Whistler in Amsterdam: a major show at the Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is devoting a major exhibition to James McNeill Whistler, bringing together nearly 130 paintings, drawings and prints. It is the first major European retrospective of the artist in thirty years.
The exhibition offers a close look at an artist who turned subtle shifts of grey, tonal balance and restraint into a subject of their own. For artists and for anyone interested in painting and drawing, it is a chance to study how nuance, surface and line can carry the whole force of an image.
By bringing paintings, drawings and prints into a single display, the show also highlights Whistler’s craft across different media. It makes it possible to see how a visual idea changes from one support to another, and how drawing, printmaking and painting work together in an art built on careful looking.
At the Van Gogh Museum, the retrospective places Whistler within a European art history that is read through the works themselves and through how they are shown together. It invites visitors to notice how an artist can build an exhibition around seemingly quiet variations that are full of formal choices and visual intelligence.
Source : Le Monde – Arts