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Mr. Whistler's gallery: the art of displaying art

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2003 by Kenneth John Myers

Styles of art change. Indeed, general survey museums like the Museum du Louvre in Paris or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City usually install their collections chronologically by national school, precisely so that visitors can experience the history of Western art by walking from Greek vases to early Netherlandish paintings to nineteenth-century French impressionism. Less obviously, viewers of art change. A cubist still life by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) or Georges Braque (1882-1963) would have bewildered the most sophisticated seventeenth century art lover. No one in the eighteenth century would have possessed the interpretive frame of reference needed to make sense of "modern" art. (1)

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Styles of displaying art also change. From the invention of the picture gallery in the early Renaissance until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, paintings were generally displayed "salon style," with the walls almost completely covered by works of art. Large paintings were hung on the center of the walls, surrounded by smaller works (see Pl. II). Frames touched frames, leaving no room for labels. At best, each painting was identified by a number keyed to a checklist providing the artist's name and the work's title. Galleries were generally lit by skylights, although by the later nineteenth century many commercial art galleries were using gaslight in order to stay open after dark. Whatever the source of illumination, many works were either underlit, overlit, or dominated by bigger or more brightly colored neighbors. (2) By the 1960s, this style of hanging had almost completely disappeared, and up-to-date museums had largely adopted the "white cube" style promoted by influential exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s (see Fig. 1). The main features of the cube are familiar: white walls, neutral lighting, paintings centered along the best line of sight on largely empty walls, and discrete labels next to each painting. This focuses the viewer's attention on each work of art as a self-contained aesthetic object, implicitly suggesting that each is a masterwork. (3)

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There were many causes for the gradual abandonment of the salon style of hanging exhibitions and the emergence of the white cube. At a fundamental level, the transition was made possible by and promoted the development of the idea of works of art as selfcontained aesthetic objects. This assumes that art objects should be valued neither for their accuracy as representations nor for their ability to teach moral lessons but solely for the success with which their elements are organized into a coherent, and therefore beautiful, whole. (4) As leading artists, dealers, art writers, collectors, and viewers began to redefine the value of the art object, they discovered that it was difficult to appreciate its internal consistencies when it was surrounded by a crush of dissimilar works all clamoring to be noticed. The work of art had to be set apart--both in the mind of the viewer and physically on the wall.

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Although now best known as a painter and printmaker, the expatriate American artist James McNeill Whistler was also an influential designer of both private and public interiors, and his work as an exhibition designer played a crucial role in the development of modern styles of displaying art. Unfortunately, his importance in this regard has been obscured by the inherently ephemeral nature of all interior decorations. Indeed, there is only one picture of a Whistler installation: a photograph of a group exhibition he designed for the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers in London in February 1898 (PL. I). From the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, Whistler's design appears cluttered and busy, even Victorian. But for late nineteenth-century art lovers used to salon-style displays, it was shockingly spare.

Whistler began to experiment with new ways of installing art in the mid-1870s, but his most influential installations date from the 1880s, when he shook up the staid art world of Victorian London by mounting a series of meticulously designed shows of his work at upscale art galleries on New Bond Street. He controlled every aspect of these installations. He designed distinctive frames for the pictures and made sure the baseboards and crown moldings were painted to harmonize with the colored fabrics he used to cover the walls. He selected carpets, furnishings, and potted plants that repeated the color harmonies established by the walls and carpeting. He even designed color-coordinated uniforms for the guards. As modern museum directors and gallery owners know, good design is good advertising. Whistler's installations were unlike anything contemporary art lovers had ever seen, and his exhibitions were widely discussed happenings. (5)

Whistler's installations attracted attention from the press and the public, but more importantly they facilitated a more contemplative relationship between the viewer and the art object. By the 1880s, almost all of Whistler's paintings and prints were both delicate in tone and small in scale, and therefore suffered when displayed in the crowded confines of a typical mid-nineteenth-century art exhibition. The exhibition galleries that Whistler designed were, by contrast, comparatively empty.

Mr. Whistler's gallery: the art of displaying art

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2003 by Kenneth John Myers

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