Winifred Knights @ Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Winifred Knights (1899 - 1947)
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Through 18 September 2016

Winifred Knights

© The Estate of Winifred Knights

Dulwich Picture Gallery presents the first major retrospective of work by Winifred Knights (1899-1947), an award-winning Slade School artist and the first British woman to win the Prix de Rome. The exhibition will establish Knights as one of the most original women artists of the first half of the 20th century, bringing together her most ambitious works and preparatory studies for the first time since they were created, including the apocalyptic The Deluge, 1920, which attracted critical acclaim as ‘the work of a genius’.

Winifred Knights’ admiration for the Italian Quattrocento was the inspiration for a highly distinctive and painstakingly executed body of work. The smooth surface, contemplative mood and harmoniously restricted palette of her paintings consciously recall early Renaissance frescoes, adapted to everyday subjects from her own time. Knights’ works are deeply autobiographical: presenting herself as the central protagonist and selecting models from her inner circle, she consistently re-wrote and re-interpreted female figures of fairy-tale and legend, Biblical narrative and Pagan mythology to create documents of her own lived experience.

Arranged chronologically Winifred Knights (8 June – 18 September) highlights the key periods in the artist’s career, beginning with the work she produced at the Slade School before charting her stylistic developments at the British School at Rome. The exhibition will also explore significant themes that run throughout Knights’ oeuvre including women’s independence, modernity and her experiences of wartime England. Over 70 preparatory studies will provide a true insight into Knights’ working process, displayed alongside her large-scale paintings to reveal an artist of supreme skill with meticulous attention to detail.

Sacha Llewellyn, curator of the exhibition, comments:

“Although never part of the modernist avant-garde, Winifred Knights engaged with modern-life subjects, breathing new life into figurative and narrative painting to produce an art that was inventive and technically outstanding. She explored form and colour to create a mood of calmness and reflection that impacts directly on our senses. Like so many women artists, heralded and appreciated in their own day, she has disappeared into near oblivion. This exhibition, in bringing together a lifetime of work, will create an irrefutable visual argument that she was one of the most talented and striking artists of her generation.”

Winifred Knights attended the Slade School from 1915-16 and 1918-20, four years that would prove definitive in terms of her artistic development. Under the rigorous tuition of Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer, she learnt the importance of meticulous compositional discipline which included the use of scale drawings, full-size sketches and life studies, a large selection of which will be exhibited to highlight her early development as an artist and offer a fascinating account of art education at the Slade during this time.

Early works reflect Winifred Knights’ growing awareness of women’s rights, due in part to her close relationship with her aunt Millicent Murby who is sensitively portrayed in the pencil drawing Portrait of Millicent Murby, 1917. A prominent campaigner for women’s emancipation and the right for married women to work, Murby’s writings had a profound influence on Knights’ early compositional work. The seminal work, The Potato Harvest, 1918, is the first of Knights’ compositions to portray the harmonious interaction of male and female workers. Leaving the Munitions Works, 1919, records female munitions workers where, albeit momentarily, progress in the economic emancipation of women was evident. A Scene in a Village Street, with Mill-hands Conversing, 1919, shows a female trade unionist arguing for better conditions for women’s labour at Roydon Mill, Essex.

Winifred Knights 

The Deluge, 1920

Oil on canvas, 152.29 x 183.5 cm

Tate: Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1989.

© Tate, London 2016.

© The Estate of Winifred Knights

Winifred Knights   

Compositional Study for A Scene in a Village Street with Mill-hands Conversing, 1919

Pencil and watercolour on paper, 22.5 x 29 cm,

© UCL Art Museum, 4980, University College London.

© The Estate of Winifred Knights

In 1920 Winifred Knights became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome scholarship in Decorative Painting awarded by the British School at Rome with one of the most enduring images in the history of the competition, The Deluge, 1920. Chosen on the insistence of John Singer Sargent, Knights’ painting was seen to possess ‘a rare command of technique in hue, figure and composition, and a meticulous care in detail’.

This epic work will be displayed alongside the numerous studies Knights made in preparation including Compositional Study for the Deluge, 1920, which shows the initial ideas for the painting. The final composition brings together 21 figures who clamber towards and up a mountain, soon to be submerged by the flood. Among the present-day men and women in the scene, Knights appears as the central figure. While Knights avoided making any overt reference to the war, this painting is imbued with its presence. The disposition of the fleeing figures is likely to have drawn upon her first-hand experience of the zeppelin raids over Streatham and the sense of panic in the painting may have reflected this traumatic experience. The picture shows the influence of the war paintings of a previous generation of Slade students including Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer and C. R. W. Nevinson.

The impact of the five years Knights spent in Italy was the strongest unifying force in her work, fuelling her imagination in works such as Italian Landscape, 1921 and View to the East from the British School at Rome, 1921. She saw Italy as a living landscape that revitalised her creative spirit and as a result she produced some of the most evocative pictures to come out of the British School at Rome: The Marriage at Cana, 1923, Edge of Abruzzi; boat with three people on a lake, 1924-30, and The Santissima Trinita, 1924-30, all of which bridged Renaissance techniques with modernism to create the highly individual language that was her own. In The Marriage at Cana, Knights appears several times as one of the wedding guests, as does her future husband, Thomas Monnington. The meticulous planning of every scene is recorded in a large number of preparatory studies which will be on display including Study of Gigi il Moro, three- quarter rear view reclining, for The Marriage at Cana, 1922, a renowned model from the village of Anticoli Corrado.

Winifred Knights

The Potato Harvest, 1918

Watercolour over pen and ink on paper, 29.7 x 38.5 cm

Private Collection.

© The Estate of Winifred Knights

Winifred Knights

The Santissima Trinita, 1924-30

Oil on canvas, 102 x 112 cm

Private Collection.

© The Estate of Winifred Knights

Although she had previously outshone her male contemporaries at the Slade and the British School at Rome, when Knights returned to England in 1926 she struggled with the conventional chauvinism that then dominated the art world. In 1928 she was awarded a prestigious commission to design an altarpiece for the St. Martin’s chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, on which she worked for five years. The finished piece, Scenes from the Life of Saint Martin of Tours, 1928-33, is profoundly autobiographical, expressing Knights' anguish upon giving birth to a stillborn son in January 1928. Among the onlookers are Knights’ mother Mabel and Knights, with Monnington standing alongside. The fixed and melancholic gaze of the three figures records their shared sense of loss.

When World War II broke out, Knights became distraught and her only concern was for the safety of her son. This brought her already intermittent work to a standstill. She only began working again in 1946, a few months before she died of a brain tumour at the age of 48.

The exhibition is guest curated by Sacha Llewellyn, a freelance writer and curator, and Director at Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, specialising in figurative art between the wars.

Loans have been secured from a number of lenders including major lender, UCL Art Museum, University College London, The British Museum, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, Tate, London and numerous private collectors who are generously lending from their collections. A vast majority of these works have never been exhibited before and will be reproduced in the accompanying catalogue for the first time.

Winifred Knights (1899-1947) is part of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Modern British series, a programme of exhibitions devoted to critically neglected Modern British artists.

DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY
Gallery Road
London SE21 7AD
www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

William Kentridge @ Whithechapel Gallery, London - Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek - Museum der Moderne Kunst Salzburg

William Kentridge: Thick Time
Whithechapel Gallery, London
21 September 2016 - 15 January 2017
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
16 February – 18 June 2017
Museum der Moderne Kunst Salzburg
22 July – 5 November 2017
The Whitworth, University of Manchester, 2018

Whitechapel Gallery presents a major exhibition of work by William Kentridge from 21 September 2016 to 15 January 2017. The exhibition titled Thick Time is curated by Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery Director and will be the artist’s first major public solo presentation in the UK in over 15 years.

William Kentridge (b.1955, Johannesburg) is one of South Africa’s pre-eminent artists, globally acclaimed for his drawings, films, lecture performances and opera and theatre productions. His work draws on varied sources, including philosophy, literature and early cinema to create intricate art works and spellbinding environments in which he explores theories of time and relativity, the history of colonialism and the aspirations and failures of revolutionary politics.

William Kentridge: Thick Time will feature six works created between 2003 and 2016 – including two of the artist’s immersive audio-visual installations, The Refusal of Time (2012) and O Sentimental Machine (2003), which have never previously been exhibited in the UK. The exhibition will also feature his flip-book film, Second-hand Reading (2013), a series of mural-scale tapestries based on his opera production of Shostakovich’s The Nose and a set model which reveals his working process on the opera production Lulu (2016), which he will direct at English National Opera this November.

The Refusal of Time (2012) is an all-enveloping, multi-sensory installation that explores the transformation of time into material objects, sound, images and mechanics. Inspired by a series of conversations between Kentridge and American scientist Peter Galison around theories of time, the work is an extraordinary synthesis of moving images, sound and performance. A breathing sculpture or ‘elephant’ at its heart is based on 19th century attempts to measure and control time during the industrial revolution and high point of European colonial expansion. First shown at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany, The Refusal of Time is a collaboration between the artist with composer Philip Miller, projection designer and editor Catherine Meyburgh, and Peter Galison, a scientist from the United States.

The exhibition concludes with O Sentimental Machine (2015), originally commissioned for SALTWATER, 14th Istanbul Biennial, where it was installed in one of Istanbul’s oldest hotels, the Hotel Splendid Palas. In a critique of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s notion that people are ‘sentimental but programmable machines’, subtitled videos of speeches by Trotsky and also his time in exile in Istanbul are projected on to glass doors on either side of the installation, offering the viewer the opportunity to observe what is going on behind the closed doors.

William Kentridge: Thick Time is co-curated by Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery Director and Sabine Breitwieser, Director, Museum der Moderne Salzburg and is organised with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (16 February – 18 June 2017), Museum der Moderne Kunst Salzburg (22 July – 5 November 2017) and the Whitworth, University of Manchester in 2018.

Publication : The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication which will include new critical writings on each of the works in the exhibition by curators and thinkers including Homi K. Bhabha, Joseph Leo Koerner and William Kentridge himself, alongside the artist’s chronology and bibliography. £24.99.

Whitechapel Gallery
www.whitechapelgallery.org

Ragnar Kjartansson @ Barbican Centre, London

Ragnar Kjartansson
Barbican Centre, London
Through 4 September 2016

Opening 14 July 2016 at Barbican Art Gallery, this is the first ever UK survey of the work of the internationally acclaimed Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, charting his wide-ranging practice across film and performance, and his less well known work as a painter and draughtsman. Born into a family active in Iceland’s theatre scene, Kjartansson draws from a varied history of stage traditions, film, music and literature from Icelandic storytelling to opera music to contemporary pop culture. His performances, video installations, drawings and paintings explore the boundary between fact and fiction, as well as constructs of myth and identity. Donning various guises from a foot soldier, to a Hollywood crooner, to the incarnation of death, Kjartansson both celebrates and derides the romanticised figure of the artist as cultural hero.

Ragnar Kjartansson said: “I am extremely pleased to have my works in the legendary Barbican. The interdisciplinary buffet that the Barbican is fits my unfocused practice. Seriously I love the building the utopian feel and the programme that has kept me coming and coming as a tourist since my parents took me there in the 80´s.”

Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts said “It is a pleasure to welcome and present Ragnar’s work at the Barbican, an artist who, incredibly, has never had a sizeable show in London or a survey on this scale this side of the Atlantic. After two highly memorable presentations at the Venice Biennale, and a host of new commissions across Europe and the United States, Ragnar is an artist at the forefront of contemporary art and I’m thrilled this show will bring his eclectic practice to a wider audience.’

Music, repetition and endurance are key ingredients in Ragnar Kjartansson’s video and performance works and the exhibition centres around two major works combining these elements. Shown to much acclaim at the New Museum in New York, Ragnar Kjartansson’s autobiographical performance, Take me here by the Dishwasher: Memorial for a Marriage (2014) is presented. Full of romance and humour, 10 male troubadours are spread throughout the lower gallery, singing and strumming their guitars against a projected soft focus love scene acted by Kjartansson’s parents. The actors met on set and family legend has it that Kjartansson was conceived at the time the film was shot in 1975 . In homage to the interweaving of the real and the fictional, Kjartansson invited Kjartan Sveinsson, former member of the Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós to transform the dialogue into a polyphonic score.

Ragnar Kjartansson’s celebrated video installation, The Visitors (2012) is also on show in the lower gallery, comprising of a series of nine life-size video tableaux of a musical performance staged at historic Rokeby Farm in Upstate New York where Ragnar Kjartansson has been a frequent visitor since 2007. Shot in one take, each musician was recorded in a separate room of the home or on the grounds of Rokeby, singing the same refrain ‘once again I fall into my feminine ways’ for just over an hour. The s ynchronisation of the screens in the exhibition space merges the individual interpretations into a cinematic and harmonic composition.

One of the earliest works on show, Me and My Mother , is an ongoing video collaboration with his mother dating from 2000, and features four video screens, filmed over five years apart where she repeatedly spits in his face over several minutes with intensity and vigour at once provocative, humorous and absurd. As well as exploring family relationships and the passage of time, the series also engages us with Kjartansson’s interest in the conflation of reality and fantasy as mother and son slip into their professional roles.

For the first time in the UK, Kjartansson’s series of 144 paintings, The End (2009), made over a 6-month period during the Venice Biennale, are on display. As his native country was in the midst of an unprecedented economic meltdown, Ragnar Kjartansson inhabited the role of a bohemian artist, painting the portrait of the same young model, day after day, drinking and smoking against the backdrop of the Grand Canal. While the project served to document the artist’s own experience, his obsessive repetition of the same subject and maniacal accumulation of paintings hinted at the nihilism of art in the face of the real world. Drawing and painting are an essential part of Kjartansson’s practice and the exhibition also includes a selection of his intimate Moleskin sketchbooks and watercolour paintings for his durational performances.

To coincide with the exhibition, Kjartansson has conceived a new work of a mirrored scene of movement and symmetry entitled Second Movement (2016) for the Barbican Lakeside every Saturday and Sunday. In a theatrical reality, two women in quintessential Edwardian costume row their boat on the Barbican Lakeside embracing in a never-ending kiss. With gentleness and tension and the feeling of Mozart’s famous composition Second Movement of Piano Concerto 21 echoing from the title, the performance is in stark contrast to the Brutalist surrounds of the centre.

Ragnar Kjartansson was born in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1976, where he lives and works. His recent solo exhibitions and performances include, Krieg (War), Volksbühne, Berlin (2016); Ragnar Kjartansson: Woman in E , Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2016); Seul celui qui connaît le désir, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015—16); Me, My Mother, My Father and I, New Museum, New York (2014); The Palace of the Summerland, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2014); The Explosive Sonics of Divinity, Volksbühne, Berlin (2014); The Visitors, Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2012 — 13); Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2013) and HangarBicocca , Milan (2013—14); It’s Not the End of the World, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2012—13); Song, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2011— 2012). Kjartansson performed A Lot of Sorrow, with The National at MoMA P.S.1, New York (2013). Kjartansson was the recipient of Performa’s 2011 Malcolm McLaren Award for his performance of Bliss , a twelve-hour live loop of the final aria of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and in 2009 he was the youngest artist to represent Iceland at the Venice Biennale.

Barbican Art Gallery, London
www.barbican.org.uk

Laure Prouvost @ MMK, Frankfurt

Laure Prouvost – all behind, we’ll go deeper, deep down and she will say:
MMK - Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt
3 September 2016 — 6 November 2016

Laure Prouvost

Wantee, 2013

Video Installation

Courtesy of the artist

and MOT International, London & Brussels

Photo: Tim Bowditch

Laure Prouvost

Wantee, 2013

HD-Video Production still

© Laure Prouvost, Courtesy of the Artist 

and Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris and Brussels) 

and Carlier-Gebauer (Berlin)

Starting in September, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst will present the Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost (b. 1978) with her first comprehensive solo presentation in Germany. Under the title “all behind, we’ll go deeper, deep down and she will say:”, the artist will create an environment transforming the entire MMK 3 exhibition space into a large-scale installation. In this setting, she will unite several of her filmic works of the past years with sculptural and painterly elements to create an overall narrative. Hybrids oscillating between technical apparatuses and human figures will serve as the installation’s main architectural structure.

Laure Provoust 

It, Heat, Hit, 2010

Video Installation

Courtesy MOT International London & Brussels

and Taipei Fine Arts Museum

The point of departure for the presentation is a story invented by the artist about her fictitious grandparents. The grandfather, a satire on the heroic artist figure, has dug a tunnel within the framework of an art project, disappeared inside it and never turned up again. The actual protagonist, however, is the grandmother, who – with the aid of relics of their shared past – tells of her own fantasies, hopes and dreams.

Laure Prouvost creates a bizarre realm of the imagination that captivates the viewer on various sensory levels. The boundary between reality and fiction grows ever hazier. The artist’s concern is with penetration of unknown worlds, escape from everyday life, and the conscious loss of the self in the hope of ultimately finding one’s way back to it again.

The exhibition at the MMK 3 is the second and central chapter of a three-part survey of the work of Laure Prouvost. It began at the end of June with the installation “Dropped here and then, to live, leave it all behind”, staged in a labyrinthine structure at Le Consortium, Dijon. In Frankfurt the story will glide into a timeless world dominated by parallel narrative threads. At the end of October, at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, it will emerge again from darkness into light in a presentation entitled “and she will say: hi her, ailleurs to higher grounds”. Although the show’s three venues share a common theme, each also stands alone and offers its visitors a self-contained and independent exhibition experience.

Laure Prouvost

We Will Go Far

Installation view Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania

© Laure Prouvost, Courtesy of the Artist

and Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris and Brussels)

and Carlier-Gebauer (Berlin)

The exhibition is being realized in collaboration with Le Consortium, Dijon and the Kunstmuseum Luzern and in close cooperation with the artist. It is being made possible by the Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung. With support from the Institut Français.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (DE/FR), the first publication ever to provide a complete survey of the artist’s œuvre to date.

MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt
Website: mmk-frankfurt.de

Sarah Moon @ Mercanteinfiera OFF, Parma

At Mercanteinfiera OFF time and beauty according to Sarah Moon

A major name in contemporary photography is to star in the third "Mercanteinfiera Off", the cultural fringe event promoted by Fiere di Parma and the Municipality of Parma, as part of the homonymous antiques and modern and vintage collectables festival running from 1 to 9 October.

The artist is Sarah Moon, a French photographer whose work for many years has explored beauty and the passage of time. Her images will be displayed at the "Sarah Moon in Parma.Photographs” exhibition curated by 2016 Mercanteinfiera Prize winner Carla Sozzani.

Running from 16 September-15 October in the Palazzetto Eucherio Sanvitale building, set in the picturesque Parco Ducale, the exhibition is a journey through a magical world of poetic images: mysterious photographs, dramatically charged and yet intimate, that create the sensation of looking through bright portals onto an entire world.

Sarah Moon’s exhibition continues the guiding theme for this autumn’s edition of Mercanteinfiera, inspired by the feminine universe. It is joined in this by two further fringe exhibitions held in the Fiere di Parma exhibition centre alongside the fair itself. Both centred on women. “Muse-en-scene”, curated by Alessandro Malinverni, Alberto Nodolini and Carlo Mambriani, reconstructs curtains and backdrops made 200 years ago for Parma’s Regio theatre, built by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma. Whilst "Secrets of queens, queens of secrets”, in partnership with Genoa’s Palazzo Reale Museum, is a fascinating journey through noblewomen’s most well-loved rituals, objects and manufactured items.

Young but already set to go far. And above all, able to bridge the gap between different forms of artistic expression, creating a dialogue between them whilst fixing his gaze set on the contemporary. These are the reasons for the expert panel’s choice of Gianluigi Ricuperati to take up the baton from Carla Sozzani as winner of the 2017 Mercanteinfiera Prize.

The writer from Turin will be a main attraction at the next edition of Mercanteinfiera, the event that is becoming less an antiques fair and more a multidisciplinary project for combining the arts.

Mercanteinfiera OFF, Parma
www.mercanteinfiera.it

Drawing Lab Paris : Ouverture en janvier 2017

Ouverture en janvier 2017 d'un drawing Lab Paris

Après New York et son drawing center, Londres et sa drawing room, Paris sera doté d’un DRAWING LAB à partir de janvier 2017.

Drawing Lab Paris est un centre d’art privé entièrement dédié à la promotion et à la diffusion du dessin contemporain. Il se veut avant tout être un lieu d’expérimentation et de production du dessin sous toutes ses formes.

Créé par Christine Phal, fondatrice de DRAWING NOW PARIS I LE SALON DU DESSIN CONTEMPORAIN, Drawing Lab Paris a pour but de faire vivre le dessin contemporain tout au long de l’année en s’appuyant financièrement sur le Fonds de Dotation pour le Dessin Contemporain.

Drawing Lab Paris est situé 17 rue de Richelieu, Paris 1er.

L’espace d’exposition d’environ 150 m2 est située au niveau bas du Drawing Hôtel, dirigé par Carine Tissot.

L’accueil et la boutique situés au rez de chaussée feront la part belle aux éditions et objets liés aux projets des artistes sélectionnés pour intervenir dans l’hôtel ou ceux des expositions en cours. Sa relation particulière avec le Drawing hôtel et sa proximité avec des lieux culturels, tels que le Louvre, le Musée des Arts Décoratifs et le Centre Pompidou, lui assurent une visibilité à la fois locale et internationale.

Le programme d’exposition 2017 a été défini par un comité de sélection indépendant constitué de Daria de Beauvais, curatrice du Palais de Tokyo, Agnès Callu, conservateur au cabinet d’arts graphiques du Musée des arts deco, Sandra Hegedus, collectionneuse, Marc Donnadieu Conservateur en charge de l‘art contemporain au LaM, Lille Métropole, Musée d’art moderne, d‘art contemporain et d’art brut et Philippe Piguet, critique d’art et directeur artistique de DRAWING NOW PARIS. Après un appel à projet associant un duo commissaire d’exposition et artiste, le programme d'exposition 2017 présentera les oeuvres des artistes suivants :

- Keita Mori (Janvier - mars)
- Débora Bolsoni (mars - juin)
- Gaëlle Chotard (juin - septembre)
- Pia Rondé & Fabien Saleil (octobre - décembre)

Les expositions réalisées au sein du centre peuvent être proposées à des institutions internationales pour favoriser les échanges internationaux et contribuer à la notoriété des artistes.

Pour chaque exposition, Drawing Lab Paris organise des événements qui permettent de découvrir et d’approfondir la réflexion autour du dessin contemporain : conférences, rencontres avec l’artiste, rencontres avec le commissaire d’exposition, projections… Mais aussi des ateliers de création autour du dessin pour le jeune public et des visites guidées pour les groupes et les particuliers.

De manière à soutenir les actions du Drawing Lab, partenaires et mécènes sont invités à rejoindre le Fonds de dotation pour le dessin contemporain.

Site internet du Drawing Lab Paris : www.drawinglabparis.com

Pierre Buraglio @ Galerie Catherine Putman, Paris

Pierre Buraglio
"94" imprimés/dessins
Galerie Catherine Putman, Paris
10 septembre - 26 octobre 2016

Pierre Buraglio

«94»B, 2015

Impression pigmentaire, rehauts à l’huile sur papier, 50 x 65,5 cm

Éditions Galerie Catherine Putman, Production Studio Franck Bordas

La galerie Catherine Putman présente "94" imprimés dessins, une exposition de Pierre Buraglio. L’exposition, sur le thème du Val-de-Marne, montre des œuvres sur papier : dessins, aquarelles et une production importante et originale d’œuvres imprimées. Des dessins et aquarelles récents de toits, cheminées, trouées de ciel, sélectionnés dans les carnets de l’artiste, montrent quel observateur inlassable de cette banlieue parisienne est Pierre Buraglio.

Né en 1939 à Charenton, il a toujours vécu et travaillé dans la même maison, celle de ses parents et grands-parents, à Maisons-Alfort. Ce lieu et ses environs n’ont jamais cessé d’être une source d’inspiration formelle et thématique. Passé et présent se confondent dans cette part de l’œuvre de Pierre Buraglio, qui y affirme son goût pour la construction, l’architecture et l’urbanisme. Petit-fils de maçon italien, son père, architecte, contribue à la reconstruction de la Manche, son grand-oncle – tonton Sérafino et ses frères Pietro et Angello – participent à la construction du fameux rocher artificiel de Vincennes, dont les croquis rythment les pages de ses carnets.

L’exposition met également l’accent sur la force d’expérimentation de Pierre Buraglio en matière d’impression. Avec la collaboration active du Studio Franck Bordas, il a réalisé deux tirages hors-cadre de très grand format, conçus spécialement pour les murs de la galerie, dont l’édition est à dimension variable, ainsi qu’un papier peint, respectant le standard des lés de 53 cm et jouant de la répétition du motif.

Depuis le début des années 90, une intense collaboration s’est développée entre la galerie Catherine Putman et Pierre Buraglio autour de l’imprimé : la galerie a édité de nombreuses lithographies, sérigraphies, tirages offset, tirages jet d’encre pigmentaire, sur lesquels, le plus souvent, l’auteur ré-intervient par des rehauts à l’encre ou à la peinture, des collages, agrafages ou variations des supports d’impression. Ensemble, avec la complicité des imprimeurs, ils ont développé une approche singulière du multiple.

Les dernières éditions de Pierre Buraglio, réalisées en 2015, présentes dans l’exposition, explorent également les possibilités offertes par les procédés d’impression numérique pigmentaire : les paysages urbains « 94 A & B », avec variations des papiers ou rehauts à l’huile et la suite de quatre interprétations du rocher de Vincennes : « Le rocher de tonton Sérafino » sur un tissu innovant en microfibres tendu sur châssis.

PIERRE BURAGLIO est né à Charenton en 1939. Il vit et travaille à Maisons-Alfort, Val-de-Marne. En 1959, il entre à l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. En 1961, il participe pour la première fois au Salon de la Jeune Peinture et fréquente l’atelier de Roger Chastel à l’ENSBA. Pendant les événements de Mai 68, Pierre Buraglio est permanent à l’atelier populaire de l’École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. De 1969 à 1974, il cesse de peindre afin de se consacrer à une activité politique militante. A partir de 1976, il enseigne à l’école régionale des Beaux-Arts de Valence puis est nommé professeur à l’ENSBA.

Pierre Buraglio participe à l’exposition « 36/36, les artistes fêtent les congés payés » du 9 au 11 septembre 2016 à la Fête de l’Humanité (Parc départemental Georges Valbon à La Courneuve). Les 36 oeuvres seront vendues aux enchères sous le marteau d’Antoine Godeau de la maison Pierre Bergé & Associés, au profit d’une association caritative.

Galerie Catherine Putman
40 rue Quincampoix - 75004 Paris
www.catherineputman.com

Feminist Avant - Garde of the 1970s @ The Photographers’ Gallery, London

Feminist Avant – Garde of the 1970s
The Photographers’ Gallery, London
7 October 2016 - 8 January 2017

The Photographers’ Gallery presents Feminist Avant – Garde of the 1970s, an expansive exhibition comprising forty-eight international female artists and over 150 major works from the VERBUND COLLECTION in Vienna.

The exhibition highlights groundbreaking practices that shaped the feminist art movement and provides a timely reminder of the wide impact of a seminal generation of artists. Alongside established practitioners such as VALIE EXPORT, Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman and Martha Rosler, the exhibition also provides a rare opportunity to discover the influential work of artists including Katalin Ladik, Nil Yalter, Birgit Jürgenssen and Sanja Iveković.

Focusing on photographs, collage pieces, performances, films and videos produced throughout the 1970s, the exhibition reflects a moment during which emancipation, equality and civil rights protests became part of public discourse. Through radical, poetic, ironic and often provocative investigations, female artists were galvanized to use their work as further means of engagement - questioning feminine identities, gender roles and sexual politics through new modes of expression.

Challenging accepted social conventions including the mechanisms of the art industry, these artists sought to reconfigure, and ultimately reshape, the prevailing iconography of ‘woman’ as the passive muse surrendering herself to the male gaze. Operating across the public and personal realms, as well as using their own bodies as central motifs, artists sought to address broad political issues and confront patriarchy and sexism in art and society. In doing so they created a new, assertive and multifaceted female identity.

The exhibition is organised into four loose themes:

In Domestic Agenda artists challenge the confines of the domestic sphere. In her video work Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), Martha Rosler employs drama and parody to criticize the traditional role of the housewife. Penny Slinger’s humorous photographic series Wedding invitation (Art is just a piece of cake) (1975), depicts the artist dressed as a bride embedded within a wedding cake, theatrically and sarcastically linking the cutting of the wedding cake with the act of the wedding night. In her self-portrait I want out of here (1976) Birgit Jürgenssen expresses the desire to break out of the limiting role of the housewife.

The Seductive Body: Sexuality and Objectification brings together artists that exploit their own bodies as art material. These include Hannah Wilke’s Through the Large Glass (1976), featuring the artist stripping behind Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923); and VALIE EXPORT who presented herself and her body as a desirable and accessible object in Tapp- und Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema) (1968).

Cultural ideals of beauty and body image are examined in In My Skin: Normative Beauty and the Limits of the Body. Change (1974), by Ewa Partum, depicts a split portrait image of the artist in which one half of her face is aged using make-up techniques. In Body Halves (1971), Rita Myers collages together pictures of her body to create the perfect version of herself. Others, like Ana Mendieta or Gina Pane, pushed themselves to the very limits of physical endurance, experimenting with facial and body manipulation and distorting their features through pressing them against sheets of Plexiglas or slicing their skin with razors.

Alter Ego: Masquerade, Parody and Self-Representation groups artists that analyse and deconstruct stereotypical personality manifestations and ‘systems of representation’ through role-playing and costumes. Cindy Sherman, Suzy Lake, Alexis Hunter and Marcella Campagnano cast themselves in a variety of roles for their photographic explorations into visual representations of women in popular media. Other projects include Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Roberta Breitmore (1974-1979) in which the artist assumed an alternative identity playing to American stereotypes of the ideal woman.

Exhibiting 48 artists:

Helena Almeida (b. 1934, Portugal), Eleanor Antin (b. 1935, USA), Anneke Barger, (b. 1939, NL), Lynda Benglis (b. 1941, USA), Judith Bernstein (b. 1942, USA), Renate Bertlmann (b. 1943, Austria), Teresa Burga (b. 1935, Peru), Marcella Campagnano (b. 1941, IT), Judy Chicago (b. 1939, USA), Linda Christanell (b. 1939, Austria), Lili Dujourie (b. 1941, Belgium), Mary Beth Edelson (b. 1933, USA), Renate Eisenegger (b. 1949, Germany), VALIE EXPORT (b. 1940, Austria), Esther Ferrer (b. 1937, Estland), Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941, USA), Alexis Hunter (1948-2014, USA), Sanja Iveković (b. 1949, Croatia), Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003, Austria), Kirsten Justesen (b. 1943, Denmark), Ketty La Rocca (1938-1976, Italy), Leslie Labowitz (b. 1946, USA), Katalin Ladik (b. 1942, Serbia), Brigitte Lang (b. 1953, Austria), Suzanne Lacy (b. 1945, USA), Suzy Lake (b. 1947, USA), Karin Mack (b. 1940, Austria), Ana Mendieta (1948-1985, Cuba/USA), Rita Myers (b. 1947,USA), Lorraine O'Grady (b. 1934, USA), ORLAN (b. 1944, France), Gina Pane (1939-1990, France), Letítia Parente (1930-1991, Brazil), Ewa Partum (b. 1945, Poland), Friederike Pezold (b. 1945, Austria), Margot Pilz (b. 1936, The Netherlands) , Ulrike Rosenbach (b. 1943, Germany), Martha Rosler (b. 1943, USA), Suzanne Santoro (b. 1946, USA), Carolee Schneemann (b. 1939, USA), Lydia Schouten (b. 1955, The Netherlands), Cindy Sherman (b. 1954, USA), Penny Slinger (b. 1947, UK), Annegret Soltau (b. 1946, Germany), Hannah Wilke (1940-1993, USA), Martha Wilson (b. 1947, USA), Francesca Woodman (1958-1981, USA), Nil Yalter (b. 1938, Turkey).

Feminist Avant – Garde of the 1970s is co-curated by Gabriele Schor, VERBUND COLLECTION, and Anna Dannemann, The Photographers’ Gallery.

The Photographers' Gallery
16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW
http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk

Clarisse d’Arcimoles @ The Photographers' Gallery, London

Clarisse d’Arcimoles: A Forgotten Tale
The Photographers' Gallery, London
19 August - 24 September 2016

A Forgotten Tale is presented as an immersive installation conceived for Print Sales Gallery. Using photography, set design and painting, Clarisse d’Arcimoles meticulously creates a life size, three-dimensional, black and white model of a room in a Spitalfields home as documented in a 1902 photograph.

Found in London’s Bishopsgate Institute archive, the photograph depicts a poverty stricken family of a mother and her six children in a common lodging house, located in what was once known as one of the most notorious slums in London. The image is a record of destitution, labour and hardship but also one of working pride and familial tenderness.

With great care and attention d’Arcimoles reconstructs the small and subtle marks which allude to the lives and experiences shared in the space. Often lost in the flat composition of an image, these details help transport visitors back to the Victorian East End and invite them to contemplate the circumstances and long forgotten stories of the picture’s subjects.

Also included in the exhibition are prints from d’Arcimoles’ celebrated series Un-possible Retour (2009) in which old childhood photos from the artist’s family album are presented alongside a contemporary restaging  of each original image. Prices start from £600 + VAT for framed works. A Forgotten Tale is supported by Arts Council England.

The Photographers' Gallery
16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW
http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk

Alma Haser @ The Photographers' Gallery, London

Alma Haser: Cosmic Surgery
The Photographers' Gallery, London
Through 14 August 2016

Combining photography with collage and origami techniques, Alma Haser’s work seeks to expand on traditional portraiture and reflect on the concerns of millennial and future generations. This will be the artist’s first UK solo exhibition and includes prints from her critically acclaimed series Cosmic Surgery (2014-16) alongside never before seen 3D portraits and free standing paper sculptures.

Inspired by notions of surveillance and the increasing prevalence of beauty treatments, Cosmic surgery is imagined as a medical procedure to help obscure one’s identity from watchful government eyes or simply as a form of aesthetic improvement. The final prints are a kaleidoscope of facial features and curious shapes both unsettling yet compelling in their intricateness and construction. 

The exhibition coincides with the much anticipated launch of the second edition of Alma Haser’s self-published pop-up book, priced at £35.00. Prices for framed works and sculptures start from £500 +VAT.

The Photographers' Gallery
16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW
http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk

Bruce Conner @ SFMOMA, San Francisco - It’s All True

Bruce Conner: It’s All True
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
October 29, 2016 — January 22, 2017

BRUCE CONNER

CROSSROADS, 1976

35mm film, black and white, sound, 37 min.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Accessions Committee Fund purchase)

and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, with the generous support of the New Art Trust

© The Conner Family Trust.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announces its presentation of Bruce Conner: It’s All True, the first comprehensive retrospective of the seminal American artist and influential Bay Area figure, on view from October 29, 2016 through January 22, 2017. Organized by SFMOMA, the exhibition brings together more than 250 objects in mediums including film and video, painting, assemblage, drawing, prints, photography, photograms and performance, representing Conner’s intensely productive and polymathic career.

“The often radical shifts in direction of Conner’s artistic practice, the parallel interest in experimental films and material objects, the playful and often irreverent approach to conventions of institutions and collectors—all of this is a sign of a great artist who made a point of not being categorized as a sculptor or a filmmaker and actively embraced change throughout his life,” said Rudolf Frieling, curator of media arts at SFMOMA. “It then seemed appropriate to make the integration of all these components of his practice the guiding principle for our retrospective."

“Conner, from the beginning of his career in the late 1950s until the time of his death in 2008, was one of the leading artistic figures in the Bay Area, admired by other artists for his artistic integrity and invention,” said Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. “His influence has grown enormously in recent decades, impacting younger artists nationally and internationally including major figures such as Dara Birnbaum and Christian Marclay and emerging artists such as Kevin Beasley and Carol Bove.”

Conner moved to San Francisco from the Midwest in 1957 and, after brief stays in Mexico and other cities throughout the U.S. in the early 1960s, called this city home for the rest of his life. During the course of his extensive career, Conner engaged in close dialogue with SFMOMA curators, conservators and educators, has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions and his work remains an important part of the museum’s permanent collection. An early practitioner of found-object assemblage and a pioneer of found-footage film, he achieved international standing early in his career and was a key member of the underground film community and the flourishing San Francisco art world—from the Beat generation, the 1960s liberation era and the punk generation of the 1970s and 1980s, though defined by none.

Exemplifying the fluidity that is now a hallmark of contemporary art, Conner worked sequentially or often simultaneously in a wide range of mediums. Bruce Conner: It’s All True presents a lifetime of work by Conner, whose transformative practice defies straightforward categorization. In a midcentury cultural landscape marked by extremes of devastation and abundance, Conner emerged as a figure adept at repurposing and recombining the detritus of a consumer-driven and media-dominated culture. The exhibition is loosely organized, both chronologically and thematically, emphasizing Conner’s polymorphic abilities by integrating works across mediums and creating atmospheric shifts and densely-installed presentations.

The initial presentation of Bruce Conner: It’s All True is at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (through October 2, 2016). After SFMOMA, the exhibition will travel to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (February 21–May 22, 2017).

BRUCE CONNER: EARLY WORK

The exhibition begins with a group of early paintings, TICK-TOCK JELLYCLOCK COSMOTRON, a rarely seen assemblage with sound, and A MOVIE, Conner’s first film and a major cornerstone of American experimental cinema. This film exemplifies what would become a signature strategy for Conner—creating new forms by reordering shards and fragments of the 20th century. Defining a dynamic mode of filmmaking through the montage of found footage set to music through precise, rapid-fire editing, A MOVIE has had an enduring influence on generations of artists who have produced new films and videos by appropriating, manipulating and remixing the remnants of mass-media culture.

A second major section is dedicated to Conner’s assemblages from the 1950s and early 1960s. Among many highlights is the artist’s first assemblage, RATBASTARD, completed in 1958, the same year that he created the jokingly titled Rat Bastard Protective Association, a social group of like-minded artist and poet friends with a shared interest in the debris of everyday life. Over the next six years, Conner developed a range of assemblage formats including reliefs, along with hanging and freestanding sculptures. Using discarded objects and building materials found in San Francisco thrift shops and neighborhoods undergoing urban renewal, Conner’s assemblages incorporated elements like clothing, toys, costume jewelry, feathers, photos, newspaper clippings, cigarette butts, nails, tacks and razor blades. With few exceptions these works were wrapped or stuffed with torn nylon stockings, giving his assemblages an untimely, foreboding aura.

BRUCE CONNER: SOCIAL JUSTICE

Themes of violent death—by execution, murder or nuclear annihilation—are common in Conner’s early work and reflect the artist’s engagement with contemporary issues of social justice, such as the nuclear arms race, the war in Vietnam and capital punishment. These concerns are particularly evident in his black wax sculptures, such as the recently restored CHILD, first presented in San Francisco in 1960 and last seen briefly in New York in 1995—a famously disturbing wax work created in response to the high-profile capital punishment of Caryl Chessman. The darkly beautiful, BLACK DAHLIA, an assemblage portrait of an infamous sex murder victim, similarly expresses Conner’s acute and intense engagement with issues of social alienation.

BRUCE CONNER: INFLUENCE OF MEXICO

Deeply concerned about the Cold War, in 1961 Conner and his wife Jean moved to Mexico City. There he produced a body of assemblages and drawings distinctly different from his earlier work. The assemblages became lighter, with richer color, and incorporated a deeper spiritual association. The ink-on-paper drawings Conner produced reflect the artist’s experimentation with psilocybin mushrooms, as well as his friendship with Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary. The mushroom form appears frequently in these works, and in some it is equated with the mushroom-shaped cloud of a nuclear explosion. Work such as the film LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS consists of footage shot directly by Conner while living in Mexico, and some earlier shots from San Francisco. Building on the rapid rhythms of his earlier film work and introducing multiple-exposure sequences, it is a psychedelic, meditative travelogue, consisting mostly of rural Mexico, featuring sumptuously colored images of the natural world, local villages and religious iconography. In 1967 Conner added a soundtrack, the song, “Tomorrow Never Knows” by the Beatles, publicly presented in this exhibition for the first time. In 1996 he edited a longer version which he set to music by experimental composer Terry Riley.

BRUCE CONNER: WORKS ON PAPER, PHOTOGRAMS AND PHOTOGRAPHY

Conner’s work shifted again in the 1970s, with the creation of numerous drawings. Those with a circular composition he called “Mandalas.” He also developed offset lithographs based on his ink and felt-tip pen drawings, using the same motifs for magazine and book covers, posters, endpapers, cards and other multiples. In 1974, Conner began a series of densely monochromatic pen and ink drawings. In some works black ink covers the entire sheet; in others, the black surface is dappled by tiny points of white—reminiscent of stars dappling a night sky. Just as Conner’s Mandala drawings were created using a tightly organized system of lines clustered around central geometric forms, these STAR and INK drawings are made by filling in around increasingly smaller areas that remain un-inked. Dated by the month and year of their creation, they reflect the detail-oriented aspect of Conner’s personality.

The series of 29 large scale photograms, a selection of which are on view, that Conner called ANGELS, were created in collaboration with the San Francisco photographer Edmund Shea (1942–2004) and illustrate Conner’s fascination with darkness and illumination. Conner himself posed for these ghostly prints, though his body and features have been dematerialized into luminous forms that convey the mystical and spiritual overtones that would continue to permeate his work.

Exploring yet another medium, Conner began employing photography in 1977, after seeing a performance by the band Devo at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco. Conner became a regular at this important Bay Area punk venue, and after being invited to contribute to V. Vale’s celebrated punk zine Search & Destroy (1977–79), he embarked on a yearlong photographic project to document bands and audience members at the club. In the 1990s, Conner revisited his Mabuhay photographs, producing from them a series of collages that are both nostalgic for, and critical of, the wildness and violence of the punk generation.

In the later part of his career, Conner also made many small intricate collages from engravings, influenced by Surrealism, that express complex psychological and spiritual themes. Entire galleries are devoted to each of these extensive bodies of work. Conner additionally began experimenting with a technique incorporating inkblots in 1975, continuing it until the end of his life; during his final years, it became his primary technique for working on paper. In 1999, Conner announced his retirement from the art world, though the same year, Conner-like inkblot drawings began appearing under the names Emily Feather, Anonymous and Anonymouse. Claiming that he had trained and paid artists to create and exhibit artwork, Conner praised these anonymous artists' decision to create art under pseudonyms, as it resonated with his career-long interest in playing with issues of artistic authorship and identity.

BRUCE CONNER: FILM

Additional filmic works featured in the exhibition are REPORT, CROSSROADS and THREE SCREEN RAY. Containing footage from recorded live broadcasts and the famous Zapruder film of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, REPORT is one of Conner’s most intense filmic constructions expressing shock and physical aggression, and offers a scathing critique of consumerist spectacles. CROSSROADS epitomizes Conner’s horrified fascination with the nuclear bomb, as well as with the capacity of art and cinema to create a powerful record of death and destruction on an unimaginable scale. To make the film, Conner sourced footage of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear bomb test the American government carried out in 1946 at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. THREE SCREEN RAY (2006) is Conner’s foray into digital editing and projection, structured around Ray Charles’s hit “What'd I Say” (1959). It followed the film COSMIC RAY (1961) and the multiple-projector film installation EVE-RAY-FOREVER (1965/2006). In THREE SCREEN RAY, three video channels create dynamic juxtapositions between elements including a countdown leader, footage of tribal dancing, military imagery, television commercials and Mickey Mouse, allowing Conner’s trademark themes of vice and violence to reach fever pitch.

At the end of the exhibition is the film EASTER MORNING (2008), a hypnotic meditation on rebirth and renewal, propelled by Terry Riley’s iconic Minimalist composition “In C” (1964). This piece manifests the spirituality that appeared throughout Conner’s career, from his earliest Christian-themed paintings to his trance-inducing works on paper. An elegiac, mournful work, this was the last film he completed before his death at the age of 75.

ORGANIZATION

Bruce Conner: It’s All True is organized by SFMOMA and co-curated by Rudolf Frieling, curator of media arts, SFMOMA; Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA; Stuart Comer, chief curator, media and performance art, MoMA; and Laura Hoptman, curator, department of painting and sculpture, MoMA; with Rachel Federman, former assistant curator, painting and sculpture, SFMOMA. Additional curatorial assistance has been provided by Nancy Lim, assistant curator of painting and sculpture, SFMOMA.

Special thanks to Jean Conner, Robert Conway, Michelle Silva and the Conner Family Trust for their cooperation and support with the exhibition.

PUBLICATION

Bruce Conner: It’s All True is accompanied by a catalogue published by SFMOMA in association with University of California Press, and edited by Frieling and Garrels. Illustrated in full color throughout, this comprehensive volume provides access to a range of material, emphasizing aspects of his work that have never been published, including early paintings from the 1950s and works from the last decade of Conner’s life, along with a trove of ephemeral materials. The publication features original scholarship by a field of authors writing from a variety of art historical perspectives, including essays by Frieling, Garrels, Comer, Hoptman, Diedrich Diederichsen and Rachel Federman, as well as contributions from Michelle Barger, Kevin Beasley, Dara Birnbaum, Carol Bove, Stan Brakhage, David Byrne, Johanna Gosse, Roger Griffith, Kellie Jones, Christian Marclay, Greil Marcus, Michael McClure, Megan Randall, Henry S. Rosenthal, Dean Smith, Kristine Stiles and the art collective Will Brown.

EXHIBITION SPONSORSHIP: Major sponsorship of Bruce Conner: It’s All True is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - SFMOMA
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
www.sfmoma.org

Beat Generation @ Centre Pompidou, Paris

Beat Generation
New York, San Francisco, Paris
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Jusqu'au 3 octobre 2016

John Cohen

Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, Gregory Corso, 1959

Épreuve gélatino-argentique, 22.2 x 33 cm

© John Cohen

photo © Courtesy L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York

Le Centre Pompidou présente « Beat Generation. New York, San Francisco, Paris », une rétrospective inédite consacrée au mouvement littéraire et artistique né à la fin des années 1940 et étendant son influence jusqu’à la fin des années 1960. C’est tout le Centre Pompidou qui se met à l’heure de la Beat Generation à travers une riche programmation d’événements conçue avec la Bpi et L’Ircam, en écho à l’exposition: lecture, concerts, rencontre, cycle de films, colloque, programmation au Studio 13/16, etc.

Aux Etats-Unis au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et aux premiers jours de la guerre froide, l’émergence de la Beat Generation "scandalisa" l’Amérique puritaine et maccarthyste et préfigura la libération culturelle, sexuelle et le mode de vie de la jeunesse des années 1960. D’abord perçus par la culture dominante comme des rebelles subversifs, les beats apparaissent aujourd’hui comme les acteurs d’un mouvement culturel parmi les plus importants du 20è siècle que le Centre Pompidou se propose de traverser en le replaçant dans un horizon élargi, de New York à Los Angeles, de Paris à Tanger.

L’exposition du Centre Pompidou replace le mouvement beat dans un horizon élargi et protéiforme. Les pratiques artistiques de la Beat Generation témoignent en effet d’un décloisonnement des mediums et d’une volonté de collaboration qui met en question la notion de singularité artistique. Si des artistes issus de la scène californienne (Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, George Herms, Jay DeFeo, Jess…) sont présentés dans l’exposition, celle-ci se concentre surtout sur le phénomène littéraire et les connexions que la littérature entretient avec la scène des arts plastiques. Une place importante est réservée à la poésie orale, véritable préfiguration des oeuvres sonores qui se sont mulitpliées dans l’art contemporain, et aux innombrables revues (Yugen, Big Table, Beatitude, Umbra …) à travers lesquelles les textes beat circulaient et dans lesquelles collaboraient écrivains et plasticiens.

La photographie, essentiellement des portraits, d’Allen Ginsberg et de William Burroughs mais aussi d’importants ensembles de Robert Frank (The Americans, From the bus …), de Fred McDarrah, de John Cohen pris sur le tournage de Pull My Daisy ou encore d’Harold Chapman qui, entre 1958 et 1963 a tenu la chronique du Beat Hotel à Paris, fait partie intégrante des médiums utilisé par la generation beat. Il en est de même pour le cinéma (Christopher MacLaine, Bruce Baillie, Antony Balch, Stan Brakhage, Ron Rice…) dont la pratique a accompagné de manière continue les développements et l’histoire de ce mouvement.

Les beats prennent rapidement possession des techniques de la reproductibilité : machines à écrire bien sûr mais également enregistreurs puis magnétophones à bande, phonographes, imprimantes primitives et miméographes, appareils photo, caméras… tout ceci avec l’idée de l’expérimentation, du bricolage dont l’exposition se propose de rendre compte. Limitée à un cadre historique précis, celle-ci illustre à quel point la beat generation, dans sa liberté d’expression, sa volonté de décloisonnement des disciplines et des cultures, son esthétique pauvre, extatique et contemplative, sa violence aussi, a conditionné les développements ultérieurs des contre- cultures contemporaines, dont elle apparait comme l’origine et auxquelles elle permet de donner une perspective historique.

Bob Thompson

LeRoi Jones and his Family, 1964

Huile sur toile, 92,4 × 123,2 cm

Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

© Estate of Bob Thompson; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

Photography by Lee Stalsworth

Jack Kerouac

The Slouch Hat, vers 1960

Huile et fusain sur papier, 43× 35,5 cm

Il Rivellino Gallery, Locarno

Jack Kerouac

©John Sampas, Executor, The Estate of Jack Kerouac

Photo © il Rivellino Gallery, Locarno

La Beat Generation est née de la rencontre de William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg et Jack Kerouac qui se rencontrent à New York, à la Columbia University en 1944. Le mouvement se déplace ensuite sur la côte Ouest et gravite autour de la librairie de Lawrence Ferlinghetti à San Francisco, la maison d’édition City Lights et brièvement, autour de la Six Gallery où a lieu, le 7 octobre 1955 la célèbre lecture par Ginsberg de son poème Howl, qui donnera lieu à un retentissant procès pour obscénité et apportera aux poètes beat une célébrité paradoxale. Deux autres figures majeures de la Beat Generation, les poètes Philip Lamantia et Michael McClure prirent une part active à l’événement fondateur à la Six Gallery. Entre 1957 et 1963, Paris sera un des foyers essentiels de la Beat Generation : William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Brion Gysin, etc. logent régulièrement au Beat Hotel, 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur, haut lieu de la marginalité du Paris polyglotte d’après-guerre et véritable laboratoire pour les expérimentations visuelles et sonores. C’est là en particulier que Brion Gysin, William Burroughs et Antony Balch développent la technique du « cut-up », que Burroughs compose Naked Lunch, et que Brion Gysin invente sa Dreamachine.

La présente manifestation fait suite aux récentes expositions sur le même thème du Centre Pompidou-Metz, du ZKM à Karlsruhe du Fresnoy à Tourcoing, des Champs Libres à Rennes et du Musée d’art moderne de Budapest présentées entre 2013 et 2014 dont le commissaire était Jean-Jacques Lebel.

L’exposition est accompagnée d’un catalogue avec des textes de Barry Miles, Alain Cueff, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Rani Singh, Enrico Camporesi, Pascal Rousseau, Gilles A. Tiberghien et Jean-Pierre Criqui. L’ouvrage présente également des interviews (la plupart inédits en français) de Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joanne Kyger, Brion Gysin, Michael McClure, Shigeyoshi Murao, William S. Burroughs et Allen Ginsberg.

BEAT GENERATION

New York, San Francisco , Paris

Catalogue de l’exposition,

sous la direction de Philippe-Alain Michaud

Format : 23 x 30,5 cm

Illustrations : 300

Pages : 304

Reliure : broché avec rabat

Prix : 44.90 €

Enfin un ouvrage de référence illustré et en français sur un mouvement à l’influence décisive sur la création contemporaine qui propose différents essais des plus grands spécialistes du sujet. Huit entretiens avec des protagonistes du mouvement ainsi que des extraits de textes et poèmes sources (Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Diane diPrima ou LeRoi Jones, notamment) viennent enrichir le catalogue.

SOMMAIRE

Avant-propos, Serge Lasvignes
Préface, Bernard Blistène

Essais
Barry Miles, Les écrivains de la Beat Generation dans les années 1950 et 1960 : une introduction
Gilles A. Tiberghien, Dynamo beat, Écriture et voyages
Philippe-Alain Michaud, Odds and Ends
Franck Leibovici, beat media (unruly reports) - carte de conversation avec howard becker, enrico camporesi, jean-jacques lebel et philippe-alain michaud
Pascal Rousseau, Dreammachine : opticalisme beat et transgression homo-érotique
Alain Cueff, Sur la route, sous le ciel
Rani Singh, Les écrivains beat à Paris
Jean-Jacques Lebel, Dadaïstes, surréalistes, clochards célestes et compagnie
Enrico Camporesi, « Man, I’m beat. » Puissance d’un lieu commun
Jean-Pierre Criqui, Honey, I rearranged the poem. Quelques remarques sur Allen Ruppersberg
et The Singing Posters

Entretiens
Barry Miles, Publier « Howl ». Entretien avec Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Barry Miles, City Lights Books. Entretien avec Shigeyoshi Murao
Rani Singh, Entretien avec Joanne Kyger, Bolinas, Californie, 10 octobre 2015
Barry Miles, La guerre des poésies. Entretien avec Michael McClure
Eduardo Lipschutz-Villa, À propos de Semina. Entretien avec Michael McClure
Barry Miles, À propos du procès de « Howl » et de Paris. Entretien avec Allen Ginsberg
Barry Miles, Le « B eat Hotel ». Entretien avec William S. Burroughs
Gérard-Georges Lemaire, « Rub Out the Words ». Entretien avec Brion Gysin (Paris, novembre 1974)

BEAT GENERATION

New York, San Francisco, Paris

Auteur : Philippe-Alain Michaud

Format: 27 x 27 cm

Illustrations : 70

Pages : 60

Reliure : broché

Prix : 9,50 €

L’album de l’exposition retrace en images le parcours de cette exposition passionnante avec une sélection des oeuvres majeures éclairées par un texte d’introduction. Un ouvrage à destination du grand public, clair et concis. Version bilingue français / anglais.

CENTRE POMPIDOU
www.centrepompidou.fr

Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II : Caractéristiques

Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II

Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II

Photo (c) Canon

Caractéristiques principales du Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II :

- Equipé du nouveau processeur DIGIC 7 de Canon
- Capteur CMOS de type 1.0 de 20,1 millions de pixels
- Zoom optique 4,2x à grande ouverture f/1.8-2.8
- Aussi performant en photo qu’en vidéo Full HD
- Bague de réglage autour de l’objectif, appareil entièrement débrayable
- Connectivités Wi-Fi NFC pour un partage simplifié
- Ecran tactile orientable

Le Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II regroupe des compétences expertes dans un boîtier compact. Il offre une prise en main optimisée et intuitive, grâce à un accès immédiat à l’ensemble des commandes principales de l’appareil et bénéficie de la qualité de fabrication des PowerShot de la Série G. Qualité optique, rapidité d’analyse de la lumière, possibilité de débrayage intégral, connectivité étendue : le PowerShot G7 X Mark II est idéal pour tous ceux qui cherchent à maîtriser efficacement la photographie.

La puissance du processeur DIGIC 7 

Le nouveau processeur Canon DIGIC 7 est à l’origine d’une capacité de traitement d’image décuplée, d’un autofocus ultra-rapide, d’une rafale atteignant 8 im./sec. et d’une réduction du bruit très poussée. Le PowerShot G7 X Mark II garantit donc de saisir même les instants les plus fugaces avec une qualité d’image exceptionnelle. Un système de détection permet à l’appareil de détecter le sujet principal même si celui-ci présente un contraste peu élevé et une faible saturation. L’optimiseur d’exposition automatique, issu des technologies EOS, ajuste le contraste en appliquant une correction qui préserve l’équilibre entre zones d’ombre et zones très lumineuses.

Le PowerShot G7 X Mark II possède également un fort potentiel en conditions de basse lumière, ou dans les situations particulières que constituent par exemple un coucher de soleil. L’association d’un objectif très lumineux (f/1,8-2,8), du capteur CMOS de type 1.0 et des nouvelles capacités de traitement d’image du processeur DIGIC 7 assurent une grande flexibilité en prise de vues, même face aux conditions d’éclairage les plus complexes et quel que soit le type de composition d’image.

Le nouveau stabilisateur d’image optique, basé sur la technologie Dual Sensing IS (double détection des vibrations), réduit efficacement les risques de flou de bougé en compensant les mouvements du photographe.

Contrôle total et créatif 

Le PowerShot G7 X Mark II est doté d’une bague de réglage autour de l’objectif, permettant d’accéder facilement et rapidement aux paramètres les plus fréquemment utilisés. Cette bague peut passer d’une commande de type séquentielle pas-à-pas à un contrôle continu en souplesse. Elle est donc parfaite pour des réglages par incréments, comme la valeur de l’ouverture, de la vitesse et de la sensibilité, ou des réglages à commande linéaire continue, comme la mise au point. Pour une plus grande précision, la fonction d’assistance à la mise au point en manuel (MF Peaking) affiche immédiatement la zone concernée sur l’écran tactile inclinable de l’appareil.

Le mode RAW 14-bits permet l’enregistrement d’images respectant parfaitement le rendu des nuances de couleurs et des effets de lumière. Afin de minimiser les opérations de post-traitement, les styles d’image proposent des préréglages correspondant à des tendances de couleurs, de style ou de type de scène. Des profils de styles d’image peuvent être personnalisés et utilisés avec la gamme des reflex Canon EOS afin de retrouver un rendu d’image identique quel que soit l’équipement utilisé pour la prise de vues.

Réalisation vidéo 

Le PowerShot G7 X Mark II enregistre des vidéos Full HD de qualité professionnelle. Le contrôle manuel des réglages donne accès à tous les paramètres d’exposition pour une plus grande créativité. Le système de suivi optimisé du sujet, permis par le processeur DIGIC 7, garantit l’obtention de séquences vidéo parfaitement nettes même pour les sujets aux mouvements rapides et inattendus. La stabilisation dynamique sur 5 axes de Canon fonctionne en association avec un niveau automatique afin de corriger les dérives d’inclinaison de l’appareil. La stabilité des images et la planéité de l’horizon sont ainsi préservées, même en cas d’enregistrement à main levée, ou avec un angle de cadrage inhabituel. Le PowerShot G7 X Mark II intègre également un mode intervallomètre.

Photographier, partager et rester connecté 

Le PowerShot G7 X Mark II dispose d’une connectivité étendue. Il est ainsi doté d’une touche dédiée pour activer le Wi-Fi et le NFC Dynamique permet de connecter des périphériques compatibles (tablettes, smartphones, station connectée CS100) par simple contact. Le partage des images et leur sauvegarde vers le Cloud sont alors extrêmement simples, en particulier grâce à Image Sync qui effectue cette sauvegarde en ligne de manière automatique. Les photos et vidéos peuvent également être partagées sur le site irista, de Canon, qui propose un espace de stockage pour archiver ses photos de haute définition. Ce service offre également la possibilité de créer des galeries pour présenter ces photos et les partager avec des amis. Une fois l’utilisateur prêt à partager ses images, le traitement des fichiers RAW intégré au PowerShot G7 X Mark II permet de choisir leur format de sortie et d’appliquer immédiatement les opérations tout en maintenant la pleine résolution d’origine.

CANON
www.canon.fr