Paths to Modernity: Musée d'Orsay's Paris masterpieces on show in Shanghai

"Paths to Modernity: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay, Paris," currently on at the Museum of Art Pudong, is surely one of the must-see exhibitions this summer in Shanghai.

As the largest showcase ever mounted by the Musée d'Orsay in China, the exhibition brings over 100 masterpieces of French art from the 1840s to the early 20th century, encompassing nearly all major artistic movements represented in the Musée d'Orsay's collection – from Academicism to Realism and Naturalism, through Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, to Post-Impressionism and the Nabis.

Masters, including Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Jean-François Millet, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustave Courbet, and Georges Seurat, converge with ground-breaking, authentic works that pioneered modern artistic language. Collectively, these works embody the avant-garde spirit and artistic revolution that led from Classicism to Modernity.

Cécile Degos, acclaimed French scenographer who is the designer of this exhibition, draws inspiration from the iconic interior architecture of the Musée d'Orsay.

Combined with the spatial structure of the Museum of Art Pudong, her design creates an immersive viewing experience that evokes the sensation of being inside the museum in Paris, where familiar light, shadow, and curves reappear on the banks of the Huangpu River.

Occupying the whole space on the museum's second and third floors, the exhibition is divided into five sections: "The Infinite Variety of Beauty," "From Realism to Naturalism," "New Painting and Impressionism," "Beyond Impressionism," and "The Nabis: Between Intimism and Decoration."

The spotlights of the exhibition are Van Gogh's "Bedroom in Arles" and Millet's "The Gleaners."

"Bedroom in Arles" depicts Van Gogh's intimate space during his time in southern France.

On February 19, 1888, the post-impressionism master boarded a train to Arles. In his eyes, the South shine was akin to an accessible Orient. The man believed in the commercial allure of the sunlit South with its exoticism and hoped its light would have therapeutic effects. This painting aimed to express "absolute repose" through its tense composition and restrained palette.

Many local art lovers are familiar with Millet's "The Gleaners", as the painting is widely reproduced in art publications with an extraordinary place in art history.

Behind the image of three peasant women bending to ears of glean in a wheat field lies the hidden tension of the era's urban-rural structures and class relations. Millet brought ordinary figures and everyday scenes into a high artistic realm, gazing at the real conditions of society's underclass laborers.

Other highlights displayed at the exhibition are Monet's "Stacks of Wheat, End of Summer," Gauguin's "Tahitian Women (On the Beach)," Manet's "Portrait of Émile Zola," Degas' "The Dance Foyer at the Opera" and Auguste Rodin's "Sculpture of Victor Hugo."

Rather than a chronological display of these masterpieces, Stéphane Guégan, renowned art historian and Scientific Advisor to the President of Musée d'Orsay, curated the exhibition. The key curatorial highlight is its move beyond the traditional isolation of masterpieces, instead juxtaposing them with works that share formal specifics or subjects.

For example, the exhibition juxtaposes representative works by Renoir and Cézanne, two pivotal figures in the transition of Impressionism. Renoir's "Young Girls at the Piano" depicts two young women immersed in music. The work not only captures a moment of performance but also seems to convey the rhythm of the music, evoking a synesthetic interplay of sound and image. Cézanne, hailed as the "father of modernism," reveals the core characteristics of his late style in "Portrait of Madame Cézanne" – building tonal variations through dense brushwork and guiding the viewer into a pure, tranquil and profound viewing experience through simplified forms and constantly adjusted perspectives.

Pissarro once talked about Cézanne in 1895, "As Renoir quite rightly told me, there is a certain je ne sais quoi (I don't know what ) akin to the things of Pompei, so rough, yet so admirable."

Also, the exhibition is enriched by "Tonight with the Impressionists, Paris 1874" on the first floor. The approximately 45-minute virtual reality journey centred on the landmark exhibition at Nadar's studio in April 1874, transporting audiences back to the streets of Paris to explore the origins and impact of this ground-breaking art movement. Participants will encounter several renowned artists and their seminal works alongside original scene locations, such as "Impression, Sunrise" by Monet and "The Parisian Girl" by Renoir.

If you go

Date: Through October 12, 10am-9pm

Address: 2777 Binjiang Ave.

Admission: 80 yuan (US$11.13)