Save us from the well-rounded exhibition! For museum visitors in Japan, this is a constant danger; something I was reminded of again by the Setagaya Art Museum's latest show: "Masterpieces from the Collection of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur." Like other multi-faceted exhibitions that endeavor to provide visitors with a "comprehensive" experience, this show, sourced from a relatively well-known Swiss museum, tries to push in too many directions and include too many facets of art. The end result is a show that fails to impress or inform.
On paper it sounds like a not-to- be-missed opportunity. There are works by a veritable who's-who of modern art, starting from precursors of modernism, like Eugene Delacroix and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, leading right through the ranks of the ever-popular Impressionists — Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley: all included — to Post-Impressionists, Symbolists, Fauvists, Cubists, and representatives of several, lesser-known movements such as Nabis and Purism.
Throwing the net this wide brings in almost all the fish in the sea. We get an astounding variety of names. In addition to those already mentioned, you can also see works by Degas, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Redon, Rodin, Bonnard, Giacometti, Klee, Kandinsky, Kokoschka, Utrillo, Braque, Leger, Picasso, Rousseau, and Morandi — all names that are on the radar of the average art fan.