Presenting Panopticon

Panopticon

Through Aug. 17, 2003

Carnegie Museum of Art

(412) 622-3131

Stepping… Panopticon

Through Aug. 17, 2003

Carnegie Museum of Art

(412) 622-3131

Stepping inside the Carnegie Museum of Art’s new exhibition is like taking the first step of a marvelous journey. The stairs that lead to the gallery space are framed with a gold-tasseled red velvet curtain, and at the top of the stairs, a station trimmed with the same rich tapestry prepares visitors with audio tours and little books for the wonderful vision inside.

Louise Lippincott, fine arts curator for the museum, calls the space “a palace for the imagination.” Indeed, with its muted red and green walls, red velvet curtains, Persian rugs and artwork filling nearly every foot of wall space, the exhibit, “Panopticon,” provides a dramatic backdrop to viewing the majority of its permanent collection while the museum’s Scaife galleries are being renovated.

The word “panopticon” means “a place where everything can be seen at once.” With the renovation of the vast Scaife galleries, the museum has been forced to move the paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and artistic chairs from nine rooms into three. In doing so, the curators adopted salon style. In contrast to the current accepted method of displaying art on vast white backgrounds, salon style places much more art in smaller spaces, often leaving very little room between paintings.

According to Lippincott, salon style began in the 16th century, but was popularized in the 19th century when public shows were short on space. Like “Panopticon” now, salon style shows consisted of huge rooms hung floor to ceiling with paintings. The now preferred method of hanging paintings did not become popular until after World War I, when avant-garde artists began to demand more room for the viewing of their artwork.

The museum has also avoided grouping artworks by using categories such as movement, style or artist. Instead, the paintings have been grouped chronologically in sections such as European, American and Pittsburgh artists. Sculpture is divided into groups according to categories such as busts, male and female figures and forms and groupings. The collection of chairs has been grouped by shape, construction and style.

Drawing personal connections between the works is part of the exhibit’s fun. For example, one may scoff at Monet’s water lilies after being bombarded by their presence on calendars, stationery and umbrellas, but when a mural-size painting of his famous flowers is shown alongside the more traditional, realistic paintings of his time, the artist’s genius seems fresh again.

Along the nearly 100-foot long wall that showcases a collection of paintings by Pittsburgh artists, the evolution of local artists becomes apparent. Philip Pearlstein, for example, has two pieces exhibited in the show. “The Artist’s Parents,” painted in 1943, is more realistic and, while still talented, somewhat crude compared to his 1980 painting, “Two Models, One Seated on Floor in Kimono,” which uses light colors and a realistic, yet slightly caricature-like approach. The parquet floor in the background takes up nearly all the space and seems tilted toward the viewer. One nude model, seated on the floor in the foreground, seems to almost spill over into the gallery. Pearlstien’s artistic growth between his teen years and adulthood is apparent in just two paintings.

Samuel Rosenberg’s three paintings demonstrate a similar evolution. His painting style changes from one of almost studied precision to one of carefree abstraction between the time he painted what appears to be a religious procession of some kind in 1938’s “Untitled” to the time he painted another, more abstract “Untitled” in 1960.

In the European and American art groupings, it’s more difficult to see evolution of specific artists because of the greater variety of work, but different connections, as with the example of Monet and his contemporaries, can easily be seen.

Lippincott said some of the juxtapositions were deliberate, but for the most part, the pieces were just placed where they would fit. The curators designed a scale model with color thumbnails of each piece of work to plan the gallery space.

The curator added she had deliberately placed a traditional British painting, Sir Alfred J. Munnings’ “Changing Horses,” next to a cubist painting from Paris, Jean Metzinger’s “Man With Pipe.”

“It’s a little bit more like the real art world,” Lippincott said.

The artwork, for the most part, includes pieces that frequent visitors to the museum will be familiar with. Lippincott estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the works in the exhibition have come from the gallery’s current collection. The rest have been pulled from storage, and a handful of them are new acquisitions including three chairs and a few paintings, including “Alya,” by New England artist Paul Feeley and Jo Baer’s graphic “Untitled,” a white field bordered by a band of dark violet.

The sculptures in the exhibit have been arranged into groups with delightful names like “About Face,” a collection of marvelous busts, including a large wooden head from a sculpture of a Buddhist deity, “Guanyin.” The other groups have been titled “Femme Fatale,” “Clothes Make the Man” and “Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd …”

Fanciful names such as these are another example of the museum trying to further engage audiences in a new way. In addition to the inviting collection of dark wooden furniture, art books, binoculars and Persian rugs scattered throughout the exhibit space, the museum’s education director has organized a variety of audio tours and the museum has a series of visitor booths planned where people can record their thoughts in journals. All of these activities are planned in light of the museum’s goal to continue bringing people back to the museum throughout the duration of this exhibition’s especially long stay.

Considering every aspect of this exhibit demands attention, and that there aren’t enough hours in the day to glean every bit of enlightenment that “Panopticon” offers in its great rooms, the museum can be certain visitors will return again and again.