In a fast moving and changing society, at times one must stop for a moment to appreciate those who paved the way for us and commemorate their achievements. In 2019, Malta celebrated the 100th anniversary since the birth of Malta's well-renowned and loved master of painting, Esprit Barthet. In the much unpublicised two-volume study, The BOV Modern and Contemporary Art Collection (ed. Keith Sciberras, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, 2020), Schembri Bonaci underlined Barthet's daringness in spite of violent aesthetic contradictions bordering on an eclectic volcanic attempt to resolve the irresolvable. In 2020, just a year after his 100th anniversary celebration, a commemorative retrospective exhibition was held at Parliament House in Valletta, where curator E. V. Borg gathered an impressive collection of works showcasing Barthet's sincere talent and mastery of the canvas.
Essentially, as is the nature of retrospective exhibitions, it celebrated the artist himself and his lifelong achievements, which are exquisitely captured in Barthet's paintings. Barthet was an artist who explored a wide range of artistic skill and talent. The paintings exhibited touched upon most of his experimentations throughout his career and lifetime, as a Maltese artist swimming in an international ocean. Cubism is at the heart of Barthet's most renowned works but begins to appear in his art nearly half a century after its origin in Paris through the works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. "Maltese art evolves in disconnected leaps", as Schembri Bonaci has often qualified in various publications. Picasso and Braque are considered as the creators of Cubism, thus the first to drop the initial pebble of ideas into the sea. Their influence spread well away from this point of origin, which provokes corresponding ripples and further waves. The more ripples that are created, the further they disperse, thus moving away from the point of origin and this is exactly the case of what happened in Maltese art.
In Schembri Bonaci's Metal and Silence: The quest for daringness and authenticity in the arts (2019), the author explores the misjudgement of the cliché argument that "Maltese art merely imports international concepts". When it came to these international movements, Malta inherited solely the facade, but this resulted in the opportunity to adapt it to our national heritage. Barthet fell under the influence of Cubism with its facade reaching the Maltese islands, together with the work of Frank Portelli in the 1950s. However, with Barthet the ripples continued to be felt well into the 70s, 80s and 90s, thus prolonging the notions proposed by the movement and their after-effects for nearly a whole century after its birth.
Barthet's cubist intent as an artist certainly comes to the fore in the vast majority of works in this exhibition, with it making an appearance in his extensive studies of the human figure, as well as with his lifetime preoccupation of the Rooftops theme, which truly capture the essence of who Barthet was as an artist. However, Barthet's career was not solely based on these subjects nor on Cubism. He carried out numerous experimentations with different styles, compositions and approaches to his canvas. Borg sought to capture the essence of Barthet in all his areas of study, from still-life, to studies of the human figure, to portraits of his family and his ever-famous Rooftops, including Barthet's final unfinished work. One must be cautious when dealing with such a vast majority of works, because not only can it result in a dissonant competition, but also the lesser-known works to be overlooked and detached from the more well-known ones.
Curating an exhibition allows for interesting dialogues and dynamics to be made with the works, but this must be done in an intelligent way. The selection of works offered great potential to spark an interesting conversation. The catalogue presents an interesting dynamic between two of Barthet's nude figure studies - a Picassian Nude from 1991 and a Sitting Nude from 1987, effectively conveying Barthet's conflict of styles and varying artistic capabilities. This exhibition conveyed the staggering number of 76 works. It is understandable that one would want to touch on the majority of Barthet's studies, but this could have been done in a more concise way, thus allowing for a greater impact and engagement with the selected works. Barthet displays an astounding oeuvre, but large collections of work within an intimate environment tend to create a concoction of overwhelming emotions and also detachment both from each other and from the viewer. This is why it is imperative for an exhibition to reach a compromise with its surroundings, thus evoking an overall sense of harmony. Such a setting certainly did not seem to cater for such a vast quantity of works, in spite of the great effort put in.
The setting of an exhibition plays a crucial role in harmonising the works of the artist with the environment, which comes as a challenge to the curator and must be tackled in an intelligent way in order to create a poetic balance between the artworks and the setting. The 2017 edition of the APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale exhibited a series of works by Esprit Barthet juxtaposed with Frank Portelli to accompany the international conference Cubism Beyond Paris held at the University of Malta on 15 December 2017 and convened by Schembri Bonaci. This select exhibition conveyed the dissemination of Cubism in Malta, and through the conference was contextualised within its development across the Mediterranean. This too was met with curatorial problems with regard to the setting due to the permanent collection of Medieval and Baroque works on display at the Mdina Cathedral Museum. Despite this, by compromising, the display successfully created a harmony, and not a detachment, with the surroundings and with the works of Barthet and Portelli.
In a celebration of the achievements of a phenomenal artist, it is of utmost importance that one must always do justice to the works of such an extraordinary Maltese master. One must constantly search for this harmony in the works of an artist and their surroundings, for this is one of the many aspects that fall at the heart of an exhibition that should be considered as an artwork in itself.