The Back Room
A commercial exhibition pairing nineteenth and eighteenth-century oil paintings collected in Italy and France this summer with contemporary art from students at the Universities of Cambridge and Durham.
‘The Back Room’ is the culmination of an ambitious project that started in summer 2021. It is a commercial exhibition that pairs five antique paintings purchased abroad during the summer with contemporary works of art. The exhibition sparks dynamic conversations between the old and the new, building a space where aesthetic and thematic links weave together works of art from a diverse range of time-periods, genres, and media. It vitalises old master paintings whilst supporting the new art of young, contemporary artists.
‘The Back Room’ exhibits five, beautiful, eighteenth and nineteenth-century oil paintings that were found in the dusty back rooms of galleries in Italy and France. These paintings were brought back to London from the small antique galleries, local art fairs and auction houses of cities like Arezzo and Annecy for cleaning and appropriate restorations and reframing. The five paintings present a beautiful spread of eighteenth and nineteenth-century art: from Neapolitan rococo and Venetian pastoral to decadent, French still-life and sublime, marine views off the coast of Belgium.
‘The Back Room’ is held in the back room of McMillan Fine Art, a commercial art gallery open for more than twenty-five years in the heart of South Kensington, specialising in eighteenth and nineteenth-century European oil paintings. The small and nostalgic space fosters a close intimacy between the viewer and the works of art, and between the works of art themselves.
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‘The Back Room’ brings to the front the cluttered back rooms of shops, libraries, and museums where artifacts converge and divisions collapse. It is in these confused and hidden spaces where ideas merge in new and vital ways. Placing contemporary art alongside old master paintings in a commercial exhibition breaks down traditional boundaries of genre and period. Hanging on the wall next to each other, antique paintings that were stale and unapproachable become fresh and interesting when in aesthetic conversations with a more familiar, modern style. ‘The Back Room’ brings a philosophy of curated eclecticism and chaotic joy to the art of collecting.
See you at ‘The Back Room’ in March.