FROM PICASSO TO JASPER JOHNS

BNF - just see the poster for expo.
The BNF, is I feel, a very off putting building, even to the extent of being « unfriendly ». If one doesn’t want to climb the stairs, there is a rather long detour to go up a hill and then enter the patio. After that you have to find the exhibition centre. What I really mean, is that there has to be a very good reason for going there:

It was this…….


 
Poster outside the BNF




From Picasso to Jasper Johns – Aldo Crommelynck’s workshop. 

Now who Aldo Crommelynck was - I certainly didn’t know. Here’s a text straight off the BNF home page.
Aldo Crommelynck (1931-2008), printer of works of art, contributed in making Paris a famous city in the field of prints and engravings. Introduced to printing by the master-printer Roger Lacourière, he opens his own workshop in 1956 and collaborates with Tal Coat, Juan Miro, Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, Georges Braque... His younger brother, Piero, comes and works with him. In 1963, the Crommelynck brothers put in a printing press in Mougins, near Picasso’s house and then work almost exclusively with the artist. They are always ready to collaborate, which incites Picasso to be particularly creative. In 1969, the Parisian workshop is moved to the rue de Grenelle and mainly welcomes Avigdor Arikha, Sam Szafran, Yuri Kuper, George Condo. Following Richard Hamilton, foreign artists attracted by the reputation of Picasso’s printer go to the workshop. The major part of them are English and American: David Hockney, Peter Blake, Jim Dine, Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns, Donald Sultan… But the workshop also welcomes the Italian artists belonging to the Trans-avant-garde movement, Cucci and Clemente, the German painter, Penck and the Swiss artist Martin Disler. From the eighties to the end of his career, Aldo Crommelynck shares his time between Paris and the United-States where he mainly collaborates with Pace prints. When he worked with worldwide famous artists, Aldo Crommelynck asked them to sign prints intended to the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Today, these prints enrich the heritage collections of the library in an exceptional way. 
What is remarkable I suppose is that they worked with Picasso virtually in exclusivity for all those years.....


 
 
Picasso - Painter and model 1963


Picaso - smoker with a green cigarette 1964

Self portrait with a stick with an actor in costume , love chubbiness and women - 1968


The patron who makes angels 1971

Picasso - Raphael at tge Fornarina XXll 1968

 
Pablo Picasso Mousquetaire attablé avec un jeune garço, 1968



I’ve always been very confused about engraving as certain pictures I have seen, I would swear they were etchings or even water colors. I spent a lot of time really studying each image - and as I could photograph, took quite a lot - and then sometimes forgot to get the title of the picture. Sorry about that.

 
Jim Dine (1935-) A Heart on the Rue de Grenelle :1981


Jasper Johns (1930-) Periscope, 1981

Jasper Johns

Jennfer Bartlett (1941-) Bridge, Boat Dog, 1997

Jennfer Bartlett (1941-) Bridge, Boat Dog, 1997

Jennfer Bartlett (1941-) Bridge, Boat Dog, 1997

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) Living Sperm, around 1986






George Condo (1957-) Clown, 1989

Aldo Crommelynck - - after Pablo Picasso, 1952

Red Grooms (1937-) Portrait of AC, 1994







 Some of these look so much like water colours to my eye.....


Red Grooms, Grand Central Station,  1994

David Hockney (1937-) Simplified Faces State ll -1973

David Hockney Felicity sleeping witha Parrot, 1974




Gunther Forg (1952-2013)

Martin Disler (1949-1996) Gravure O, 1984

A.R.Penck (1939-) What is gravitation? 1984

A.R.Penck Children in puberty 1984

Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) Leopold Bloom, 1983

Avigdor Arikha (1929-2010) Samuel Beckett, 1970













Jim Dine (1935-) Paris smiles in Darkness, 1976

Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) Picasso's Meninas, 1973

George COndo (1957-) Untitled 1989

David Hockney (1937-) Artist and model.



Once again, even if it was Sunday, I was pretty much alone


 





 apart from two ladies who were discussing their life stories and vaguely looking at each picture. I get very irritated with such people……like being in the metro with a passenger next you who is on his/her mobile ‘phone.

Commentaires

Michael Keane a dit…
Wonderful images.
4/7/14 11:42
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