I chose this cover picture above of Roses (1893) by Peder Severin Krøyer, which I discovered from reading Women Who Read Are Dangerous, as I thought it’s a great illustration of the home-ly, sheltered lives we have been living in now — lucky for you if you have a gorgeous rose garden like the one pictured! I’ve had this image as my desktop wallpaper since I got my new computer last August, and I love it for its calm peacefulness. In the same way, I wanted to share some art content that I have been checking out recently that has brought both entertainment and reprieve during these times!

One great thing that has emerged during the global slowdown / lockdown has been seeing how art continues to engage and uplift people. I’m very appreciative of all the museums and their staff that have been working hard to deliver more digital content online, which has been great in allowing me to access more exhibitions and content which I might not been able to before. Also a big thank you to all readers who have been visiting Wording Art here for a dose of art! :)

Here goes a list of exhibition tours, films and talks that I have been enjoying lately. You may notice that many are from British institutions, but they have been my interest lately…

1. Royal Academy of Arts & Exhibition On Screen

Royal Academy of Arts has very generously released three Exhibition On Screen films on their Youtube channel and Facebook page featuring their previous exhibitions. Exhibition On Screen specialises in making films focusing on artists or exhibitions, and you can buy, download, or stream their great number of art films at their website (linked here)!

The three films featuring the Royal Academy of Arts’ exhibitions are:

David Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts: A Bigger Picture 2012 & 82 Portraits and One Still Life 2016

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

Manet: Portraying Life

I will link to the RA’s Youtube and Facebook here (as they have disallowed playback on other websites), but be sure to click over to view these films featuring these great exhibitions! I think it’s such a great way to (re)discover exhibitions, and they’re also done in a documentary style, so you get further insights from the curators and art experts on the works.

2. Picasso on Paper at the Royal Academy of Arts

The RA also shared a virtual tour of their most recent exhibition Picasso on Paper, which had to close when the UK went into lockdown. A super interesting exhibition featuring an aspect of Picasso’s work that is not often discussed: his work with paper, in the form of sketches, prints, collages and even three-dimensional pieces.

I liked how the virtual tour zoomed in close on the details of the individual works and even spanned across the didactics and wall panels at a slower pace to allow you to read them! All set to the tune of peaceful music, no voices this time. :) Again, here are the links to the RA’s Youtube and Facebook, where you can check out the tour.

3. Titian: Love, Desire, Death at The National Gallery

Here is a brilliant curator tour of the exhibition Titian: Love, Desire, Death at The National Gallery, London that was also cut short thanks to the lockdown. It seems like this exhibition will be extended, but that’s really depending on when museums in the UK can reopen.

This exhibition features Titian’s six paintings depicting mythological scenes from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Though it’s a small one, the exhibition is hugely remarkable as it marks the first time the series of paintings was brought together in one space in over four centuries! Here is also a link to a post on The National Gallery’s website explaining and describing each of the six paintings in more detail.

4. Young Rembrandt at the Ashmolean Museum

Young Rembrandt is yet another exhibition that was abruptly closed, but has now gone online! Young Rembrandt tracks the artistic development of Rembrandt, and the virtual exhibition follows the same pattern with its neat sectioning into five parts.

Unlike the other exhibition formats share above, Young Rembrandt is being shared on Ashmolean’s website linked here through the ‘old-school’ way of text and images, coupled with some supplementary videos along the way.

5. Open Courtauld Hour with the Courtauld Institute

While the arts content I’ve shared above are on exhibitions, I’ve also been enjoying listening to talks on art history online. Art history seminars used to be only presented and heard in-person, and it’s very interesting how going online means that they are made free and accessible despite distance and time difference!

The Courtauld Institute has recently concluded their Open Courtauld Hour event, a series of four talks that focused on the themes of (in the following order): Art in Isolation, Art and Wellbeing, The Future of Art History and Women Artists. Each talk invites a few speakers to present on the set topic, and ends with a reading by a poet every time.

All of the talks are available to watch on their Youtube channel (linked here). Out of all the talks, I have yet to complete watching the final one of Women Artists, which I have linked below:

I’m sure that the topic of Women Artists is probably going to be the most popular, and I’m also really interested in this one because this is what my research is about! More on that later…

6. Talks at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center

Final recommendation: The art history seminar Rome and her Legacy: Classical Art in the 21st Century presented by Susanna McFadden from the Fine Arts Department of the University of Hong Kong, organised by the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. Here is the link to watch the seminar on Asia Society Hong Kong Center’s Facebook page!

I pretty much like learning about any aspects of Western / European art, and this was a really interesting talk about classical Roman wall paintings. I also loved having this chance to connect with my alma mater!

And that’s a wrap! I hope you will enjoy checking out these talks, tours, videos, and films — if you hadn’t seen them yet! Of course, if you also have any recommendations to share, please let me know too!

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Update: Singapore Pinacothèque de Paris closed in April 2016. The main branch in Paris has also closed in February 2016.

From the name, it’s telling that the first Pinacothèque de Paris is located in well, Paris, and their second branch opened in Singapore at the end of May. The museum is divided into 3 galleries: The Collections Gallery, The Features Gallery, and the Heritage Gallery.

The Collections Gallery contains a permanent collection of 40 Western and Southeast Asian artworks, ranging from 17th century European paintings to modern and contemporary works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock and Lucio Fontana. The Features Gallery holds themed exhibitions, its first being The Myth of Cleopatra. The Heritage Gallery contains artefacts from Southeast Asian cultures that are pertinent to Singapore, and is the only gallery with free admission.

I visited The Collections Gallery and Heritage Gallery, but decided to skip the Cleopatra exhibition due to the pretty steep price! I was really interested in checking out The Collections Gallery because of its promises of Western art and its curatorial approach of “transversality.” Head curator Marc Restellini’s focus was on combining Western and Southeast Asian artworks in the same space, crossing over cultures, time periods and mediums. I really like that idea and it’s not something you often see in most art places, so I was looking forward to what the museum had to offer.

Before going more into that, first off: the fantastic interaction panels! After buying the tickets at the fancy counter with changing graphics, you walk down the long corridors and reach these touch-screen panels with a cute talking chameleon or whatever it is.  (It actually waves and goes “Hello!” when no one’s playing with it.)

It’s a long screen but you can actually stand at one spot and slide through the various artworks the green chameleon wants to talk about. Press the key icon when you want to hear more about an artwork! The green guy does talk for quite a bit, but if you’ve got the patience to hear him out, there is a lot of helpful background information and images. This is really the best interactive section I’ve seen at an art museum – fun and informative!

Claude Monet, Suzanne with Sunflowers (on view in Collections Gallery) and Water Lilies series (not on view)

I was lucky to have the whole space to myself long enough to go through all the artworks included in the interaction section. They’re taken from The Collections and The Features galleries, and I forgot how many exactly were included, but it’s probably about 10 or more.

Despite the long panel catered to allow multiple people to interact with the chameleon, I thought it best to listen while on my own. It was harder to hear what he was saying when someone else was playing his speeches, even when we were standing at opposite ends of the screen.

Jackson Pollock, Composition with cubic form (on view in Collections Gallery)

My favorite was the explanation of Modigliani’s Young Lady with Earrings that was both fun and cute, and which also well demonstrated the theme of transversality by addressing the connection to African masks in Modigliani’s painting.

Amedeo Modigliani, Young Lady with Earrings (on view in Collections Gallery)

Moving on to the Collections Gallery! The Western artworks mostly consisted of paintings, many of which were from the 17th century. Otherwise, they were from the modern and contemporary era. Southeast Asian pieces were mostly sculptures. I have to say that my bias lies in Western artworks! ;)

Note: Photography is allowed in the galleries but the modern and contemporary artworks are not allowed for photo taking. There’s a no photography indication on the wall beside these artworks.

Amedeo Modigliani, Young Lady with Earrings, 1915, oil on canvas

I was expecting this to look very flat, but it looks so much better when you see it for yourself! There are many layers to the flesh tones, and the lady’s hair is very textured in the center.

This mask was placed beside Modigliani’s Young Lady with Earrings, and I felt this was the best example of the theme of transversality in the collection. I didn’t get a good shot of the didactic, so I don’t know the details of this piece, my bad!

Antony Van Dyck, Portrait of a Gentleman, 1619/1620, oil on canvas

The gentleman’s facial features are so well painted. The rest of the background and landscape are instead sketchily painted, hehe!

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijin, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, 1640, copperplate

You wouldn’t expect that the copperplate is really small, with the amount of detail in this biblical scene. With the number of portraits in the collection though, it would have been great to see one of Rembrandt’s famous portraiture works! ;)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Georgette-Marie Malivernet, 1896, oil on canvas

I think of Renoir as a popular Impressionist artist, with his idyllic images of pretty people in fashionable clothing. I like to compare him to a modern-day person who relies on Instagram filters for pretty photos, haha! Beautiful images, but not much beyond the surface.

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Portrait of Maria Dircksdr Bogaert, 1670, oil on canvas

Now, this portrait I absolutely love! The portrait seems to glow from within, and the detailing of the lady’s curls and the lace of her gown is exquisite.

Claude Monet, Suzanne with Sunflowers, 1890, oil on canvas

This painting is huge, much larger than I was expecting. It’s even bigger than lifesize! It’s not my favorite of Monet’s… but I don’t think it was his favorite, either. Monet didn’t do many figure paintings, preferring to paint scenes of nature and water. His best figure paintings and portraits were those that his first wife, Camille Doncieux, modeled for. After her early death, Monet painted a few more figure paintings with his second wife, Alice Hoschedé, and stepdaughter, Suzanne Hoschedé, as models. In my opinion, Monet didn’t put much heart into his later figure paintings, especially since they lack the overall oomph of his paintings of Camille.

The effect doesn’t come out well in the photos, but the sunflowers seem to be the main focus of the painting despite the fact that Suzanne clearly occupies most of the painting. Suzanne however looks washed out and fades into the background, while the yellow of the sunflowers makes them pop. The sunflowers are also too long and extended, relative to the figure and the table, and their deliberate positioning around Suzanne’s head seems to bring home the idea that the sunflowers are so much nicer to look at than Suzanne herself. Ouch, right?

Gregorius Oosterlinck, A Tavern Interior with Soldiers Merrymaking Around a Table, 1637, oil on canvas

Generally, I was happy with what I saw with the Western artworks. In a small collection, it is impressive that there were a few big names included in the selection. I of course would have loved to see more, but I think I have to leave those expectations for an art trip to Europe, haha!

The Southeast Asian pieces were pretty limiting though. There wasn’t much variation with most of them seeming to belong to the ancient tribal art category, and I think there could be a lot more said about Southeast Asian art.

Overall, the theme of transversality was not well conveyed. There were way more Western pieces than Asian pieces for one, so the Western pieces were well distributed around the gallery, while the Asian pieces were scattered here and there. The crossing over time periods also wasn’t well conveyed, since I felt many of the artworks were from European 17th century painters, and the subject matter of the artworks did not differ much from the others. In that way, the connections between supposedly vastly different artworks weren’t well illustrated.

The gallery was also too dark for my taste. Spotlights shine directly onto the artworks, making them very well-lit, but the effect on photos is not great.

I don’t think the museum is well worth the high price, but I will say pay a visit if you’re keen on getting a taste of viewing Western artworks!

Singapore Pinacothèque de Paris is located at Fort Canning Arts Centre, 5 Cox Terrace.
Opening hours are as follows:
Sun – Thurs: 10 AM – 7:30 PM
Fri – Sat : 10 AM – 8:30 PM
Very important note: Last admission is 30 minutes before closing time! (I had to learn it the hard way.)
Find the ticketing info here.

View Singapore Pinacothèque de Paris’s website here.

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