Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries @ Nationalmuseum Jamtli, Östersund

Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries

Nationalmuseum Jamtli, Östersund

Through 9 March 2025

David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl 

Self-portrait with allegories, 17th-century 

Photo: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum 

Laila Prytz 

Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005), opera singer, 1964 

Oil on masonite

Photo: Linn Ahlgren/Nationalmuseum

Per Krafft d.y 

The Demoiselles Charlotte Jeanette and Anne Sofie Laurent, 1815 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Erik Cornelius/Nationalmuseum

The exhibition Just like in a mirror – portraits over five centuries presents men, women and children who lived in or served Sweden from the 16th century to the present day. Not all the subjects were born in the country, but they all contributed in various ways to its history or cultural life. Some of the artists and subjects have a connection with Jämtland.

Duskily as in a mirror, people from past centuries and from our own times can be discerned in the portraits. The paintings, sculptures and photographs are not realistic depictions, but rather images of how the subject wishes to appear for eternity and how the artist chooses to interpret this. The artworks show different ideals of appearance and fashion, while also reflecting how notions of status, social identity and profession have changed over the centuries.

In 17th-century Sweden, the court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl produced an allegorical portrait of himself in the company of symbolic figures personifying painting and creativity. In the 19th century, the idea of the unworldly bohemian emerged as an artistic ideal, represented here by Louise Breslau’s informal study of her fellow artist Ernst Josephson. Others, such as Ava Lagercrantz at the turn of the 20th century, emphasised their social status by posing in lavish clothes and elegant settings. In the present day, Marja Helander’s photograph of Britta Marakatt-Labba portrays the Sami artist outdoors amid the snow-covered landscape of northern Sweden.

To this day, official portraits of the Swedish royal family, especially those of reigning monarchs, follow the portrait traditions of the Renaissance. The subjects represent not only themselves, but also their office and the kingdom. A full-length standing portrait of Queen Kristina as a child shows her holding regalia and wearing a dress of the same cut as those worn by adult women of the time. The emergence of the middle class in the 19th century was reflected in the style of royal portraits. Bernhard Österman’s 1929 painting of King Gustav V, with its brilliant use of light and colour, is akin to the artist’s portraits of other well-to-do personages. In our time, Thron Ullberg and others have taken photographs of the present King both in formal stately poses and sitting in the forest.

Bernhard Österman 

Gustav V (1858-1950), King of Sweden 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Per-Åke Persson/Nationalmuseum 

Marja Helander 

Britta Marakatt (born 1951), PhD h.c., 

Sámi textile artist, graphic artist, painter, married 

to reindeer owner Nils Johannes Labba, 2022. 

Photograph, digital print

Ida von Schulzenheim 

Pierre Louis Alexandre, called "Petterson", ca. 1880 

Oil on canvas 

Photo: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum

Scholars and creative practitioners – writers, actors, singers – are well represented in portraiture. In the past, they were often portrayed with an appropriate attribute such as a book or a sheet of music. Nowadays, photographic portraits in particular tend to rely more on the subject being recognisable to viewers, as in Sanna Sjöswärd’s portrayal of the author Theodor Kallifatides. Other artists have moved away from more realistic depictions. Laila Prytz created her image of Birgit Nilsson from blocks of colour, nevertheless succeeding in capturing characteristic features of the opera singer’s appearance.

Groups less well represented in Nationalmuseum’s collections, especially among the older portraits, include the peasantry, servants and sports stars. Examples featured here include an 18th-century servant girl, painted by an unknown artist, and Johan Fredrik Höckert’s portrait of Såsser Kerstin Andersdotter. The Afro-Swedish dockworker Pierre Louis Alexandre had a side job as a model at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, where student Ida von Schulzenheim painted his portrait.

Just like in a mirror features around 100 portraits from the Nationalmuseum collections, including the Swedish National Portrait Gallery. Although painted works predominate, photography and sculpture are also represented. The portraits are not displayed in chronological order, but instead are grouped into themes such as family, cultural personalities and royalty. The exhibition not only focuses on portraiture as a major genre in art, but also presents a representative selection of works from Nationalmuseum’s collections, many of which have not been exhibited publicly for many years, if ever.

Exhibition curator: Eva-Lena Karlsson from Nationalmuseum

NATIONALMUSEUM JAMTLI

Museiplan 2, 831 52 Östersund, Sweden

www.nationalmuseum.se

www.jamtli.com

Chen Ke: New Year greeting card for Kering

Kering invites prominent contemporary Chinese artist Chen Ke to celebrate Chinese New Year

Chen Ke, Dragon Boat 

Image Courtesy of Kering

In honor of the upcoming Chinese New Year in February 2024, Kering has invited Chen Ke, a prominent female contemporary Chinese artist, to collaborate on a crossover art project titled "Dragon Boat". The project empowers imagination and go beyond traditional cultural symbols, conveying a contemporary artistic touch to ring in a new year of prosperity.

Born in the 1970s, Chen Ke has witnessed the rapid development of China. In her creative career, she has skillfully intertwined Chinese traditional culture with Western culture. She typically uses the oil painting medium to evoke experiences and memories while signaling open-ended growth.

Her oil painting masterpiece "Dragon Boat" draws inspiration from the ancient Chinese legend of dragons. People endow this creature, derived from imagination, with free forms and personalities, embodying rich emotions. 

On the vast icy surface, a dragon boat with a non-traditional shape slowly approaches a little girl dressed in winter clothes. The narrative context originates from traditional Chinese roots, but takes a different path, full of whimsy. The dragon boat is not just a boat nor a traditional symbol – it represents living beings, nature, and the universe. The dialogue between the child and the dragon boat transcends language to speak to the heart. The artist has expressed hope and joy in a world of imagination, presenting a unique and unrestricted wish in the Year of the Dragon. 

Collaborating with Chinese artists on Lunar New Year campaigns has become a tradition for Kering: an important moment to pay homage to Chinese traditions with a contemporary twist. In 2023, the Group collaborated with contemporary Chinese painter Peng Wei, whose artwork That Year celebrated harmony of humans and nature via biodiversity protection. In 2022, Kering welcomed the year of the Tiger by commissioning contemporary calligrapher’s Xu Jing auspicious brushstroke. In 2020, papercut artist Wen Qiwen and her piece Gazing at the sky beyond the clouds presented a playful nod to Kering’s Chinese name “kaiyun”. The year before，Kering’s new year greetings saw another word play twist with artist Xu Bing’s innovative "English square character" calligraphy. These collaborations not only showcase Kering's support for art but also reflect its continuous pursuit of innovation and diversity.

In the upcoming Year of the Dragon, Kering and Chen Ke will present fascinating and excellent works of art. They will echo the Group’s signature mission, "Empowering Imagination", while aligning with Kering’s core concept of creativity and innovation, reflecting its core value of empowering women. This has long been supported by Kering’s Women In Motion program that shines a light on women’s contribution to culture and the arts. Earlier, Chen Ke was interviewed on the Kering Women In Motion official WeChat account, sharing her own creative vision.

In addition to the printed version of the artist's original artwork as a New Year greeting card, this crossover creative project also includes digital formats. Starting from January 23rd, Kering is also launching the "Kering Creative Relay" social challenge on its official Red account, inviting the public to participate in a New Year's wish campaign. 

Chen Ke Biography

Chen Ke, born in 1978 in Tongjiang, Sichuan province, currently lives and works in Beijing.She holds a master’s degree from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute.

Chen Ke launched her career in Beijing after obtaining a BA from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2002 and an MFA in 2005 from the same faculty. Chen is among the generation witnessing the rapid development of China. Traditional Chinese culture and Western culture have intertwined throughout her growth and career.

In Chen’s early works, a fragile little girl was often depicted in a surrealistic background, struggling with a reversed reality, or wallowing in nostalgia in a lonely and innocent manner. Since 2012, Chen began to use the real figures in her photographic works as the object of description. From Frida to Monroe, she expressed her feelings in real life through the interpretation of these characters, especially the situation of women in society. And the experience of time and life.

In 2018, Chen set out on a new series, attempting to deal with the genuine feelings she has about her father. In these paintings, she managed to approach her personal experience and understanding of life in a more straightforward method. Through a series of mixed media paintings and installations inspired by the daily talk with the artist’s father, Chen discussed about youth, characteristic, family and aging in her solo exhibition The Real Deal is Talking with Dad at Yuz Museum (Shanghai, China).

In 2020, Chen debuts the Bauhaus Gal series. These portraits are based on the zeitgeist-charged archive photos of the Bauhaus. Chen prefers the classical conventions when delineating the faces of these pioneering young women of modern times. Immersed in their own world and in deep thought, they are completely oblivious of the gazes from the outside. While transforming into painting, these archive images undergo “physical implants” so that the painter can relive certain moments in life and recollect involuntary memories such as smell, light and touch, thereby reviving those black and white figures in these historical records. Her awareness of medium from years of painting practice helps her to establish a link between the ancient spirit and contemporary sentiments.

Chen Ke plots her art inside her own script, involving the medium of painting in the mutual generation of experiences and memories to endeavor an open-ended development. 

About Kering

A global Luxury group, Kering manages the development of a series of renowned Houses in Fashion, Leather Goods and Jewelry: Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, DoDo, Qeelin, Ginori 1735 as well as Kering Eyewear and Kering Beauté.

www.kering.com

The Art of Assemblage @ Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York

The Art of Assemblage 

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York 

January 27 – March 23, 2024 

“The assembler is especially akin to the modern poet…in using elements which (unlike ‘pure’ colors, lines, planes, or musical tones) retain marks of their previous form and history. Like words, they are associationally alive.”[1]                

—William C. Seitz

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce The Art of Assemblage, a group exhibition organized in homage to The Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking 1961 exhibition of the same name curated by William C. Seitz. Presenting a selection of works that mirror and expound upon Seitz’s medium-defining exhibition, the gallery’s iteration of The Art of Assemblage demonstrates the incisiveness and prescience of his thesis. Featured artists include Mary Bauermeister, Lee Bontecou, Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Arthur Dove, Melvin Edwards, Claire Falkenstein, Ilse Getz, Nancy Grossman, Edward Kienholz, Yayoi Kusama, Conrad Marca-Relli, Louise Nevelson, Alfonso Ossorio, Betye Saar, Lucas Samaras, Richard Stankiewicz, Lenore Tawney, Laurence Vail, and Vaclav Vytlacil. The Art of Assemblage is on view concurrently with the solo exhibition Hannelore Baron.

In William Seitz’s lengthy catalogue essay chronicling the evolution of modern assemblage practices, the curator identifies Kurt Schwitters’ Dadaist “collages, objects, environments, and activities” as an inciting development in the medium’s history, explaining that his works embody “an impatience with the line that separated art from life”[2] that is characteristic of assemblage’s leading practitioners. Seitz emphasizes the importance of the inter- and postwar impulse to create art from the materials of daily life using English critic Lawrence Alloway’s essay on “junk art”—published in the same year that The Art of Assemblage opened—which situates the assemblage aesthetic within the context of modern commodity culture:

“Junk culture is city art. Its source is obsolescence, the throwaway material of cities, as it collects in drawers, cupboards, attics, dustbins, gutters, waste lots, and city dumps. Objects have a history: first they are brand new goods; then they are possessions, accessible to few, subjected, often, to intimate and repeated use, then, as waste, they are scarred by use but available again. …Assemblages of such material come at the spectator as bits of life, bits of the environment. The urban environment is present…as the source of objects, whether transfigured or left alone.”[3]

Several works in Michael Rosenfeld Gallery’s exhibition constitute prime examples of the “junk art” aesthetic pioneered by the postwar avant-gardes on both coasts. Works such as Bruce Conner’s Buffalo Bag (1959) and Edward Kienholz’s America My Hometown (1963) arrange symbolically loaded detritus into sculptures that evoke themes of a decaying empire. Also dating to 1963 is Lee Bontecou’s wall-mounted sculpture of welded and painted steel, soot, and velvet; baring her signature bandsaw “teeth” through a barred window, Untitled reflects the prevailing anxieties of the Cold War era as well as the feelings of containment and despair inspired by her Wooster Street studio’s proximity to the Women’s House of Detention. Abstracted anatomical references likewise structure Nancy Grossman’s My Terrible Stomach (1964/2015), an agglomeration of castoff materials originally created for her 1964 exhibition at Krasner Gallery. After the show closed, the work—then titled Black Knight—was kept in an unsafe location and many of its parts were torn off by vandals. Nancy Grossman revisited the sculpture in 2015, adding several new parts, endowing the work with “a cornucopia of mementos for an insatiable appetite,” as she put it, and retitling it after a 1961 poem by artist Walasse Ting.

Richard Stankiewicz’s Double Booger for a Little John (1961) is an exceptional example of his double-faced “head” sculptures composed of found and welded metal objects. Richard Stankiewicz worked in an improvisational, process-based method, experimenting with various arrangements according to the forms of his materials in a process mirroring that of Melvin Edwards, whose freestanding Monochromo (1964) embeds a single, shining piece of chrome in an otherwise rust-brown metal composition, establishing a play on the word of the title.

Notably, The Art of Assemblage includes one of the artworks featured by Seitz in MoMA’s exhibition, Laurence Vail’s Out of My Window (c.1945). Active in the Parisian intellectual circles of the 1920s, Vail was associated with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, and married to Peggy Guggenheim. Out of My Window is exemplary of  Laurence Vail’s rococo and often humorous aesthetic, infusing the accretive process of assemblage with a Surrealist bent. The exhibition also features an influential American counterpart to the European Surrealists, Joseph Cornell, who was an important presence in Seitz’s exhibition. Joseph Cornell’s iconic Taglioni’s Jewel Casket (1941) is a counterpart to the 1940 version of the same title in MoMA’s collection that was also included in The Art of Assemblage. An homage to the Romantic era ballerina Marie Taglioni, Taglioni’s Jewel Casket is perhaps best described by Kynaston McShine (another important MoMA curator), who understood Joseph Cornell’s boxes as “journeys into an enchanted universe that also has the reality of this world.”[4] Similarly, the gallery’s exhibition features Arthur Dove’s George Gershwin-“Rhapsody in Blue,” Part I (1927), a work closely related to Dove’s Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz (1925), also in MoMA’s collection and included in the 1961 Art of Assemblage. A dynamic homage to Gershwin’s masterpiece, Arthur Dove’s painting assemblage embodies the composer’s description of his iconic jazz composition as “as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America—of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.”[5]

Demonstrating the impact Joseph Cornell’s box assemblages had on the generations of American artists that followed him is Lucas Samaras’ Box #63 (1967). Resembling a devotional container in the vein of the medieval European reliquaries he studied as a student of art history, Samaras’ Box #63 is animated by the psychedelic palette of the 1960s, comprising an elaborately adorned box containing an enigmatic assortment of objects including animal bones, a fork, and a glass orb. Alfonso Ossorio’s Helix (1968) was executed in the following year with a similarly overwhelming admixture of brightly colored components. The work is an outstanding example of his “Congregations”—the term he preferred visionary body of assemblages, which he understood as a multiplicity of unique entities coming together to form a spiritually charged whole.

Though the focus of The Art of Assemblage is the middle decades of the twentieth century, a small selection of works from the 1970s and 1980s offers a glimpse into the evolution of the medium as it was adopted and reinvented by artists from a widening variety of backgrounds and circles. Lenore Tawney’s Thesaurum (1970) places an ostrich egg atop a wooden gear fragment and a stack of found papers; enshrined in a box lined with vertically inserted feathers, Tawney’s assemblage invokes a host of associations pertaining to the cycle of life and death and the soul’s transitive journey within it. Conversely, Louise Nevelson’s Untitled (c.1973) is a towering, densely packed assortment of found wood objects all painted in the artist’s signature matte black. Providing a relief-like quality to her architecturally enclosed constructions, Louise Nevelson’s uniform, monochromatic treatment of each individual part frees them of their histories as utilitarian objects, allowing their incorporation into a new, unified object.

Finally, an important assemblage by Betye Saar, Red Table (1983), takes an altar-like format, alluding to the ancestral rituals she was exploring at the time. The work exists as both a freestanding sculpture and a component of a few of Saar’s larger installations, manifesting the thematic undercurrent of her works from this period articulated by Jane H. Carpenter in a statement that mirrors Seitz’s own observation about the earliest Dada assemblagists: “for Betye Saar,” Carpenter writes, “understanding blackness as an ancestral relationship to Africa was not just suggested through a set of visual signs: it became an artistic process that wedded art to life.”[6]

The Art of Assemblage features works by gallery artists Mary Bauermeister, Claire Falkenstein, Nancy Grossman, and Alfonso Ossorio, as well as works by artists for whom the gallery has mounted solo exhibitions, namely Betye Saar and Lenore Tawney.

[1] William C. Seitz, The Art of Assemblage, exh. cat. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961) p.17

[2] William C. Seitz, The Art of Assemblage, 87

[3] Lawrence Alloway, “Junk culture,” Architectural Design 31 no. 3 (March 1961) 122

[4] K.L. McShine in William Seitz, The Art of Assemblage (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1961), p.68

[5] George Gershwin, quoted in I. Goldberg, George Gershwin: A Study in American Music (New York: Ungar, 1961), 139.

[6] Jane Carpenter, Betye Saar: The David C. Driskell Series of African American Art: Volume II (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2003), 30

MICHAEL ROSENFELD GALLERY

100 Eleventh Avenue @ 19th, New York, NY, 10011

www.michaelrosenfeldart.com

Atelier Bouts @ Museum Leuven - Les facettes scientifiques de la création de chefs-d'oeuvre du XVe siècle

Atelier Bouts 

Museum Leuven 

16 février - 28 avril 2024 

DIERIC BOUTS

Christ couronné d’épines, ca. 1470

M Leuven, photo: artinflanders.be, Cedric Verhelst

DIERIC BOUTS

Triptyque avec le martyre de saint Érasme, ca. 1460-1464

M Leuven / Église Saint-Pierre

Photo: artinflanders.be, Dominique Provost 

« Atelier Bouts », l'exposition proposée par M Leuven, est un récit passionnant dans le sillage de la grande rétrospective internationale « DIERIC BOUTS. Créateur d'images ». Au travers de six oeuvres emblématiques, exposées encore quelque temps à M, le musée examine les facettes scientifiques de la création d'un chef-d'oeuvre du XVe siècle. Les visiteurs apprennent comment les Maîtres flamands réalisaient leurs tableaux, de quelles couches se composent leurs pièces, si Dieric Bouts était l'unique auteur des oeuvres qui lui sont attribuées actuellement et comment ces tableaux sont restaurés aujourd'hui, près de 500 ans après leur création.

« La visite d'“Atelier Bouts” est une occasion unique de voir réunis dans un même espace quatre des principaux triptyques de Bouts », souligne Marjan Debaene, conservatrice en chef d'Art ancien à M Leuven. « Après l'exposition, “La Cène” et “Le Martyre de saint Érasme” retourneront irrévocablement à l'église Saint-Pierre, tandis que “Le Martyre de saint Hippolyte” retrouvera sa place à la cathédrale du Saint-Sauveur à Bruges. Le “Triptyque de la Descente de Croix”, un prêt prestigieux venu de Grenade, ira à l'Institut royal du Patrimoine artistique (KIK-IRPA) pour une restauration approfondie. Dans l'exposition, vous apprenez combien les nouvelles technologies comme le balayage Macro-XRF, la réflectographie infrarouge et la dendrochronologie sont importantes pour de telles campagnes de restauration, et quelles découvertes surprenantes elles ont déjà permis de faire. »

DIERIC BOUTS

Triptyque de la descente de la Croix, ca. 1450-1458

© Cabildo de la Capilla Real de Granada 

Photo: Armando Bernabeu Granados

DIERIC BOUTS

Triptyque de la descente de la Croix, ca. 1450-1458

© Cabildo de la Capilla Real de Granada 

Photo: Armando Bernabeu Granados

DIERIC BOUTS

Triptyque de la descente de la Croix, ca. 1450-1458

© Cabildo de la Capilla Real de Granada,

Photo: Armando Bernabeu Granados 

« Atelier Bouts » présente sous un nouveau jour six oeuvres parmi les plus emblématiques sorties il y a cinq cents ans des ateliers de Dieric et Albrecht Bouts, grâce à des techniques d'imagerie récentes et des méthodes innovantes d'étude des matériaux.

Pour le « Christ couronné d'épines » (v. 1470), oeuvre acquise par M en 2019 et tout récemment restaurée, une étude  minutieuse au moyen de la radiographie, c'est-à-dire des rayons X, pemet de suivre les étapes de la réalisation et l'histoire matérielle du tableau.

ALBRECHT BOUTS

Mater Dolorosa, après 1490 

Collection particulière 

© KIK-IRPA, Bruxelles

La dendrochronologie, la discipline scientifique visant la datation du bois, nous apprend que la « Mater Dolorosa » (après 1490) n'a pas pu être réalisée par Dieric Bouts, mais provient probablement de l'atelier de son fils Albrecht.

La macrophotographie a produit des images éblouissantes à très haute résolution du « Triptyque de la Descente de Croix » (v. 1450-1458), permettant d'analyser en détail les techniques employées et l'état de conservation de l'oeuvre. A l'aide de la Macro-XRF ou spectroscopie à macro-balayage de fluorescence X, les chercheurs ont pu déterminer la composition chimique du « Martyre de saint Érasme » (v. 1460-1464), qui nous informe entre autres sur les interventions de restauration dans le passé.

« Le Martyre de saint Hippolyte » (panneau central et panneau de droite v. 1475, panneau de gauche v. 1479), l'une des dernières oeuvres de Dieric Bouts, a été examiné avec la réflectographie à infrarouge ou IRR. La signature qui a ainsi pu être mise à jour renforce la supposition que le panneau de gauche, le portrait des donateurs, a été terminé par Hugo van der Goes, un contemporain de Bouts.

DIERIC BOUTS

Triptyque avec la Cène, 1464-1468

M Leuven / Église Saint-Pierre

Photo: artinflanders.be, Dominique Provost

Bien évidemment, le chef-d'oeuvre absolu de Dieric Bouts ne manque pas à l'appel dans « Atelier Bouts ». Le triptyque « La Cène » (v. 1464-1468) est analysé jusqu'à la plus fine couche de peinture par le biais de l'analyse stratigraphique.

MUSEUM LEUVEN

Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 28 - 3000, Leuven

www.mleuven.be

Leon Kossoff @ Xavier Hufkens, Brussels - "Close Encounters: Paintings and Drawings" Exhibition

Leon Kossoff

Close Encounters: Paintings and Drawings

Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

2 February — 30 March 2024

Xavier Hufkens presents the gallery’s first exhibition dedicated to the work of the British painter LEON KOSSOFF (1926-2019). Featuring paintings and drawings made over a four-decade period,  the presentation highlights two significant bodies of work showcasing major themes in Leon Kossoff’s oeuvre, namely London cityscapes and his ‘translations’ of works by Old and Modern Masters. The exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of Leon Kossoff’s practice as well as its stylistic evolution.

Leon Kossoff was a leading member of the London School, a loose association of artists that also included Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and David Hockney. Although stylistically diverse, they all focused on figuration and expressive realism at a time when abstraction and minimalism were the dominant forces in contemporary art. Kossoff painted London almost obsessively. The works in the exhibition include scenes from the north of the city, where he lived and worked, and the East End, where he was raised. Painted between 1971 and 1992, they chronicle Kossoff’s fascination with the city’s post-war renewal. He was especially drawn to places of transformation and transit, such building sites and stations, as evidenced by Demolition of YMCA Building No. 2, Spring (1971), Booking Hall, Kilburn Underground Station No. 4 (1978) and Outside Kilburn Underground Station, November (1984). Separated by a period of six years, the Kilburn paintings not only bear witness to the artist’s unwavering interest in his everyday surroundings but also the way in which even the most familiar subjects are in a state of permanent flux.

The artist additionally depicted buildings and places that evoked specific memories for him, such as Red Brick School Building, Winter (1982). This was a type of school building familiar to many English children growing up in the post-war period, and which reminded him of the primary school he himself attended in Spitalfields. The nearby church, one of London’s grandest baroque edifices, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, was the subject of another of his paintings, Christ Church, Spitalfields, Early Summer (1992). For Kossoff, these subjects were not just physical landmarks but ones in which there is a constant interplay between past and present, underscored by the charged and ever-moving brushwork. Leon Kossoff painted London all year round and always from life. Light and the weather determine the atmosphere of his works, together with his gestural technique and characteristic use of impasto. In an oeuvre that chronicles the ebb and flow of life in one of the world’s largest metropolises over the best part of a century, time and memory are important touchstones. While many of the locations that Kossoff painted have long since vanished, the places immortalised in the paintings on exhibition — the Red Brick School Building, (Willesden), Christ Church, Spitalfields, and Kilburn Underground station — can all be seen today.

Leon Kossoff is also renowned for his ‘translations’ of paintings by Old and Modern Masters. While he visited and drew in the National Gallery in London on a weekly basis, and had done from a young age, the drawings in this exhibition were mainly made from works shown in Royal Academy exhibitions: Francisco Goya’s paintings and Courbet’s The German Huntsman were included in the retrospectives dedicated to these artists in 1978 and 1994 respectively, while Titian’s The Flaying of Marsyas (c. 1570-1576) was exhibited in Venetian Painting in 1983. Here too, Leon Kossoff worked from life: he made his drawings in the galleries before the actual paintings. Yet these are anything but academic copies. Leon Kossoff’s rapid, dynamic technique and repetitive strokes are unmistakably his own and the sketches, whilst faithful to the originals, are never identical to them. Hence the term ‘translation’. Captivated by certain Old Masters, or canvases by pioneers such as Cézanne and Courbet, Kossoff strove to analyse the psychological and emotional impact of the paintings by recreating it in his own work. It was both an intellectual engagement and an educational exercise. He wrote in 1987: “In my work done in the National Gallery, and elsewhere from the works of others, I have always been a student. From the earliest days…my attitude to these works has always been to teach myself to draw from them, and, by repeated visits, to try to understand why certain pictures have a transforming effect on the mind.” Leon Kossoff was particularly drawn to dramatic and intense works, or those depicting a struggle, as can be seen in the exhibition.

LEON KOSSOFF began his artistic training at St. Martin’s School of Art in 1943 but left in 1945 to complete three years of military service. He returned to St. Martin’s in 1949 and followed David Bomberg’s classes at Borough Polytechnic from 1950 to 1952. He then completed his training at the Royal College of Art between 1953 and 1956. Leon Kossoff represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and was the subject of a retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1996. His work is held in major public and private collections around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Gallery, London.

XAVIER HUFKENS

107 rue St-Georges | St-Jorisstraat, 1050 Brussels

www.xavierhufkens.com

Gary Waterston: Pace Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Operations

Pace Welcomes Gary Waterston as Executive Vice President

Gary Waterston 

Photography credit Michael Halsband 

Pace announces the appointment of GARY WATERSTON as Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Operations. In this role, Waterston will be responsible for managing multiple departments across the gallery's global platform. Based in London, he will officially join the gallery on February 1, 2024.

Gary Waterston brings 20 years of experience working at the highest level of gallery management to Pace. Over the past three years, he has worked with Atlantic Contemporary LLC in New York, exploring new structures for gallery ownership and funding. Prior to joining Atlantic Contemporary LLC, he was at Gagosian in London since 2003, overseeing the gallery’s expansion to three exhibition spaces in the English capital and winning two Royal Institute of British Architects awards for the work on the Britannia Street and Grosvenor Hill locations. After serving as a Director of Gagosian in London, he became the gallery’s Managing Director Europe in 2011. In that post, he worked across business management, operations, and sales, leading Gagosian’s expansions in Paris, Rome, Geneva, Athens, and Basel in close collaboration with the gallery’s directors in each city.

Gary Waterston’s experience and expertise in the art world will be invaluable to Pace as it continues to pursue new opportunities for its artists and for business development on a global scale. As Executive Vice President, he will work directly with Pace’s CEO Marc Glimcher and President Samanthe Rubell.

Over the course of his career, Gary Waterston has produced exhibitions for some of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Ed Ruscha, Cy Twombly, and Jenny Saville, as well as Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, and James Turrell, three major figures within Pace’s program. He was also a collaborator and project manager for two groundbreaking Picasso exhibitions organized by the late scholar Sir John Richardson, and he continues to work as a private advisor to several artists and foundations. Before working full time in the art industry, Waterston volunteered for many years at the historic Inverleith House exhibition space in Edinburgh while also working on product launches and communications in the hospitality sector, producing events for Pfizer, Accenture, Bloomberg, the Scottish Arts Council, and other organizations.

Gary Waterston, says:

“Having stepped away from galleries, artists, and exhibition making these past three years, I am beyond excited and thrilled to be joining Pace Gallery in such a transformative role. I have watched with admiration as the gallery has expanded globally and created new initiatives and opportunities for its artists and community of collectors—it will be a privilege to join Marc, Samanthe, and their talented international team as the gallery delivers on these exceptional opportunities.”

Samanthe Rubell, President of Pace Gallery, says:

“We’re thrilled to welcome Gary to Pace. An art world leader with two decades of experience in gallery management, Gary is a perfect fit for our leadership team. With his guidance, we will continue to strengthen and grow our business—and our relationships with artists and collectors—around the world.”

PACE GALLERY

www.pacegallery.com 

Monica Sjöö Exhibition @ Alison Jacques, London

Monica Sjöö

Alison Jacques, London

1 February – 9 March 2024

MONICA SJÖÖ 

Nordic Symphony, 1994 

© Monica Sjöö Estate

‘Witches cast spells, not to do evil, but to promote changes of consciousness. Witches cast spells as acts of redefinition. To respell the world means to redefine the root of our being. It means to redefine us and therefore change us by returning us to our original consciousness of magical-evolutionary processes.’

Monica Sjöö, The Great Cosmic Mother:

Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, 1987

Alison Jacques presents a solo exhibition by the late pioneering artist, activist and writer MONICA SJÖÖ (b.1938 Västernorrland, Sweden - d.2005 Bristol, UK). This exhibition coincides with Monica Sjöö’s first retrospective The Great Cosmic Mother on view at Modern Art Oxford until 25 February 2024; touring from Moderna Museet, Stockholm and travelling to Moderna Museet, Malmö from 23 March – 1 September 2024. The exhibition also coincides with Sjöö’s inclusion in Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain, on view until 7 April 2024. 

Monica Sjöö was a co-founder of the Goddess movement and this exhibition traces her deep commitment to gender and environmental justice. The artist, self-described as a ‘radical anarcho/eco-feminist and Goddess artist, writer and thinker involved in Earth spirituality’, and as an activist, co-founded Bristol’s Women’s Liberation. Sjöö protested against the Vietnam war and the US missile base at Greenham Common, among numerous other causes she embraced. Sjöö was also a prolific writer, her most well-known book The Great Cosmic Mother, written with Barbara Mor, was published in 1987. 

As an artist and writer, Monica Sjöö’s focus on feminism, peace activism, goddess worship and ecology was unwavering. In her work, she combined her personal symbology with archetypes, references to pre-patriarchal societies and the power of nature. A self-taught artist, she was a firm believer that creativity was a conduit to the wisdom of the past and to possibilities for the future.

This exhibition spans over 30 years of Monica Sjöö’s practice from 1976 up to 2003, showcasing both her paintings on canvas and paper. It reveals the artist’s sources of inspiration including pre-Aztec and monumental Aztec sculptures, Catholic art and the vibrant revolutionary paintings by artists including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The titles of Sjöö’s work in the exhibition – including Women Becoming (1976), Child of the Mother-tree (1984) and Priestess at Tarxien Temple on Malta (2003) – indicate the consistency and range of her concerns: feminism and spiritualism. Cornwall, Ancient Land of the Goddess (1993) depicts a landscape populated with stones and enigmatic characters amidst green fields, tempered with colours that evoke the sea and that possibly allude to the blood spilled for deeply held beliefs. In Sun Goddess at Stonehenge (1992) the famous giant stones are pictured beneath a floating mask, a gateway to a glowing, labyrinthine womb that shelters an embryo. Continuing the theme of the countryside as a place of profound mystery, Monica Sjöö explained that her chosen landscapes are ‘full of spirits and the haunt of the powerful and most ancient…’

Monica Sjöö moved to the UK in her 20s, living mainly in Bristol, where she dedicated her life ‘to creating paintings that speak of women’s lives, our history and sacredness’. Some of the work in the exhibition references Sjöö’s years spent travelling to ancient sites in Malta, Sweden, Wales and to Neolithic centres of the ancient Great Mother, pilgrimages to the sacred land in England, Ireland, Scotland and Brittany, ‘communing with the spirits and connecting with other women… involved in Earth Mysteries’. She communicated with what she called ‘the ancient sisterhood’ of pre-patriarchal Goddess societies and portrayed women as strong and life-giving. When Sjöö suffered from postnatal depression following the birth of her first child, she restored herself by drawing visionary pastels while listening to sacred Hebrew music. Many of her paintings and drawings are also evocations of grief. Having been devastated by the deaths of two of her sons in 1985 and 1987.

For Monica Sjöö, who died in 2005 aged 66, the land was never simply an arrangement of earth and sky; rather, it pulsated with memories and otherworldly beings. She immersed herself in its symbolic, as well as its life-giving properties, and it inspired both her visions and activism. By digging deep into the history of cultural communion with the natural world, she believed she could release long-repressed energies back into the ether and so begin the necessary process of human healing. Rejecting abstraction because she felt it was impossible to represent the complexities of a woman’s life ‘in stripes and triangles’, Monica Sjöö’s imagery evolved in a combination of symbols, both universal and personal, and through stories that fuse mythology and autobiography. Her palette ranges from the earthy to the psychedelic; she drew in swift, bold strokes. She loved making physically big pictures, statements that couldn’t be ignored. Despite a life scarred by poverty and personal tragedy, Monica Sjöö’s art is one of hope.

In addition to the current travelling retrospective at Modern Art Oxford, past solo exhibitions include Monica Sjöö: The Time is NOW and it is Overdue!, Beaconsfield Contemporary Art, London (2022); Blessed Be, Konstnärshuset, Stockholm, Sweden (2006); Through Space and Time the Ancient Sisterhoods Spoke to me: A Monica Sjöö Retrospective, Hotbath Gallery, Bath (2004).

Selected group exhibitions include Women in Revolt!, Tate Britain, London (2023); Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool (2022); A Batalla dos Xeneros, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2007); Art Feminism: An exhibition of Swedish feminist art from the 1960s until today, Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden (2006).

ALISON JACQUES

22 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG

alisonjacques.com

Exposition Anselm Kiefer @ White Cube, Paris - For Jean-Noël Vuarnet

Anselm Kiefer

For Jean-Noël Vuarnet

White Cube Paris

24 janvier – 2 mars 2024

Anselm Kiefer

Aurora, 2014

Watercolour and pencil on collage of paper

41.5 x 55.5 cm | 16 5/16 x 21 7/8 in.

© Anselm Kiefer 

Photo © White Cube (Thomas Lannes)

Anselm Kiefer

Semele, 2013

Watercolour and pencil on paper

50.5 x 40.5 cm | 19 7/8 x 15 15/16 in.

© Anselm Kiefer 

Photo © White Cube (Thomas Lannes)

White Cube Paris présente une exposition d'aquarelles d'Anselm Kiefer, réalisées au cours de la dernière décennie dans l'atelier de l'artiste en France. Cette exposition, qui met en lumière un aspect distinct et important de la pratique de Kiefer, est la première depuis plus de 40 ans à être uniquement consacrée à ses aquarelles.

Comprenant une sélection d'œuvres sur papier, l'exposition est intitulée d’après le philosophe et écrivain français Jean-Noël Vuarnet (1945-1996), dont le séjour à la Villa Médicis (Académie de France à Rome) à la fin des années 1970 inspira son livre Extases féminines (1980).

Représentant des figures littéraires, bibliques, mythiques et artistiques, dont Aurora, la déesse romaine de l'aube, et Die Windsbraut, d'après le tableau d'Oskar Kokoschka de 1913-14, ainsi que des images de fleurs et de paysages, ces œuvres offrent une occasion rare de découvrir les aquarelles les plus intimes de Kiefer.

WHITE CUBE

10 avenue Matignon, 75008 Paris

whitecube.com

A DAY OFF An Exhibition of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation @ f3 – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

A DAY OFF 

An Exhibition of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation

f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

March 15 – June 2, 2024

Andreas Herzau

Love Parade, Berlin, Germany 1999

Image: Andreas Herzau © F.C. Gundlach Foundation

Martin Parr

© Martin Parr, from the series Common Sense

[F.C. Gundlach Collection, F.C. Gundlach Foundation + 

House of Photography, Deichtorhallen Hamburg]

Peter Keetman

Diving Tower, Prien am Chiemsee, Germany 1957

Image: Peter Keetman © F.C. Gundlach Foundation

With works by: Diane Arbus, Katharina Bosse, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Arthur „Weegee“ Fellig, Bruce Gilden, Nan Goldin, F.C. Gundlach, Esther Haase, Andreas Herzau, David Hockney, Thomas Hoepker, Peter Keetman, Barry Key, Barbara Klemm, Lisette Model, Martin Munkácsi, Martin Parr, Dirk Reinartz, Joel Sternfeld, and others.

Leisure activities are a topic that constantly occupies us all. Just do nothing? Impossible! Our lives have become more hectic and intense, and not just since the coronavirus pandemic. We are confronted with ever more exciting, adventurous and exotic leisure activities everywhere. The pressure to keep up and supposedly have to is enormous. Leisure time has gone from being a time to relax after work to a mass phenomenon. At peak times after work, at weekends and on public holidays, beaches, swimming pools, sports studios, cinemas and parks are bursting at the seams. Everyone is striving for maximum relaxation, self-optimization and the greatest possible distance from everyday life.

Esther Haase

Fish and Chips with the Queen, London 2018 

© Esther Haase

[F.C. Gundlach Collection, F.C. Gundlach Foundation + 

House of Photography, Deichtorhallen Hamburg]

Martin Parr

© Martin Parr, from the series Common Sense

[F.C. Gundlach Collection, F.C. Gundlach Foundation + 

House of Photography, Deichtorhallen Hamburg]

Dirk Reinartz

St. Georg, Hamburg, Germany 1981

Image: Dirk Reinartz © F.C. Gundlach Foundation

A DAY OFF at f³ – freiraum für fotografie visualizes the manifestations of our leisure culture with a wink: people feast, sizzle, smoke, sweat and work out as much as they can. Some scenes are no longer conceivable today. Others are similar: then, as now, people soaked up the sun, watched the latest film in the cinema, danced or played bingo together. Through the lens of some of the world's most renowned photographers, we gain an insight into how our leisure behavior has changed over the past hundred years.

F.C. Gundlach

Self-portrait, Marrakech, Morocco 1983

Image: F.C. Gundlach © F.C. Gundlach Foundation

The F.C. Gundlach Collection

For many decades, F.C. Gundlach, himself one of the most important fashion photographers in the Federal Republic of Germany, collected photography and amassed one of the most important private photography collections in the country. The focus is the image of man in photography. Under this title, around 9,000 photographic works from the collection have been on permanent loan to the House of Photography in the southern Deichtorhalle in Hamburg since 2005. In addition, many other types and genres of photography were and are part of the F.C. Gundlach Collection, some of which can be seen as collection themes in their own right. Even after the collector's death, the F.C. Gundlach Foundation continues to add large collections of individual photographers and archives, which are preserved and processed.

f³ – freiraum für fotografie 

Waldemarstrasse 17 - 10179 Berlin

www.fhochdrei.org

Ways of Seeing: Four Photography Collections @ New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe

Ways of Seeing 

Four Photography Collections 

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe

January 20 - June 16, 2024

Jeff Brouws 

Mobil/Trailer, Inyokern, Calif., 1991

Chromogenic print, 18 × 18 in. 

Collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art 

Gift of Jamie Brunson and Dr. Mark Levy, 2021 (2022.15.2) 

Photo Courtesy of Jeff Brouws / Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco 

Showcasing three groups of recent donations and one promised gift to the New Mexico Museum of Art collection and highlighting individual approaches to collecting art, Ways of Seeing includes nearly forty photographs ranging from a 1903 photogravure by Gertrude Käsebier to a 2013 pigment print by local artist Anthony O’Brien. 

“Ways of Seeing is an interesting study of taste and the profound reasons why collectors select objects for their personal collections,” said the museum’s Executive Director Mark A. White. “In addition, the exhibition is an important reminder of how collectors have shaped and grown the photography collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art.” 

Photographer and photo dealer Donald B. Moritz began collecting photographs in the mid-1980s, working directly with the artists he admired to amass a holding of primarily black-and-white prints. He met one of them, longtime New Mexico photographer David Michael Kennedy, when taking a class at the Santa Fe Workshops. Struck by the beauty of Kennedy’s work, Moritz quickly became one of the El Rito artist’s major collectors. In 2022, Moritz donated Kennedy’s portfolio of cloud studies and four additional photographs, all on view. 

New Yorker W.M. Hunt chose a thematic approach to acquiring photographs. “Photography changed my life; it gave me one,” Hunt says in The Unseen Eye. The 2011 publication documents Hunt’s extensive collection of images from across the history of photography in which the eyes of the subject are hidden or obscured. Eight photographs from Hunt’s donation are on view, by artists Adam Fuss, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Inge Morath and Saul Steinberg, Ruth Thorne Thomsen, Arthur Tress, Gerald Slota, Minor White, and Joel-Peter Witkin. 

Painter Jamie Brunson donated seven photographs to the museum from a collection she assembled with her former husband, the late art historian and teacher Mark Levy, while living in Berkeley, California. The two were drawn to large-scale, contemporary photographs of the 1980s and 1990s, particularly those alluding to human interactions with the environment and those that reflected their interests in meditation and the concept of the void. The group is comprised of work by Tom Baril, Jeff Brouws, Kevin Bubriski, Edward Burtynsky, William Claxton, Richard Misrach, and John Pfahl.  

Another couple, Caroline Burnett and her late husband William, also shared the adventure of collecting photographs. In 1992, Bill gave Caroline a print of an Arnold Newman’s photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch, as a reminder of their hike to the summit of Pedernal. The two moved to Santa Fe in 2001, and continued collecting photographs that touched their hearts and often feature a sense of serenity. After Bill’s death, Caroline continued to shape the collection and established it as a promised gift to the museum. On loan for this exhibition are gems by Ruth Bernhard, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Harry Callahan, Kenro Izu, Gertrude Käsebier, local photographer Anthony O’Brien, Sebastião Salgado, Alfred Stieglitz, and Todd Webb. 

NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF ART

Santa Fe, New Mexico

nmartmuseum.org

O’Keeffe et Henry Moore : Géants de l’art moderne @ Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal

O’Keeffe et Henry Moore : 

Géants de l’art moderne

Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal

10 février – 2 juin 2024

Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002), Georgia O’Keeffe, 1956 

MBAM, don d’Estrellita Karsh à la mémoire de Yousuf Karsh 

Henry Moore dans l’atelier « du haut », à Perry Green. vers 1953 

Reproduit avec l’autorisation de la Henry Moore Foundation 

Photo Roger Wood

Le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (MBAM) présente, en première canadienne, O’Keeffe et Henry Moore : géants de l’art moderne, une exposition d’envergure qui met pour la première fois en dialogue l’œuvre de la peintre américaine Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) et celle du sculpteur anglais Henry Moore (1898-1986). Organisée par le San Diego Museum of Art, cette grande exposition dresse un parallèle inédit entre la vie et la production de ces deux artistes qui ont marqué le XXe siècle. A travers plus de 120 œuvres et la reconstitution de leur atelier personnel, elle retrace l’évolution de leur pratique artistique et témoigne de l’influence profonde du monde naturel sur leur travail.

Bien qu’ils aient vécu sur deux continents distincts, O’Keeffe et Moore ont partagé une vision semblable de l’art moderne. Le point commun entre ces deux artistes réside dans l’inspiration que chacun tire de la nature et dans leur association durable avec les vastes paysages ruraux environnants. Si d’autres de leurs contemporains, comme Piet Mondrian et Hans Arp, empruntent la voie des formes organiques pour atteindre l’abstraction, O’Keeffe et Moore centrent leur approche sur cet aspect fondamental.

Au cours de leurs excursions quotidiennes et de leurs voyages, les deux artistes amassent des pierres, des crânes et ossements d’animaux, des racines, des morceaux de bois, ainsi que des coquillages dont leurs ateliers regorgent. Leur vaste collection révèle des similitudes étonnantes. Pour la première fois, la reconstitution méticuleuse de leur atelier respectif permet au public d’observer comment ces objets trouvés façonnent leurs créations et leur inspirent certaines de leurs œuvres les plus importantes.

« À notre connaissance, les deux artistes ne se sont rencontrés qu’une seule fois, à l’occasion de la rétrospective Moore tenue au Museum of Modern Art en 1946. O’Keeffe a eu droit elle aussi à une rétrospective la même année. Il y a lieu de se questionner sur le message que cette grande institution a voulu lancer en mettant ces deux artistes à l’affiche à un moment où le monde se relevait du traumatisme de la guerre. A-t-elle voulu dire que leur œuvre offre quelque chose de vivifiant, de positif et de bienfaisant par le lien humaniste qu’elle entretient avec la nature ? », poursuit Anita Feldman, directrice adjointe de la conservation et de l’éducation, San Diego Museum of Art.

Georgia O’Keeffe et Henry Moore ont fait l’objet d’innombrables expositions. Pour la première fois sont réunies des œuvres des deux artistes provenant majoritairement de la Fondation Henry Moore, en Angleterre, et du Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, au Nouveau-Mexique, ainsi que d’une vingtaine de collections muséales et privées. L’exposition comprend des peintures, des œuvres sur papier et des sculptures réalisées à partir de diverses matières allant du plâtre au bronze, sans oublier le marbre, le calcaire Hoptonwood et l’albâtre de Cumberland. On y retrouve même une sculpture taillée à même une stalactite. Parmi les chefs-d’œuvre présentés, mentionnons Panier à oiseaux (1939), Figure allongée (1959-1964), « Trois morceaux no 3 : vertèbres », (1968) et Modèle de travail pour « Ovale avec pointes » (1968-1969) de Moore, et Arisème petit-prêcheur III (1930), Tête de bélier, belle-de-jour bleue (1938) et Le mont Pedernal vu depuis le ranch no 1, (1956) d’O’Keeffe. La présentation montréalaise est par ailleurs enrichie d’un « dessin de transformation » et de quatre sculptures de Moore, en plus d’un portrait d’O’Keeffe réalisé par Yousuf Karsh, tous issus de la collection du MBAM.

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE ET HENRY MOORE : 

GÉANTS DE L’ART MODERNE

PARCOURS DE L'EXPOSITION

Déployée en six sections, l’exposition propose une série de galeries thématiques qui portent un regard approfondi sur les formes naturelles qui ont marqué les créations d’O’Keeffe et de Moore. Elle débute par une présentation des premières études d’après nature des deux artistes. Elle offre un aperçu de l’influence, sur leur travail, du mouvement surréaliste qui se répand dans les années 1930. Ce mouvement se caractérise par un intérêt pour les thèmes de la transformation et de la métamorphose, ainsi que pour les juxtapositions d’objets insolites et les ruptures d’échelle.

Une section de l’exposition est consacrée à l’une des plus importantes sources d’inspiration de Georgia O’Keeffe et de Henry Moore : les ossements. Les deux artistes explorent la complexité interne des crânes et admirent la puissance et la robustesse des ossements, tout comme leurs arêtes tranchantes. Tous deux les mettent en relation avec le ciel qu’ils regardent par leurs ouvertures de manière à jouer avec la perspective et l’échelle.

Dans les années 1940, Georgia O’Keeffe et Henry Moore quittent respectivement les centres artistiques de New York et de Londres. La première s’installe dans les collines désertiques du Nouveau-Mexique, où elle vit et travaille au gré des saisons : à Ghost Ranch (en été et en automne) et à Abiquiú (en hiver et au printemps). Comme O’Keeffe, Moore travaille dans divers ateliers avant de s’installer dans le paysage rural de Perry Green, dans le Hertfordshire, après que sa résidence londonienne a été endommagée par les bombardements. Là-bas, il occupe plusieurs ateliers aménagés dans des hangars et des écuries reconvertis, au milieu de vastes pâturages.

Des meubles originaux et des répliques donnent vie aux ateliers reconstitués dans les salles de l’exposition et illustrent l’environnement dans lequel Georgia O’Keeffe et Henry Moore travaillent, entourés d’objets trouvés dans la nature. L’atelier d’O’Keeffe à Ghost Ranch intègre notamment un chevalet et des tableaux inachevés de l’artiste, ainsi que des pinceaux taillés par ses soins, des pastels de sa confection, des fiches chromatiques destinées à consigner des couleurs précises et même des outils lui servant à tendre ses toiles. L’atelier de Moore, Bourne Maquette Studio, contient pour sa part des étagères pleines d’objets trouvés et de petites sculptures directement moulées sur ces objets, notamment des maquettes en plâtre de figures humaines, des coquillages, du bois flotté, des bouts de silex ainsi que des os et cornes d’animaux amassés au cours de ses promenades dans les champs de moutons. On y trouve également quelques raretés telles qu’un crâne de rhinocéros noir et une vertèbre de girafe que l’artiste a reçus en cadeau de la part de l’éminent biologiste Julian Huxley. Cet arrangement de formes et d’objets souligne la relation intrinsèque qui unit tous les êtres vivants.

Une autre section porte sur les vastes collections de galets, de silex, de roches de rivière et de roches ferrugineuses des deux artistes qui, superposés et imbriqués, servent à réaliser bon nombre de leurs œuvres. Tous deux sont fascinés par l’immense variété des pierres aux surfaces tantôt corrodées et texturées, tantôt lisses et nuancées, allant même jusqu’à explorer des sites archéologiques pour étudier la manière dont ces pierres monumentales s’intègrent les unes aux autres. L’exposition examine par ailleurs l’évolution du travail de chaque artiste avec les formes organiques, explorant des formes internes et externes comme celles des fleurs et des coquillages. Le dialogue fécond entre les œuvres présentées jette un éclairage nouveau sur les peintures florales d’O’Keeffe qui tranche avec l’habituelle interprétation sexualisée de son œuvre, qu’elle n’a cessé de réfuter.

Le parcours se termine par la présentation d’œuvres tardives, des paysages caractérisés par des formes épurées et des échelles démesurées qui créent une monumentalité dans la simplicité. Certaines œuvres de Moore illustrent sa façon de transformer une figure en paysage métaphorique, tandis que les compositions d’O’Keeffe, constituées de bandes de couleur et de lumière, illustrent l’immobilité et le passage du temps.

Une exposition organisée par le San Diego Museum of Art, en collaboration avec le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.

Commissariat : Anita Feldman, directrice adjointe de la conservation, San Diego Museum of Art. Iris Amizlev, conservatrice – Projets et engagement communautaires, est responsable de la présentation montréalaise.

Publication : L’exposition est accompagnée d’un élégant ouvrage illustré, publié en anglais par Marquand Books, et adapté en français par les Éditions du Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. Sous la direction d’Anita Feldman, il réunit des essais d’Hannah Higham, de Jennifer Laurent, de Barbara Buhler Lynes, d’Ariel Plotek et de Chris Stephens, qui offrent un éclairage nouveau sur les méthodes de travail d’O’Keeffe et de Moore, artistes dont la pratique est profondément ancrée dans leur environnement.

MUSÉE DES BEAUX-ARTS DE MONTRÉAL

1380, rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montréal (Québec) H3G 1J5

mbam.qc.ca