International cooperation between museums expand the audience to artwork and bring together different cultures and historical backgrounds around art.
Livia Schaeffer Nonose @livisn
It often come to mind when we think of painter’s art the western works of artists and masterworks such as Rembrantd, Van Gogh, Monet, Kandinsky, Modigliani, among so many others. Outside the main stream, creative process has also flourished in places like Indonesia, Philippines, Russia, Singapore and other countries of South East Asia and near by regions, just to mention a few examples in the worldwide art scene. The recent exhibition organised by the National Gallery Singapore in collaboration with Centre Pompidou in Paris, named Reframing Modernism - Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond, is the first international collaboration for the singaporean gallery, bridging SEA art work to the european influences that defined modernism and how it was interpreted in different regions, facing different historical moments. The cultural and historical background of a piece has an extremely important weight for reflecting characteristics that could be mainly, if not only, influenced by a specific event or period of time, thus making it so important and meaningful. This is one of the most valuable aspects of the collaboration that brought up Reframing Modernism together, as it enlightens, through SEA and other regions’ works of art, historical events of important countries for the region when at the same time, links them to the similar style of european modernists and how it connects the audience across regions as well. |
The exhibition is well curated to promote the not-so-known works of eastern painters if compared to the popularity of western masterpieces, taking full advantage of the few pieces brought from Paris to introduce the visitors to the style of modernism, and the details of each asian art works.
Recently, in another international collaboration between west and east, the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art exhibited Renoir’s Light to the Japanese public with works coming from different museums and private collectors, with a considerably number of artworks painted by the impressionist artist. Some of the works included Woman with a Straw Hat, Luncheon of the Boating Party, and others coming from Palais Princier de Monaco; Collection Perez Simon, Mexico; Biblioteque Nationale de France; Foundation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, among others. Exhibitions like this facilitate the connections and dialogues that only art can promote and act as educative programmes for those keen of it.