ARTinvestment.RU-22.12.2010,
Most of the artists we call “post-impressionists” lived and worked in France, but the term, interestingly, was invented by the British. It is known that the word was first used by artist and art historian Roger Fry (Rogerfry), but was he the only author of the new term? The newspaper themartnewspapergives some guesses, offering its readers help in solving the mystery.
The term became known to the general public in 1910, thanks to the exhibition “Manet and Post-Impressionism”, which Fry arranged in London’s Grafton Galleries. For the first time, British art lovers now have the opportunity to see a significant number of works by Gauguin and Van Gogh in one place.
The exhibition, which opened on November 8, became a real sensation. Visitors (including critics), as usual, left indignant, but for some the event was the beginning of a hobby of modern art. The following words of Virginia Wolf (Virginia Woolf) testify to the storm that the exhibition has lifted: “In December 1910 or so, human nature changed.” Modernism, which stirred minds throughout Europe, finally took the helm of the British kingdom.
It is hard to believe, but Fry was called to make an exhibition at the last minute to plug a hole in the program Grafton Galleries. The details of its name became known only in 1945, when one of the organizers, Desmond McCarthy (Desmond MacCarthy), told the following: “I, Roger and a young journalist who wanted to help us with advertising, met to decide what we call Exhibition. That’s when this word appeared, which is now entrenched in the English language-“post-impressionism”. Roger wanted to use a term emphasizing the difference between these artists and the Impressionists; Among his proposed options was “Expressionism”. But the journalist did not like all these terms. In the end, Roger, losing his patience, said, “Okay, let’s just call them post-impressionist, they’re after the Impressionists are coming.”
So who was that journalist, thanks to whom we do not attribute Cezanne and Gauguin to expressionists or anyone else? They say he was twenty with something, and most likely he was male. Perhaps it was a critic who published a review of the exhibition, but there is little known positive feedback, and their authors (including Holbrook Jackson (Holbrook Jackson), Frank Ratter (Frank Rutter) and Lewis Hind (Lewis Hind), has already exceeded 30, or even for 40. For example, Ratter, who mentioned the term in his article of 14 October 1910, was 34.
There is also a version that “journalist” was not a journalist at all, but the main assistant of the gallery. In the archives of the Van Gogh Museum there is a letter signed by a certain “F. Wallstone “, subordinate to Fry (the signature is not very legible). Nothing is known about this employee; Maybe he had to “help with advertising”?
What surprises me is that an unnamed young man did not mention his key role in this matter in writing, although the exhibition received the status of a historically significant event. The “journalist” could have been killed during the First World War, which broke out in less than four years.
In any case, the one who was engaged in advertising of the exhibition, waited for success, surpassed the wildest expectations. The press has more than 50 reviews, and the number of visitors amounted to 25,000-an incredible figure for the commercial gallery!
A hundred years have passed since then, and the post-impressionist audience is still in the shaft. It is expected that the most popular London exhibitions will be “real Van Gogh: artist and his Letters” (Royal Academy, January 23-April 18) and “Gauguin. Mifovorets “(Tate Modern, September 30-January 16, 2011). On Van Gogh came to see 411 thousand people; The organizers of Retrospectives Gauguin expect the number of visitors to exceed 350 thousand. In general, go “nostril to the nostril.”
Translation of Julia Maximova, AI
Sources: theartnewspaper.com, artinvestment.ru
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