How, from the middle of the 19th century, did the rise of the railway modify our representations of time and space? At a time when the French, followers of “slow tourism” or concerned about the energy crisis, seem more and more numerous to prefer this mode of transport, the Nantes art museum is devoting its new exhibition to him. An apparently surprising choice except to consider that “the train, like a new means of communication of the 19th century, made it possible to see the world differently”, starting with the artists, explains Jean-Rémi Touzé, the scientific curator of the exposure. From this Friday and until February 2023, “The Train Journey” therefore explores these upheavals in an “unpublished” way, thanks to around a hundred works (mainly paintings), some of which are exceptionally on loan from the Musée d’Orsay.
In the first part of the exhibition, the rails gradually mingle with the sometimes bucolic landscapes. What is this locomotive doing in the background in this 1870 painting by Claude Monet? “It was a way of expressing its modernity, replies Jean-Rémi Touzé. There is this idea that the railway comes to reanimate a landscape, a still life which is a cliché of art, continues the curator. The machine comes to sublimate it by creating something ephemeral, which gives it all its importance. Painting also becomes faster with large brushstrokes, low-detailed figures. And on the canvases, metallic architectures such as bridges mingle with nature where it is reflected. The crash of the machine, its steam, echo the natural storms and the clouds… “The subject becomes at the heart of Impressionism”, comments the curator.
But the train is also the pleasure of watching the landscape pass before your eyes. And this even if it scrolls too fast (yet between 40 or 50 km/h at the time) for certain painters or photographers who are afraid of it and then challenge themselves to catch up with it! On a large blue wall, the Museum of Arts takes us on a journey through 100 years of representations of landscapes through glass, from the Lumière brothers to advertising posters. Views assimilated to real discoveries, while the train itself is considered by some to be an artist in its own right, capable of delivering different and surprising scenes, randomly. “Like emblems of modernity” the colored and luminous regulation signals appear in the works for very geometric results.
Inside the train
On the second floor of the museum, the atmosphere becomes more intimate. Welcomed by a strange accumulation of clocks, we wonder in this space about the notion of time, and about the strange link between the history of the railway and the time. “Each city lived at its own time, depending on the sun, but from the train was born the notion of synchronizing the clocks! The stress of the delay then starts, ”recalls Jean-Rémi Touzé.
We then go from the platform to the wagon, between those moments when we hurry and those, more suspended, when we are forced to have interactions with our neighbors, for better… or for worse. Travelers are honoured, via numerous paintings from all over Europe, where we meet sleepers, families, a widow with her child behind closed doors… “Not much is happening but these are fragments of a story that are available to us, observes Jean-Rémi Touzé. This exhibition questions our way of traveling today, of taking our time, but also on the notion of progress which is transformed, with hindsight, into technology of the past. In the basement, a strange installation combines a large model of landscapes and a train with a dozen works by contemporary artists.