On March 18, 2017, the ARTPLAY Design Center will open the multimedia exhibition “From Monet to Malevich. Great modernists”. The exhibition is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the death of Edgar Degas and includes the works of sixteen of the most significant representatives of the era of modernism - Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustav Klimt, Paul Signac, Piet Mondrian, Amedeo Modigliani, Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Juan Gris, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. In total, about 5,000 works from more than 20 museums around the world will be shown.
In 2016, the ARTPLAY Design Center established the Young Art Support Program, within the framework of which it attracts contemporary artists to design the Center's exhibitions. Within the framework of this Program, Daria Kamyshnikova and Maxim Parfenchikov, curator of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and head of the Free Workshops School, will be co-curators of the entrance hall of the exhibition "From Monet to Malevich". The motto for the exhibitors was a quote from the American poet, critic and translator, one of the founders and ideologue of modernism, Ezra Pound: “Make it new!”. On the one hand, this phrase emphasizes the main postulate of modernism and is seen as fundamental in the further development and study of modernist aesthetics,on the other hand, it is a challenge to young artists and a presentation to the viewer of their attempt to “make something new” in the conditions of a changed historical, social and cultural context.
The multimedia part of the exhibition is a journey into the world of art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, when culture and society were experiencing a real revolution. Every year brought new achievements to everyday life - gramophones, cinemas, typewriters, electricity, airplanes, telephones, x-rays. Simultaneously with the industrial revolution, the world was shaken by political upheavals and wars. Art reacted sharply to what was happening. It was then that artistic movements appeared, later united by the term "modernism" - expressionism, abstractionism, surrealism, suprematism, and so on.
At this time, connections between reality and its image on canvas begin to break - from copying the surrounding world, artists move on to creating their own worlds. So, full of primitive secrets, striking with their brilliance and cheerfulness, Paul Gauguin's canvases are a reflection of the artist's inner worldview, his dream, intertwined with the myths of the peoples of Oceania. In Gustav Klimt's work, feminine images full of eroticism dissolve in decorative splendor. Wassily Kandinsky discovers in schematism the power to evoke free associations, and the ideologist of Suprematism, Kazimir Malevich, proclaimed that only non-objective paintings are an act of “pure creativity” that equalized the creative power of man and Nature.
The exhibition will become a serious educational platform. On Mondays, there will be an action "Lesson at the Exhibition" - for all schoolchildren (up to 16 years old inclusive) free admission to the exhibition will be organized, both with parents and as part of a group. Particular attention will be paid to inviting groups from art schools and schools where there is a subject "World Art Culture" with teachers who, during or after the exhibition, could conduct excursions for the students. A visual excursion into the history of art using the examples of the 12 greatest artists of the 19th - early 20th centuries. could be of great help in mastering the subject.
In addition, within the framework of the exhibition, a free lecture hall for visitors will be organized, dedicated to the life and work of each of the artists.
Modernist paintings often contain puzzles for the eye, making it wander like a labyrinth and open the source of meaning where tradition sees only chaos and nonsense. They easily take on a new life with the help of digital technologies - after all, a hundred years ago, it was the work of modernists that was the first glimpse of this technological future.
The multimedia exhibition "From Monet to Malevich" is open from March 18 to August 19, 2017 at the address: st. Nizhnyaya Syromyatnicheskaya, 10, ARTPLAY Design Center, building 2, entrance 2A.
According to the press service of the ARTPLAY Design Center.