The Venue
First off, a few things that make the Kunstpalast in DĂĽsseldorf, Germany, considerably less endearing than I remember it, to put it mildly.
To start with, it’s not altogether clear why an elaborate account with full address and telephone number is needed to buy an electronic exhibition ticket online—that’s certainly not what’s called »Datensparsamkeit« in Germany. Then, while I do have an account I’ve already used for exhibitions and concerts several times, it has vanished without a trace, so I had to go through the whole procedure again to create the exact same account, with all that mandatory excessive and gratuitous data.
Next, the exhibit texts. For the largest part of the exhibition, the exhibit labels and texts are not only placed flat on the floor of a slightly elevated step (to keep people from moving too close) but also directly in front of the paintings. This has the dual advantage of not being able to read them without considerable effort and blocking the view to the paintings for inordinate amounts of time while trying to do so. As an alternative, the texts can be found on the website, but as a PDF and without even the shred of an effort at formatting for online view; thus, to make it reasonably useful, you have to download the PDF to your phone and have the GoodReader app or similar handy. But, as the formatting borders on sabotage, even then.
Now, what about an audio version? Well, there is an audio version—but offered in German language only, and you would have to pay three bucks for it, in an old-fashioned nickel-and-diming effort I haven’t encountered in years, not even in Germany.
The Exhibition
The exhibition itself is fantastic. While it’s labeled “Monet—Cézanne—Matisse: The Scharf Collection,” it’s much more than that.
It starts out with Delacroix, Courbet, Corot; the brutal political commentaries in paintings, lithographs, and sculptures by Daumier; and ten etchings by Goya from his series «Los Desastres de la Guerra».
These are followed by Monet, CĂ©zanne, and Renoir and Japonisme works by Bonnard and Vuillard, complemented by a number of beautiful woodblock prints by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Kunisada, who triggered Japonisme in the first place.
Then, to my delight, there were about a dozen charcoal drawings, lithographies, and monotypes by Degas, and especially a black-and-white reproduction of his terrific « Place de la Concorde », the original of which can be found at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (where it has no business being). These, in turn, were followed by a full room of Toulouse-Lautrec, several paintings by Matisse, one work each by Picasso, Gris, and Laurens, and a considerable number of paintings by Léger.
Finally, there were about two dozen works by various artists from after 1945 I didn’t much care for in this particular context, with the exception of »Himmelblau« by Max Ernst and two works by Sumimoto, “Arctic Ocean” and “Mirtoan Sea,” whose seascapes have followed me, almost haunted me, ever since I saw his works in a solo exhibition in Berlin around twenty years ago.