Achi news desk-
What’s the deal with Leonardo’s harpsichord-viola? Why were Impressionists obsessed with the color purple? Art Bites brings you a surprising fact, a lesser-known anecdote, or a curious incident from art history. These delightful nuggets shed light on the lives of famous artists and decode their practices, while adding new layers of intrigue to famous masterpieces.
From Just Stop Oil to Free Palestine to PAIN, recently art museums have been co-opted as platforms for high-minded protest.
In 2015, however, the group of protesters who picketed outside Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts had a simpler, less lofty target: Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Call them? That museums are removing his paintings from their walls. Their reasoning was rather simple: they argued that Renoir was bad at art. (A protest at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art soon followed.)
The Renoir Sucks at Painting movement (if you can call it that) was the brainchild of Max Geller and came to life after he came across the substantial collection of Renoir paintings at Philadelphia’s Barnes Institute. His central outlet is an Instagram account that features close-ups of Renoir’s paintings along with satirical, often long-winded critiques.
Armed with snobbish hipster rage and signs that read “God Hates Renoir,” “ReNOir,” and “We’re Not Iconoclasts, Renoir Just Sucks At Painting,” the group briefly gained significant media attention.–although none of the organizations were heckled. Fellow Renoir haters expressed their aesthetic sympathy online by posting photographs of themselves giving Renoir paintings the middle finger, often with the hashtag #renoirsucksatpainting.
Renoir stands outside the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Photo: Lane Turner via Boston Globe
The commotion prompted Renoir’s great-great-granddaughter, Genevieve Renoir, to sing in. She argued that the free market had spoken clearly in favor of her ancestor’s talent. The market said something that sounded like, “$78 million at Sotheby’s for ball at the Moulin de la Galette no no-no no.” Geller responded by saying that the free market lacks judgment and taste, citing television commercials, climate change, and the destruction of sea otter habitats as evidence. Fair enough.
This points to the deeper purpose of Renoir Sucks at Painting, one that has generally been lost under the media noise and pointed snippets. Geller was not trying to censor Renoir through ridicule. He hoped to force museums to reconsider the artistic merits of the paintings on their walls and make a change, preferably in favor of non-white male painters. He called it “cultural justice.”
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bathing Group (1916). Courtesy of the Barnes Collection.
Although Geller’s approach was contemporary, his basic feeling was not. People have hated Renoir for a long time. The hatred has a moral and aesthetic substance. On moral grounds, Renoir’s countless muted female nudists have seen him posthumously accused of sexism. Adding to the ignominy was his anti-Semitism, as shown by his stance in the Dreyfus affair.
Yet even the aesthetic charges are somewhat personal. Renoir, a ceramicist by training, joined a Parisian clique that included Alfred Sisley and Claude Monet, anti-academic artists who would become part of the Impressionist movement. There was bold color and pictures of modern life in it. Out was formality, flowery rococo details, and grand mythical scenes.
The problem was, Renoir really liked these old things–“I belong to the 18th century,” he once said–and when things got tough financially, he went back and started painting saccharine, bourgeois portraits. It made him rich, even an international star. In short, it is seen as a sell-out.
Critics argue that Renoir paid no attention to line or composition (he painted as if on a pot, the charge runs) and ignored the contemporary concerns of his day. The most damning, probably, is the charge that Renoir’s paintings are pretty. Of course, good art cannot be beautiful.
A fan of Renoir’s pretty little paintings? Donald Trump. He claims to own itTwo Sisters (On the Terrace). It’s fake, mind you.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter for breaking news, opening interviews, and incisive critiques that drive the conversation forward.
Ad blocking test (Why?)
Source link
The post Art Bites: The Movement to Remove Renoir from Museums – artnet News appeared first on Canada News Media.
