Pissarro

This past weekend I visited the Pissarro show at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Impressionist painters seem to get a bad rap. Reproductions found on mouse pads, calendars, coasters. Gallery-goers who enjoy the spring time pastels, garden scenes and haystacks. The paintings are pretty. Easy on the eye and often have no underlying form or structure. Or so it seems. And so it has seemed to me the past few years. I mention haystacks because years ago, I attended a lecture about Monet's haystacks. In a way I forced myself to attend it, which is something I have done more and more in the past few years, however I no longer consider it forcing. I attended the Monet lecture because I wanted to understand Monet. I was familiar with his work but what was there behind those waterlilies? I did not take much away from the lecture and the details now escape me but I did leave with a certain respect and admiration for the haystack paintings. Monet painted the haystacks in different seasons and focused on the light (as an impressiont would) that hit them. I admire the paintings still and have seen one or two in the flesh since then and they were quite lovely.
Fast forward a few years to the Pissarro show. What was it about this painter and his work that attracted people? In my mind, he was a certain second rate impressionist but why? I walked through the show and tried to spend time on each painting. There is definitely something under those trees. There are shapes there and there is a bit of abstraction and there is depth. That were certain places in the paintings that feel like a whole other painting. A sort of abstract study of form and planes. I was impressed. One particular painting that stands out in my mind and one which I was immediately drawn to is a painting in which he uses a tree to mark the vertical center. On either side of the tree is a house. While the viewer stands and looks at the tree dead on, we see one house as only frontal-one plane. On the other house we see the side wall in addition to the front of the building. It was an amazing little play on space and distance. I will return to the show in the upcoming weeks. It often takes a few visits for me to process the work completely and I hope to leave with something else but until then, I can say that I am glad I saw the show and glad that I left with a new admiration.