Modern Art and its Sources
Modern Art and its Sources
The Phillips Collection is a museum of both modern art and its sources, reflecting Duncan Phillips's belief in the continuity of artistic expression rather than a sharp break with the past. He also believed that some earlier artists anticipated modern ideas, calling the 16th- and early 17th-century painter El Greco, for example, "the first impassioned expressionist."
At the museum, art from very different periods is often juxtaposed in the same galleries, creating a fluid dialogue and revealing surprising relationships.
As Phillips once put it, "Ours is an unorthodox museum with a way of its own in not segregating periods and nationalities, the better to show the universality of art and the continuities of such ancient seeing habits as realism, expressionism, and abstraction."
Works in the collection, in turn, continue to inspire contemporary artists, extending Duncan Phillips's aesthetic vision into the future.
El Greco, The Repentant St. Peter, 1600-1605
Francisco Jose de Goya, The Repentant St. Peter, c. 1820-1824
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