"Renoir protest at MFA is funny, but sophomoric" by Sebastian Smee Globe Staff October 06, 2015
Is it worth getting worked up about Renoir? I often wonder. He is an artist I detest most of the time. Such a syrupy, falsified take on reality. Everything he painted — especially toward the end of his career — was homogenized and pasteurized, transposed into the same pictorial language, which was essentially fluffy, flickering, and cute, like one of those ubiquitous YouTube kittens seen through color-enhancing sunglasses.
But all that’s only until I see the next great Renoir. And the thing is, there are plenty of them.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was not, as they say, “a very nice person.” He was an anti-Semite who, at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, renounced his Jewish patrons — the very families who had helped lift him out of crushing poverty.
But he was undoubtedly one of the most gifted, innovative, dedicated, and prolific artists of his dazzling generation.
One of his greatest paintings, “Dance at Bougival,” is, as almost everyone knows, at the Museum of Fine Arts....
As almost everyone knows?
They really are writing it for a $elect group of Bo$ton elites.
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"The whole thing was quite funny, of course."
Related:
Raising the Flag of Surrender
Sign of the Southern Triple Cross
That protest not so funny.
