Reviews on Inside Out Upside Down Gallery Site
Paul Gauguin, La Vision du sermon, la naissance du synthetisme, musee de beaux arts de Quimper, Quimper
This exhibition has now closed, I apologise for not having this review available earlier, so it is perhaps better to call it an historical note.
The exhibition focuses on placing Paul Gauguin's work in context with the region of Bretagne in France. The musee de beaux arts de Quimper is the regional art museum and this approach to showing artists work in a regional context is a common theme of regional musee de Beaux Arts in France.
I found it difficult to conceptualise the impact of Gauguin's work in Bretagne as a result of the exhibition. This was the third regional art exhibition I had been to in Bretagne and the fourth museum in three days. My previous experience of Bretagne had been limited to a couple of hours in Vitre twenty five years ago and reading Balzac's The Choan. Armed with so little understanding of this intensely interesting culture, I was perhaps doomed not to realise the significance of Gauguin's work in causing controversy and perhaps cultural change.
Fortunately the exhibition was accompanied by a splendid book produced by the National Gallery of Scotland. Unfortunately the edition available was in French, of which I have a limited understanding, but I bought it anyway and after leaving the exhibition was able to comprehend the impact of Gaugin's painting.
The exhibition was well presented will plenty of accompanying text to assist the viewer. Lighting was excellent and access to the paintings was as open as possible. As you might have gathered my problems with the exhibition were not so much those of the Musee's presentation but rather that my schedule was overly demanding.
For the non French speakers I should add that the staff of the Musee are quite helpful and some are proficient in English.
The Musee's collection was quite interesting and provided you are not worried about seeing big name artists... just good art, then this venue like others in Bretagne is a must see.
author: Neil Miley