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The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) continues with their lively and intriguing exhibit "A Circus Family: Picasso to
Léger" (to 5/17). The show, spread over five rooms, contains about 80 paintings, sketches, prints, book
illustrations, and sculptures; a delightful 30 minute video of excerpted performances from Cirque d'Hiver (1948) is offered
under a mini-tent at midpoint. Clear and well organized curator notes introduce the world of the circus and performer
and nicely accompany the art which covers many of major styles and movements of the early modern period (1890-1950), though
not impressionism or post-impressionism.
While the exhibit opens and closes with the expected circus fanfare -
the first gallery with posters of Jules Chéret and Toulouse-Lautrec and the last with colorful illustrations from Léger
- the show is largely an introspective look at the wandering performer manifested through the characters of commedia dell'arte.
The highpoint is delivered with the 30 or so works of Picasso, which catches him in a transition between the blue and rose
periods. The seldom seen "The Acrobat Family," on loan from The Göteburg Museum in Sweden, is worth the
price of admission. This truly amazing and otherworldly composition evokes the spiritual and transcendent from the Holy
Family to the evolution of man, the latter perhaps suggestive of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Together with "Two Acrobats with Dog" from MOMA, "Circus Family" from BMA and other work offer insight
into the creative process that led to other major paintings identified by the curators, one from our own NGA...Must sees also
include the circus inspired Matisse cutout prints from the book "Jazz," a selection of BMA's strong German Expressionist
collection of artists, and the Léger illustrations from the book "Cirque," or 21 variations on a circle.
The artists in the show had a fascination with the circus. Was it the color, movement, and form ... or was it
the alienation, solitude, and marginalization - the performer as freak - that they responded to? You be the judge.
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