The Ascetic. Pablo Picasso, 1903; Room 18. "Quite three-dimensional, but flat at the same time. When you stand back and look at it, there is this absolute stillness, but when you look down at the left hand - crushing the napkin - there is this ripple and rhythm in a point of action. I find it very powerful and obviously very El Greco-esque. This is poverty." - Barnes president Derek Gillman
On a walk through the gallery, president Derek Gillman points out relatively obscure pieces of complexity, ambiguity, tension.
In Room 2 of the Barnes Foundation hangs Terracotta Pots and Flowers by Paul Cézanne. You may know the collection and some of its 69 works by the great master - The Card Players, The Large Bathers - but you probably never paid much attention to this one.
Yet this relatively obscure still life is one of Derek Gillman's 10 favorite paintings in the Barnes.
Why?
"It is a really, really complex painting when you start to analyze your way into it," says Gillman, executive director and president of the Barnes. "It reminds me of Chinese calligraphy, which only in the reading of the characters does your eye follow the line of the brush. It is like that here - you have to follow Cézanne's hand to see what he is doing."
The Barnes includes more than 800 paintings in its $25 billion collection. When we asked Gillman to show us his favorites, we did not get the eye-popping icons we expected. Instead: a luncheon scene by Renoir, a Goya portrait, a primitive head sculpted by Modigliani.
Complexity. Ambiguity. Flatness interacting with dimension. The tension between representation and abstraction. The rhythm of line and color through a composition.
These are some of the criteria he uses to explain his choices, expected from the Oxford-educated art historian who took over the Barnes in 2006 and ran the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before that.
But beyond his resumé, Gillman's eye has been refined by his background in philosophy, Chinese art, and the aesthetic theories of Albert C. Barnes.
Reviewing the list of favorites, Joseph Rishel, senior curator of European paintings before 1900 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said, "Clearly, Derek - no surprise - is on the top of his game. . . . His choices pluck just about all the primary strings of Dr. Barnes' remarkably prescient and broad views while finding a personal sweet spot in each cluster."
Loose and friendly, with an easy laugh, Gillman, 60, says, "I'm a visual guy. I respond to pictures, to images. And I don't in my own mind differentiate between the emotional and the rational response." Did a painting ever make him cry? "I had an English public school upbringing - I was taught not to cry."
Some viewing advice for the typical eye?
"When you look at a work of art," Gillman says, "ask yourself, where does the artist want me to go? The Klee, the Renoir, the Soutine - Barnes was looking for works that help you do that."
Seated Riffian
Henri Matisse, 1912; Main Room. "The man is a warrior, a force of nature. This for me - and probably for Barnes, too - is a very fine point where the seesaw is nicely balanced between the pleasures and the intrigue for the eye of a pattern and colors, and the figure that is located in the real world."
Terracotta Pots
and Flowers
Paul Cézanne, 1891-2; Room 2. "It's not necessarily something you'd stop at - for one reason, it's sitting next to van Gogh's The Postman - yet it is a very compelling painting."
Luncheon
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1875; Room 13. "We have 181 Renoirs, so one seemed reasonable. This is an impressionist painting - relaxed, ordinary, middle-class couple. A moment of intimacy."
The Studio Boat
Claude Monet, 1876; Room 9. "That fleeting effect of light, sky, water. You may say it looks moody, overcast. I see this as an act of the hand and the eye. It's the painting whose postcard sells the most in the Barnes gift shop."
Head
Amedeo Modigliani, 1911-12; Mezzanine. "Modigliani was already ill with tuberculosis when he did these figures. He couldn't sell them, so he had them in his courtyard and put candles on them at night so it was like a primitive temple. It's a very strong piece."
Door
Baule peoples, 19th-early 20th century; Balcony. "A stunning, wonderful object. It used to be the logo of the Barnes. If you go out to Merion, you'll find this represented in the mosaic outside the gallery."
The Ascetic
Pablo Picasso, 1903; Room 18. "Quite three-dimensional, but flat at the same time. When you stand back and look at it, there is this absolute stillness, but when you look down at the left hand - crushing the napkin - there is this ripple and rhythm in a point of action. I find it very powerful and obviously very El Greco-esque. This is poverty."
The Pastry Chef
Chaim Soutine, c. 1919; Room 16. "The paint is erupting out of the canvas. It wants to spread all over and out and come into the room. And yet, in the midst of this explosion, this volcanic painting, the eyes are level. You think you've lost this character in paint - but he's there, within it, looking out at you."
Sicilian, Landscape
Paul Klee, 1924; Room 17. "It's a representational scene, an abstract painting, a piece of music, an exercise in paint balance and color harmonies. My thesis on Klee is that you can never have too many Klees. He's one of the greatest painters who ever lived."
Portrait of
Jacques Galos
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 1826; Room 6. "A radiant, warm face. But it's not like a Renoir face - not warm in a sentimental way. He is the rational, clear-thinking human being. I like the stillness of the figure - utterly, utterly still - and yet utterly alive."
The Barnes Foundation
2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. For days and hours, and to purchase timed tickets, call 215-278-7200 or go towww.barnesfoundation.org
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