The latest in the Exhibition on Screen series – playing on 26 May – finds documentarist Phil Grabsky applying his defiantly old-school house style (talking heads, diary readings, steady rostrum camera in the tradition of Kens Burns and Morse) to the acclaimed Inventing Impressionism show now installed at London’s National Gallery. Interviewees acknowledge these long-canonised works make it hard to convey the shock of the new impressionism represented; Grabsky wisely deploys his Manets and Monets to illustrate the struggles of Paul Durand-Ruel, the young dealer whose keen commercial and curatorial instincts eventually smashed down the salon’s locked doors and cracked these artists in the US. Given all those personality-oriented “journeys” in TV land, it’s refreshing to encounter a doc that commits 90 minutes to disseminating its info in considered, scholarly fashion. Fascinating theories and titbits abound, and the way these canvases reflect light renders them newly immersive on the big screen. An enriching experience.
