Reviews on Inside Out Upside Down Gallery Site
Antral, Musee des Beaux Arts et D'Archeologie, Chalons en Champagne
This exhibition runs till 29 August 2010, so there is still time to go and see it. As most readers will have gathered from my reviews I'm not enarmoured of modernist and post modernist art, Antral and the between wars Realists are an exception to this, though more because their stories are accessible than that their art is exceptional.
Robert Antral was an artist of the post Grande Guerre period, he painted largely coastal images of ports and their people, though he also worked in Paris. After serving in the First World War, Antral enjoyed limited success as an artist , was an active agitator for political change and died in June 1937.
The exhibition is arranged on a single ground floor space that is divided into three spaces, with a number of glass cabinets used to hold items that enlarge on Antral's story. I found the arrangement to be a joy of simplicity that mimiced the simplification Antral brought to his painting. Well lit and with brightly coloured walls that counter the relative supressed palette of Antral's paintings, the arrangment is a work of art in itself (though with limitations that reflect the small budget for the exhibition, without detracting from it).
Antral appears as a man of intense determination both as a painter and activist. His works show signes of brilliance in their compositional simplication but lack an adequate control of colour to move much beyond cloudy days in industrial settings. Particularly startling are a group pf paintings towards the end of the exhibition that show his inability to control or use effectively green pigment. Perhaps he was overly infuenced by his views as a political activist to produce works that are timeless, but his work does impose a picture of what we now see as the time.
The accompanying book is well structured and full of information, not only on Antral but also on the French art world of his lifetime. The work is quite inexpensive and my only reservation is that it appears only in French.
The museum appears to be manned by volunteers from the friends of the museum. They are very helpful and rise to the challenge of communicating with English speakers in a very engaging way. If you get the chance see this exhibition and help the Musee continue to deliver exhibitions of this calibre.
author: Neil Miley