Inspiring Impressionism at the High

"No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the Old Masters."

Who said it? Edgar Degas — surprising since he's grouped with the Impressionists, whose works generally depict their subjects in an, indeed, impressionistic and seemingly unstudied manner.

That irony seems to be the point of Inspiring Impressionism, an exhibition on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta through January 13, 2008: Mary Cassatt drew on the Rococo canvases of Jean Honoré Fragonard; Claude Monet took cues from river paintings by Dutch masters; Edgar Degas was particularly fond of a chubby cherub statuette. It's an interesting take, so it's too bad that its execution is disappointing.

Hang Manet's copy of Velázquez's The Little Cavaliers, and, sure, this illustrates the premise of the show, but room upon room of this feels heavy-handed and tedious. What's worse, some of the connections, as the Catherine Fox pointed out in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, seem tenuous, at best. "Just because images are the same doesn't mean they are related," Fox wrote.

You have to wonder, too, about the emphasis given to the Louvre. The Impressionists flocked to the Parisian museum to copy masterpieces, various pieces of wall text and the audio guide will tell you more than once. That may be true, but with the High's well publicized partnership with the Louvre — The Louvre and the Ancient World is the latest selection of the European museum's holdings to go on view in Atlanta — is it too much of a good thing?