In the photographer’s lush red-and-gold-carpeted studio in northern Paris, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas are putting the finishing touches on a painting hanger, while fellow artist Berthe Morisot and Camille Pissarro lament the lack of recognition for their work, and Claude Monet laments being mistaken for Edouard Manet.
Outside, Parisian gentlemen in bowler hats and bustling ladies admiring the newly completed opera house, while horse-drawn carriages rattle along Baron Haussmann’s new boulevard. Enjoying an early drink on the terrace of a cafe.
The Musée d’Orsay exhibition, “Paris 1874: The Invention of Impressionism,” which opens this week, takes visitors on a virtual journey back 150 years to the very moment that marked the birth of a movement that changed art history.
On the evening of April 15, 1874, when 30 artists now known as the Impressionists gathered in photographer Félix Nadar’s studio at 35 Boulevard Capucines in Paris, they were little known and struggling. Was.
Almost in desperation, many decided to hold their own exhibitions, alienated from the jury at the annual Académie des Beaux-Arts Salons, which formally adjudicate artistic merit.
At the time, they were not known as “Impressionists.” Shortly after journalist Louis Leroy used the word as an ironic synonym for “unfinished” in his review of Monet’s impression Soleil les Vents, which was later hailed as an iconic founding masterpiece. This term has appeared. An exciting new move.
During the 40-minute immersive tour, visitors spend a virtual evening in a breakaway exhibition of young artists and travel by steam train to Bougival, west of Paris. Many of them worked there, helped by the development of tubed oil paints. I let them out of the studio.
They then exhibited Renoir’s “La Parisienne” and “La Danseuse,” which were featured in the 1874 exhibition, and other Impressionist masterpieces, paintings, and other Impressionist masterpieces that were displayed alongside more classical works that were accepted into the official salons. Visit the main exhibition, which leads to a gallery of drawings and sculptures. In that same year.
Agnès Abastad, director of digital development at the Musée d’Orsay, said the immersive experience was “unique and innovative” but based on painstaking scientific research. This oral communication was scripted from hundreds of letters exchanged by young artists at the time.
“You can go to this exhibition and relive the evening with the artists and learn about the origins of this exhibition. [artistic] movement. We wanted to recreate the emotions for the visitors of the 1874 exhibition, but we took a precise scientific approach, so it’s based on what we know tonight,” Avastad said.
“Although the story of the exhibition was invented, we spent two years researching and reconstructing documents and letters to ensure that everything was as close to reality as possible.”
Little is known about Nadar’s studio, which was destroyed in 1989, and the first Impressionist exhibition was never photographed, but Stéphane Millière, head of Gedeon Media Group, who co-created the VR experience, said: said it had tracked down the architect. ” plans, lighting and upholstery details, and even wallpaper receipts, allowing us to reconstruct the studio and its surrounding streets.
“The boulevard you see in VR is an exact replica of what it looked like in 1874,” says Millière. “For visitors, the VR experience brings the exhibition to life and makes it special.”
Anne Robbins, co-curator of the exhibition, said the aim of the exhibition and VR experience was to “retell the rich and passionate story of the beginnings of Impressionism”.
“We are looking into this situation [1874] At the event, we will introduce carefully selected works at a specific time and place. Some of the works by chefs are quite impressive, while others are paintings and sculptures that are less noteworthy, but still important.
“There we see the novelty of these paintings and how this group of artists who participated in the 1874 exhibition were so diverse and their work so eclectic. We want to offer new perspectives and understanding.”
Pierre-Emmanuel Rousself, general manager of the Musée d’Orsay, added that the VR experience is more than just entertainment.
“This allows us to go back in time, evoke the surrounding environment and decorations, and bring the painters to life, but it is scientific in its approach. This is not manufactured entertainment, but at that time You can learn by immersing yourself,” LeSerf said.
“Then you walk into an exhibition and see amazing, real paintings. VR can’t replace this.”
Paris, 1874, the invention of Impressionism opens at Musée d’Orsay from March 26th to July 14th
