Musee d'Orsay: Explore French Art in a Virtual Museum - Essay Sample

Introduction

Musee d'Orsay is one of the most exciting museums with a permanent collection of houses and many artworks. The virtual museum has a wide range of French art that includes paintings, photographs, and sculptures. The exhibition consists of fine and applied arts that encompass paintings by great artists like Renoir, Menot, Degas, and Manet (Getlein, 2008). The virtual museum is overwhelming to watch. The website is also attractive as it consists of the most creative artworks. It is inspiring and motivates someone to visit the museum. Bal du Moulin de la Galette Painting by Renoir is an example of successful artwork in the museum. One of the unsuccessful artworks is Le Chat Blanc painting by Pierre Bonnard. The purpose of this paper is to review the online art exhibition critically.

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Bal du Moulin de la Galette Painting by Renoir

The exhibition mainly displays impressionist and modern arts from France. One of the successful artworks includes Moulin de la Galette painting by Renoir. About impressionism, the picture consists of a scene of a joyful atmosphere at a party. It captures several people, their movements, and expressions (Renoir, 1876). The painting is anchored across the upper right to lower diagonal to separate the foreground and background, complementing the sense of movement enlarged by blurry contours.

Image 1: Bal du Moulin de la Galette Painting

Description of the Painting

The painting involves a scene of working-class people at leisure. The entire picture is full of happy faces apart from a man sitting on the right who seems to be in a thoughtful mood. Some people are dancing while others are seated, taking their drinks. On the left, there is a dancing couple depicted in a natural spotlight (Renoir, 1876). The woman's pink dress is contrasted with dark blue. There is also a mother playing with her child.

The painting's theme is leisure. It emphasizes on the social life during leisure where people gather to dance together in joy. In the painting, people are drinking and dancing, while the atmosphere is joyful (Renoir, 1876). It is also regarded as one of the happiest artworks in the museum. The artwork is representational as it presents specific subjects from realism. The subjects in the painting are easily recognizable. The representational painters always depict what they see in the real world while drawing it.

Elements of Art Used

Renoir uses patches of light with soft pink and purple colors, while for the figures, he makes use of blue, pink, and green (Getlein, 2008). He also uses dark blue to contrast the light colors. The tone used creates a frenzied atmosphere. Additionally, the painting uses organic shapes to show the figures in the painting. However, the circular structures and chairs take the geometric shape. It also uses monocular cues of texture gradient as the couples dancing have detailed figures and a considerable distance from each other. As the viewer looks at the painting, the crowd gradually seems to compress together, thus reducing the details. The chandeliers and some figures are smaller in size to show that they are farther from the people dancing.

Principles of Art Used

Renoir uses repetition and rhythm in his painting. There are repeated shapes in the entire painting to create a rhythm that moves the viewer's eye around the scene (Getlein, 2008). The shapes of the light fixtures also repeat across the top of the painting. There is a repetition of bright faces in the entire scene. There is the use of contrast. The women in the centre are wearing clothing with different values that contrast between dark and light. The white fixtures also contrast the dark leaves in the background. The geometric shape contrasts with the organic shapes where the man's arm is placed over the back of his chair.

Interpretation

The painting is an early French impressionist painting. It represents a joyful atmosphere of the popular dance at Butte Montmartre (Getlein, 2008). The painting symbolizes the real life of the locals. It further symbolizes the conviviality and cooperation of the people of Montmartre. It also represents the famous dance garden in Montmartre. On Sunday afternoons, the working-class individuals used to drink and dance together in the dancing garden.

The painting evokes a feeling of happiness. It is a typical impressionist snapshot of real-life (Getlein, 2008). It stimulates emotions in an individual due to the use of happy faces and the inclusion of a scene that also represents contemporary society. Presently, people engage in meetings after work, drinking, and dancing together in their favorite places. The painting also invests in a vivid color palette and light to produce a painting of people. It depicts the people as contented individuals who take a break from their usual work. It, therefore, helps in connecting with all classes of people.

Le Chat Blanc Painting by Pierre Bonnard

Le chat blanc painting displayed in the online exhibition is one of the most unsuccessful artworks in the museum. In the painting, Bonnard applies distortion to create the image of a cat that seems to arch its back. It is also exaggeratedly arched on its paws and its head drawn into its shoulders. The cat has a very short neck, and its eyes are like slits. The white cat is humorous. However, it does not follow most of the principles of arts (Geitlein, 2008).

Image 2: Le Chat Blanc

The painting is terrible, as it seems to be strange. The cat's legs are stiff and stiff. The cat appears to be reliable. The picture also lacks most elements of art. It ignores the use of texture, shape, and space. The principles of art are also ignored in the painting. Its symbolism is also confusing as it may be used to symbolize purity due to white color and privacy within the lives of French families. However, his bold use of color is commendable (Getlein, 2008). He also invests in sinuous lines and avoids the depth of the figure. The use of oblique lines and the absence of depth of the character place his artwork in the Nabi tradition.

Conclusion

Musee d'Orsay museum is famous for its extensive collection of Impressionist paintings and exhibits paintings from Renoir, Morisot, Monet, and Manet. One of the most successful artworks in the museum is Bal du Moulin de la Galette Painting by Renoir. The painting consists of a scene of people dancing and drinking. It applies most elements and principles of art. It consists of various colors that contrast each other. The shapes used are geometric and organic. The painter applies repetition and rhythm by repeating figures in the entire painting. One of the unsuccessful artworks is Le Chat Blanc by Pierre Bonnard. It involves an exaggerated cat that seems to arch its back. The painting fails to comply with the principles and elements of art. A good painting should follow some of the guidelines in art. It should also have an aesthetic experience. However, the virtual exhibition of Musee d'Orsay is fascinating to watch.

References

Getlein, M., & Gilbert, R. (2008). Living with art. McGraw-Hill. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5c3c/3c7bf924b6571ff137f8ccbf02139b35039e.pdf

Musee d'Orsay Museum, Paris. Arts and Culture.https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/musee-dorsay-paris?hl=en

Renoir, P. A. Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette. (1876) http://www.gomesfame.com/Documents/DocumentsFameIV/Renoir.pdf