Dark at La Maison Rouge

La Maison Rouge on boulevard de la Bastille is on my list of visits while in Paris and this time offers two well assorted exhibitions. I guess because it was on the right side, I started with L' Asile des photographies, a collaboration between an historian, Philippe Artières and a photographer, Mathieu Pernod. Of first, the installation Le Dortoir des agités immerses the visitor in the closed world of madness. Like in a prison, the bare room is occupied by four iron beds, side by side, with contorted, torn mattresses, vestiges of the troubled past occupants. Following the stark introduction, the lunatic asylum's story unfolds through anonymous photographs assembled along the walls which describe the life of the residents, a group of demented and their caregivers. Confronted with the destruction brought by World War II and the ensuing reconstruction, then modernization,  it seems that the residents life is relatively undisturbed and carries on through a cycle of celebrations, processions and daily activities. In parallel, the history of psychiatry unfolds and is reflected in the addition of new facilities like a day hospital better adapted to the new treatment methods. A model of the buildings in the center of the room allows a three dimensional view of the site. The patients history  is not forgotten with a display of medical records, personal objects and even medical equipment used at the time. A movie concludes the exhibition, showing sisters in their religious garbs, patients, visitors, interacting, happily walking or resting in the garden, a glimpse in a past closed world generating a bizarre feeling of nostalgia.
Paintings from Philippe Vandenberg and sculptures from Berlinde de Bruyckere are assembled for  Il me faut tout oublier ( I must forget everything) , an exhibition  underlining the close ties between the two Flemish artists which still strive beyond the painter's death in 1999. The works intermingle and create a dialogue in the rooms lined up with paintings, drawings, painted wood panels and filled with sculptures. The paintings from the 1990's favor an expressionistic language describing a Dantesque world of flagellants, infernos and mountainous romantic landscapes bathing in reds, oranges with inscriptions in charcoal "Flageller c'est aimer" (whipping is loving), "Aimer c'est l'enfer" (Loving is hell), for Aimer c'est flageller, 1997-1998 or violent deep violets for Il importe ou le berger se couche, (It matters where the shepherd lays down), 1997-1998, where the flock of sheep resemble lions. In  the next room the mural contrasts by its graffiti style, an assemblage of  pieces of paper stuck to the wall covered with short messages written with multicolored chalks, litanies of words in French and English: "Il me faut tout oublier" (I need to forget everything), "kill them all and dance", "arrêtes de souffrir, nous les massacrerons" (stop hurting, we will massacre them) ... The center-piece is a sculpture from de Bruyckere and the first view of one of her work  leaves an unforgettable impression. Decomposition, suffering, death and metamorphosis resume her sculptures. Through the media, wax, wood, epoxy, metal fabrics and polyester, she creates organic sculptures with colors reminiscent of Francis Bacon's fleshes. Large pieces of wood, like limbs amputated abandoned on metal trestles, rot and leave one imagine the smell of putrefaction and the maggots. The display proceeds to the basement of the red house to discover more  tragic pieces displayed in cell-like white cubicles: wolfs devouring corpses, blood dripping from the artist's own blood, a martyr torn apart cut by a saw in the middle, bodies hanging from trees... Suffering, infernos are followed by a series of watercolors treating of Genesis and Indonesie, 1996, drawings of religious themes transposed in erotic compositions.
Sex, violence, submission, erotic love and also fragile love with more sculptures from Bruykere , smaller but evocative, dialogue with the drawings and paintings and it is no surprise that the two artists were exhibited conjointly in the past.
Dark subjects, madness, suffering, death, are uniting the artists chosen for the Spring exhibition at La Maison Rouge, a courageous choice from the curators.

photographs by the author
translations by the author

Out of Lines

To celebrate the 25th birthday of the review Raw Vision based in London, La Halle Saint Pierre in Montmartre has assembled the works of eighty-one international "outsiders". From Europe, the United States, India, Japan or Africa, each artist is represented by several pieces for a total of more than four hundred works.
Without theme or chronology, the exhibition is an exuberant show of paintings, sculptures of artists known by a small circle of amateurs of Art Brut. One can discover John Pass with his expressionistic fields of skulls under tormented skies called Resurrection or Collections of Souls, Vonn Strőpp inspired paintings, so busy, with pictures born from pictures, stories from stories, building a world of science-fiction like Embargo, 1985, a war-like scene populated with female warriors, half female, half birds. The elaborate techniques and subjects contrast with the compulsive works from Johann Korec  whose primitive paintings represent coupling in different poses accompanied by an indecipherable text in German below. Madge Gill's (1882-1961) obsessional representations of a female (most likely a self-portrait) with a hat in black clothes caught in colored cobweb-like, suffocating architectures, is followed by the naive, dreamlike works from Pavel Leonov (1920-2011)... We learn that Korec was a shepherd until he reached twenty years of age when he was placed in a psychiatric asylum for the rest of his life, we can read about the tragic life of Madge Gill as each artist is presented with a short biography. Many were diagnosed with severe mental illnesses and had troubled lives. Some started to paint at a young age, others like Scottie Wilson at age 40 after a mental breakdown. The techniques are varied but have in common an obsessive pattern and the repetitive gestures create a personal style easily recognizable for each artist. Inspiration is often related to visions engendering creativity. Augustin Lesage (1876-1954) heard a voice which told him to paint and so he did, delicate lace-like works filled with spirituality. Johann Garber (1947-) represented on the canvas fantasies, hallucinations with saturated ink drawings while August Walla (1936-2001) thought his paintings had the power to protect him.
Some artists are very prolific, like Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) who left an esoteric work composed of 25000 pages of graphics drawn with colored pencils, collages, literary and musical compositions (one of his work was acquired by André Breton), or Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern (1892-1982) invited by the surrealists to participate in their international exhibition. Media can also surprise: Alaize Corbaz, sickly in love with emperor Guillaume II, interned in a psychiatric hospital, would use the juice of pressed petal flowers, toothpaste others use wrapping paper, fabrics, computers like Danczyszak or matches like Pradeep Kumar.
On the second floor an area is dedicated to American Outsiders and it is like being home: Bill Traylor, Roy Ferdinand ( 1959-20004) with his violent exotic scenes from New Orleans, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Herbert Singleton from Algiers, Mose Tolliver (1920-2006), Richard Burnside and more.
Such an ambitious exhibition is appropriate to celebrate the magazine which like la Halle Saint Pierre promotes Outsider Art and ignoring borders connects artists and audience.

No photographs were allowed
photographs by the author

Banner at la Halle Saint Pierre
Bill Traylor

Wild, Chakaia Booker

Thanks to "Sculpture for New Orleans", my daily commute is  lined up  with sculptures along the Poydras corridor. Furthermore, I park right across FOCI, an outdoor work from Chakaia Booker.
I discovered the artist a few years ago at the New Orleans Museum of Art where one of her sculpture is included in the permanent collection.
Her medium, rubber tires, exude violence. The rubber produced by forced labor in African countries like Congo is a commodity traded daily and takes a historical, cultural and economic significance. The artist's gesture to create the sculpture transforms the medium into a powerful source of associations. Slashing, slicing, twisting the multi-shades black material, she gives birth to rebellious, lively, rough, exuberant, organic compositions and offers a reflection on colonization,  industrialization, consumerism, environmental concerns. Playing with smoothness and roughness, the reflection of the lights, her pieces transform rubber a rather masculine material into sensuous, haptic works like the piece at NOMA which could represent a headdress for a queen and/or a warrior. The references to her African-American heritage are not lost with the shades of black from the rubber and the scarification marks on the tires. The artist reaches far beyond the New Jersey shorelines where she found her inspiration in the dumps.


My next encounter was during Art Basel Miami Beach where one of her sculpture was displayed in the park surrounding the Bass Museum of Art.

What about the sculpture on Poydras? If the roughness of the material is still present with squares of rubber covering a metal skeleton like the abandoned carapace of a strange animal, the twisted sculpture appears contrived. The lifeless pole with a black tarp-like construction stretched on it, competes with a palm tree and melts in the bleary neighborhood, a no man's land filled with parking lots, the end of the corridor leading to the Interstate.


A sculpture for nowhere.

photographs by the author

sculpture at the NOMA
"FOCI" on Poydras

Mysterious Magritte

Discover the parallel world of Magritte at the Menil Collection in Houston with Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, a gathering of works produced during the most prolific period of the Belgian artist. He spent three of these years (1927-1930) in France where he lived in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, a Paris's suburb. Magritte mingled with members of the Surrealist movement, applied some of their techniques and began investigating the relationship between objects, words and images which gave birth to famous paintings like The Treachery of Images, 1929.
Facing the entrance, The Menaced Assassin, 1927, a large painting, engages the visitor at once. It feels like walking through a crime scene with two bowler-hatted men staged on each side as repoussoir directing the viewer's gaze toward a strangely silent drama. The scene involves an exposed female corpse abandoned on a red sofa next to a gallant gentleman and three (most likely four) expressionless onlookers surrounded by a mountainous landscape. The focal point is not the victim but the presumed assassin looking at the horn of a mute gramophone. In the same room, The Encounter, 1926, and The Midnight Marriage, 1926, give the same feeling of suspense with their theatrical props ready for a play. This is Magritte's world represented with eighty of his most famous paintings displayed in chronological order.

Reproductions in books or on the Internet (most with bright colors thanks to Photoshop or the like) will never be able to induce the reactions triggered by the view of famous paintings like The Meaning of Night, 1927, The Secret Player, 1927, The Lovers, 1928... The subjects can provoke ambivalence and worse disgust when looking at Girl Eating a Bird (Pleasure), 1927 or The Murderous Sky, 1927 and require going back to Freud 101 for interpretation. A heavy brushstroke, dark colors, dirty pink or yellowish glabrous nudes with furry islands, Magritte has found his niche with his figurative scenes. The following years, he  introduces words and his close association with the Surrealists in particular André Breton shines through his works. The daily objects become a source of associations with pictures and words. The display of  pages from La Révolution Surréaliste and manuscripts from Magritte Les Mots et Les Images enclosed in glass cases are a welcomed break from looking at the succession of paintings. We could call the following period more Daliesque, with bare compositions like Threatening weather, 1929 and the introduction of bright blue skies with heavy white clouds found on paintings, sculptures, objects, like a wallpaper. In the same room, a nude The Eternally Obvious, 1930 reveals the artist's wife in five paintings focused on key parts of her anatomy leaving the viewer fill the voids to reconstitute the whole body. The muse is not the elegant Gala but the bourgeoise Georgette. Close by, The Rape, 1934, a small painting which made the front cover of Breton's book Qu'est que le Surrealism?  (Breton had a sense of marketing)  appears tacky. The visit goes on with less known paintings like Collective Invention, 1935, an inverted mermaid or The Red Model, 1935, a pair of shoes growing into feet. Magritte declined to give the images a symbolic dimension and aimed at creating unease by their "inappropriate" juxtaposition. But it is difficult not to fill objects like the bilboquets and the jingle bells with some symbolic meanings as they recur more frequently in the compositions.
On the Threshold of Liberty,1930, a panel commissioned to decorate the house of an eccentric Briton in London is a resume of cliches: a sky, breasts, a house façade, fire, a paper cutout, all aimed at by a canon. The Song of the Storm, 1937, the only allusion to music with its title, depicts rain falling in a regular pattern and the windless storm stays silent like the other paintings.
Following the visit, it felt that the shocking, mysterious, uncanny works from Magritte lack the poetry, the humor, the wittiness and the vision of the Parisian Surrealists.

photographs were not allowed
photographs Google images

"The Empty Mask", 1928
"The Lovers", 1928
"The Menaced Assassin", 1927

Meet Braque in Houston

For those of us who could not travel to Paris, a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is a chance to discover or rediscover Georges Braque. A shorter version of the exhibition that just took place at the Grand Palais, Georges Braque: A Retrospective is a collection of carefully selected works, each meaningfully displayed to bring the visitors on a journey of the artist's career. The first room is filled with landscapes from L'Estaque, along the littoral or the surrounding countryside and views of the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris. Influenced by Cezanne and Fauves like Derain, these were made in 1906, 1907 and the bright expressionist colors, yellows, violets, oranges, will never be seen on Braque's palette again. Rapidly, the same landscapes take subdued tones and become populated with solid masses defined by sharp lines. The transition to Cubism is subtle, but perceptible through a series of landscapes from L'Estaque again, made at a later date in 1908. A primitive figure Grand Nu, 1908, unlike Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, did not make waves through the art world, but  introduces a new chapter marked by the close relationship with Picasso which lasted till the onset of WWI. The next paintings, landscapes and still lifes, define Analytic Cubism characterized by multiple points of view, where the object becomes fragmented and its pieces rearranged to create three dimensional works in dark browns, greens, black. Built from the inside out, the paintings become vertiginous and crowded without ups or downs, sometimes whirling in circular motions. Instruments are a recurrent theme reflecting Braque's interest in music particularly Bach which can explain not only the subject but also the rhythmic lines and patterns in his paintings. Abstraction seems to be around the corner. Taking another turn, in 1912, Braque adopts a flatter style with simpler geometric shapes cut in paper then glued or collages. Trained as a house painter, he introduces pieces of false wood, false marble, calligraphic letters, numbers, shaped canvasses and veers to a more figurative phase later called  Synthetic Cubism, a period cut short for Braque who was conscripted in 1914. His intertwined path with Picasso during these six years makes it difficult to dissociate their works usually displayed side by side in museums and for once, we can meet Braque without Picasso. Their paths will diverge for good at the onset of WWI. Braque is seriously wounded in 1916, temporarily blind. His paintings reappear in 1917.

The second part of the exhibition is about a new Braque. Colors are back, even reds but dark and muted, and the artist slowly leaves Cubism behind. Following the fashion, he produces a series of  Neo-classic Canéphore in the 1920's. His series of Ateliers or Billiards, are showing dark overcrowded interiors without windows. In 1923, when asked by a journalist what he thought of Cubism, the artist answered: "I do not know what it is." He is accepted at the Salon d'Automne in 1922, represents France at the Venice Biennale. But I cannot see life in the heavy still lifes, 1930-1940 and the late figurative landscapes appear muddy, tormented and "silty" per Braque. It may be a broad and superficial judgment but I found the post-war paintings as a whole lacking dynamism, somber, depressive, neurasthenic to use a fashionable word at the time. Braque's fame is at its highest in the 60's and the French government gave him national funerals. Shortly after, the art world proceeded to forget him.
The exhibition is an overdue resurrection of Braque's legacy, minus the sculptures and drawings which I understand were part of the show in Paris. A well-balanced walk through the artist's periods with short didactic comments to introduce rapidly evolving periods of Cubism, it is also the occasion to see post-WWI paintings, understand a painter who has been lost in the shadow of Picasso, give him back his place in the history of a movement prelude to Constructivism, Futurism and remind the world of his contribution with his collages still inspiring contemporary artists.
One can wonder what would have happened if Braque had not gone to war.

photographs were not allowed
photographs from Google images

"Violin and Pitcher", 1910
"Fruit Dish and Cards", 1913
"Black Bird and White Bird", 1960

Going Viral, Mel Chin at NOMA

A retrospective is usually a display of works in chronological order with appropriate short comments on the side. In Mel Chin: Rematch, at the New Orleans Museum of Art, this approach quickly becomes a vain attempt in light of the diversity of the artist's practice. The seventy pieces differ by size, media, subject, and the logistics  to install the show must have been a challenge for all involved.
Mel Chin is born in Houston from Chinese descent and early works like Western Dynasty Urn, 1974, with its Chinese inspired design decorated with the symbol of a Longhorn or Vertical Palette, 1976-1985, which refers to the five Chinese elements are reminders of his dual roots. The influence of Dada and Surrealists, like Joseph Cornell (who can be seen at NOMA) is quite apparent in Homage to Cornell or Magnolias in the Moonlight, both made in 1976, but already, Bird in a Cage, 1976, alludes to an extinct specie of pigeons and  forebears some of the artist's future themes.
See/Saw, 1976, a Land art project in Houston, Myrrha P.I.A, 1984, a sculpture for Bryant Park in New York City or Lecture Ax, 1988, a conceptual piece made for a lecture, illustrate the diversity of the works early on, but the opening of the show is stolen by The Extraction of Plenty from What Remains: 1823-, 1988, a large-scale sculpture which includes two broken columns, replica from the White House, surrounding a cornucopia made of tree fibers, mud, coffee and (goat) blood. The perfectly staged introduction to the political activism of Mel Chin is a critic of the policies of American administrations in South America, and after reflection, appears to favor an easy symbolism to tackle a complex problem.
Material related to the project Revival Field started in 1990 includes photographs, drawings, a model of the actual outdoor fields, a piece of corn hanging in a cage and a long description of the "interdisciplinary project combining art, science, and public affairs" to clean toxic material through hyperaccumulator plants, in short phytoremediation. This section of the exhibition and Operation Paydirt, 2006, launched following the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, represent the artist as a catalyst for projects aimed at improving community lives. Through these, Mel Chin reaches his full bloom as a conceptual artist and activist.
A major installation arranged in an oval gallery shaped by the intersection of two circles or vesica piscis, Operation of the Sun through the Cult of the Hand, 1987, represents eight "planetary" sculptures, seven arranged along the walls and a free-standing sculpture for Mercury. Inspired by Greek mythology, Eastern and Western theory of alchemy, made with seventy different materials, the installation stays murky due to its density and complexity.
Upon reaching Circumfessional Hymenal Sea (Portrait of Jacques Derrida), 2005-2006, I realized that I was spending more time reading the commentaries than looking at the art.The French philosopher Jacques Derrida inspired the painted wooden sculpture, an impenetrable repository of knowledge, allusion to the closed world of academia and possibly the remoteness of philosophers. The description of the concepts behind the sculpture fills two pages of the book published at the occasion of the exhibition.
The subject becomes darker with Cluster, 2005-6, a series of jewels, copies of wounds inflicted by weapons of war. Rubies, diamonds, shine in place of wounds and blood and the allusion to the economics of war is quite direct. More on wars with a Glock-17 9mm handgun transformed in a surgical first aid kit or a pipe in a bomb and two racially charged pieces exuding violence, Night Rap, 1994, and Fan Club, 1994.
A comfortable sofa allows for a break to watch looped television clips of  Melrose Place, a soap opera.  In the Name of the Place, 1995-97, is a collaborative work between 120 artists who embedded 150 props in the sets and introduce humorous to politically charged subliminal messages. The lack of interaction and follow-up with the audience weakens an otherwise interesting project.
KNOWMAD, 1999, is a video game built at MIT consisting of tents filled with colorful carpets and a pomegranate tree. One must chase fruits through the tents and gets points... I managed to play three minutes, distracted by the beautiful designs of the carpets. The video's goal is to bring attention to the precarity of nomadic life.
A carpet is also featured in Degrees of Paradise, 1991, a three part installation which includes a vestibule decorated with a Tantrist "graffiti" and two womb-like dark spaces with decorated ceilings. On one side, a representation of the earth's atmosphere weaved on a rug and the other, a dynamic representation of clouds made with fourteen video monitors. Crossing cultures, interdisciplinary, mixing technology and tradition, the work represents the artist's hallmark.
The exhibition concludes with two major projects. The Funk and Wag from A to Z completed in 2012, the compulsive work fills a room with 524 collages made from images printed in The Universal Standard Encyclopedia of Funk and Wagnalls. Surrealist, politically charged, poetic, satirical, the association of images is filled with symbols, concepts, allusions, references, and the installation can become overwhelming  if one attempts to look at each collage. In contrast, Operation Paydirt, an ongoing project well known in New Orleans is a simplistic approach to a complicated problem, lead contamination and ultimately violence. Visitors are invited to participate and draw an anonymous Fundred.
Our Strange Flower of Democracy, 2005, could not find a better place to explode than the Great Hall. A variation of the cargo cult, the representation of a bomb made with bamboo and coconut twine can trigger a discussion about damages inflicted in the name of democracy. The provocative work relates to Mel Chin's practice who describes ideas as viruses inserted within a social realm to bring changes. The artist is not seen as a creator but as a catalyst for ideas and actions, staying remote but impacting directly on our world and lives. Chin sees the role of the artist as a facilitator, "a guide for navigation through legal, political and social worlds".
A Renaissance man or a maverick? You decide.

no photographs allowed 
photographs by the author:
NOMA's façade
"Our Strange Flower of Democracy", 2005

Virtual Reality

 Portraits, still lifes, landscapes become a virtual reality through manipulation of fine details, perspective, viewpoint, lighting, shadows. In her exhibition Hyper Real at the Caroll Gallery on the Tulane campus, Bonnie Maygarden goes one step further. She creates a new reality combining synthetic material and colors. Artificial oranges, greens are applied on the pleather or nylon which is crumpled and then laid flat like a canvas, a technique reminiscent of Hantaï's pliages. In a dreamier version, the fabricated landscapes are black, white and all shades of grey filled with anticipated drama in their quiet emptiness. Coined by Jean Baudrillard and defined as "the generation by models of a real without origin or reality", the concept of hyperreality is met in Virtuous Reality, 2013, Stylus, 2013 or A.Void, 2013 and similar works. In the same venue, Maygarden gives a variation on an impossible green with Buffering, 2014,  next to a minimalist sculpture made of four planks, possibly an homage to McCracken. This reminds us that the exhibition is set up for her Master thesis and includes also two works derived from photographs and neon showing the whole spectrum of the artist's practice. Minimalism and hyperrealism are not known to stir emotions and to avoid a possible monotony of the perfectly staged show, Maygarden activates the space with a mirror unfolding on the floor, reflecting the surrounding space. Hyper Real assembles older and newer works but the unity of the message creates harmony and an atmosphere of quality, rigour and professionalism.
My only regret, the exhibition lasted only two weeks.

photographs by the author:

"De.Fragment 1", 2013, Enamel on nylon
View of the exhibition