November 02, 2006
MoMA pieces together Manet's 'Execution of Maximilian'
One of the focal points of "Manet and the Execution of Maximilian," a small new exhibition opening Sunday at MoMA, is a large Edouard Manet oil painting that had been damaged, sliced up, partly discarded and partly sold off in pieces by the artist's stepson.
In the 1890s, Edward Degas reassembled the fragments, even rescuing one section via wheelbarrow. Again taken apart by the National Gallery in London, it's only been back together since 1992.
 It's an apt metaphor for the new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
"Manet and the Execution of Maximilian" reunites not only Manet's full series -- three large paintings, an oil sketch and a lithograph -- but it adds in actual sketches, photographs and written accounts from eyewitnesses to the execution on June 19, 1867 of the emperor Napoleon III sent to Mexico. It also uses art works that likely inspired Manet as he worked on the Maximilian paintings, including his own "The Funeral," and Goya's "The Third of May." The MoMA book for the show goes one step further, throwing in some of the most famous execution photographs from the past century, including Robert Capa's Spanish soldier, Eddie Adam's moment of execution in Vietnam, Bob Jackson's image of Lee Harvey Oswald and stills from the Zapruder film.
The show itself, MoMA director Glenn Lowry said during the Tuesday media preview, is part of the museum's efforts to rotate in exhibitions of works made before 1880 that helped lay the foundation for modern art.
The text for the show provides an undercurrent for debate on war and censorship considering Napoleon III had banned all images and letters about the execution, since he was embarrassed that Maximilian had been executed by the Mexicans only after the French abandoned him there. The only one of Manet's Maximilian paintings displayed during his lifetime was the final painting (now referred to as the Mannheim painting,) which was exhibited in 1879 and 1880 in Boston and in rented rooms at New York's Clarendon Hotel for the steep admission price of 25 cents. John Elderfield, the curator of the exhibition, said the site of the hotel is now the home of Famous Famiglia Pizza, near Broadway and Eighth Avenue.
The exhibition was in part possible because the Kunsthalle Mannheim museum agreed to allow its Maximilian painting to travel. In return, it will get a loan of MoMA's "The Charnel House" by Picasso, which was recently in Spain. A MoMA spokeswoman was unable to determine when "The Charnel House" will again go on display in New York.
The Maximilian exhibition will be on display at MoMA through January 29.
Image credits: Edouard Manet's "The Execution of Maximilian," 1867-68. Oil on canvas, from the collection of The National Gallery, London, © The National Gallery, London.
François Aubert's June 1867 photograph, "Execution Squad Standing at Ease," from the collection of the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History, Brussels. Both provided for use by MoMA.
November 2, 2006 01:57 PM in History, Midtown, Museums, Sightsology
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