A new art exhibit at Pepperdine University’s Weisman Gallery brings to Malibu some of the finest works of 19th century Europe. It opens with a reception Saturday.
By Paul Sisolak / Special to The Malibu Times
An exhibit of epic proportions is the newest to be featured at the Pepperdine University Weisman Gallery, where the theme of academic realism will coincide with the school’s ongoing 75th anniversary.
“The Epic and the Exotic: 19th-century Academic Realism from the Dahesh Museum” is a collection of 32 paintings that finds an appropriate atmosphere in the college’s spirit of learning and knowledge-an exhibit of the artists whose work was a product of the great European art academies.
On loan from the Dahesh in Greenwich, CT, the exhibit, which opens with a reception on Saturday, proves to be a rarity for Southern California, and a first for Pepperdine. It’s the first time that pieces from luminaries like Jean-Leon Gerome, Edwin Longsden Long or Frederick Arthur Bridgman have visited the Weisman Gallery.
Their names may not be of the household kind like Picasso, Van Gogh or Monet, but in their time, the names contained in the “Epic” exhibit carried an influence like no other.
“In the 19th century, they were considered the best artists of their time,” said Weisman Gallery director Michael Zakian. “These painters were the official artists of the day. One of the reasons why they had such support is that they represented clarity, order and beauty in art.”
Visitors to the show, which runs until April 1, will notice that that support was well-deserved. They hailed from disparate ends of the continent and even the globe-Hermann David Salomon Corrodi was Italian, Gerome and William-Adolphe Bouguereau were French, Long was British and Frederick Arthur Bridgman was American. But they were singularly unified by their specialty in a blend of Neoclassicism and Romanticism known as academic art, itself a merging of French classical standards that included paint, sculpture, music and architecture.
Painters like Bouguereau, or Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, were members of these academies, sanctioned by the government, which trained its artists to uphold societal mores, emphasizing techniques founded by Raphael and other Renaissance luminaries. However, while the artisans in the new exhibit were students of that movement, committed to handing down its traditions, their aim was to expand them further, exemplifying and honing a set of artistic ideals that had more or less gone by the wayside centuries prior. The training that these artists endured, according to Zakian, was to employ what the term “academic realism” is all about: depicting people, their features and expressions in their most human and realistic forms.
“Overall, the biggest attraction of these paintings is their compelling beauty. These artists did not emphasize originality or creativity,” says Zakian. “They emphasized perfecting classical ideals.”
The “Exotic” half of the exhibit’s title can be attributed to the artists’ fascination with Orientalism, a genre that laid the groundwork for depicting life in Asian, Middle Eastern and African regions. Long’s “Love’s Labour Lost” and Corrodi’s “Campfire by the River” offer a glimpse into the Egyptian and Arabian cultures that were largely unfamiliar to people of their generation. Pepperdine is using Bridgman’s “Cleopatra on the Terraces of Philae” as the face of the exhibit, the most recognizable of the academic school’s foray into Orientalism, and a strong influence on old Hollywood, especially for the famous film of the same name that starred Elizabeth Taylor in the title role.
Zakian says he’s happy to bring the academic arts into a major exhibit. Apart from Gerome and Bouguereau getting their credit now and again on the walls of the Getty, their colleagues are hardly exhibited at all, and were largely forgotten for several years, sadly, in favor of newer, bolder movements. “These artists were the ones that the Avant Garde painters, beginning with the Impressionists, rebelled against,” he said. “It’s just been in the past 20 to 25 years that people have been looking at these artists with renewed interest.”
But like the Renaissance they studied so closely, there is a renewed interest in revisiting the works of European academies. Displaying them on a college campus, especially in the midst of a major anniversary, is the perfect environment, Zakian said.
“The interesting thing,” he said, “is that these schools emphasized tradition and heritage, which is something that Pepperdine places a lot of interest in, as well.”
A reception for “The Epic and the Exotic” takes place Saturday, Jan. 14, from 5-7 p.m., and remains open, free of charge, from Tuesdays through Sundays, until April 1. More info on the exhibit can be found at www.pepperdine.edu.