Grimaldi Forum Monaco

A sublime immersive experience

The great summer exhibition explores the light, colours and landscapes of the English painter Turner, juxtaposing his works with those of 20th and 21st century artists.

Par Tanja Stojanov

Sublime. Here it is not beauty alone but much more. It is that little something that shifts your thoughts and emotions to an elsewhere, an experience of the self and the world. Certain paintings by the English watercolourist and engraver Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) will pull you in, gripped by his fascinating light and the truly unique way his colours diffuse to enshroud the landscape in their atmosphere. The 2021 exhibition by the MNBAQ (Quebec’s national museum of fine art) focused on the historical context of the emergence of the sublime, a concept theorised by Edmund based on the emotional reaction to the forces of nature. This exhibition, presenting newly selected pieces alongside some massive contemporary pieces, extends over 2 000 m². “Turner aimed to capture our intense reaction to natural phenomena and we wanted to demonstrate how the sublime finds expression in modern and contemporary art today,” says Elizabeth Brooke, Senior Project Curator at the Tate Modern and curator of this exhibition. She has collated a considerable collection of almost 80 oil paintings, watercolours and sketches, spanning his early paintings of the English countryside in the 1790s to his 1840s works, to exhibit them alongside the masterpieces of 15 artists, most from the Tate collections, such as Rothko, James Turrell, Roni Horn and Laure Prouvost.

Poetry and emotion in landscape painting

“Turner is one of the most famous 19th century Romantic artists. He is also considered to be the first modern painter,” Elizabeth Brooke continues. The exhibition therefore explores from different angles the works of the master of sublime who came to Monaco in 1828 to make some sketches. As a prelude, Katie Paterson’s mirror ball Totality projects its solar eclipses into obscurity. The exhibition proper then opens in the heart of the English Countryside with Turner’s sketches and paintings but also the monumental Slate Circle by Richard Long, a land artist who also roamed the moors of Dartmoor. “In the mountain section we have placed the photos of Ólafur Elíasson’s The glacier melt series 1999-2019, which show the effects of climate change. Like Turner who, before the Impressionists, liked to go off and immerse himself in the landscape, Ólafur Elíasson takes an insider view of nature today,” the curator tells us. Following scenes from history, mythology and the bible, in which Turner’s technical prowess and modern style is even more prominent, we are plunged into the magic of the Venetian Lagoon, a treasure that is under threat from rising waters. But Turner is also known for his seas and storms, his seascapes accounting for over half of his work. He uses atmospheric effects, heightened by touches of gold and silver, and nature’s forces, to arouse emotions, elevating landscape painting to the ranks of major artworks. The sensory journey therefore ends in contemplative mode, fed by the skies and seas Turner so masterfully portrayed in his later works.