Arch-idealism. The truth of nature, in rational mind and emotional heart. The liberation of formlessness. The descent to brutality.
This summer, on the last Thursday of each month, the Woodstock Opera House and Woodstock Fine Arts Association presents Great Art On Screen, the latest in its new lineup of audio-visual and film programming. The series will tour guests through collections of some of the greatest and most influential artists of the 17th, 19th, and early 20th centuries – Caravaggio, Monet, Van Gogh, Klimt, and Schiele.
Opera House director Dan Campbell said that the series will help bring art and culture to Woodstock in a new way. “We can show great works of art by some very famous painters, sculptors, and so on,” Campbell said. “It’s another way to bring a variety of artforms [beyond performance] to the public… it’s another pathway that we can explore that we didn’t have the opportunity to do before.”
The first program in the series, showing this Thursday the 30th, focuses on Vincent Van Gogh, the post-impressionist painter of the late 1800s. Van Gogh became famous – sadly, well after his early death – as a bridge between the structural, rationalistic styles of classical painting, and the chaotic, emotive ethos that defines 20th century and modern art.
“Van Gogh: Of Wheat Fields And Clouded Skies,” explores the collection of Helene Kroller-Muller, an early and avid collector of the Dutch artist. The film will present 40 of Van Gogh’s paintings and 85 drawings in documentary style – Campbell said, “it’ll be a deep dive, they’ll have experts who can explain some of the backstory and history behind the paintings, and their social and artistic relevance to the audience.”
The series will conclude on August 29th with Van Gogh’s contemporary and predecessor in style, Claude Monet (“Monet: The Magic Of Water And Light”), whose simple and beautiful depictions of nature as he saw it – the “impressionist” style – were nonetheless a striking challenge to conventions of European art. For centuries, works like those of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (“Caravaggio: The Soul And The Blood,” presented on June 27th) were the only acceptable definition of “high art,” pursuing the peak of idealism through mastery of style and glorification of subject matter.
After Van Gogh, art made another, similar jump as that from Caravaggio to Monet, and Monet to Van Gogh. Gustav Klimt, an Austrian artist and one of the first greats of the 20th century, led an artistic movement known as the “Vienna Secession,” which furthered the already-established trend of beauty through emotion and feeling, rather than through pure thought and reason. His works incorporated gold leaf, foreign techniques (particularly Japanese), and a sensuality and sexuality that far surpassed earlier nude portraits.
His protege, Egon Schiele, was a preview of things to come. His works in both portrait and landscape were pure deconstruction – the “id,” the animal of man, revolting against the very concept of the ideal. Since Schiele’s 1918 death from the post-WWI Spanish Flu pandemic, a hundred years of visual art has followed his example: like a skeleton revealed beneath sloughing flesh, mere decay has been transcended. The most powerful civilization in the history of mankind will accept nothing less than the completely undefinable.
“Klimt and Schiele: Eros And Psyche” will show on June 27th. All shows begin at 7 pm. For tickets and more information, visit http://www.woodstockoperahouse.com
Willcockson Wordsmithing 