SHARING WITH ME

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...

Earlier in the week I went to an exhibition of photography-montage-collage by Joel-Peter Witkin. The title was «Enfer ou Ciel» or «Hell or Heaven».  The last way I would describe myself is as  puritanical but seeing deformed bodies, mass of flesh and female or males changed physically into the opposite sex - and naked - doesn’t shock me it just leaves me cold. A good friend asked me «but why Bacon and Picasso then ?» This is painting and not changed form through montage. Even if Witkin’s references are Renaissance and many of the photo-montages recognizable in terms of where they came from - somehow that irritated me even more...I came out with a nasty taste in my mouth and walked across the Palais Royal where of course there is the Daniel Buren installation. In 1986 Buren  created a 3,000 m² sculpture in the great Palais Royal with «public money» -  Called «Les Deux Plateaux  but more commonly referred to as the "Colonnes de Buren" ("Buren's Columns"), this ...

Since when ? Forever I would think, the word Opera and I don’t go well together. There are modern operas I really enjoy or modernizing the classics can be marvelous. But classical or traditional opera leaves me as cold as listening to John Cage. As a child I spent hours of my free time pretending to dance and sing in musical comedy and consequently knew every show that was on or off Broadway or in London. I was living in Launcestion. Tasmania. Then at the age of 16 in London for the first time, I was  taken to the world premieres of both «My Fair Lady» and «West Side Story». I made up my mind that I would become a musical comedy star. So I broke my voice singing, my back dancing and it never happened. Even so I am still passionate about -most- musical comedies and there is hope for pop opera. Having reserved for the Chatelet theatre season earlier in the year, I knew what to expect when I sas «Nixon in China» and loved it - but was a little doubtful about what I would see with «...

Is this art ? A good friend who came with me to see «Excentrique(s) Travail in Situ» or perhaps « Excentriques(s) Art on the spot», did not think so. When I ventured to say that it was changing colour - she added that in a church with stained glass windows there would also be changing colours if the sun was shining in. Murielle is right but on the other hand, this work is colour - changing colour - and changing light. With every footstep I seemed to see another colour and another perspective of Daniel Buren’s work. Thanks to Claude who was our speaker, we had the time to look closer and see structures and colours which we may not have seen otherwise. Claude also described this creation as art. Monumenta, is just  that - monumental. Every year an artist is invited to «invade» the 13 500m2 and 45 metres of height in the Grand Palais. A work of art which is created for this space. Two of the five artists so far have created ephemeral works. Daniel Buren’s is one of them. He is one of...

I sometimes try to give artists a second chance. Especially living ones. It’s not easy as installations and work which just  doesn’t say anything to me leaves me quite perplexe and as friends say, snarly ! Wim Delvoye’s work is strange and sometimes quite funny. When I was looking at the listing of his exhibitions, I was surprised that he recently gave one in the MOMA in Tasmania. He seems to have been all over the world. He reinterprets artworks of the past whilst giving an amused glance at contemporary society. He explores art history although when there are references to Bosch, Brueghel or even Warhol, I am a little if not quite lost. One of his pigs which is mentioned in the chapter «Reassuring and Otherwise» is very well known. When I saw this image as the front page of an art magazine, I burst out laughing. There was the exhibition I had just seen in Grenoble alone with Wim and his pig. Wim is from Belgium and 47. The exhibition I saw today was in the Gallery Perrotin. A...

Musée de Grenoble It was quite a day  as there are 6 hours of travelling by TGV there and back to Grenoble. Having left very early I was at 11 in the Grenoble  Museum to see «Die Brucke». «Thanks to an outstanding loan of more than 120 leading works coming from the Brücke-Museum in Berlin, and 20 years after the last such event held in Paris, the Musée de Grenoble is presenting an exhibition devoted to the Die Brücke [The Bridge] group, the first German avant-garde movement, which ushered in one of the 20th century's major art tendencies :  Expressionism. Etablished in Dresden in June 1905 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, who were subsequently joined by Max Pechstein, Emile Nolde, Cuno Amiet and Otto Mueller, this group was defined above all by its rejection of academic art. These artists were influenced by the works of Van Gogh and Munch as much as by the primitive arts, and translated into a style involving dazz...

Collège des Bernadins The Collège des Bernardins is just down the road from my place and was reopened in 2008. It is a centre for Research and discussion for the Church and society in general. Open to everyone, Christian or not and all those who question the sense of life and what man will become. It is the most beautiful place and holds some of the strangest events as far as contemporary installations are concerned. I popped in with a friend the other day. Eelco had not seen the centre and was slightly bemused by Michael Blazy’s installation in the old vestry. Collecting the foam On the Left On the Right Blazy creatures sculpture from anything he is inspired by and finds around the house. Carrot purée, lentilles, food, dog or cat croquettes....and a lot more. His installations are very temporary and rather fragile. This «Bouquet final» (Eelco felt it was the last wedding bouquet») is a foam bath . What interests him is when he finishes his installation, it begins...

Gianni gave me a book a few weeks ago «L’Homme de l’Art» on the life of D-H Kahnweiler (1884-1979). He was without any doubt one of the most important art dealers of his period and also the most ardent protagonist of the cubists. I like the way he calls the artists he represented. «His artists» To name a few, Picasso, Braque, Gris, Leger, de Vlaminck, Derain, Masson....it would not surprise anyone knowing my tastes a little that I find it difficult to put the book down. One particular chapter on Gleizes and Metzinger caught my eye as there is an exhibition on of their work in Paris at the moment. Their cubist paintings were criticized by Kahnweiler and the REAL cubists themselves. Picasso and Braque. Copyists, and certainly considered to be esthetically pretty without the sophistication of THE cubists. Gleizes and Metzinger came from very different backgrounds. Gleizes is a self-taught artist. Metzinger studied art and was introduced into this world thanks to Max Jacob and Apollina...