Dreams & Reality

Last week, we made a trip down to the National Museum of Singapore to take a look at the Dreams & Reality art exhibition. It featured French and European masterpieces from Musee d'Orsay Paris.

The exhibition is now over, so it's too late to visit it even if you want to, but it was pretty good so I thought it was worth recording the visit in a blog post.

I've always loved Western art, I even did an elective module on Art Appreciation in NUS. While the exhibition wasn't very big and didn't have the top-tier of famous paintings as say, in the Louvre, it was still pretty well represented in terms of the artists covered.

It was divided into different sections, which I won't go into it in detail since the exhibition is now over.

There were so many gorgeous paintings but Andre's favourite was this dark one, depicting the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. It's called The Enigma by Gustave Dore. What is it with guys and battlefields?

Lesley-Anne likes this one, called Going Fishing by Piet Mondrian. We've not heard of this artist but the painting has such as serene clarity that you can't help but be drawn to it.

Then there were all the big guns of Western Art.

Camille Pissarro's Young Peasant Girl Lighting A Fire. Pissaro is one of the forerunners of Impressionism.

The Female Clown Cha-U-Kao by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. To me, Toulouse-Lautrec is the circus guy.

A couple of Monets - this is Woman with a Parasol Looking to the Right.

This is Branch of the Seine near Giverny. This one is truly gorgeous up close.

Dancers Climbing a Staircase by Edgar Degas. If Toulouse-Lautrec is the circus guy, then Degas is the ballet dude.

Paul Cezanne's The Cardplayers. This is the emblematic painting for the exhibition, it's on the cover of all their collaterals. Like so many paintings, it looks so much richer and better in real life than on screen or print.

I've kept the best for last. This one was hung as a centrepiece of the main exhibition hall and it drew a huge crowd. Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. I can see why, in real life, this painting is unbelievably breath-taking. The colours are so saturated and vibrant, it packs a punch. The photo really doesn't do it justice.

It was very crowded and as it so happened, the museum was having an open house meaning there was free entry. It was a bonus for us, we weren't aware of this when we went. Luckily we arrived early because as we left, the queue to enter the gallery had snaked all the way up the stairs out the main entrance onto the carpark. Crazy!

Anyway, the exhibition is now over but I fancy that our local museums are bringing in many more high quality shows these days, so do look out for them. Many of them are worth a visit.