"Chantiers", fifty works from Bertrand Lavier

"Things" become art because they are reinterpreted and the association of a stone on top of a refrigerator creates a new entity, this is called hybridization, one of the techniques used by the artist who has a background in horticulture, which explains his approach. The exhibition Bertrant Lavier, since 1969 at the Pompidou in Paris presents several "chantiers" illustrating different concepts developed by the artist over the years: addition, crossing, transposition, grafting, hybridization. A painted object like the grand piano now covered with a thick black coat brings emotions with its rough surface full of crevasses.
The leaf blower above the art deco chest leaves me perplex, the Giulietta, a damaged Alfa Romeo in the middle of the room  has a feel of deja vu,  Arman developed the idea in the past. The reinterpretation of Stella's work in neon is visually challenging. Maybe the small mobile from Calder above a refrigerator from the Calder brand is intended as a pun?  The cold, white, angular shaped freezer contrasts with the sensuous red lipped sofa from Dali and so on.

An interesting area includes a collection of objects mounted on pedestals, like sculptures in a museum. The skateboard, the motorcycle helmet, a saw become symbols and the shining African sculpture cast in nickel-plated bronze looses its status and becomes an object.

The curator of the exhibition makes the visit entertaining and informative with the works grouped into four themes: after the readymade: form and feeling, new impressions of Africa, the photo without camera, the art of transposition.
The Surrealists collected objects to stimulate creativity. The artist claims that his creations, sums of two objects are more than each object and he aims to bring  emotions to the readymade.
However the humorless work stays remote and dry.

photographs by the author:
"Burgundy Stone on refrigerator" 1989
"Ibo", 2008
"La Bocca/Bosch", 2005

Serious Laugh at the Fondation Cartier

The advertisements in the metro are defying every French passenger: a man decapitated, holding his head, laughing.
This is the invitation to see the latest exhibition at the Fondation Cartier,  a first in Europe, forty paintings from Yue Minjun for "L'Ombre du Fou Rire". The artist who lives in Beijing, stays discreet about his life and political views, his work speaks for itself.

Starting on a joyous note, the early works from the 1990's are showing a group of friends, on an outing near a river or visiting a landmark in the painting On the Rostrum of Tiananmen, 1992, laughing at the viewer in a pose fit for a photograph. The sky is blue with a few white puffs, however, fighter planes in the background are ominous in Artist with his Friends, 1991, and the artist's expression is closer to a rictus than a laugh.
The tone of the work defines itself during the following years, with a subtle mixture of humor and cynicism as the style of the artist matures. He chooses a cartoonish representation of himself set in surrealistic surroundings. The preferred colors include a sour pink for the face, a baby blue or a flat orange for the sky. Black is for the mouth, hairs and contrasts with the flawless white teeth and the red lips. The eyes are closed. The laugh resonates throughout the room, obsessional and defiant. The cloning of the artist to represent groups, crowds, produces uniformity, anonymity and depersonalization.

In the basement, the works take an epic dimension. The artist interprets masterpieces of Western art and gives them a fresh look. The Execution of the Emperor Maximilien of Mexico by Manet becomes The Execution. In the tense scene, the only missing  items are... the weapons. Instead, an empty space separates the executioners from their target, four times the artist, laughing. A copy of The Death of Marat from Jacques-Louis David without Marat creates an expectation. Who will be next in the bloody bath? The same theme inspires the copy of The Founding Ceremony of the Nation from Dong Xiwen, 1953, Mao is missing. The central character becomes secondary and the decor essential, a stage ready for the next actor. History repeats itself. Still laughing, the painter represents The Massacre at Chios, Freedom Leading the People, very serious themes indeed and the contrast between the subject and the callous laugh is chilling.

In an adjacent room, a hundred sketches and drawings give an insight into the process of creativity and are a witness to the artist's research. More paintings with the artist borrowing the body of a dinosaur, birds flying, or locked in an impossible embrace with copies of himself.
But the work becomes repetitive and the laugh lasting too long, annoying.
What I will remember about the exhibition? A laugh of despair.

no photographs allowed
photograph of the admission ticket by the author

An American in Paris

The number of visitors for the current exhibition at the Grand Palais is beating all  records.
 Edward Hopper is on everybody's mind in Paris: or you did see the exhibition or you did not. Being part of the latter is almost embarrassing. I saw Soutine, Dali, Van Gogh, Yue Minjun,  but...I missed Edward Hopper.
My third attempt was thwarted when after standing for one hour, I realized that my only progress in the line was due to people getting closer to each other to fight the cold and a sign stated that it would be three hours before we would be able to get in the building (the day before was five hours).

Back to the States, I missed Hopper in Paris!


photograph by the author
"Nighthawks", Edward Hopper, 1942, at the Art Institute of Chicago

Van Gogh, the Japanese

Hidden on a side street, near Fauchon at La Madeleine, La Pinacotheque de Paris offers didactic and thought provoking exhibitions. The latest is dedicated to Van Gogh and the influence of Japanese prints on his works, in particular the prints from Hiroshige, the Master of Edo (Tokyo).

By the mid-nineteenth century, Japan had opened its borders to foreigners and collecting Japanese prints became fashionable. Samuel Bing offers Japanese art in his gallery, and Theo, Van Gogh's brother, collects more than four hundred prints now housed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

With forty paintings from Van Gogh, the curator makes the point. Next to each painting, copies or details of the print which matches the work reveal Van Gogh's source of inspiration. Structure, composition, movement, colors, even the subject acquire a Japanese flavor. Excerpts from Van Gogh's letters to Theo, displayed on the walls are a testimony to his interest for the Japanese culture, art and its religion. He is spending 1888 in the South of France where he has "discovered Japan". 

Art allows a symbiosis between the quiet, serene world of the Japanese artist and the hallucinatory, schizophrenic world of Van Gogh.     

Van Gogh communicates an inner energy with his fluid but precise stroke. The thick paint on the canvas has an earthy feel illuminated by an ethereal light, a celebration of life at the time when the artist is sinking deeper in a state of dementia.

no photographs allowed
Wiki media

"The Blooming Plum tree", 1887, Van Gogh next to "Plum trees in Kameido", Hiroshige

"The Olive Trees" 1889, Van Gogh

Black, White, All Shades of Grey

Conceptual Art and Minimalism are represented  at the
Centre Pompidou-Metz with thirty-three Wall Drawings from Sol LeWitt. Chosen among 1200 drawings, they represent the early to late works from the artist, from 1968 till 2007.

The visitor is reminded of the technical feats of such an installation with a video produced during the two months it took to execute the instructions and diagrams from LeWitt. After a careful priming of the walls, the projection of grids are filled with pencil, crayon, inkwash, acrylic paint or graphite to produce a perfect result. A dozen people from the LeWitt studio, thirteen artists, sixty-three students from five local art schools, the manpower required to install the exhibition makes it unique. Each drawing is accompanied by a number, and detailed information concerning the medium, the location where the work was first installed, the name of the drafters who first executed it, the date of first execution and the collection to which the work belongs.The dimensions are not specified, they are site specific.

What about the visit? Like a walk through lines, patterns, designs, sometimes creating dizzying optical illusions, black, white, and greys, the exhibition becomes monotonous, an intellectual experience at best.

photographs by the author

Art Brut and Psychiatry

Madman, schizophrenic, prisoner, handicapped, deaf-mute, illiterate... at Les Halles Saint-Pierre in Montmartre where the exhibition "Banditi dell'Arte" features works from known or anonymous Italian artists who have in common a total freedom of expression. Without any formal education, they are driven by an uncontrolled inner force to create works of art and their production has been labelled Raw Art or Art Brut.
The exhibition which occupies two levels of the building starts with colorful paintings and sculptures of dragons, alligators, birds. Is the bestiary from Rosario Lattuca 1926-1999, born from his imagination or a state of delirium?

Orest Fernando Nannetti, diagnosed with schizophrenia, carved the walls of the psychiatric hospital in Voltera with the buckle of his vest during the nine years of his confinement. Words and pictures became his way to freedom.  

Well-known Giovanni Podesta is heavily influenced by the Church: crosses, religious themes, red and gold colors cover paintings, sculptures or furniture.  

The media include embroidery to describe naive happy dreamlike scenes or plaster and gauze to shape tortured masks, Versino G uses pieces of the mops he is cleaning the hospital with to fabricate costumes, boots, hats.

Eugenio Lanzi's art is getting a lot of attention from his physician who comments on the pipes made of wood, stones, bones. He notices that the production is repetitive, theme and style are frozen. 

Franscesco Toris, suffering from paranoia and autism, carves his "New World" with the bones left over from the psychiatric hospital's kitchen, without glue or nails. 

Carlo Zinelli, very prolific during his years spent at the psychiatric hospital is represented by several of his paintings. His naive style is recognizable with little personages, symbols, he creates a surrealist world.

On the second level, the exhibition goes on with photographs from giant works, locally famous, like Angelo Stagnaro in Ligura with his "bombo-sculptures", Vincent Brunetti in Puglia, Fiorenzo Pilia with his "Enchanted Garden" in Sardaigna or Filippo Bentivenga in Sicily, with his "Enchanted Castle", forms of Land Art. 

Madmen, geniuses or both? The artists are now recognized and their works make up the permanent collection of the Collection de l' Art Brut in Lausanne.


photograph from the Website   http://www.hallesaintpierre.org/
no photographs allowed

New Dimensions

 Common objects are becoming art in the latest exhibition Lifelike, brought by the Walker Art Museum to the NOMA. Size, medium, give them a new dimension, literally, and a new status as symbols of our time.

Fifty five artists are represented and in an attempt to organize the works, the curator arranged them into five themes: "Common Objects", "The Uncanny", "Realism into Abstraction", "Handmade Sleight of Hands" and "Special Effects: The Real as Spectacle".
The visitor is greeted by "I Am Amazed", 1971, from Edward Ruscha, and just in the first room, will meet a now classic work from Andy Warhol, "Yellow Brillo Box and White Brillo Box", 1964,
a giant "Paper Bag", 1968, "Legal Pad Sheet", 1967 from Alex Hay, "Eraser", 1967, from Vija Celmins and next to each other  "Cardbird Box II", 1971 from Robert Rauschenberg and "Bread", 1969, from Jasper Jones. Robert Bechtle, a photo realist painter permanently displayed at the K&B Plaza Building on Saint-Charles, is well represented with several works.

Among the plethora of works, some bring emotions and provoke thoughts like "Nomad", 2001, from Gavin Turk featuring a sleeping bag, shaped by the body of the  wanderer or across it, "Newspaper", 1992, from Robert Gobert, a pile of newspapers ready to be delivered, a morning ritual soon to be history like the bottle of milk left daily at the door.
I felt like a voyeur looking at "Crouching Boy in Mirror", 1999-2000, from Ron Mueck. We surprise the boy, modern Narcissus, contemplating his body in the mirror. I find " Bremen Towne" from Keith Edmier, 2006-2007, disturbing. It represents an American dream turned into a nightmare: a kitchen, equipped with cabinetry, stove, sink, colored in a dirty vulgar yellow. It is an exact replica of the kitchen from the artist's childhood home. Jud Nelson's trash bag in marble, "Hefty 2-Ply" is a masterpiece of high and low art. Plastic becomes marble, trash becomes a symbol of our society.

 Well-known artists should bring big crowds and the list includes: Chuck Close with a giant self-portrait, Gerhard Richter, Ai  Weiwei. The latest is represented by a mason jar three-quarter filled with a sample of the 100 millions of the sunflower seeds which were spread on the floor at the Tate Modern, creating an infinite landscape. Size does matter as discussed in a previous blog, and the idea gets lost in this small version. 

The viewer must look carefully to see "Weeds" (2005-2009) from Yoshihiro Suda, or a fly on the wall "Untitled" 2010 from Tom Friedman. .I never thought that a plastic bag could be a piece of art. But the checkered bag worth a few dollars behind a black line at the museum has now the status of art work. What is the price of  "Refugee", 2007, from Susan Collis? It is the traditional, international plastic bag carried by migrants, displaced populations, a symbol of loss. It usually holds the  belongings and dreams of the new nomads. Other works related to the same subject include the luggage from Kaz Oshiro or "Still Life", 2009, from Ugo Rondinone, pieces of cardboard left along the wall, ready for a move.

The last room is taken over by the giant work from Robert Therrien, "No Title (Folding Table and Chairs)", 2007. Visitors are scrambling to avoid the guard and have their picture taken. It becomes a game. Children are running around the display, fairytales become reality at the museum. 

Upon leaving the exhibition, I thought about Duchamp, his works would fit just fine.

photographs by the author:

grandstaircase at the NOMA

"Sunset Street", Robert Bechtle, 1984 (at K&B building)

"Refugee", Susan Collis, 2007