ENORMOUS AND UPTLIFTING

My trip to Metz had been cancelled a couple of times. Now I was off again. Every time I have visited the Beaubourg there, the weather was freezing cold or rain and cold. This time the sun shone and providing I had the time I would do a bit of visiting. Notably the Cathedral which has Chagall stained glass windows. 

The exhibition I was to see was « PHARES » or « Beacons »
Based entirely on loans from the collection at Centre Pompidou/Museum of Modern Art, the « Beacons » highlights a selection of masterpieces rarely shown to the public due to their monumental size.

With no specific chronological order, the exhibition's staging provides an overview of the primary movements in art since the start of the 20th century, from Pablo Picasso to Anish Kapoor including Sam Francis, Joseph Beuys and Dan Flavin.

I was so lucky. As the first rush of visitors was over - especially the summer months - there was virtually no-one in the museum.
For openings, there was this. Joan Miro’s monumental picture was first shown in a retrospective at the Grand Palais in 1974. It’s majestic. « Figures and Birds in the Night » . There is always a notion of equilibrium in Miro’s work even if shapes and forms seem to transform the more you look at his work.

I moved into the first gallery and stopped short. Filled with Yan Pei-Ming (Franco-Chinese). His work is overpowering and yet here, it had a place of its own, where it could breathe. He achieved international recognition for his original approach to portraiture. He ignores the criteria of resemblance. I seemed to penetrate into the faces as we would a landscape. These seven pieces were commissioned in 2000 for the Epiphanies exhibition at the Art Centre in 2000. Although I didn’t see this exhibition this work conjures up images for me of life after death.

Joseph Beuys work is not unknown to me. The first time I saw these two pieces was at the Beaubourg in Paris, but when, I can’t remember. It was probably the lack of space which made the piano look as if it was crushed. Here everything jumps into place. It is a direct reference to the pharmaceutical scandal in the second half of the 20th century caused by the Thalidomide drug, prescribed to pregnant women in the 50’s causing a spate of deformities on new born babies. The two red crosses on either side of the piano are signs of emergency. You can only see one, of course.The skin hangs next to it. Seen here it brought back awful memories of that period.



Julio Le Park we have seen together at the Palais du Tokyo and the Grand Palais. This is a collective work done by GRAV (The Groupe de recherché d’Art Visuel ») François Morellet, Yvaral, Horacio Garcia Rossi, Francisco Sobrino, Joël Stein and Beuys of course. 
Their work moves, transforms even without the viewer’s participation. It was in quite a narrow « corridor » and my limit of vision was quickly tested. It seemed to move all the time.

"TABULA" (1974) by Simon Hantaï is not an unknown work. His method as we have seen before is folding and crumpling the canvas and then covering with color before unfolding it. The result of the folding and painting process appeared only when the canvas was unfolded with the painting itself participating in its own creation. In actual fact it looked very organized as if it had not been folded at all!



Robert Delaunay created this work in 1937. Having encountered the limits of easel painting, he was now exploring the monumental possibilities of large scale murals. « Entrance to the Railway Pavilion, 1937 » could not be seen as a whole as it too was hung in the gallery and a passageway.

I had seen this work of Fernand Léger a number of times. « Composition with Two Parrots », 1935-39. He tried adding an element in the figures » hands that would balance the composition. His objective was to exploit the law of contrasts so used these multicolored birds. Léger frequently painted on this monumental scale as he wanted his paintings to dominate the room.




Once again a Picasso I knew nothing about. Although I had seen the stage curtain in the same museum for Parade (1917) I knew nothing about this one created for the ballet Mercure in 1924. The music was by Eric Satie which still must be a family name in France. Contemporary critics felt that Picasso’s contribution dominated those of Satie and Massine (choreography) ….


Now an artist I didn’t know. Louise Veleson was born in Russian and emigrated to the States in 1905. This work evokes both the cubist forms she studied as a young artist and her new home in New York. Her use of mirrors enables her to play with shadows and reflections and intensify the illusion of a waterfall. The installation is called « Reflexions of a Waterfall 1 », (1982).

 This was the first time I had seen something of Claude Viallat’s work which seemed to be a whole. It’s called « Orangey, Light Blue Forms » (1970). Once again impossible to photograph. It was possible to go up to another level to look down on it. I’m still not too sure what I think, even looking at it today.

A very new and unknown painting by Frank Stella. « Polombe » 1994. In the 60’s Stella was one of the major figures of American minimalism. He painted large scale « shaped canvases » in which the picture’s geometric pattern determined the form. This painting is an example of a new language which he developed in the 90’s. It seems to be a tangle of forms and I love it!

« The Lost World » by Pierre Alechinsky. Fabulous! Remember that he was a member of the CoBrA coupe (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam)? When he stared putting a designed and painted frame around his work, I felt that his paintings were boxed in. Here though there is nothing of tha. It was a trip to Japan in 1955 when he discovered Zen philosophy which inspired the painting. It was teeming with faces for me, whirling in space.




Jean Degottex is virtually unknown to me. A French artist and during the summer of 1954 he painted the Atlantic coast at first had. Even if he was a self taught artist, most of his work was monumental. He too was influenced by Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. His work is free, confident gestures as I like them and the work « feels » very committed.


Ahh Pierre Soulages. « Painting 202x453 » cm done on the 29th June in 1979 is magnificent. The spectator moves around, backwards and forwards and sees the many variations of black. Soulages calls Black, the « color of light » which modifies when we contemplate the painting. Perhaps that’s why I like his work so much. Every time I see one of his paintings, there is a mystery about it.

Sam Francis « The New American Painting » done in 1957.
« What we want is to make something that fills utterly the sight and can’t be used to make life only bearable: if the painting til now was a way of making bearable the sight of the unbearable, the visible sumptuous, then let’s strip away …all that »

I typed this out as I wanted to see if I could understand it better. Not really sure, but here the painting lies under the cloud that soared over the inlaid sea.

Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was a "second generation" abstract expressionist painter and printmaker. She was an essential member of the American abstract expressionist movement, even though much of her career took place in France. Once I had seen a retrospective of her work in the States, I began following her more closely. This is called « The Great Valley » XlV,  1983. She was determined to extract herself from the agitation of American art at the period and came to live in France in 1959. This triptych belongs to a series of pictures with the same title painted from 1983 to 1984 while she was still morning the death of her sister. I tell you this as she had a very serious cancer of the throat and must have gone through a lot of pain.


I certainly don’t have to present the Indian-born Artist Anish Kapoor. He regards himself as both a painter and a sculptor. I love this kind of work. Meticulously polished, they overturn the surrounding space. The upside down picture created distortions and illusions…. always very strange.

upside down

 Dan Flavin has never been high on my list of artists even if he is a major figure in American Minimal Art. The new language that he invented from 1963 composed of fluorescent tubes has never really enthralled me. Here is one that did. Probably because it reflects light in two directions, inwards toward the wall and outwards toward the viewer. I « watched it » for more than a couple of minutes. Walked up to it, backed off looking at the reflections.


The final work by Robert Irwan is difficult to photograph and to see. This work belongs to his disc series in which he plays on the illusion of « dissolving » a convex Plexiglass circle on the wall on which it hangs. It is very strange and I’m sorry the photo does not represent the work better and it is quite beautiful to look out.

 What a morning and there was still so much more to see….The Andy Warhol I walked through and confirmed that I really don’t enjoy his work, except watching these children play with huge silver pillows. I wish that I could have joined in. It looked like fun.