150 had to pass years for the revenge of the impressionist movement to bury forever the stiffness of the academy that blocked their way.
Last March 29, Good Friday in other words, 31,800 people were able to admire some of the works that at the time were disdained, reviled, thrown aside by a intelligence short-sighted.
If, initially, they were shown in friends’ studios and cafes, now some of their works are exhibited in one of the most important museums in the country. On the aforementioned Friday, the Soumaya Museum broke the attendance record for museums in the world, above the emblematic Metropolitan and Louvre.
The Mexico of the 19th century dreamed of Paris, just as today it is still seduced by the American dream. A Paris seen from Madrid, of course a bit old and superficial, more focused on fashion. Nothing to do with the intense Parisian life of the late 19th century and early 20th century in terms of art.
But beyond the emerging avant-garde, technology made it possible for new artists to break with vices and stony inheritances. Photography as a witness to replace portraitists and as a faithful copy of the world around us: a mechanical device that fixed things more accurately than any artist.
The other technological development that favored them was the brand new paint tubes. If before they had to prepare their colors in workshops with vessels, oils, minerals and small mortars, lead tubes favored their independence.
He allowed them to paint outside rooms and halls. Do it in the field in broad daylight.
The direct relationship with the countryside in the very moments of artistic creation even allowed the landscape to be democratized with new motifs and characters. They took the light to his canvas and he didn’t like that.
A critic cited by Gombrich thus referred to the first impressionist exhibition mounted in Durand-Ruel’s studio in 1876: “my horrified eyes beheld something frightening… I have seen people laughing with laughter… but I was disheartened when I saw them. These so-called artists consider themselves revolutionaries. They take a piece of fabric, color and brushes, smear it with a few random spots of paint and sign it.”
Monet was clear that light and air mattered more than the subject, as he demonstrated with great mastery, the same as Vincent van Gogh with his potato eaters or in their piles of straw.
It never ceases to surprise that impressionism, which initially had so many reservations, became one of the artistic trends preferred by people from all over the world. Exhibitions with impressionists draw crowds in any museum.
Unlike Van Gogh, who sold only one painting during his life, the famous red vineyard, Monet and Renoir could see the beginning of the critical collapse while their popularity was increasing.
It’s a pity that the young Van Gogh could not discover his popularity among young people of various generations who have been moved by his room, his sunflowers made into a calendar, poster, t-shirt, or by that musical group called La Oreja de Van Gogh.
The last days of the Dutch painter are of astonishing intensity. He bought the revolver that he will use on July 27, 1890 and goes to work on a canvas two days before his death: Wheat field with crows.
The image whose thick and bold brushstrokes break down the color seem to vibrate within the painting. The night has not yet arrived, but it foreshadows the dark density that is coming. The crows are part of the night, they come from it.
After the crows, Antonin Artaud wrote, I cannot bring myself to believe that Van Gogh would have painted a single more painting
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In one of his letters to his brother Theo Van Gogh, he wrote: do not believe that the dead are dead. As long as there are living, the dead will live
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The last stone to bury this criticism headed by Louis Leroy, who disdainfully called them impressionists, was laid by the 31,800 people who wanted to see that art at the Soumaya, who frequently asked about the Van Goghs that light up when someone shows them. look.