Last Trip to a Museum in 2012 - The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism at De Young Museum in San Francisco

My museum visits in this year (2012) have been greatly augmented by my trips to China, Austria and Italy in May and October, especially the one to Europe, which I have sporadically discussed in my previous blog entries. 

Yesterday, 30 December 2012, I returned to De Young Museum in San Francisco for The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism, on the very last day of the exhibit, of which The De Young Museum website informed us was "A selection of major works from the William S. Paley Collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.. A pioneering figure in the modern entertainment, communication and news industries, Mr. Paley (1901–1990) was a founder of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and a dedicated philanthropist and patron of the arts. The Paley Collection, which includes paintings, sculpture and drawings, ranges in date from the late 19th century through the early 1970s. Particularly strong in French Post-Impressionism and Modernism, the collection includes multiple works by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, as well as significant works by Edgar Degas, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Andre Derain, Georges Rouault and artists of the Nabis School such as Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard."

It was an astonishingly rich collection and one highlight succeeded another.  Though I've seen most of them in New York's MOMA, it was wonderful to see them again, in our home museum.  Amongst those wonderful works, I particularly love these below:


The Seed of the Areoi, 1892, Paul Gauguin


Strawberries, c 1905, Pierre-Auguste Renoir


Milk Can and Apples (1879-80), Paul Cezanne


Reclining Nude, 1897, Pierre Bonnard


Two Dancers, 1905, Edgar Degas


Mme Lili Grenier, 1888, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec


Woman with a Veil, c 1907, Henri Matisse


Seated Woman with a Vase of Amaryllis, 1941, Henri Matisse


Odalisque with a Tambourine, Henri Matisse


Boy Leading a Horse, 1905-06, Pablo Picasso


Still Life with Guitar, 1920, Pablo Picasso


Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1925, Georges Rouault


Oasis (Mirage), 1944, Georges Rouault

I also stopped by to see another special exhibit: Rudolf Nureyev: A Life in Dance, which featured photos, video clips and costumes of the great dancer, overwhelming in its opulence and extravagance with a tint of vulgarity, redeemed by his unapologetic conviction.