Turner : le sublime héritage, Grimaldi Forum Foundation, Monaco, 06.07– 01.09.2024

Abstract

We arrived in Monaco on August 15, just so I couldn’t confirm all the prejudices about this concrete labyrinth squeezed between the sea and the cliffs. As it was a holiday, all public institutions were closed so it was very hard to find a printed map anywhere near us, as we switched to old-fashioned tourism. We did try to use the internet, although we knew it wasn’t a good idea, but two minutes on Google maps and 50 euros later, we were back to default settings and ready to Richy Rich’s city on foot. But that’s not accurate, in Monaco one doesn't walk, one drives walk, you drive maybe, unless one goes up and down stairs. Lots of them. And driving, without Google maps, in Monaco is what you would call a rollercoaster on asphalt. We easily found the Grimaldi Foundation though, most of the tourist attractions are on the seafront, where else, so down and down stairs we went, for half an hour to get to an oasis of art! The ugly pyramid that serves as the entrance to the Grimaldi edifice gave no hint of the treasures carefully gathered up in the Turner exhibition and his sublime heritage! As a painter in my 40s I had, of course, heard about the flawless watercolors of Joseph Mallord William Turner (23.04.1775–19.12.1851) but had never seen any. And it is indeed sublime and so is his legacy extended to the works of contemporary artists exhibited alongside the master! One cannot suspect how spectacular Turner’s paste is, how vigorous the structure of the landscape, how deep the perspective of his work, until one breathes next to his works. Fragile and tumultuous, evanescent but materialistic, these openings to infinity in Turner’s painting carry you to places that exist only in the painter’s mind. William Turner was an Impressionist before Monet and an abstractionist before Kandinsky, Mondrian or even the newly discovered Hilma af Klint.