A Visit to the Barnes Foundation

A wall at the Barnes Foundation

A visit to the Barnes Foundation is always a treat. If you're not familiar with the museum, the collection showcases the artwork amassed by Albert C. Barnes over the course of his lifetime. I don't use the word "amass" lightly. His collection contains more than 4,000 artworks and includes 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes and 59 Matisses. The obvious question (other than how one person can own so much world class art) is how to display thousands of paintings. Rather than mounting just a few works in the traditional manner and storing the rest for rotation, Barnes created ensembles on each wall. The works are arranged with an eye to color and line and space rather than a particular artist or period. The effect is quite glorious, if a bit overwhelming. 

"Absorbing Art" by Aristodimos Kaldis (1941)

The museum was originally located in Barnes' home in Merion, Pennsylvania. The move to downtown Philadelphia was extremely controversial. It had been Barnes' intention for the collection to remain in situ in Merion in perpetuity. There were issues with the location, though, that put the museum on the brink of financial collapse. Most significantly, it was difficult for people to get there. Fewer visitors meant fewer dollars, of course, and a collection of that magnitude is expensive to maintain. 

After years of legal battles, the collection was moved to its new home. While the structure is quite different from a house, the artwork is displayed in rooms the exact size and shape of those in Barnes' home. As a result, visitors see the art in the configurations he envisioned. 

For this visit, I decided to focus on the work of artists with whom I was not familiar. Not to belittle Cezanne or Renoir or other well known artists, but why not take the opportunity to be introduced to someone new? "Absorbing Art" by Aristodimos Kaldis is one example. I like the idea of an art lover in a museum looking at a painting of an art lover in a museum. Kind of meta, right? More importantly, I responded to the bright colors and somewhat primitive style of the work. If you do too, you can find some info about Kaldis by clicking here. I was particularly interested to learn that Kaldis was the first living American artist whose work Barnes purchased. Quite an honor. 

Particularly in an exhibit this size, it's easy to get caught up in chronicling what you're seeing rather than really looking and appreciating. I'm certainly guilty of this behavior, especially when I see works I might want to include in a future blog. So I entered the galleries with my iPhone at the ready. But there was an issue -- the Barnes doesn't have wall cards with the names of the works and the artists who created them. This of course makes sense given the context. People generally don't label the artwork in their homes, and the idea was to preserve Barnes' collection exactly in the manner it was displayed. Happily, the museum has developed a fix for this issue, albeit one that was a bit anxiety producing.

"Married Life" by Roger de la Fresnaye (1913)

Thanks to the magic of modern technology, when you point your camera at a painting, a message is conveyed to the Barnes that you want an image of that artwork. You are assured that you will receive an email after you've left the museum with images of each of the works you wanted to remember along with the info that would typically be on a wall card. Great, although going along with this approach felt a bit like taking a trust fall.   

I breathed a sigh of relief when my email from the Barnes arrived shortly after we left. Whew! What if I had to actually just rely on my memory of the experience? (This is a philosophical question beyond the scope of this blog - lol.) My friend Maggie's email didn't arrive until the next morning, though, causing a good deal of consternation on her part. Technology is great until it doesn't work. 

Now back to the art. Both "Married Life" and "David and Goliath" were paintings that caught my attention, but I had no idea who had created them. I now know that the artists were Roger de la Fresnaye and Angelo Pinto, respectively. Both were new names to me. You won't be surprised to learn that de la Fresnaye was part of the Cubist movement. Just look at the angularity of the bodies of the couple featured in his work. De la Fresnaye moved away from Cubism later in his career to depict people in a more realistic manner. That work included a series of self-portraits chronicling the progression of his tuberculosis caused by his exposure to toxic gases during WWI.

"David and Goliath" by Angelo Pinto (1942) 

Angelo Pinto is an artist whose story is intimately linked with that of Albert Barnes. Angelo, along with two of his brothers, took art classes at the Barnes Foundation in the late 1920s. Barnes took a shining to the young artists and became their supporter and, eventually, their patron. Angelo became even more connected with Barnes when he joined the Foundation as an art instructor. Eventually, Barnes purchased four paintings by Albert and his brothers, securing their reputation in the art world. For more on this connection, click here.

Pinto's "David and Goliath" is a reverse painting, a technique I hadn't heard of before. Pinto painted this image on the back of a transparent support, creating the detail and highlights before moving on to the background and shading. This technique is more protective of the artwork than a painting created in the more traditional manner, but it sounds like a pretty complicated solution to a potential problem. 

With that, I'll leave you with a strong recommendation not to miss the Barnes if you're in the Philadelphia area. It's a very special place. For an armchair visit, click here. Happy exploring!