Reviews on Inside Out Upside Down Gallery Site
Crime et chatiment - Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France
This exhibition is large, with 18 sections to pass through. It is however intriguing to see and only starts to become overwhelming towards the end.
Design wise the exhibition takes the viewer through a history of French art as it relates to crime and punishment. The gradual development of new subject matter for artists is well portrayed. From the Greek Myths through the Revolution, the romanticized perception of crime, the introduction of illustrated newspapers, representations of the power of the legal profession, goals, the death penalty, crime and science, identification and finally the surrealist perversions through to modern artistic representations of crime, it is all there.
I must admit that the earlier part of the exhibition held great interest for me with a section devoted to paintings of the death of Marat, which clearly shows the brilliant execution and compositional originality of David's work compared to a number of excellent but not quite so out of the ordinary paintings.
The last section being the Surrealist/ Modern was perhaps the most disturbing. The illustration of degrading crimes of passion is presented in an unavoidable segment in which I felt like I was being directed down a super market isle to get to the check out. This is a very minor criticism of what is otherwise an beautifully designed exhibition.
I recommend this exhibition to anyone that can make it to the Musee d'Orsay before 27 June 2010.
If you are unable to go, then the catalogue is very good.
author: Neil Miley