Pre-Production

It was a quite dazzling piece of research, and a no less impressive exhibition, spanning 90 works and somehow bringing them all together into a concise and convincing story.

Eventually, the sheer complexity of the subject matter and the wealth of content from overseas collaborators and loans to the ‘After Impressionism’ exhibition, led us to split the content into three episodes which we felt had a natural structure and would provide a clear approach for our audience.

Cezanne and Van Gogh: The Rise of Modern Art
How Five European Cities Inspired 20th-century Art
Picasso and Rodin: Facing Abstraction

Through the Gallery’s contacts, we were able to reach out to the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Belvedere and Secession in Vienna, and the Círculo del Liceo and Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona to arrange interviews and access to their spaces and works, some of which would soon be on their way to London. We chose to only film b-roll in Berlin and Brussels.

With the approach decided upon, we began script development for each of the contributors, working with them over numerous months to agree on the structure of each element and their comments. Each sequence and approach was signed-off with the Gallery and the curatorial team.

Filming

Our first step was to complete the narrative backbone of the films. We chose to film at our studio in Camden, London, just twenty minutes from the Gallery’s home in Trafalgar Square.

We elected to construct a set to resemble a turn-of-the-century artist’s garret, complete with a light-flooded window, period furnishings, an easel and assorted models and objets d’art. Both Chris and Mary Anne’s interviews were filmed on different sides of the set with different arrangements of furniture and props, creating the sense of slightly different locations.

Thanks to the exemplary performance of all three of the curatorial team and their colleagues, covering areas as diverse as the opportunities open to female artists in this era, and the confluence of artistic ideas between France and the Iberian peninsula, we were able to begin assembling the final structure of the films and set on off our grand tour of Europe’s art capitals.

Our first stop was Vienna, where Arnika Groenewald-Schmidt of the Belvedere took us on an extraordinary early morning visit to the museum, home to Gustav Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’, before introducing us to one of the loan works that would feature in the exhibition. This was followed by a whistle-stop tour of the Viennese coffee shops typical of the time, a trip to the Secession building that was a landmark for modern art, not only in the Austrian capital, but across Europe, with an opportunity to film Klimt’s famous frieze, and finally, an after-hours treatise on the art world in Vienna circa 1900 filmed back at the Belvedere.

Then our team was off to Catalonia, to the beating hearts of Spanish art at the time, the Círculo del Liceo and Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona. Again, we were able to film one of the works coming to the exhibition, in situ amongst the cycle of works on a musical theme of which it forms a part, and to capture the energy and humour that typified Spanish art at the time.

Finally, we headed to Paris with Assistant Curator Julien Domercq to the heights of Montmartre, the centre of the Paris art world at the turn of the century, and to visit the haunts of Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Matisse and Mondrian including the evocative Moulin Rouge. In the very first room of the exhibition were two sculptures by Auguste Rodin and, with the assistance of Amélie Simier, Director and Senior Curator of the Musée Rodin, it was only fitting that we were able to film some of his works in their wonderful home and stunning gardens, whilst also interviewing Amélie and adding more texture to the film with her remarkable insight into his career and works.

Post-Production

Editing such a wealth of content is challenging, not just in terms of the overall structure, but confronted with an embarrassment of riches, it’s difficult to know what to leave out.

The first decision we had to make, and to agree with the Gallery, was that the films would be longer than we had initially intended. So many people had given of their time, granted us the most remarkable access and provided such rich and valuable content and insight that it would have been unthinkable not to incorporate it.

As the films came together, we had to deal with the tricky issue of music. We spent weeks researching and pulling together period music (Clair de Lune by Debussy particularly stands out) and other tracks by more modern composers, but all clearly influenced by the era and regions central to the films.

We were able to locate some beautifully recoloured footage of Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Vienna from the turn of the century which gave the films a wonderful sense of context and spoke to one of the key themes of the exhibition and videos, that of the rapid modernisation and growth of these cities.

We were also commissioned to film the Members’ Tour film for ‘After Impressionism’. Although this only takes place a few days before the opening, once the layout of the entire exhibition has been agreed upon, it gave us an additional layer of shots to include in our exhibition films that showed the curators and the works in the Gallery space, giving would-be visitors a sense of the juxtaposition of the displayed art and an even better reason to see this remarkable exhibition in person.

The project took over eight months to complete, but the finished films - which run to over thirty-five minutes - were delivered on budget, on time, and ready for the opening.