Exhibition Review: Nicolas Party, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Montreal, one of my favorite places, isn’t far from my home in Arlington in southwestern Vermont. It’s an easy, pretty drive by the Adirondacks. I had an unprogrammed day Tuesday, so I did the rare and, for me, positively aberrant thing. On an impulse, and little old Burkean me is anti-impulsive, I went to the Great North to see Nicolas Party: L’heure mauve (Mauve Twilight), at the Museum of Fine Arts. Swami Blackface, Canada’s Castro-lite prime minister, closed the country during the Covid mass derangement. What good’s power, after all, if its disuse leaves the public unoppressed? Canada’s lockdown was so intense that the country seemed to disappear. During its brief open window last year in December, I visited Montreal to write about the MFA’s very nice Karsh portrait exhibition.

Party, born in 1980, is a Swiss artist based in New York. His work is seductive and beautiful. He’s a master in pastel, an unusual and daunting medium, and he’s also both original and a smooth amalgamist. Montreal’s MFA is a great place. Its calling card is visionary exhibitions. Mauve Twilight is one more trip to heaven courtesy of Party and the MFA’s exhibition philosophy.

Montreal, one of my favorite places, isn’t far from my home in Arlington in southwestern Vermont. It’s an easy, pretty drive by the Adirondacks. I had an unprogrammed day Tuesday, so I did the rare and, for me, positively aberrant thing. On an impulse, and little old Burkean me is anti-impulsive, I went to the Great North to see Nicolas Party: L’heure mauve (Mauve Twilight), at the Museum of Fine Arts. Swami Blackface, Canada’s Castro-lite prime minister, closed the country during the Covid mass derangement. What good’s power, after all, if its disuse leaves the public unoppressed? Canada’s lockdown was so intense that the country seemed to disappear. During its brief open window last year in December, I visited Montreal to write about the MFA’s very nice Karsh portrait exhibition.

Party, born in 1980, is a Swiss artist based in New York. His work is seductive and beautiful. He’s a master in pastel, an unusual and daunting medium, and he’s also both original and a smooth amalgamist. Montreal’s MFA is a great place. Its calling card is visionary exhibitions. Mauve Twilight is one more trip to heaven courtesy of Party and the MFA’s exhibition philosophy.