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Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
Art Reviews From our Archives |
October 2005 |
from The State Hermitage Museum, Russia
at the Art Gallery of Ontario until January 1, 2006
By Alidė Kohlhaas
When Catherine the Great comes to mind, she appears as stormy and destructive as Hurricane Katerina, as promiscuous as Gerda Munsinger, and as deadly as a spider who kills her mate following consummation. Somewhere in the background, one also knows she is somehow connected to St. Petersburg's Hermitage, the small Winter Palace built by Peter the Great and extended by her immediate predecessor, Empress Elizabeth I, and by her. It is there that Catherine housed paintings, sculptures and artifacts she commissioned and bought. Subsequent rulers continued to enlarge the place into what we now know as The State Hermitage Museum. While it opened its doors to the public for the first time in 1852, it was not declared a museum, however, until 1917. That same year it was forced to close for several years because of the Bolshevik Revolution.
The reason for this long preamble is the current exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Catherine the Great: Arts for the Empire - Masterpieces from The State Hermitage Museum, Russia. This exhibit is all about Catherine, though not about the empire-building authoritarian, whom one opposed with dire consequences. It is about Catherine the art lover, who flirted with the Enlightenment, but ultimately rejected even its minor aspects she had adopted to reform Russia because the French Revolution turned bloody and awry. Like the other enlightened despot of her time, Frederick II (also known as Frederick The Great of Prussia), she corresponded with Voltaire and Denis Diderot. This in itself is remarkable because in most ways, Catherine was self-educated.
So, who was Catherine? The exhibit is rather one-sided in its look at the most well-known female of the 18th century. It only hints at her more ferocious side while stressing that of the benevolent promoter of the arts. To understand Catherine, however, and the choices of art she made, all of her sides should be known.
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