What is most wonderful about the newly opened exhibit at the Nassau County Museum of Art, “The Moderns,” is that there are works by all the most important artists who defined The Modernists and revolutionized art — Picasso, Miro, Dali, Chagall, Matisse — but works that would have been in private collections, so are unfamiliar to us and we can revel in these to better know the ones we thought we knew so well.
Even more exciting is to see for the first time masterpieces from artists you may not be familiar with at all — Claude-Emile Schuffenecher, Maximilien Luce, Victor Brugariolle.
Taken together, the exhibit expresses The Moderns, in context to the social and political currents of the times that produced such revolutions in art as Cubism, Fauvism, Expressionism and Surrealism.
“Beginning with Impressionism, art becomes largely an end in itself, rather than being an adjunct to storytelling, or official political and cultural ideologies,” writes Franklin Hill Perrell, guest curator for “The Moderns: Long Island Collects Modern Art.”
“Cubism’s premise of multiple vantage points to comprehend its subject furthered the break away from descriptive …. Next, surrealism, which elevated imagination as a valid source of artistic imagery. In Expressionism, emotion and intuition prevail over rationality … recurrently surfaces throughout the modernist epoch.”
The centerpiece of this special exhibit, THE MODERNS: Selections from the Saltzman Family Collection, which continues celebrations of the Museum’s 25th anniversary year, honors the Museum’s Founding President, the late Ambassador Arnold A. Saltzman, who during his life formed one of America’s great private collections of early modernist painting and sculpture.
The exhibition includes works by well-known modernists such as Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, Constantin Brancusi, Edgar Degas, Robert Delaunay, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and many others.
It is more than complimented by a companion exhibition, THE MODERNS: Long Island Collects Modern Art, organized by guest curator Franklin Hill Perrell, which draws together choice examples of 20th-century art from significant Long Island collections.
This special presentation embraces a wide range of treasures by pioneering artists of the modernist era, among them Matisse, Monet, Renoir, Dali, Léger, Chagall, Miró, Toulouse-Lautrec and others.
Saltzman Family Collection include powerful pieces, like George Grosz (German, 1893-1959) “World of Asphalt” (1931), and stunning pieces like Robert Delaunay (French, 1885-1941), “Femme lisant (“Woman reading” 1915), and surprising pieces, like Marc Chagall’s “Les Chardons” (“The Thistles,” 1931), remarkable for its subdued palette for the artist better known for jarringly bright colors (and can be compared to Chagall’s “The Green Clown” (1970-75) in a gallery devoted to art works declared “degenerative art” by Nazi Germany, where the notes describe Chagall as “a unique artistic personality”.)
What is most interesting here are the notes from the artists themselves, describing their work or their philosophical approach to their art — something that intrigued Arnold Saltzman himself (and I wonder if it was Saltzman who collected the quotes).
At the opening reception, Saltzman’s daughter, Mimi, said, “Collecting was for him a wild pursuit, worldwide, three-dimensional chess game. He went to tremendous depths to understand art history, the artists and their lives.”
“He began collecting as a very young man with the first money he made. He was a businessman, a political animal but his true soul was art — collecting and understanding. He wasn’t simply an art collector, but a philanthropist, seeing ways to improve lives.
“He was sympathetic to Nazi Degenerate art. He had an aggressive nature, and a profound need to follow his vision in all aspects of his life.
He really felt George Grosz’s disgust with Germany, and the impressionists’ delicate, nuanced relationship with nature.”
“He was instrumental in establishing this museum. Arnold inhabited this museum, his soul is here,” she said.
The riches continue in galleries devoted to “Long Island Collects Modern Art” — pieces loaned from private collections.
On one wall: Paul Cezanne’s “Near to Aix en Provence” (1865-7); Camille Pissarro’s “The Flood at Ermagy, A Study” (1892), a ballet dancer by Degas, Pierre August Renoir’s “Paysage” (1905), a sweet, small landscape as well as a charming portrait of a young girl.
The opposite wall has an equally stunning display: Jean Gabriel Domergue (French 1889-1962), “Racing at Longchamp,” Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) “Mere et enfant” (1951 a line drawing, and Henri Matisse (French 1869-1954) “Interieur rouge” (1920).
Also in this gallery is Toulouse Lautrec, and Maximilien Luce’s pointillist portrait of Rodolphe Pissarro.
In one remarkable room, Victor Brugariolle (French, 1869-1931): “Place de la Concorde” (1890), Claude-Emile Schuffenecher (French 1851-1931), “In the Isle of France, (1897) and Maximilien Luce (French 1858-1941) “Port of Rotterdam” (1905), a gift to NCMA from Saltzman.
There are two rooms devoted to Surrealism, with marvelous works of Salvadore Dali, Joan Miro (1881-1973, “Une tale et son petit (1970), which would suggest it was created right before Miro died and “Babere dans la nuit (1976), a lithograph published after his death.
“Surrealism was much more than an art movement,” Hill writes. “Its establishment in 1920 was a corrective to the perceived failures of the social order represented by the violence of World War I.” What is more, “Art’s mandate to portray the external world was usurped by photography.”
Several of these works, including two Dali sculptures (melting clock and woman with a piano) were lent by Dr. Harvey Manes, a museum trustee, who at the opening reception, July 24, spoke of what drew him most to acquiring Dali’s “La Promenade Figures et papillons” which is about metamorphosis, and how he gilded the frame of another Dali, perfectly setting off the image.
In another gallery, devoted to artists whose works were persecuted as “degenerate art” in Nazi Germany (where Chagall’s “Green Clown” is to be found), Dr. Manes has other pieces, including a Picasso with the notation, 25D43, indicating it was made (hastily and is unfinished) as a Christmas present for his mistress.
This sweeping showcase of modern art, Selections from the Saltzman Family Collection and Long Island Collects Modern Art, which together lets you understand the transitions and the context as well as the personalities, is on view through Nov. 8.
