Decorative painting in France.(exhibition)(Brief Article)

At the turn of the twentieth century in Paris a group of painters known as the Nabis were united in the goal of tearing down the aesthetic barriers that separated the fine and decorative arts. As Pierre Bonnard wrote, "Our generation always sought to link art with life. At that time I personally envisaged a popular art that was of everyday application: engravings, fans, furniture, screens, etc." With this end in mind, Bonnard and his colleagues Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Ker Xavier Roussel painted murals and screens, and created designs for stained glass for specific locations in both public buildings and private houses. Their work in this vein is the subject of a groundbreaking traveling exhibition entitled Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, and Roussel, 1890-1930. The show, of which a major sponsor is the Sara Lee Corporation, is comprised of eighty-five works and is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago until May 16. It will then travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where it may be seen from June 18 to September 9.

The young artists who founded the Nabis in 1888 advocated what they considered the highest form of expression or, in French, decoration, a term that had a far more profound meaning than the English decoration. The Nabis took their cue from a variety of sources, among them the English arts and crafts movement, the rococo revival in France, and the arts of Japan. With these aesthetic forerunners in mind, members of the group designed posters, ...