result of January 2012 sketchwalk

National Museum exterior and interior. It was another great turnout for the urban sketchers Singapore group. We were there at 10am and visited the Dream and Reality Exhibition which featured the collection of the world renowned Musée d’Orsay. Most of the exhibits were small paintings, photographs and drawings by the realists, impressionists and post-impressionists artists whose names were rather unknown to us in Asia. The only take away for me was to see the original paintings by my favourite artists, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin. Even Van Gogh's famous "Starry Nights" only caught my attention for about 2 mins and I left quickly for sketching. Perhaps I should spend another day just to go through the exhibits again without sketching in mind. Then again, I had been to Musée d’Orsay in 2004 so the setting and ambience was entirely different.

From the website, it said "The exhibition explores the reaction of man towards modernity at the turn of the century from 1848 to 1914. The changing social and industrial landscapes of Paris in early modernity forced artists and photographers to rethink their approach to the visual world around them. Their varied responses generated new ways of depicting reality and a proliferation of styles."