“This and That” is an occasional series of paired observations. See past “This and That” posts here. – Ed.
Today: Impressionist paintings on round, found objects
Paul Gauguin, “Flowers and Bird,” c.1884-1886, drum with oil on vellum. Image courtesy Dallas Museum of Art
Joel Murray, “After Camille, Before Wyoming,” 2024, oil on plastic gas door; Image courtesy of The Fuel Commission’s Instagram account
With 2024 marking the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition, it only makes sense that exhibitions celebrating the movement are currently on view or are planned to take place throughout the world this year. Dallas is no exception, including today’s unlikely pairing.
On view at the Dallas Museum of Art, The Impressionist Revolution from Monet to Matisse includes Paul Gauguin’s Flowers and Bird. The painting depicting pink peonies is on the surface of a small drum – one of only two known paintings by Gauguin to be created on a drum.
Joel Murray’s painting ’After Camille, Before Wyoming,’ offers a more contemporary look at Impressionism. His landscape presents a cropped and altered take on Camille Pissarro’s Jallais Hill, Pontoise. This painting might be a little harder to track down so keep an eye out. It is part of The Fuel Commission – a recent project by Lucia Simek and Gavin Morrison.
The Fuel Commission, started earlier this year, is a gallery on wheels. When Simek and Morrison purchased a 2017 Volvo XC60 online, the car was delivered without a fuel door. To remedy the problem, the couple now commissions an artist to paint a new door and they install it on the vehicle. The piece, for sale at a cost of ten times the Volvo’s tank of gas, makes its rounds. Once it is sold, the artist receives all the money minus the cost of a tank of gas and a new fuel door.
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No matter how original, innovative or crazy your idea, someone else is also working on that idea. Furthermore, they are using notation very similar to yours. – Bruce J. MacLennan
