It is rare that the Getty attracts such crowds to an opening in which each and every attendee anticipates the exhibition with the same question.
At the largest scale in 30 years, French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte’s works are being exhibited on the West Coast, a collaborative project with the Musée d’Orsay, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. At the opening reception of “Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men,” the night before the works are displayed to the public, Timothy Potts, the Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum, previewed the exhibition.
Key to understanding this exhibition is the international conversation concerning the supposed over-emphasis on the sexuality of Caillebotte’s exploration of men in his paintings. Parisian magazines criticized this exhibition, blaming American curators for the overreaching claim to Caillebotte’s sexuality.
Libération’s Philippe Lançon wrote that American cultural concepts of gender theory in art history have now “crossed the Atlantic and landed,” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Harry Bellet at Le Monde further criticizes the recent acquisition of any Caillebotte works in America, writing, “America acquired works by Caillebotte when we didn’t want them.” Eric Biétry-Rivierre at Le Figaro writes, “For its first monograph devoted to Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), the Musée d’Orsay, under the influence of its American co-production partners, has chosen to study the painter’s ‘masculinity.’”
Undoubtedly, the exhibition explores masculinity. But, is it really a woke, uniquely American concept to distinguish between gender and sexual orientation?
The tension between the two art communities manifests in the space Caillebotte occupies between the revered style of French Impressionism and the complex art theory for the subject matter of the male body.
Objectively, the title of this exhibition is accurate in that it features an oeuvre that uniquely highlights men. And after months of international controversy, the opening night of this exhibition buzzed with anticipation for Los Angeles to see for itself.
The question on attendees’ minds — was he gay?
I overheard many groups of visitors walk from piece to piece, seeking out sexual innuendos — with each exposed male body, more head nods toward the assumptions.
Lançon, in a review of the exhibition, wrote, “Contrary to what the wall labels heavily insinuate, nothing proves that Caillebotte, who lived with a woman, was gay.”
But do the Getty’s labels actually insist on Caillebotte’s homosexuality?
I read them (and you can too, as USC students receive free entry to the Getty with a student ID). The entirety of Caillebotte’s works on men in their private, urban spaces, not the famed Floor Scrapers (1875) nor Man at His Bath (1884) have wall labels that suggest Caillebotte’s sexuality.
The Getty’s press release for the exhibition details the artist’s “intimate portraits” of men and the way he “intentionally masculinized” the genre of the nude, but does not explicitly insinuate his sexuality. Rather, it notes his long-time female companion in the closing section about his family.
Nowhere does the Getty claim a definitive sexual narrative for the artist. Admittedly, one label, in the last section of the exhibition, notes that “by depicting athletic male bodies in form-revealing outfits, Caillebotte’s often suggestive work makes room for a desiring gaze that is not necessarily male or heterosexual.” This is the only place where the Getty uses language to discuss sexuality, not just gender. It merely declares that there is “room” for a homosexual undertone in the portraits, but when paired with the additional literature the Getty produced, it is hardly a definitive declaration of his sexuality.
Moreover, the Musée d’Orsay’s own website continues, stating that Caillebotte “challenges the established order, both social and sexual,” particularly in an era when “traditional masculinity was in crisis.” The implication that American curators are imposing a sexualized lens or “influence” on Caillebotte’s work seems overstated when the French institution itself acknowledges these themes or their possibilities, too.
In defense of the relatively young, in comparison to Paris, art world in Los Angeles, this exhibition does not enforce a single narrative that Caillebotte was gay. It does, indeed, discuss gender dynamics, using the word “masculinity” repeatedly and offering that there is “room” for a queer interpretation. But, perhaps what American gender theory is offering, in its extensive — albeit occasionally overzealous — vocabulary and labels, is a difference between sexuality, sensuality and gender expression.
Los Angeles’ reputation may precede itself — the liberal haven for politicized culture. Or perhaps, it is a stereotype and not a reputation that promotes the idea that Los Angeles cannot be trusted with showcasing treasured French Impressionist works, despite its proven ability to afford them.
It seems to be more of an opportunistic projection of resistance against Los Angeles’ increasing influence as an art capital than an academic criticism of presentism. Reducing the literature to the kitschy exposure of a closeted Impressionist is hardly the Getty’s focus in this historic collaborative exhibition, despite what French critics may say. While perhaps the Getty could have been more wary to include the many ideas there is “room” for in Caillebotte’s works, the French criticism seems to be based on cultural disapproval of more than the wall label’s vocabulary.
Most importantly, the works are an inspiring, motivating collection of French Impressionism in Los Angeles that transforms one’s conception of the capital-E Establishment of art on the West Coast.
Indeed, Caillebotte’s brush does not have to paint a sexualized man, but rather, an intimate portrait of manhood. Such a distinction is often afforded to women, which the art world broadly accepts as possible on the condition of girlhood and not homosexuality. To deny Impressionist-era men the same space to explore their own gendered experience is to conclude that only women may think critically about their gender community.
The true treasure of this exhibition is the Military Men section. Technically, these small works serve as a transitory section between his female portraits and his outdoor kayaking and garden series, but in fact, capture the essence of Caillebotte’s unique view of the men in his life, before his artistic peak.
The Getty writes “Caillebotte’s masculinizing art arguably registers the cultural emphasis on virility that arose in the wake of the country’s humiliating defeat in the war, when anxieties about French manhood ran high.” Required military service, a uniquely male fact of life in Caillebotte’s time, offered the artist a meditation on the male experience. These are the earliest of the works in the exhibition, and some of the earliest of Caillebotte’s oeuvre. And what a privilege it is to see his natural alignment of the boys in their duty of civil service embedded within the overgrown forest, still comfortably lounging around a Classical mansion in the countryside. Caillebotte captures the pleasures of solitary boyhood, physically separate from society. These works do not explicitly feature a detailed male body, the catalyst for most academics’ arguments for the homosexual undertones of Caillebotte’s works. Instead, these help contextualize the artist’s genuine focus on male genre painting.
The Getty writes, “There is a juvenile irreverence in these informal paintings,” and that is the gift this exhibition provides. The collection continues room after room, unfolding more aspects of the man and the artist, and upon each new one, it is that irreverence for acceptance and tradition that allows for such raw, honest works.
Caillebotte’s oeuvre ranges from canon-defining scenes of Haussmanized Parisian architecture to intimate portraits of his cardshark friends to simple depictions of military training.
Later in Caillebotte’s oeuvre, we would discover the flaneur, the term for an untethered bachelor who explores urban life because he can — a lifestyle increasingly popular in 19th-century Paris. Caillebotte had a unique way of capturing this concept with more than artistic criticism, but with sympathy, one he had because he cared to really look at the men around him.
Truly, it does not matter if Caillebotte was gay because his work teaches us about gender intimacy, not necessarily sexual intimacy. Still, the criticism the Getty receives for this exhibition is wholly placed upon only the American curators, perhaps because gesturing to Los Angeles’ capability to contribute to this project opens the same floodgates as the questioning of every artist’s identity.
Both things can be true, however. It can be worth exploring, not concluding, an artist’s potential for an identity that would have been hidden because of cultural norms. However, identity was just as complex then as it is now, even without the popularized vocabulary, and what a shame it would be to spend time assuming the intimate details of the man and not looking at what he gave us so clearly. No matter his orientation, Caillebotte had powerful, significant things to say about the men of the 19th century and their lives and relationships — and these are enough to merit the historic alignment of these three institutions, and some critical appreciation, too.
