Bonjour Monsieur Courbet

Why is a Courbet exhibition showing at a place accustomed to modern and contemporary work? Probably because the Fondation Beyeler in Basel wished to highlight the important role that this artist had as a forerunner of the modern sensibility.

Resolutely individualistic, Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) refused to bow down to the conventions dictated by academic rules, and followed his own compass. Encountering his somber rocky landscapes and caves from his native Jura, viewers were not convinced.  “You’re astonished that my canvas is black!” he said, “Nature without the sun is black and dark; I do what light does, I light up the prominent points.” His vision becomes very clear in the way his work has been arranged by the curators of this exhibition. After his shadowy scenes, the next room is a burst of light with his winterscapes capped with snow. Ah! That’s what Courbet meant. He was able to see this so clearly, holding fast to his commitment to truth, that he must have thought all of us blind.

The path of a pioneer is never easy, as evidenced by his self-portraits, notably “The Man Mad with Fear” (1844) who looks directly at you as if about to come out of the canvas and grab your elbow seeking help. Courbet’s relief arrived in the form of a Maecenas, Alfred Bruyas. This meeting is depicted in the painting “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet”, and is curiously devoid of any sycophancy. Courbet painted himself in a confident attitude almost as an equal, if not superior, to his patron.

As a little aside, I need to mention the building of the Fondation Beyeler as a work of art in itself. Restful and sparse, all natural wood and white walls, it provides very welcome intermissions in the viewing with a long airy reading gallery with floor to ceiling windows looking on to the garden and fields, plus a seating area showing a 1996 Arte documentary on Courbet’s life. The venue is on the triple Swiss/German/French border and easily accessible from the French side by car or tram – an uplifting little detour on a trip to Alsace.

In the next room, looking at “Le Ruisseau du Puits-Noir, vallée de la Loue” (1855) there is a foreshadowing of what is to come. It shows a densely wooded gorge that swallows the light into a deep black sinkhole (puit-noir). It has a duality of an incalculable danger in a life-giving source. Courbet’s female personification of springs seems to point to the same infinite mystery, building up to “The Origin of The World”, his single most provocative piece.

This seminal work was commissioned in 1866 by a collector of erotic art and depicts the female anatomy with virtuoso in-your-face realism. Rarely shown in public it became the most famous picture never seen, and was often kept behind a curtain or disguised in a trick double-frame with a removable front panel showing a mundane landscape. Still to this day the painting is censored on Facebook , even though it is considered a pivotal work in art history and takes pride of place both in this exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, and in its permanent home at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

This is one work of art that elicits anything but indifference. It is definitely an eyeful. Some cringe, others marvel at the refinement and luminosity of the technique, some move to have it banned. For me it had no sense of eroticism, rather a twinge of the apprehension of the examination table. I saw the primal echo of the “puit-noir”, a somewhat foreboding place for men to get lost in and, at the same time, the fountainhead of life.

Does our individual reaction to The Origin of the World reveal more about our own character and moral filters than we would normally care to share? You’ll just have to go see it and judge for yourself.

 

Gustave Courbet
Daily until January 18th, 2015
Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101, Basel
Access: Tram 6 – Fondation Beyeler
>Hours: Open every day 10am – 6pm. Until 8pm Wednesday.
Admission: SFr 25
Telephone: +41 (0)61 645 97 00
www.fondationbeyeler.ch