The Walters Art Museum will present Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces, an unprecedented international loan exhibition exploring the significance of artistic repetition through the art of 12 celebrated 19th- and 20th-century French painters. On view Oct. 7, 2007 through Jan. 1, 2008, this exhibition includes 76 paintings, pastels, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures. Many of the related versions of these well-known compositions have never been exhibited side-by-side before. The exhibition is presented by The PNC Foundation, the charitable giving arm of The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.Featuring influential artists of early modernism (1800–1940), the exhibition includes works by Jacques-Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Dominique Ingres, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Henri Matisse. The works selected exemplify the many reasons for painterly repetition, whether as part of a creative process, in response to market demand or to the aesthetic shift that would eventually lead to the development of the now familiar Impressionist series. Also featured are new conservation findings using infrared photographs, X-radiographs and enhanced digital photography, which uncover physical evidence of the artistic process and/or resolve any lingering questions of authenticity. Déjà Vu? will include some of the most recognizable imagery of the Western tradition, ranging from David’s brilliant Revolutionary martyr portrait, The Death of Marat, to Monet’s Grainstacks to Matisse’s colorful domestic interiors populated by women at leisure. “Repetition is so prevalent a characteristic of everyday life, whether in the realm of advertising or in the fine arts, that we have become accustomed to it as a phenomenon of modernity,” said organizing Walters curator Eik Kahng. “This exhibition will capitalize on the natural predisposition to examine subtle differences between closely related images, thereby compelling the kind of sustained looking so infrequently practiced in this fast-paced technological age and so essential for the appreciation of the static medium of painting.”“We are proud to be able to show such extraordinary works of art from great museums around the world, including the Louvre, the Hermitage, the Met and the National Gallery, London for this thought-provoking exhibition,” said Walters Director Gary Vikan. “This show not only includes paintings of the finest quality, but also asks and engages important questions of contemporary art and experience that will stimulate broad public interest.” The installation will feature some spectacular reunions. For example, David’s The Death of Marat in the Royal Museums of Brussels, Belgium will be virtually present in the form of a life-size, high-resolution video produced for this exhibition, showing the painting both from the point of view of visitors in Brussels and from the point of view of the Marat itself. This literally moving record of the ‘original’ portrait by the great neoclassicist David will encourage close comparison between it and four painted copies produced under David’s direction by some of his most gifted pupils. Yet another innovative activity created specifically for the exhibition will allow for a computer-generated reunion of Monet’s Grainstacks, whose initial display as a complete series in 1891 remains a practical impossibility to repeat today. The Walters has partnered with The John Hopkins University Media Center to create an interactive computer program that allows visitors to manipulate 12 Grainstack paintings in a virtual picture gallery where they can select sequence, architectural décor and framing style. They will exercise their taste as instant ‘connoisseurs,’ an effect that accounts in part for the irresistible appeal of Monet’s recipe of painting in series. Visitors will confront head-on the difference between virtual and ‘real’ objects, as they compare their own response to the three exhibited painted Grainstacks and their miniaturized digital counterparts.