Edouard Vuillard (review)

Best known for his radically simplified paintings done as a member of the avant-garde group of French artists called the Nabis, Édouard Vuillard is shown in this exhibition catalogue to be a far more complex, multifaceted, and versatile painter than previously recognized. This thorough investigation of Vuillard's long career overturns the long-standing view of the artist as a gentlemanly painter of intimate interior scenes whose work declined after a brief period of experimentation before 1900. Moreover, through the inclusion of Vuillard's decorative art, theatre design, and photography, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts director Guy Cogeval and his colleagues show that even the well-trodden ground of the 1890s can be mined for new insights.

This visually stunning and lavishly illustrated catalogue is the fruit of a comprehensive study, which also resulted in the publication of a catalogue raisonnéof the artist's work (both texts unfortunately now the subject of lawsuits alleging copyright infringement), as well as a promised catalogue of more than two thousand mostly unpublished photographs taken by Vuillard throughout his life. It begins with Cogeval's biographical essay, which exposes the artist as a masterful manipulator, ruthless in his depiction of emotional events of those close to him. The day-to-day tension between Vuillard's apparently dominating mother and retiring sister, and her awkward courtship - engineered by the artist - with his womanizing best friend, Kerr-Xavier Roussel, and their subsequent grief following the loss of a child are all mercilessly depicted. Cogeval compares the artist to a theatre director who manipulates the actors in his life and portrays the drama as he sees fit, and demonstrates the impact of Vuillard's work as a set designer for avant-garde Symbolist theatre on both the style and subject matter of his painting. The catalogue also counters the well-established notion of the artist as monk-like, describing his vigorous social life, important ongoing relations with several well-placed women, and immersion in Parisian night life. Much of this social activity is revealed in the largely unknown and often stunning photographs. Vuillard's successive love interests, Misia Natanson and Lucy Hessel, dominate, but it is a photo of his smiling, bald mother seated on her deathbed that both charms and haunts the reader. His relationships led to significant decorative commissions, which have begun to receive much scholarly interest and are here placed in the context of his larger oeuvre. Overall, the essays demonstrate how important narrative is throughout Vuillard's body of work, from his early, abstracted works of the 1890s, through his decorative installations and even in his late portraits, where a depiction of the aging poet the Countess Anna de Noailles seated in her bed is redolent of guests recently departed. This emphasis on narrative hints at gaps in the dominant history of modernism, where narrative is often ignored in favour of stylistic innovation.

In rare instances, the catalogue fails to convince. Cogeval's psycho-biographical approach is occasionally difficult to countenance; for example, that we do not see Vuillard's mouth in a painting of him kissing a young girl is unconvincingly read as 'a sign of his psychological reserve.' Likewise, a comparison of Vuillard's family photographs to Diane Arbus's 1960s images of societal outcasts fails to enlighten. Moreover, repeated charges that American prudishness has led to mistaken interpretations of certain works seem unnecessary. In addition to Cogeval's biographical overview of Vuillard's life and detailed entries for each work, the catalogue also includes essays by Dario Gamboni on Vuillard and ambiguity, Elizabeth Easton on the artist's photographs, Kimberly Jones on his vacations and travels, and Laurence des Cars on his place between two centuries. With the catalogue raisonné, this book forms an invaluable resource for future study of Vuillard and his era.