'French Impressions' - Prints at the British Museum

The British Museum has just opened a new, small exhibition about prints-making by the Impressionists and their successors, 'French Impressions: Prints from Manet to Cezanne'. It's upstairs in Room 90, a single room, but it has some great works that are well worth seeing. They seem to be mainly lithographs, rather than other forms of print-making, with some etchings on display as well. I've seen many paintings by some of the artists featured in this exhibition, but those were in oil paints rather than the mainly monochrome prints so it's interesting to see how they manage with a largely monochrome palette.

One of the first prints I saw was a lovely small portrait of the painter Berthe Morisot that also serves as the picture for the poster of the exhibition. It's by Manet, who was friend of hers. You've probably heard of Manet but possibly not heard of Morisot. I saw an exhibition of her works a few years back in Paris and all the exhibits were small, warm and very welcoming. Morisot also has a couple of prints in the exhibition that were more like line drawings, quite delicate and small, one of which was a self-portrait with her daughter.

One of the more experimental print-makers was Degas and there's one of his 'bather' prints on display. Apparently the first time he made this print if came out too dark so all the detail was lost so he scraped it clean and tried again and this is the result. Not as feminine as his pastels but still, obviously, a Degas.

There was, of course, the inevitable print by Toulouse-Lautrec but the one that surprised me was a portrait by Vincent Van Gogh of Dr Gachet, with whom he was staying in Auvers after his release from the mental asylum. It's an etching and is Van Gogh's only etching which he gave to the doctor and his son donated it to the British Museum in 1923. Apparently Dr Gachet taught Vincent how to etch.  

There were a few other portraits in the exhibition and one of my favourites was a portrait of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard by Renoir, a lithograph from 1904. They were friends and I think this comes across in the portrait which seems quite gentle and intimate.

Another portrait I liked was a self-portrait by Cezanne. Apparently Cezanne only made eight prints and this is a lithograph self-portrait from around 1896. He also knew Dr Gachet and stayed with him in Auvers in 1873 (it was a smaller world back then). This doesn't look like any of Cezanne's other self-portraits which were all painted in oil  but is really quite charming, sitting in front of a canvas (or mirror?) he was working on. There was a great exhibition of his portraiture a few years ago that I saw in Paris and in London and it's a great shame that this print wasn't included in it - it would've helped shed more light on his approach to portraiture.

In the display case beside the self-portrait was another of Cezanne's rare prints, this time a print of one of his 'Bathers'.

A final print I'll highlight is a colourful one to show that they also used colour back then and not everything was monochrome. This is another lithograph by Henri Gabriel Ibels from 1893, 'At The Circus, The Clown'. Lovely warm colours and simple lines and so very effective.

If you're in the area you could do worse than pop in to see the exhibition - it's free!

'Edvard Munch: Love and Angst' at the British Museum

The exhibition about Edvard Munch's prints is about to close at the British Museum but I managed to squeeze in a viewing so as not to miss this rare opportunity to see his prints rather than his paintings. Munch is famous for one painting, really, 'The Scream' and he also produced a print of it in black and white which is in the exhibition. That painting sort of says a lot about Munch and his works, rather psychological and depressing, but I also think of his paintings of his garden that I saw at the Royal Academy a few years ago, bright and colourful paintings. That gave me hope that there might be some moments of joy in this exhibition since the title includes the word 'love' as well as the expected 'angst'.

One of the first exhibits was a couple of prints in different colours printed from the same block. What made them really interesting was that the wooden block they were printed from was also on show in a glass case beneath them. It was great to see a concrete example in front of you of how he worked, how he started to create his prints. Apparently, instead of using different blocks for different colours he sometimes used different colours on the same block. It worked, but I wonder why he decided to try it out?

As with turning 'The Scream' into a print, Munch used others of his paintings as the basis for prints. He did several paintings of a couple beside a window, embracing or kissing, and he turned this into a print but decided that the couple should be naked in front of the window, oblivious to the world, lost in their own moment of passion.

Their faces appear to be joined, melted together in their passion and love, so close that nothing can come between them. It's a lovely print with some simple lines used in showing the contours of the body. It's simple, it's small and it's in black and white and it's very effective, catching the eye from across the room. If nothing else, this shows that Munch can really draw.

Another print that caught the eye was 'Madonna', but this isn't the kind of picture of a Madonna that you might expect. This is a sensuous woman, naked and exposed. In the border of the print is a stream of swimming sperm in a blood red background and a crouching foetus. What's that about? One of my initial reactions was surprise that people knew what sperm looked like way back then.

It's a very arresting image with the woman almost appearing to be swaying, mesmerising the viewer, while the border seems to suggest that procreation and pregnancy (wanted or unwanted) isn't just the job of the woman, but the man has an essential role as well. Apparently, around this time Munch was questioning his previous championing of free love and, perhaps, considering the implications of free love.

One of the most striking prints was descriptively called 'Woman with Red Hair and Green Eyes: Sin' from 1902. An impossible mass of red hair tumbling over her shoulders and breasts with those strange staring eyes - what's she looking at?

As a famous painter in his day, I didn't realise that Munch was also invited to design sets for plays and even design theatre programmes. Of course he would be, lots of artists have done that before and after him, but I suppose I get caught up in the whole 'Scream' thing where something so psychologically charged couldn't possibly be linked to popular theatre. There were a few examples of his designs and I quite liked this set design for Ibsen's 'Ghosts', a production in Berlin to commemorate Ibsen's death.

I like Munch's experimentation with the form of the print and also the British Museum's attempts to explain these sometimes complicated processes. A favourite print was 'The Girls on the Bridge' from 1918 which was, again, based on an earlier painting of the subject. This print is, apparently, made from a wood block as the base coloured blue printed with a 'zincograph' on top, i.e. three plates in yellow, red and green. I haven't seen the painting but I like the print.

About this far into the exhibition I gave up on my hopes for moments of joy in the prints. Impressive as they may be, Munch is not an artist for joy unless he's painting his garden. His view of love seems to be that it's doomed from the start so don't get hung up on it. I don't know that much about Mr Munch but he doesn't seem to have had a terribly happy life. He lived through two world wars which must have coloured his view of humanity, but he does seem to be an archetypal artist of pain and depression. This exhibition does nothing to dispel this impression. It did, however, make me wonder what he'd be doing now if he was alive. Would he have found any hope in the modern world?

One thing is clear, though, in that he would have continued to experiment with his art forms and this is demonstrated by a series of three large prints in the final room of the exhibition. The three prints of 'Towards the Forest' were completed between 1897-1915 and show lovers in front of a forest. He seems to have cut up the print blocks to get different effects in the prints. There may not be 'joyous' prints but maybe this is the joy of Munch prints, the perpetual experimentation and striving to create something new? Maybe the joy is that he never gave up despite everything the world threw at him?