19th century. As the Enlightenment took hold and revolution stirred, an emphasis on order and balance reigned supreme in the refined compositions produced by the artists of the Academy. The most prominent artist of the time was David, who painted both classical scenes—like masterpieces The Oath of the Horatii (1784-85) and The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1796-99)—and tableaus depicting the first revolution. His unfinished painting The Oath of the Tennis Court (1790-94) captured the chaotic enthusiasm of revolution and the somber Death of Marat (1793) showed the gruesome bathtub murder of the revolutionary leader. Later, David would create stately portraits of Napoléon and his court; as “First Painter to the Emperor,” his paintings became essential to the regime’s propaganda program.
Also of the era, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres trained under David and developed a unique style that often strayed from the precision of the Academy. Unlike his contemporaries, he depicted historical and physiological anomalies, such as in La Grande Odalisque (1814), his famous nude displaying an impossibly long back.

Romanticism

• 

  Eugène-Victor-Ferdinand Delacroix (Eugène Delacroix)

  La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty Leading the People), 1830

  Musée du Louvre, Paris

Developing around the same period as Neoclassicism and stemming from the literature of the time, Romanticism took a more emotional, intimate approach to its subject matter, favoring contemporary and personal scenes over the historical or mythological tableaux of Neoclassicism. Imagination and the interior life of the self were guiding forces in works that often focused on nature and fantastical views of faraway lands. Théodore Géricault painted some of Romanticism’s best-known works, including the dramatic, devastating The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), which captures a tragic shipwreck from 1816, heavily imbued with political critique. The painting earned Géricault a fair amount of infamy, as the events it depicted were already central to a national scandal regarding the reinstated monarchy.
A contemporary of Géricault, Eugene Delacroix portrayed historical subjects like the Neoclassicists, but his paintings were laden with emotional content and fiercely vibrant colors. Delacroix looked to the East for inspiration (a common fascination of the time that stemmed from France’s colonial activities), often painting foreign locales replete with bustling marketplaces and exotic animals. He also created what is perhaps the most iconic French image of all time: La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830) shows a disheveled but triumphant Liberty emerging from the violent mayhem of revolution while raising the tri-color flag.

Realism

• 

  Gustave Courbet

  The Origin of the World, 1866

  Musée d'Orsay, Paris

• 

  Auguste Rodin

  Iris, Messenger of the Gods (Figure in Flight), 1890/91

  Fondation Beyeler

As the Revolution overturned France in the mid-19th century, a desire for egalitarianism began to inform artists’ work. Breaking away from the grandiose and emotionally charged subject matter of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, they focused their attention on everyday life and the common working men and women of France. Paintings of peasants toiling in the field, townspeople worshipping at church, or crowded city streets proliferated. In this climate, Gustave Courbet led the charge, painting forthright scenes of poverty and quotidian struggle, as well as unabashed views of sexuality, such as in his unflinching nude The Origin of the World (1866). Carrying elements of this genre into the next century, Auguste Rodin approached sculpture with an unusually realistic style. In bronze and marble, he forged bodies in motion and unidealized, conventional human forms along with centaurs and goddesses inspired by Classical mythology that connected back to his Neoclassical forebears.

Impressionism

• 

  Claude Monet

  The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil, 1880

  National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

• 

  Edgar Degas

  Dancers at the Barre, ca. 1900

  Phillips Collection

The late 19th century in French art belongs to the Impressionists, who were deemed radical for their loose brushwork and experimental approach to light and color that veered firmly away from realistic representation. Industry was booming across Western Europe, with technological advancements infiltrating daily life and increasing its pace. Characterized by loose “impressions” of scenes, this art explored the vagaries of visual perception and captured the new conditions of urban life. Impressionism in France was led by Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Pissarro, Morisot, and Caillebotte, who painted everything from smudgy seascapes, gardens, farmlands, and picnics, to boisterous dancehalls, household interiors, and elegant flâneurs along city streets—all views of the emerging modern world, where industrial development opened up more time for leisure, be it in the countryside or rapidly expanding urban areas. Their work was initially derided in haute art society, before gaining traction and spreading to other countries.

Post-Impressionism

• 

  Georges Seurat

  Poseuse de face (Model, Front View), 1887

  Musée d'Orsay, Paris

• 

  Paul Gauguin

  Contes Barbares (Primitive Tales), 1902

  "Paul Gauguin" at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, (2015)

Focused more on expressing subjective experience, Post-Impressionism emerged towards the close of the 19th century and carried into the 20th, with French painters Cézanne, Gauguin, and Seurat at the helm (along with famed Dutchman Van Gogh). Each stepped out into their own style. Seurat is known for having pioneered Pointillism (complex images made from tiny dots of color), furthering the impulse of Impressionism to translate the mechanics of human perception. Gauguin’s striking scenes of Tahitian life were characterized by their Symbolism, which discarded scientific concerns for art that stemmed from individual emotional experience and notions of spirituality. Self-taught Henri Rousseau also painted bold, brightly colored scenes of exotic locales, but unlike Gauguin, Rousseau’s jungle landscapes were all imagined. Paul Signac extrapolated from Pointillism, printing airy, pastel lithographs with slightly larger flecks of color and light.
Inspired by Cézanne’s strong palette and style (as well as that of other Post-Impressionists), Fauvism became one of the earliest forms of modern art. Propelled by Matisse and Derain, the movement’s name derives from an early critique of their work, in which the painters were labeled fauves, or “wild beasts”—the vivid, clashing colors and flattened out, pattern-based images shocked the public, but paved the way for the Modernism of the next century.

Modern

• 

  Marcel Duchamp

  Bicycle Wheel, 1963

  Private Collection of Richard Hamilton, Henley-on-Thames

• 

  Louise Bourgeois

  FEMME, ca. 1960

  Cheim & Read

  Contact gallery

After Matisse and Derain helped fuel the modernist fires, French art expanded in a variety of directions. A cornerstone of the country’s avant-garde, Cubism—the fragmented, geometric twist on reality that pushed art into the conceptual—was driven by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and help to launch the cavalcade of experimental genres that followed. Avant-garde innovator Marcel Duchamp (known for pioneering the readymade) also dabbled in Cubism, as well as the Swiss movement Dadaism and, later, Surrealism. Penned by André Breton in 1924 and greatly influenced by the iconoclasm of the Dadaists, the Surrealist Manifesto called into being the otherworldly, mind-bending works of artists such as Yves Tanguy.
Sculptor Louise Bourgeois began her practice with similarly absurdist forms and notions, but gradually shifted her focus towards capturing instead the movement and psychology contained in her subjects. Another contemporary, Jean Dubuffet, fostered Art Brut (also known as Outsider Art), categorized as works created outside society’s influence, whether due to a lack of art education or the artist’s position on the margins of society. Europe’s response to the Abstract Expressionism blossoming after WWII in America was Art Informel, championed in part by French painters Pierre Soulages and Georges Mathieu. In the ’60s, Nouveau Réalisme was born, with elements of American Pop and Neo-Dada combined across an array of mediums; Yves Klein, Niki de Saint-Phalle, and Martial Raysse all participated.

Contemporary

• 

  Sophie Calle

  The divorce, 1992

  Galerie Perrotin

  Contact gallery

• 

  Pierre Huyghe

  De-extinction, 2014

  Hauser & Wirth

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French contemporary art is marked by traces of the past; while mediums and styles have evolved, a keen interest in the psychology of the self and the nature of existence and the world remain at its core. Notable artists of the later half of the 20th century and today include Christian Boltanski, who often works with found objects (in the readymade tradition of Duchamp); Sophie Calle, whose conceptual works feel deeply intimate; and Pierre Huyghe, whose multimedia practice sometimes incorporates living beings of all sorts (recent installations include a sculpture buzzing with a live bee colony in the MoMA’s garden and a fish tank rife with slinky, eel-like fish perched on the Met’s rooftop).

—Kate Haveles