When Ben Livingston ’13 and Ursula Moreno-VanderLaan ’13 signed up to take Associate Professor Pamela Fletcher’s art history course, “The Pre-Raphaelites” last spring, they had no idea they would have to curate their own exhibit to pass.
“‘We Never See Anything Clearly:’ John Ruskin and Landscape Painters” debuted at the Bowdoin Museum of Art on Wednesday and is composed of works from the permanent collection chosen by the two seniors.
“Normally when we do a class that is going to be a museum exhibition class, we decide that in advance,” said Fletcher. “The class is described that way and there is usually a heavy demand for it, so you’re working with twelve or maybe even more people.”
While “The Pre-Raphaelites” did not start out as a museum exhibition course, when Livingston and Moreno-VanderLaan were the only students who showed up on the first day of class, Fletcher wanted to find some way to make a two-person course work.
“I went and talked to Joachim Homann, the Museum’s Curator, and we talked about a variety of the ways that the museum could be foundational for the course,” said Fletcher. “Ben and Ursula were immediately interested with the idea of a Museum exhibition.”
At first the course began as a survey of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—a group formed in 1848 by a number of young English artists that are sometimes considered the first avant-gardes—and their influences. As the semester progressed, the focus of the course shifted towards putting together the exhibition.
Since the museum does not have any Pre-Raphaelite pieces, Livingston and Moreno-VanderLaan had to be creative in their approach to the exhibit. They chose to focus on the ideas of John Ruskin, the English art critic who first recognized the worth of Pre-Raphaelites work.
“When the Pre-Raphaelites first started out, everyone thought their work was horrible and absurd,” said Moreno-VanderLaan. “They were not respected at all, people thought they had no true sense of art.”
“While the criticism was that they were making things deliberately ugly—turning their backs on centuries of art-making—Ruskin said no,” said Fletcher.
According to Fletcher, Ruskin saw value in the Pre-Raphaelites’ honest depictions of natural scenes, though she notes he also had concerns about the ides of painting landscapes with intense detail, because painters could never faithfully depict the atmospheric effect we actually see when we look at large landscapes.
“He was always really conflicted between getting affect in a painting and detail—realism versus idealism,” said Moreno-VanderLaan. “He could never really reconcile this and it’s a huge part of our exhibit. Ultimately he was more for high detail—Pre-Raphaelite-type work—but he also loved Joseph Turner, who was the first person to do hyper-abstract landscapes.”
Moreover, with the invention of photography, the question of affect versus detail became even more confused.
“Painters were trying to make scenes very realistically and then this machine comes along and can just do such a better job,” said Livingston. “So at that point, the question became: what’s the role of painting? This question definitely opened up more room for abstract painting.”
For Museum Curator Joachim Homann, this problem is what makes the exhibit so moving.
“The students made a really smart move,” said Homann. “They used the introduction of photography to anchor this 19th century debate on what images are supposed to do—how do paintings and drawings compete with and respond to the presence of photography beginning in the 1840s.”
For Livingston and Moreno-VanderLaan, the course ended up being one of their most rewarding experiences at Bowdoin.
“We would search the museum’s database and go to the museum to look at paintings,” said Livingston. “Other professors would meet with us to help us with specific questions—Professor Wegner with early Italian art, Professor Kibbie with Hogarth, Professor Mullen with Ruskin drawings.”
While Livingston says he will try making his own art after Bowdoin, this experience inspired Moreno-VanderLaan to pursue a career working in museums.
“This was definitely a ‘eureka’ moment for me,” said Moreno-VanderLaan. “Curating the show ended up combining pretty much all of my academic interests into one thing. It was art, it was aesthetics, it was about how people interact with visual things. It was culture, it was history, and for me, it was fabulous. I told myself, ‘I need to do this.’ So I’m looking for work in galleries, auction houses, and museums, and then I’m planning on going to graduate school after working for a couple of years.”
“‘We Never See Anything Clearly’: John Ruskin and Landscape Painters” will be on view through December 23, in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.