What a show!  Perhaps the best Art Show in a museum that I have seen in the last 10 years, Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde @ The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the best show in NY right now - if you like Post Impressionist and early 20th Century Art.   This Vollard show took the unusual step of focusing on the Art Dealer, Ambroise Vollard, who must have had uncanny taste as it’s largely due to his patronage that many of the most well known artists at the turn of century survived, rather than the artists he collected. 

And while Vollard was a dealer, after all, and profited handsomely on his early purchases of Cezanne’s work (which are noted in the show notes), it’s also clear that, without Vollard, and the insight he showed in collecting the work of artists largely unknown at the time, modern art would have taken a much different course.   It’s also true that if your going to make a fortune on Art - your better off starting by collecting unknown artists whose works you can buy cheaply and resell at a much higher price….a strategy that Ambroise Vollard used often - and sometimes it did seem like he might have profited more than he needed to.   And even as you have Vollard pegged, he keeps certain works because he really did enjoy them, for his own personal collection - and these he would not sell.

And what a Collection!   This show rivals the Barnes Collection and perhaps surpasses Barnes in breadth.  To be clear, most of the paintings in this show were not owned by Vollard when he died; they were paintings that he owned or showed in his galleries at some point …that’s why they are in the show.

Here’s a link to the Exhibition Catalog and I’ll discuss the paintings that most touched me - but it’s hard since most of the show touched me…. but I’ll focus on the top 10 for me.

The Basket of Apples has long been one of my very favorite Cezanne!  It’s also one I may never have personally stood in front of before.  I used to own an Abrams book on Cezanne that had this painting on the cover - I have admired this Cezanne for over 30 years.    I don’t know how to describe my feelings for Cezanne.  My paining sensibilities are much, much different - yet Cezanne influences me more than any other artist - and for most of my life, has been the strongest influence on my thinking about art and what it is and should be.  Cezanne’s paintings are a recreation of nature - not copying - he constructs.

Boy in a Red Waistcoat - a painting I admired for some time also.

Van Gogh’s portrait of Dr. Félix Rey   has an interesting story - I think it was given to the family of Dr. Ray and used at one time to fix a chicken coop - until Gauguin tracked it down and rescued the painting.  It’s a masterpiece but it’s also easy to see why Van Gogh was even separate from other artists of his time - who thought he was crazy.   Today, we can accept Van Gogh as someone who belongs to that time - but many were unprepared for his directness.   Time is the true leveler …. time reveals all ….. today we know Van Gogh’s greatness - but it might have been hard to accept him in his own time.

Gauguin’s large painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? is considered one of his masterpieces - and probably his largest painting.   Gauguin’s success with  Ambroise Vollard was not as much as he’d have hoped - and many of his works did not sell - leaving Gauguin to sell off some of his personal collection of post impressionists just to make ends meet.  For the last years of his life, Vollard had Gauguin on a monthly stipend and took possession of a certain number of his paintings in return for the stipend.

I think Gauguin’s work is more subtle than some of the others in the show - it probably did not immediately catch on and find an audience like Cezanne’s did, for example.   Both Gauguin and Van Gogh did not have much success selling their work via Vollard (and Van Gogh was already dead, but his Sister in Law had most of his works and sent them to Vollard to be shown in two shows the dealer set up in 1895 and 1897 I believe).

There was a version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night over a river - I think this painting was perhaps, the strongest, in the show - I could not break away from it …it was so powerful -

      

Every painting in the show was a masterpiece and yet - this painting - I could not walk away from.  I could not take my eyes off of it - this is Art.  You can not explain it - and certainly I can see why Van Gogh was not accepted in his lifetime - even among his own fellow painters, in many cases - and yet the the pure life force of the river- of the night - is in this painting. 

How else can I explain that which can not be explained?