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<\/a><\/p>\nWhat sets one exhibit apart from another requires finding what is original or different. You can talk about the \u00e9poque and you can talk about the artists. You can read about this in a book or magazine, or watch a special on television. Seeing an exhibit, permits an investigation.<\/p>\n
Armed with the\u00a0exhibit print out<\/a>\u00a0from the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay\u2019s Web site, I set out to find the objects shown and read about the exhibit before I rented the audio guide.<\/p>\n Exhibits set up at a child\u2019s level of understanding, usually employ a search-find method to study what\u2019s on show. Audio guides point out details. (Check out iTunes for availability of iPhone and iPad app.)<\/p>\n It is a good thing I took my child mentality, because the supplier of the audio guides had pulled the plug on audio help the sales girl told me. Changes had to be made and they never reissued the players.<\/p>\n In the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay\u2019s exhibition salon, I decided to look for the unusual in \u201cBeaut\u00e9, morale et volupt\u00e9 dans l\u2019Angleterre d\u2019Oscar Wilde\u201d (September 13, 2011 – January 15, 2012). I found three unusual points of interest: A painting of revenge, the source of the revenge, and Egyptian references.<\/p>\n Whistler\u2019s Talents<\/strong> Shown in the Musee d\u2019Orsay\u2019s alcove is a 360 degrees digital film that rotates around a dining room to show off greenish blue walls patterned in gold. The room was originally designed by the interior architect named Thomas Jeckyll.<\/p>\n James McNeill Whistler, an American artist who lived and worked in England and Paris, is the artist and redecorator for both the painting of \u201cThe Gold Scab\u201d and the wall art of the dining room (The Peacock Room<\/strong><\/a>).\u00a0 Whistler\u2019s painting \u201cLa Princesse du pays de la porcelaine \u2014 or The Princess from the Land of Porcelain \u2014 hung over the fireplace (take a\u00a0Closer Look<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n Over a controversy of payment, Whistler ended up filing bankruptcy and having to sell his home known as the \u201cWhite House\u201d. Misunderstanding of a friendship\u2019s extent led to disdain between Whistler and Leyland.<\/p>\n A far cry from his paintings of women in white, his mother and others, this painting is filled with imagery. Whistler had the talent to envision an interior, basing his colors and patterns in the room on Japanese porcelain jars and his painting \u201cThe Princess\u201d.<\/p>\n Whistler\u2019s changing the room and etagere colors and patterns that Jeckyll had selected was bold. Not asking the owner of the room, Leyland, for permission to do an extensive renovation and assuming there would be payment was even bolder and assuming.<\/p>\n An Egyptian Source<\/strong> Less exciting than the revenge story, the idea of Egyptian design made me curious to search out more. It is light, thin, almost delicate in appearance. I just returned from Egypt viewing temples and hieroglyphics and seeing heavy, bulky furniture sold in Cairo. The students and public, I am told, know very little of their pharaonic history and culture, apparently know little of their Egyptian furniture influence.<\/p>\n These three points, for me, made the exhibit more interesting.<\/p>\n Other Points of Interest<\/strong> The 1865 version of \u201cThe Love Song\u201d (Le Chant d\u2019amour) by Sir Edward Burne-Jones displays a bellows pumping air into a tall, thin pipe organ. The bellows is worked by a figure in red wearing a scarf.<\/p>\n The long purple scarf blows in a breeze light enough to make the scarf appear as wings while a pale faced girl plays the organ keys and turns the pages of her book. The young fellow looks on as she multitasks. The 1868 version (not in the exhibit) lifts the blind fold and the book becomes insignificant.<\/p>\n There is always so much to absorb at exhibitions; it\u2019s like taking a crash course in art, design, architecture, personalities, history, and exhibit arrangement.<\/p>\n The Aesthetic Movement (\u201cArt for Art\u2019s sake\u201d) exhibition offers the typical period collection of a nontraditional moment in history during the Victorian era. This exhibition of art for the middle classes consists of paintings, jewelry, clothes, designs by interior architects, furniture, wall paper, the \u201cYellow Book<\/a>\u201d, book engravings and a large sculpture of Ethos at the end.<\/p>\n The museum synopsis offers a self-guided tour that encourages the curious to back track and to search out and re-examine the objects. The tour moves next to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.<\/p>\n What You Would Have Experienced<\/strong> The French explanations and descriptions were on a platform, close to the floor, making it easy for someone in a chair who reads French to look down and read. Some of the descriptions were on the face of a glass case instead of flat next to the object. However, some of the objects described were high and flat unable for someone in a chair to see.<\/p>\n Where It\u2019s Been; Where It\u2019s Going<\/strong>
\nAmong the placid, pensive faces that peer from the walls is an unconventional painting. In place of the pensive, calm stare of the other paintings is a sharply shaped character looking out with a glare.<\/p>\n
\nAncient Egyptian furniture is a reference point for the designs of chairs in this exhibit. This is the first time I am aware of references to ancient Egyptian design. It seems that Greek art is always a starting point.<\/p>\n
\nA marble bust of a woman turning, looking over her shoulder tells a mythological story of\u00a0Ovid\u2019s Metamorphses<\/a>\u00a0and uses the Aesthetic Movement\u2019s symbol, the sunflower. The woman represents\u00a0Clytie\u00a0who becomes a sunflower after nine days of looking to the sun god, Apollo, wanting forgiveness.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nOn the walls were Oscar Wilde quotes from his writings. Some of the passage ways were very narrow. People were in non-electric wheel chairs moving independently or being pushed. A few baby carriages were there. The rooms were crowded. Occasionally, either the wheel of the chair or the baby stroller bumped into a display.<\/p>\n
\nVictoria & Albert Museum<\/strong>\u2019s title:\u00a0The Cult of Beauty<\/strong>: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900; the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Legion of Honor title: The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde, 1860\u20131900
\nMus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay<\/strong>\u00a0English title: Beauty, Morals and Voluptuousness in the England of Oscar Wilde.
\nFine Arts Museum of San Francisco<\/strong>,\u00a0Legion of Honor<\/strong>\u00a0title: The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde, 1860\u20131900 Opens: February 18, 2012
\n\u201c\u2026 Whistler’s Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room is once again what the artist intended, a whimsical land of porcelain ruled by the princess in the painting. \u2026\u201d –\u00a0Freer-Sackler, The Smithonsian\u2019s Museums of Asian Art<\/strong>.
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