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| Chaim Soutine, View of Céret, about 1921-1922. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to Brooklyn Museum |
LACMA has opened "Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA." As regular readers of this blog will know, Henry and Rose Pearlman's collection was on loan to Princeton University Art Gallery for half a century. Nearly all of it is now being distributed to the three museums in the show's title. It's a big win for LACMA especially, which gains its first paintings by Manet and van Gogh. (More on the background
here and
here.)
The title "Village Square" refers to the painting that started Henry Pearlman's collection, Village Square, Céret (now called View of Céret) by Chaim Soutine. Pearlman (1895–1974), a Brooklyn-born cold storage magnate, favored the School of Paris, that moveable feast of modernism. Cézanne is the founding figure here, and the collection's nexus is a vertical-format view of Mont Sainte-Victoire.
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| Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, about 1904-1906. Museum of Modern Art, promised gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
Cézanne produced many paintings with large areas of bare canvas. Collectors and museums have often shied away from these works but Pearlman prized the "unfinished" aesthetic before it was cool. Route to Le Tholonet is a shape-shifting hybrid of painting, oil sketch, and drawing.
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| Paul Cézanne, Route to Le Tholonet, about 1900-1904. Museum of Modern Art, promised gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
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| Paul Cézanne, Trees and Cistern in the Park of Château Noir, 1900–1902; Rocks at Bibémus, about 1887–1890. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to the Museum of Modern Art |
Naturally, the Pearlmans gravitated to Cézanne's watercolors. There's a fantastic selection here, with more coming in a second rotation (starting in April). All the Cézannes are promised to the Museum of Modern Art.
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| Installation view with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's The Sacred Grove, 1884 (on wall at left). Brooklyn Museum, promised gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
One of the show's surprises is a 12-1/2-ft-wide painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, The Sacred Grove. Created when the artist was 20 years old, it's a parody of a painting of the same name by Puvis de Chavannes. The latter artist was equally popular with the French art establishment and the avant-garde. Van Gogh considered him "the father of us all," and Puvis' Sacred Grove informed Seurat's La Grande Jatte. Even Picasso's Classical Period has roots in Puvis' pastel visions of misty, toga-clad antiquity.
Toulouse-Lautrec wasn't drinking the Kool-Aid. In the Pearlman painting, he goofs on Puvis by including a crowd of modern Frenchman. The short-statured artist is seen from the back, pissing on Puvis' masterwork.
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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and Muses, 1884-89. Art Institute of Chicago (not in show)
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| Detail of Toulouse-Lautrec's self-portrait in The Sacred Grove |
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| Installation view of Gauguin's The House of Joy |
Where is Gauguin, post Epstein files? In this show, skied. Gauguin's painted wood relief The House of Joy is displayed high above eye level, almost invisible due to glare. I don't know whether that counts as stealth cancelation, but it wouldn't be the first time. X-rays show that the woman's genitals were once red, then painted over with green to be less evident.
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| Paul Gauguin, The House of Joy, 1895 or 1897. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to the Brooklyn Museum |
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| Édouard Manet, Young Woman in a Round Hat, 1877–1879. LACMA, gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
Roger Fry showed Young Woman in a Round Hat in his pivotal 1910 show, "Manet and the Post-Impressionists."
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| Camille Pissarro, Still Life: Apples and Pears in a Round Basket, 1872. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to the Brooklyn Museum |
The collection has only one Pissarro. Rather than a cityscape or scene of rural labor, it's this still life, created when the artist was working closely with Cézanne.
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| Maurice Utrillo, The White House, about 1937. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
When the Pearlmans started collecting, Maurice Utrillo was a household name. Much like van Gogh, Utrillo was seen as a self-destructive genius in the Romantic mode. Now he's a relic of School of Paris taste.
The White House is one of the few works in the show not promised to a museum.
Pearlman's tastes are a reflection of his time, both in the artists he bought and those he bypassed (notably the Cubists and Fauvists). Actually Pearlman
did buy a great Matisse—the
Bathers by a River now in Chicago
. Matisse himself considered
Bathers one of his five most important works. It was surely the single most important painting Pearlman ever bought. Yet he swapped it for a B+ Toulouse-Lautrec,
Messalina, in a deal with the Art Institute of Chicago. This wasn't entirely the blunder it might seem. After buying the Matisse, Pearlman realized it was in poor condition. He sought an American museum with the expertise to conserve it properly. Of course, had Pearlman really been into Matisse, he might have found a way to keep it. It seems Toulouse-Lautrec was more to his taste.
Messalina is newly gifted to LACMA.
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| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Messalina, 1900-1901. LACMA, gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation |
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| van Gogh's Tarascon Stagecoach (LACMA gift) with Jacques Lipchitz's Portrait of Henry Pearlman (Brooklyn Museum promised gift) |
Here for future reference is what LACMA's new van Gogh looks like on painted drywall. Two months from now it will be displayed on concrete in the Geffen Galleries.
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| Oskar Kokoschka, Henry Pearlman, 1948. Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, promised gift to the Brooklyn Museum |
The figures in the background of Kokoschka's portrait are Pearlman's daughters, and the setting is probably the family's home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
"Village Square" is in the Resnick Pavilion through July 5, 2026. It travels to the Brooklyn Museum Oct. 2, 2026, to Apr. 18, 2017.
Comments
It’s a great show, and it’s wonderful that it’s integrated with the current Impressionist rotation next door. However, including works on paper alongside paintings means the paintings are not displayed under optimal conditions for viewing. To protect works on paper, the lighting is lowered, and as a result, the paintings lose some of their visual power. The otherwise wonderful Cezanne has not one but two shadows. I recommend closing your eyes for a minute and letting them adjust before looking closely.
The cancellation of Gauguin at a major museum is especially disappointing. It’s unfortunate for a museum with the strongest collection of the artist in Los Angeles to sideline one of the premier Old Masters of modern art. Too often, those who seek to cancel him seem are more motivated by professional positioning than by serious engagement with the work.
It is not surprising that Gauguin would be the subject of criticism. He is arguably the most important European artist to center non-European subjects and ideals of beauty in his work. Seeing Van Gogh in person is striking; Gauguin, by contrast, can feel sublime. His decision to turn his back on Europe still unsettles westerners. The attacks on his lifestyle in Martinique and French Polynesia are often framed as moral critique, yet they also raise questions about how we view those cultures and their norm. In other words, criticizing him for acting like a native is criticizing the natives. These same pandering curators would in his time be volunteering to indoctrinate non western cultures with their set of superior culture and norms, raping and pillaging away those native cultures for ethnographic scholarship and self promotion (and salvation - alas the present lot has evolved past God).
Gauguin was, in fact, a vocal critic of French colonial administration and positioned himself—however imperfectly—as an advocate for Indigenous cultures. That tension deserves discussion rather than erasure. Ironically, he may also be one of the last major modern painters to produce a substantial body of explicitly Christian work, albeit, like everything else about him, complicated.
The situation reminds me of the way conservative evangelicals once attacked The Simpsons despite it being one of the only prime-time shows that regularly depicted a family going to church. The paradox is similar: easier to jump on the bandwagon, turn discussion in a wedge issue, rather than to grapple with the work in a serious manner.
> it will be displayed on
> concrete in the Geffen
> Galleries.
I have major qualms about that. I've seen a video of an exhibit located in the Bregenz Museum, Zumthor's space for contemporary art in Austria. To my eyes, large expanses of gray concrete fight the display of artworks in a gallery, even of newer art too, no less. But older styles and periods of art? Oh-oh.
William Pereira 1965 design suffered because spaces were too chopped up (4 levels!) and square footage was certainly very modest. Of course, that wasn't helped by LACMA's collection over 60 years ago justifying saying the word "county" in a drawl similar to, "sou-iee, sou-iee." LOL.
Hey, don't blame me! A review awhile ago of LACMA and its controversy involving Peter Zumthor's design and Govan's management did make light of that aspect of the museum's name.
With all the AnyCity-USA exhibits of generic contemporary art often inserted into way too much of LACMA, saying "count-y" with a twangy southern dialect may be justified for another reason.
Oh, well, when the Geffen Galleries finally do open, hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
As for the Chaim Soutine, something about that painting not being a part of the donation to LACMA hits differently than the Cezannes going to MOMA. I recall an article years ago that described art collectors as preferring to bequeath "strength to strength." But that also means a gift is more likely to end up in storage too.
In turn, having to read LACMA's "first paintings by Manet and van Gogh" is sort of the opposite extreme.