SHARING WITH ME

How do you start talking, writing or getting your thoughts straight about the Great War of 1914-1918? This is a huge multidisciplinary exhibition which gives an immediate view of one year of the war. «1917». Why this particular year was of extreme diversity and overly creative, I do not know. It is not an exhibition that you go from picture to picture, photo to photo or object to object - not unless you are a historian and know a lot about that period. I certainly knew something about what was going on in the art world but seeing it in this context is entirely different. One of the many propoganda posters  Time needs to be taken to read the texts, study the artifacts, look at the propoganda   and try to understand just what was going on artistically, in the battlefields and how did the war artists (eg. Pierre Bonnard,1867-1949,  Edouard Vuillard 1888-1940...) and artists who were called up such as Otto Dix, (1891-1968) cope with what they saw. Otto Dix - Destroyed villag

Yesterday I went to the Pompidou centre in Metz. The last time I was there a couple of years ago just after the opening and Gianni and I gaped at the queues when we arrived. Many people come from Luxembourg, Brussels and the north. It was raining when I arrived yesterday and I wondered if the museum wasn’t closed. Beaubourg Metz Two exhibitions I planned to see and five h ours to do so. «1917» which will my main chapter and Sol Lewitt. His wall drawings.  In between the two exhibitions, I discovered this. Is Daniel Buren following me? Or perhaps, I am following him ! This was an extension work of what he had done for the Pompidou -Metz in 2011. This installation «From Above» the mirror becomes a template, highlighting the wooden structure which is one of the key structures in the building. In the Monumenta Installation there are 377 coloured circles . (see «Art and Eccentric Light» - May 30th)  Here there are 1600 pieces of curved wood covered by Teflon-fibreglass. It’s really