Exhibition at the Ashmolean tells the story of the rise of Modernism

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Harlequin with Mask (Tête d’Arlequin masque).

Ink and coloured chalks on paper, 24.1 x 18 cm. Private Collection.

© ADAGP, Paris and DACS London 2016.

OXFORD.- The Ashmolean’s spring exhibition tells one of the most compelling stories in the history of art – the rise of Modernism. From the early nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, this story was played out in France and especially in Paris where international artists were drawn by salons and dealers, the creative exchange between poets and painters, and the bohemian atmosphere of such places as Montmartre and Montparnasse. The exhibition plots a course from Neoclassical and Romantic artists like David, Ingres and Delacroix, through Impressionists and Post-Impressionists like Degas, Monet and Seurat, to the groundbreaking experiments of Picasso and Braque; but it shows that there was no straight line leading from tradition to the shock of abstraction. The story is altogether more interesting as academic artists and members of the avant-garde exchanged ideas and as rivalries developed between different schools and powerful characters. In works by Manet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Degas and Picasso, the exhibition explores the artists who created Modernism and how they did it.

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