Auguste Chabaud (1882-1955), Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne

Auguste Chabaud (1882-1955)
Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne
25 février - 28 mai 2000

Né à Nîmes en 1882, Auguste Chabaud fréquente l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Avignon, puis monte à Paris en 1899 pour y poursuivre sa formation artistique. La frénésie de la métropole, sa modernité agressive fascinent le jeune peintre, qui reste en même temps profondément attaché à sa Provence natale, parcourue par le rythme lent, immuable, de la vie rurale. De la tension entre ces deux pôles, Paris et le Sud de la France, va naître une oeuvre puissante et singulière. Réunissant près de 100 tableaux et plus de 50 dessins, l'exposition offre un panorama rétrospectif de cet artiste hors du commun, qui voulut "puiser, sans intermédiaire, à même la vie".

Auguste Chabaud expose dès 1907 au Salon des Indépendants et au Salon d'Automne, aux côtés des principaux protagonistes du fauvisme. A Montmartre où il a son atelier, il peint les rues animées et bigarrées, les enseignes lumineuses et les divertissements populaires (Le Moulin Rouge, la nuit, 1907). Ses scènes de la vie parisienne ne font aucune concession à l'anecdote; beaucoup ont pour thème la prostitution, qu'Auguste Chabaud aborde d'une manière franche et directe, non dépourvue de brutalité, mais sans complaisance ni pitié (Fille à la cravate rouge, 1907). Dès les débuts, il recherche l'expressivité du coloris, recourt à une écriture rapide, synthétique, proche parfois de la caricature. Juxtaposant les couleurs crues, cernant les formes d'un trait noir épais, il saisit les figures frontalement ou découpe leur profil, décrit la solitude des hommes dans le monde moderne. Ses paysages urbains vigoureux, traités dans une palette plus austère, montrent des rues et des places désertes (Montmartre, construction du Sacré-Cœur, 1907-1908), des lieux de passage anonymes (Couloir d'hôtel, 1907-1908), et traduisent la même volonté d'aller vers l'essentiel.

Après la Première Guerre mondiale, le peintre s'établit définitivement à Graveson, petit village près d'Avignon où se trouve le Mas de Martin, domaine familial dont il reprendra bon gré mal gré la gestion. Fier de ses racines, Auguste Chabaud revendiquera toujours un art instinctif, et une position marginale dans le champ artistique: "Le peu que je sais, je l'ai appris non dans les ateliers suffocants où je n'ai pu vivre […], mais en suivant les laboureurs et les bergers", écrit-il en 1912 dans la préface de son exposition à la galerie Bernheim-Jeune, "j'ai dessiné ce que j'ai vu autour de moi (paysans, bergers, chevaux, vaches, etc., et ces drames de la vie simple, la mort de la brebis ou la mort du cochon)". Les séries parisienne et provençale (il y travaille parallèlement jusqu'en 1913, date à laquelle il quitte la capitale) manifestent des influences réciproques. Les habitants de la campagne sont, comme ceux de la ville, abstraits en types (Vieilles Provençales à l'église, 1909); le paysage, résolu en formes simples, est construit à partir de quelques éléments emblématiques (Rue de village, 1909). Dépourvue de tout folklore, la Provence est, dans ces images, monumentale; brûlée sous la lumière implacable du soleil, elle se présente comme figée dans une intemporalité, un silence qui placent, ici encore, l'oeuvre du peintre sous le signe de la solitude.

Dans les années vingt, Auguste Chabaud travaille dans des couleurs vives, dominées par un bleu de Prusse éclatant (Village de Graveson, 1924-1925). La pérennité et l'âpre beauté de la Provence vont s'incarner désormais dans la Montagnette, une petite chaîne de montagne voisine du Mas de Martin, que l'artiste peindra inlassablement, dans une vision empreinte de sérénité et de lyrisme (Paysage dans la Montagnette, 1928). Au cours des décennies suivantes, Auguste Chabaud - qui est représenté dès 1936 par la galerie Katia Granoff - va continuer d'exposer aux grands Salons de Paris, même si sa production se trouve ralentie par l'exploitation de son domaine.

L'oeuvre d'Auguste Chabaud a fait l'objet de nombreuses rétrospectives dans les musées français, notamment à Nîmes (1946, 1956 et 1989), Aix-en-Provence (1950, 1960), Marseille (1956), Montpellier (1961), Toulon (1968), Brest (1978), Saint-Tropez (1984), Orléans (1986) et Troyes (1989). Plusieurs expositions monographiques lui ont été consacrées en Europe, notamment à Saarbrücken-Wuppertal-Munich (1993), Bochum (1994), Gand (1996) et Copenhague (1996-1997).

L'exposition qu'accueille la Fondation de l'Hermitage a fait étape dans les musées de Dessau, Wiesbaden, Emden et Coblence, et sera ultérieurement montrée à Paderborn et Maastricht. Elle est enrichie, pour sa présentation à Lausanne, par des prêts du Musée du Petit Palais à Genève, et par un ensemble d'oeuvres majeures provenant de l'ancienne collection de Josef Müller, conservées dans des collections privées suisses.

FONDATION DE L'HERMITAGE
2, route du Signal - CH - 1000 Lausanne 8
www.fondation-hermitage.ch

Hong Hao, Art Beatus Gallery, Vancouver - Suspended Disbelief

Hong Hao: Suspended Disbelief 
Art Beatus Gallery, Vancouver
February 25 - April 30, 2000

Art Beatus Gallery presents a solo exhibition of the recent works of Beijing artist, Hong Hao. Suspended Disbelief  includes computer-generated colour photographs, photographic hand scrolls and a selection of colour serigraphs from his series, Selected Scriptures.

Hong Hao has been working on this continuing series for over ten years and the process of creating a fictionalized document, in the likeness of an encyclopedia or atlas, has generated a prolific body of work. Each serigraph is an element of the total invented volume, and presents a view of two pages from this book. The prints define a territory of a world that we almost know: "political, social and historical in content and rendered in ways so subtle that, if you don't know your history you might well believe yourself to be well beyond the looking glass." The pages contain what appears to be an historical evolution that challenges our cultural precepts.

His art is the result of his curiosity and process of understanding. His sensitivity to the relationship between both traditional and modern culture lends to a unique photographic portfolio that highlights his view of the influence of Western ideas in an Eastern locale. In his large-scale colour photographs, the artist inserts himself into Western commercials cast in the role of a transnational businessman. "By creating a Chinese identity which is blurred and unfamiliar from both an ethnic and cultural standpoint, Hong attempts to express the uncertainty and inconsistency of human judgement, as well as people's embarrassment at living in a pastiche society." Based on the famous twelfth-century painting by Chinese court painter Zhang Zeduan, Life along the River on the Eve of the Chingming Festival, Hong Hao presents scrolls composed of snapshots depicting "a cityscape in which the traditional urban plan has been undermined by the chaotic distribution of modern commercial buildings."

Suspended Disbelief is not only the first opportunity to see Hong Hao's work in Vancouver, but it is his first solo exhibition in Canada.

ART BEATUS GALLERY, VANCOUVER
888 Nelson Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2H1
www.artbeatus.com

Lyson at Art Expo 2000 in New York

The Art Expo event will be held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City between the 9th and 13th of March 2000. Lyson, together with US distributor I-Lab, will exhibit various fine art images printed with Lyson inks on Lyson fine art papers. Iris Giclees, provided by US Printmakers, will be shown, and in addition portfolios of work by distinguished American and European photographers will display the latest ink set offerings that are now at the forefront of the emerging Digital Photographic Fine Art sector. Lyson's stand number is 1409. http://www.lyson.com/

Cesar Martinez, A.J. Quiroz, A.Turok at Apex Art

 

 

 Chispa

Cèsar Martìnez
Alfred J. Quiróz
Antonio Turok

Curated by Luis Jimenez

 

  © Alfred J. Quiros,
  Untitled, 1999
  Courtesy the artist
  and Apex Art, NY

 

Three Latino artists, Cèsar Martìnez of Texas, Alfred J. Quiróz of Arizona, and Antonio Turok from Chiapas, have profoundly changed the way their culture and art is seen in their communities and beyond - like a chispa, a spark in Spanish, that ignites a fire.

A brochure containing an essay by Luis Jimenez will be available free of charge.

 

APEX ART Curatorial Program
February 9 - March 11, 2000

Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things 

California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco 

19 February - 14 May 2000 

Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.

Georgia O'Keeffe, 1922

Sixty-eight signal works by Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), will be on view in San Francisco in the only West Coast showing of Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things. This major exhibition is the first to focus entirely on the artist's depictions of objects. The selection of paintings and works on paper on display spans the period from 1908 to 1963, and explores Georgia O'Keeffe's aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual relationships with the objects she chose to paint.

In 1915 Georgia O'Keeffe divided her work into two categories: "land-scapes" and "things." Georgia O'Keeffe's "things" have a decidedly organic nature and veer toward the abstract rather than the representational. Flowers, leaves, bones, shells, and fruit are among the objects explored by the artist in these works, which reflect her sensual regard for objects in nature.

A Giant in the History of American Art

Georgia O'Keeffe has endured as the preeminent woman artist in the United States since her first critical success in the early 1920s. At that time, her fresh outlook defied the traditional norms of space, scale, perspective, and time promulgated by her contemporaries. Her work focused on things close at hand, such as the fruits and vegetables grown in her garden at Lake George, or the leaves she picked up, or the clam shells she gathered in Maine. Unlike traditional compositions, Georgia O'Keeffe did not place her subject in the usual domestic space of a garden or kitchen, but rather in an indefinite, timeless space. Her use of color, shape, and patterns operated independently from the discipline of botany or the 19th-century standards of landscape and still-life painting. When inventing her own new form, O'Keeffe shunned these traditions and said to herself, "I'll paint what I see--what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it...."

Her now well-known canvases epitomize by their precision of design, simplicity, and refinement the spirit of the modern age. They also brilliantly attest to the primacy of nature in American art and thought, even in an industrial era. Georgia O'Keeffe's art remains as provocative today as when it first came to public attention in the early decades of this century.

Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things focuses on the artist's most important series: her studies of nature. Through these, the exhibition reveals her rapid development as an abstract painter, as she scrutinized objects from nature for their essential forms. The petals of a flower become in her work undulating rhythms, the skin of an apple a sea of light and color. The exhibition also demonstrates how closely connected these objects are to the artist personally and psychologically. They are, for Georgia O'Keeffe, souvenirs of places and experiences. They are also emblems of the vastness, mystery, and dynamism of nature. "I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it," she once wrote.

Eastern Theories, Western Genre of Painting

Georgia O'Keeffe's aesthetic synthesized Eastern theories and principles with a Western genre of painting, thereby redefining the still life tradition in Western art. During her studies in 1914 with Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia University, she was introduced to Dow's classroom text Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, by Ernest Fenollosa. This book revealed to O'Keeffe an Asian art of live, precise detail whose eloquence had come from clarity, not sentiment. O'Keeffe owned a copy of Epochs, along with many other publications on Asian art and philosophy that she collected throughout her life and kept in her library at Abiquiu, New Mexico.

Exploring a range of her invention, Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things reveals her deepening understanding of her materials and process as well as the essential components of her developing aesthetic. Georgia O'Keeffe's imaginative process was poetic and precise. The images she conveyed in her paintings can be said to mirror an active mind discovering something new and then registering it into the field of consciousness. Therein lies her artistic poetry of selection, elimination, and emphasis.

Shared Aesthetic with f 64 Photographers

The San Francisco presentation of Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things will be augmented by a display of works by f 64 photographers, which acknowledges the shared sensibilities and interconnections between O'Keeffe's vision of the natural world and that of her contemporaries who worked in the photographic medium. The display of approximately 30 photographs borrowed from Bay Area institutions will include works by Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Dorthea Lange, Alma Lavenson, Paul Strand, Roger Sturtevant, Willard Van Dyke, and Edward Weston, among others.

Some of the f 64 photographers--a group of colleagues who took their name from the smallest aperture setting, or f stop, on the camera, which rendered the sharpest focus and greatest depth of field possible--were Bay Area residents for all or part of their lives. Of special interest is the fact that the work of these photographers was first brought to public attention in the landmark f 64 exhibition at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in 1932.

In addition, a selection of photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, lends an important biographical element to the exhibition and demonstrates as well the extent to which O'Keeffe was a principal subject of Stieglitz's art.

Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things is co-organized by The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC and the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibition was curated by Dr. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, The Philips Collection.

Venues

The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, 17 April-18 July 1999

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 7 August-17 October 1999

Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, 7 November 1999-30 January 2000

California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California, 19 February-14 May 2000

Catalogue

A comprehensive catalogue accompanies Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things. The first work to deal exclusively with O'Keeffe's still-life paintings, the catalogue contains essays by prominent art scholars and color plates of the works in the exhibition. In addition, the publication includes comparative black-and-white illustrations and descriptions of each work in the exhibition, as well as contextual photographs of O'Keeffe's studios and related historical and contemporary works. 

California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA

www.thinker.org

The Worlds of Nam June Paik, Guggenheim Museum, NYC

The Worlds of Nam June Paik 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
February 11 - April 26, 2000

The Worlds of Nam June Paik is the first American retrospective of the Korean-born multimedia artist since 1982. This exhibition brings together the major artworks that define Nam June Paik's singular achievement. Through his sculptures, installations, videotapes, and projects for television, Nam June Paik recognized and realized the potential of video to become an artist's medium. The exhibition allows audiences to experience the numerous ways in which Nam June Paik has treated the electronic moving image and expanded the definition of sculpture and installation art over the past four decades. The exhibition explores the crucial role Nam June Paik has played in changing visual and media culture.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a spectacular site-specific installation, Modulations in Synch (2000). It features laser projections cast onto the Rotunda ceiling, as well as laser projections that pass through an actual seven-story waterfall cascading from the top of the museum to the Rotunda floor. On the floor of the Rotunda will be an installation that employs more than 100 television sets facing upwards, displaying a pulsing mix of Nam June Paik's video imagery. This dramatic merging of lasers and video can be viewed all along the ramps that circle the Rotunda, offering the viewer multiple perspectives on the work.

On the ramps is a selection of Nam June Paik's seminal video installations from the 1960s and 70s, including The Moon Is the Oldest TV (1965-76), TV Garden (1974-78), and Video Fish (1975), as well as groupings of important smaller-scale sculptures. Several of Nam June Paik's early prepared televisions such as Magnet TV (1965) and performance pieces such as TV Cello (1971) are also on view in the Tower Gallery. A selection of the artist's laser sculptures are installed in the High Gallery.

The exhibition has been organized by John G. Hanhardt, Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, with Jon Ippolito, Assistant Curator of Media Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and distributed through Harry N. Abrams, Inc., it includes an essay by John G. Hanhardt, along with a selection of Nam June Paik's own writings

SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
1071 Fifth Avenue, New York City
www.guggenheim.org

Updated 04.07.2019

Derek Sprawson, Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London - Pale Shadows

Derek Sprawson: Pale Shadows
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
2 - 26 February 2000

The imagery in Derek Sprawson’s recent paintings originates from accumulations of objects which are photographed and then projected onto the canvas often at a distorting angle. Using the projected shadow as a framework Derek Sprawson loosely draws the objects into the prepared surface with a freehand, doodle like mark, removing, to varying degrees, the recognisability of the objects.

The objects used include toys and organic matter. These items seem to inhabit the desert like environment of the flat ground. Sometimes appearing totally abstract, sometimes quite recognisable, these objects exist in a sort of mediated half state between their physical self and their representation. The colours seem to have a ghostly, shadowy quality and somehow do not quite relate to the colours we are used to seeing in painting or real life.

In contrast, the paintings themselves make one very aware of their physicality. The images seem to be almost knitted into the ground, each application of colour dissolving and blending with the colours of the layered under - painting. The mixture of oil paint with wax which Derek Sprawson uses gives the surface a softness and density and produces the effect of a a faint luminous sheen. At the same time it makes the work so physically sensitive that it brings out the aspect of vulnerability, tenderness and exposure implied in the painting’s forms and images.

Derek Sprawson is senior lecturer in painting at Nottingham Trent University. He also curates exhibitions. He won the drawing prize at the 15th bienale of Drawing and Sculpture at Caldhas de Rhaina in Portugal in 1995 and in 1997 was the invited artist at the Bienale where he created an installation of large wall drawings. This is his second one person exhibition at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery. Derek Sprawson’s work is in private and public collections in Great Britain and the USA.

BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY
14A Clifford Street, London W1X 1RF
www.jacobsongallery.co.uk

Martha Henrickson, Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto - View from a Train

Martha Henrickson: View from a Train
Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto
February 3 - 26, 2000

Jane Corkin Gallery presents MARTHA HENRICKSON’s new body of work, view from a train.

Fascinated by train travel from an early age, Martha Henrickson (b. USA, 1942, Canadian) made her first trip across Canada by train in 1968. Over the last thirty years, she has examined the landscape from the windows of many trains, which has given her a humility before it. These photographs are an experience of her meditative journey rather than a pure record of the landscape.

Her large-scale colour images are subtly abstract. Equally subtle are the reminders of Martha Henrickson’s transit: trees blurred by motion, an aisle light tracing rectangular shapes in the sky over the Rockies. Her black and white images are delicate, highlighting wave crests, mountaintops, ski tracks in the snow, rock formations, and rivers. In this body of work, the windows and tracks of the train frame the landscape as she sees it. The aluminum mounts, which are an integral part of each photograph, echo the machines that have made this view possible.

Martha Henrickson’s awe before her chosen subject is a quiet gratitude, tempered with the awareness of the landscape’s vulnerability.

With this exhibition, view from a train, Martha Henrickson gives us her eye on her home, a reminder that the landscape endures, we are but travellers on it, and technology gives us another part of the picture.

JANE CORKIN GALLERY
179 John Street, Suite 302, Toronto, ON, M5T 1X4
www.janecorkin.com

Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX flash

 

Canon USA introduces at PMA 2000 an advanced and versatile flash unit for macro photography available in any 35mm SLR system.

The new Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX provides professional photographers with full E-TTL flash capability -- when used with any EOS System camera that supports E-TTL metering -- and supports TTL auto flash plus manual flash exposure control on all EOS System cameras. Supplying a powerful Guide Number of 46 (ISO 100/ft.), the MR-14EX incorporates a host of new flash and metering features, including Flash Exposure Lock, high-speed sync, variable power manual flash, Wireless Remote functions, two independent flash heads and 7 Custom Functions for tremendous flexibility.

“While Canon has enjoyed great success with its line of EOS System cameras, much of that success has been built around the entire system, including our line of lenses and flash accessories,” said Yukiaki Hashimoto, vice president and general manger , Photographic Products Group, Canon U.S.A., Inc. “From the outset, our goal is to provide photographers with a complete system of products that are compatible throughout the product line. The new Macro Ring Lite is just one example of how Canon is constantly striving to provide our customers with the most comprehensive selection of compatible products in the industry.”

Flash Exposure Lock / High-Speed Sync: With E-TTL compatible EOS cameras, photographers can utilize other functions beyond conventional flash photography, including Flash Exposure Lock and FP Flash. The Flash Exposure Lock (FEL) feature (a form of spot metering for flash) allows users to take a light reading from any given spot within the viewfinder, using the camera’s spot or partial metering modes. This virtually guarantees that the most critical area of a scene will be perfectly exposed, even if it is placed off-center for better composition.

In addition, the MR-14EX can be automatically synchronized to the camera’s maximum shutter speed using the FP flash (high-speed sync) feature. Photographers can now use higher shutter speeds and wider apertures outdoors in any lighting condition to achieve greater creative control.

Variable Power Flash: The new Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX mounts directly to Canon EF Macro lenses and features two flash tubes that can be used together or independently. When both flashes are fired in E-TTL and used together with the EOS-1v or EOS-3, lighting ratios can be set in ½ stop increments up to +/- 3 stops. This provides photographers with extensive creative control even in the most difficult lighting conditions, while offering tremendous exposure latitude for a wide range of subject matter.

Lighting ratios can also be controlled between the left and right tubes, even when the flash is placed in its manual mode, and users can select variable power settings over a 7-stop range down to 1/64th power. This feature is available with the Canon T90 SLR and all EOS cameras, even those that are not compatible with E-TTL.

Wireless Remote Functions: Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX is compatible with Canon’s exclusive E-TTL wireless autoflash system. Using this advanced technology, photographers can now set up unlimited numbers of 550EX Speedlite flash units around the subject. Similar to the wireless system in the EOS-3, the strategically placed off-camera 550EX flashes are fired in sync with the Macro Ring Lite with no need for connecting cords. In addition, photographers can adjust and maintain full control of lighting ratios via the LCD panel on the control unit, providing even greater lighting precision.

Custom Functions: The new Macro Ring Lite is also equipped with twin focusing lamps and a set of 7 Custom Functions that allow the user to modify flash operation for specific shooting conditions. Supported features include Flash Exposure Bracketing, Modeling Flash, and Wireless Flash control.

Pricing and Availability: The Canon MR-14EX flash requires 4 AA-size batteries and is equipped with a socket for optional external power supplies such as the Canon Compact Battery Pack CP-E2 to reduce recycling time and increase the number of flashes per set of batteries.

The Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX flash unit will be available at USA dealers in March, 2000 and have a suggested list price of $750.

Other posts on Canon’s flashes

Canon Speedlite 550EX flash and wireless Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2

Canon Speedlite 420EX with E-TTL wireless system

Updated Post

Brassaï / Picasso : Conversations avec la lumière, Musée Picasso, Paris

Brassaï / Picasso  

Conversations avec la lumière

Musée Picasso, Paris 

2 février - 1er mai 2000

Prenant place dans le cycle d’expositions que le musée Picasso consacre, depuis 1994, aux relations que le peintre entretenait avec la photographie, cette exposition s’intéresse à sa collaboration avec Brassaï (1899-1984). Grâce à des enrichissements récents des collections du musée, elle présente pour la première fois un ensemble significatif de leur travail commun autour de deux grands thèmes : les photographies de sculptures et les diverses utilisations de la technique du cliché-verre.

Brassaï et Picasso se rencontrent en 1932 par l’intermédiaire de Tériade, qui commande pour le premier numéro de la revue Minotaure une série de vues de l’atelier, rue La Boétie, et des récentes sculptures en plâtre réalisées par Picasso à Boisgeloup. Par la suite, de 1943 à 1946, c’est l’ensemble de l’œuvre sculpté que Brassaï photographie pour Les Sculptures de Picasso, 1949, publié aux éditions du Chêne, avec une préface de Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Entre 1932 et 1946, Brassaï photographie donc de manière systématique l’œuvre sculpté de Picasso, alors à peu près inconnu. A cette occasion s’engage entre les deux artistes un dialogue sur les natures respectives de la photographie et de la sculpture. Conversations avec Picasso, publié par Brassaï en 1964, a rendu célèbre les détours et les rebondissements de ce dialogue.

En 1996, le musée Picasso acquiert la totalité du fonds photographique de Brassaï traitant de la vie et de l’œuvre de Picasso. L’ensemble constitue la plus riche collection publique consacrée au photographe, avec plus de 440 images. L’exposition en présente 150, en grande partie inédites, autour de petites séquences qui les associent aux plâtres, bois, bronzes ou papiers déchirés de Picasso. Par le changement du point de vue, du cadrage ou de l’éclairage, Brassaï propose ici ce qui serait son « manifeste » de la photographie de sculpture.

Un soir de décembre 1932, Brassaï oublie une petite plaque photographique vierge dans l’atelier, rue La Boétie. Picasso s’en empare et y grave un portrait de Marie-Thérèse. L’épisode est décisif pour Brassaï, qui écrira plus tard à Picasso : « C’est vous qui avez réveillé en moi le démon du dessin » (lettre du 15 mai 1945, archives Picasso, Paris). Par la suite chacun des deux artistes va expérimenter à sa manière la technique du cliché-verre.

Ce travail de tirage d’épreuves photographiques à partir d’une plaque de verre peinte (Picasso) ou d’une plaque photographique gravée (Brassaï) allie les potentialités de la photographie, de la gravure et du dessin. En 1934-1935, Brassaï réalise plus de 150 « grattages » à partir d’une trentaine de négatifs de « nus » datant des années 1931-1935. L’exposition présente les différents états de ces « grattages » : « La photographie s’est parfois volatilisée. Parfois quelques débris en ont survécu ; un bout de sein frémissant, un visage en raccourci, une cuisse, un bras. » (Brassaï, Transmutations). A son tour Picasso développe encore l’expérience en 1936-1937, par une série de quatre grands clichés verre peints à l’huile dont il tire une vingtaine d’épreuves, superposant aux plaques de verre des papiers découpés, des pièces de tissus ou des objets.

Grâce à la dation Dora Maar, l’ensemble des plaques et des tirages de Picasso est récemment entré dans les collections du musée Picasso. Il était resté inédit, hors quatre reproductions publiées dans Cahiers d’art en 1937. De son côté, Brassaï avait publié en 1967 douze images de ses recherches de 1934-1935, sous le titre de Transmutations. Les quelque 60 épreuves et les 26 négatifs originaux présentés ici permettent de mesurer l’intérêt des résultats obtenus par le photographe.

L’exposition s’enrichit encore des planches-contact de travail de Brassaï, souvent annotées et rehaussées, de pièces d’archive, d’ouvrages, de dessins et de dédicaces qui forment les jalons de l’exceptionnelle collaboration de Brassaï et Picasso.

Célébrant le centenaire de la naissance de Brassaï (9 septembre 1899), l’exposition révèle pour Brassaï comme pour Picasso un aspect de leur œuvre tenu secret et dont la dynamique dépend pour l’essentiel de leur fascination commune pour la photographie et la sculpture, le dessin et la photographie. De ces techniques, ils font des univers. Les interrogeant sans relâche, chacun d’eux en réinvente les formes de manière décisive. A un moment où la recherche se porte sur les ressorts de la création au XXe siècle, il a paru utile de reconstituer le fil ténu de ce dialogue où Brassaï et Picasso se tentent, se défient et se répondent dans le langage de la photographie. 

Commissariat : Anne Baldassari, conservateur au musée Picasso

Publications : catalogue, 344 pages, 320 illustrations en couleur, 385 F (58,69€) ; Petit Journal, 16 pages, 15 F, éditions RMN

Musée national Picasso

Hôtel Salé - 5, rue de Thorigny - 75003 Paris