AN ARTIST WHO LOSES HIS TOUCH

Before I even started writing up my experience with «Dynamo», I went back to see Julio Le Parc with Nicky. The experience was as strong as the week before and as usual when you see an exhibition for the second time, you see something else. Especially with cinetic art. You enter into it and there is little to understand if not «how on earth did he do it?». 









Nicky liked it too..
My enthusiasm after the first visit and then «Dynamo» with Gianni a few days later gave me a lot to think about following a dinner party with Europeans and Argentinians. When I could get a word in, I finally started talking about Julio Le Parc. He had been a teacher of a guest attending the dinner party. The same guest had in his time been very famous, known around the world and then the company he was working for as an exclusive designer went broke and he lost everything. The Jeweler in question did not go broke because of the artist but for other reasons. It was relaunched a few years later and has a prize place on the Place Vendome. The same man who had been famous and apparently knew everyone of that period, is suddenly a nobody. My question is of course, «why does someone who was so creative suddenly slip into a deep dark hole?


At another contemporary art fair this week, the question was still rolling around my head and then I looked at the work around me. Virtually none of the artists were known and those of us who saw it, were confused. Everything seemed to look the same. Stick and glue jobs of artists we all know. Reassuring? Fashion? On the hundreds of exhibiters we saw, there must have only been a few works which really seemed to stand out. 

I wondered if this is what had happened to the person I was talking about? His work (so I am told) lacks in originality and seems to be a repetition of those artists who were doing cinetic art in the 50’s and 60’s. Sad......

Next stop «Dynamo» .......



Entering into a work with Gianni

Flower beds at the Grand Palais

Commentaires

Michael Keane a dit…
There are so many artists who “lose their way” – in fact, the majority, I venture to suggest. If the artist deviates from his “usual” path, his followers feel disassociated in new, unfamiliar territory. They’ll never admit, though, that they might be the ones “lost”, not the artist.
Miles Davis, the jazz musician, was always attacking new frontiers, often accompanied by gasps of disapproval from his audience, but later, when comprehension dawned, he would be lauded as a great pioneer. Sometimes, though, there can such an acute divergence of paths between artist and follower, ne’er the twain will meet again.
13/5/13 08:10
Enregistrer un commentaire

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

CONFLICTS AND ENCOUNTERS OF MULTIPLE HISTORIES

Image
Over the years, I have gone on discovering Wifredo Lam. He has been mentioned in different Blog chapters but always within permanent collections. I have to admit today that in the early years, I took one of his paintings for a Picasso….and seeing certain paintings of his today, it didn’t really surprise me. Especially as I learnt that he knew Picasso…This though was a retrospective of his work at the Beaubourg. Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was a precursor of a cross-cultural style of painting, infusing Western modernism with African and Caribbean symbolism. He must have been one of the very rare artists who was in contact with all the movements of his time …and all those that I follow. Cubism, surrealism, CoBrA…but he never lost sight of the world around him and took on the struggle to paint the drama of his own country, Cuba. The above photo plunges us at once into the exhibition. Was he an attractive man? I think there are later photos which make him look less brutal….but in my book,
Lire la suite

MY BELOVED PICASSO -I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS -

Image
After 25 years as a museum, it was time to renovate the Picasso site. The « Hotel » as we call it, has quite a history. It is probably, as Bruno Foucart wrote in 1985,  (he is an art historian of 19th century architecture) “the grandest, most extraordinary, if not the most extravagant, of the Parisian houses of the 17th century”. Hotel Salé The Main stair case Another coming down "Picasso" would have liked these lights The building has seen many occupants come and go over the centuries. However, paradoxically, before the place was entrusted to the museum, it was rarely “inhabited”, but instead leased out to various private individuals, prestigious hosts and institutions. And so it became the Picasso museum. The renovations began in 2009 and quite obviously went well over budget and should have opened before the holidays started this year. The political arguments too had to be contended with not to mention the changes in Directors and the big question bei
Lire la suite

THE CHOICE OF ONE OF THE RICHEST WOMEN IN THE WORLD

Image
The exhibition season is very full between January and the French holiday period. I make less and less effort to go and see the « block-busters » and there are some museums which are not easy to get around. The Jacquemart André is one of them. The rooms are so small and when a couple of groups move in, it is virtually impossible to see a picture or move at all. Still I was interested to go and see the Alicia Koplowitz collection. Now I come to think of it, there have been quite a few private collections shown to the public since the end of last year.  Naturally I knew nothing about this woman.  Alicia Koplowitz is very well known in her home country, Spain. Thanks to her company, the Capital Omega Group  a comprehensive financial services company , she has become an important collect er Alicia is is a Spanish business magnate. When her father died, she and her sister inherited Construcciones y Contratas, S.A. (CYCSA), a company founded by her father. She  sold her part of the comp
Lire la suite