Wifredo Lam was a fascinating artist, a truly cosmopolitan figure who eluded any fixed categorization while interwined personal and artistic contacts with all the most important Western avant-gardes of the Twentieth Century.
Born in Cuba to a Chinese father and a mother from African descent, throughout his life he retained elements of his cultural background in his practice, infusing them with the influence he got from different sources. His artistic evolution is aptly narrated by an exquisite retrospective exhibition that started in Paris in September 2015 before moving to Madrid from April to mid-August 2016, where I travelled last week to visit it.
Portrait of Lam-Yam [father], 1922, Pencil on paper. Self-portrait, 1926, Graphite on paper.The exhibition is organised in five chronological sections that well display the developement of Lam’s highly individual style. The first section covers the early years of his life (1923-1938), his artistic studies in La Habana and Madrid, where he at first he applied a naturalistic approach to painting and drawing. Progressively though, he distanced himself from academic conventions and started to draw inspiration from the highly innovative works of Matisse first, and Picasso slightly later. His artistic life cannot be separated by the personal and historical events that were occurring in those years in Spain. Fully supportive of the Republican cause, after witnessing the death of his young wife and one-year-old son by starvation, he joined the fight against Francisco Franco’s authoritarian aims. Through his paintings, worked out on paper rather than on canvas, he gives us a vivid description on this period characterized by the struggle for life, violence and hunger.
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Document medley.
With the victory of Franco’s party, Lam and his friends fled to Paris and then Marseille in 1938. Between this year and 1941, Wifredo befriended many intellectuals and artists who were to bear a huge impact on his style and career, and who would remain his friends throughout his life. He particularly became close to Picasso, who shared with him an interest in the different African masquerade traditions, and André Breton, the main theorist of Surrealims. In this period he became fascinated with techniques of automatic production and collaborated with the Surrealist group to many joint works, some of which are displayed in the exhibition. He also developed the theme of the Femme cheval, a dreamlike hybrid figure in between a woman and a horse that is the best example of the Surrealist influence on his creativity. In 1941 Lam fled Marseille and visited Martinique along with Breton. Here, he got the chance to meet Aimé Césaire, poet of Négritude, who shared his negative views on racial and cultual domination.
In 1942, after twenty years, Lam went back to Cuba and lived and worked there until 1952. This is commonly accepted as the period of his artistic maturity. This exhibition in particular sheds a new light on his relationship with the Cuban political establishment. Although an advocate of revolution and socialism, Lam never officially bound himself to any political party, retaining his individual freedom of thought beyond all attempts to categorize him as a Marxist. His artistic production in Cuba focused on giving voice to a distinctive Cuban identity that was the original outcome of the fusion of cultural elements from all over the world, from China to West Africa, from Europe to the Americas. Many symbolic features conveyed this message and combined it to an harsh comment on social inequalities and exploitation. The jungle in particular became the preferred theme, representing both the place where to escape slavery and where to worship the ancient Yoruba gods that arrived to the New World during the centuries of the transatlantic slave trade. Also basing his visions on the work of his anthropologists friends Lydia Cabrera and Fernando Ortiz, he claimed for Cuba a variegated cultural background that appropriated elements of different traditions into a unique form that was to be preserved from the influence of the West. In this view, it is certainly a pity that his masterpiece, La Jungla (The Jungle, 1943) was not there to behold.
La fruta bomba [La Papaye], 1944. Oil on canvas.In 1952, Lam left Cuba to dwell in Paris and until 1967 he travelled often to deliver shows in different locations all around the globe, from Caracas to Zurich, from New York to Stockholm. Around this time he started his artistic brotherhood with Asger Jorn and the CoBrA collective, sharing with them an interest in spontaneity, teamwork and popoular art. His style was evolving into simpler lines and forms and the dreamlike yet strong flavour of his drawings fit perfectly the work of different poets, such as Luca Ghérasim, whose lyrical project Lam illustrated.
Bélial, empereur des mouches, 1948. Oil on canvas.
From 1954, Wifredo and his family settled in Albisola Marina in Liguria, Italy, invited by Jorn who also lived there and was experimenting with terra cotta. It was Jorn who introduced him to this extremely protean medium through which Lam informed some 300 artworks in 1975. In the last twenty years of his life, his tireless artistic wit never slowed down, as well as his wanderings: He visited Egypt, India, Thailand, Mexico, expanding his collection of non-Western art, and he worked to the autobiographical project Le Nouveau Monde de Wifredo Lam, while getting more and more international recognition. Wifredo Lam died in his home in Paris aged 80, just after completing his latest series of engravings.
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With more than four hundred objects on display paintings, drawings, photographs, letters, reviews and rare books, this exhibition succeeds in conveying the impression of a full, dynamic life, framed by long-lasting friendships and high ideals. The syncretism of his practice defies common notions of centre and periphery, placing this poliedric artist at the centre of Modern Art in a global rather than Western perspective.
…Feels like worth seeing it? You won’t have to rush to Madrid, because Wifredo Lam will be on display at Tate Modern from 14 September 2016 to 8 January 2017 (Adult ticket: £16, Concession: £14). No excuses.
Useful links:
Centre Pompidou exhibition page (Paris): https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/resource/cbyd4kE/rbydeKb
Museo Nacional Reina Sofia exhibition page (Madrid): http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/wifredo-lam-0
If you are feeling like spring is lazy to start in London, go for this beautiful inspiring exhibition at October Gallery and you will feel refreshed.
Primavera is the latest steel scultpure effort by Sokari Douglas Camp CBE (b. 1958), the wordwide famous Nigerian artist working and living in London, who often in her work recalls elements of Nigerian culture(s), interwining them to a critical discourse on international matters.
She does so even in this show, where you will find fine sculpture groups reminiscent of the Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), widely known for his blooming paintings Allegory of Spring (Primavera) and The Birth of Venus (La Nascita di Venere) among others. Fully quoting the Italian master, Douglas Camp creates vibrant pieces, where the flowing movement of the figures is well matched by the brilliant colours of the substaining natural background.
The floral theme in fact suggests the artist’s ongoing engagement with enviromnetal issues. Particularly significant form this point of view is Europe supported by Africa and America, a contemporary revisiting of William Blake’s 1796 engraving. In Douglas Camp’s version, the luxuriant garland held by Europe turns into a petrol pump heavily hanging from the sides of the sculpture. It is a strong metaphor for the exploitation of oil resources both in Africa and the Americas by international companies and it makes you look at the garlandwith different eyes, as it were cuffs trapping the three continents in a strangling embrace. In the same piece she also references Nigerian high fashion by choosing to enrich the figures with a stylish contemporary apparel.
Other pieces explore the delicacy you may find within violence. I was specifically attracted to Posing with a gun, a powerful composition showing a fighter standing beneath fragile trees in a very scenic posture, while casually carrying a rifle on her shoulder. The only added colour to this steel piece is the pink string supporting the gun. This made me think of Richard Mosse’s video installation The Enclave (2012-2013), where the artist makes use of a pink film originally developed by the US army during WWII. I think both artists were thinking of the dreadful conditions of the relevant African countries but they were at the same time displaying the endurance of locals as well as creating an aesthetically appealing, quaint image out of a devastated scenario, thus putting forward a paradox.
Sokari Douglas Camp, Posing with a Gun, 2015. Nickel plated steel, 69 x 55 x 39 cm. Image credits: http://whatsonafrica.org/top-ten-sculptures-by-sokari-douglas-camp/
A delightful exhibition, Primavera will be on display at the October Gallery until May 14th. Entry is free.
Useful links:
October Gallery’s official website: http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/exhibitions/2016sok
Richard Mosse: The Impossible Image, short documentary on the making of The Enclave: https://vimeo.com/67115692
Time for a sweet escape in my home town, and my architect-to-be sister brought me to Palazzo della Ragione (“Palace of Reason”) in the centre, an antique space now recycled, yet not renovate, to show photography exhibitions. Now on a retrospective on Herb Ritts (1952-2002), whose black and white potraits of models and actors of the Eighties and Nineties have come to be part part of popoular culture.
Born in Los Angeles, Herb, who held a degree in Economics, started his career as a photographer quite randomly. In 1978 he took pictures of his friend Richard Gere, then a young and unknown actor, while waiting for their car to be fixed in the middle of the hot Californian countryside. Who could have imagined that this would have been the beginning of an artistic journey that would make him work with many of the most famous folks in the Western star-system? He had an innate sense for composition, but also studied Greek statuary and the works of Bruce Weber and Man Ray among others, often referencing them in his pics.
H. Ritts, Richard Gere, San Bernardino, California, USA, 1978.
The exhibition reconstructs his whole career, dividing it in three main phases or themes of interest: the body as cult, Ritt’s trip to Kenya in 1994 and finally portaits of famous personalities. His sense of sacred emanates from the naked bodies displayed in the first section as something almost moving. He was keen on natural light and detailed every little feature of an image to make a body look perfect, timeless, god-like. Observing his works, you can experience a sort of synesthesia, because through your sight you can feel the perfect smoothness of the model’s satin skin, the interplay between the heat of the sun and the soothing shadow on the body, the power of this machine that our physicality is. His collaborations with fashion houses such as Versace or Calvin Klein, just to cite a couple, helped defining the body as an idol in the post-modern era, where fitness and fashion were becoming increasingly popoular. Yet I find there is some kind of fragility in his compositions, maybe a Sehnsucht for a perfection that doesn’t exist in real life; thus these beautiful photographies become mementoes for the natural decay none of us can escape.
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The group of pictures on the Maasai popoulation are maybe separate, an interlude between the many glamorous collaborations this photographer experienced, yet they present the same hieratic power, the same pursuit of a sacred dimension. I don’t know if he would have accepted it, however the characterisation of this trip as his “African period” by the curators reflect the old Western conceptions on Africa as an indifferentiated dark area where mysterious and unintelligible are the key elements. This reiterates a bias that is completely out of date, as discussed in a conference by artist Hassan Musa that I reviewed here.
H. Ritts, Maasai woman and child, Kenya, Africa, 1993H. Ritts, Two giraffes crossed, Kenya, Africa, 1993
The potraits section is both fun and melancholic. Herb’s aim when taking a portrait was to capture the inside, making visible the personality of the sitter. The use of black and white in this instance is very helpful; it reduces the composition to simplicity and emphasises shadows and features. The resulting images are incredibly powerful and evocative not only of the model’s character, but also of the photographer’s sensibility. I should remark here that the choice of black and white obviously makes an impact on how we behold and compare photographs and reality. Herb’s work being situated in the second half of the XIX century was very influential in shaping the perception of black and white as “pure” and “essential” and, to a certain extent, more apt to represent beauty.
H. Ritts, Jack Nicholson I, IV, III, II, London, UK, 1988
The exhibition is overall well structured and contains many valuable gelatine silver prints that were all produced while Herb was still alive. The explicative panels are interesting and smartly disposed. They give information without too much distracting the viewer from the main experience of seeing. I didn’t find the audioguide, which is included in the price, particularly useful.
Herb Ritts – In equilibrio (“Herb Ritts – In balance”) runs until 5th June 2016. Entry 12€, 10€ concessions.
Set in the very central Belmacz space, The Conformist is truly an unusual show, linking modern to contemporary artists, as well as art itself to fashion and jewellery design. Main theme of the exhibition is the question on conformity/deviance, and its declination through the passing of time. The twenty-one artists included share a reflection on the moral and aesthetic codes of Western society. Their works are the result of this creative thinking, and they can be of the most different register, from serious to playful, form ironic to melanchonic, from sharp to mellow. Here’s just a taste of what you will find if you go to visit it.
Helen Bullock, coming from textile design, has created a window installation characterised by strong colours, as well as a floor decoration for the lower ground. Her vivid contribution, featuring red brush strokes on the window, torn textile with a floreal (or phallic?) allusion, handmade bracelets and a long knotted cloth hanging from the ceiling is instrumental in driving the viewer inside the exhibition space.
The curator and artist Paul Kindersley has chosen two main sites of inspiration: the first is In Youth is Pleasure (1945), a novel by Denton Welch, a worn copy of which is available to flicker through, dealing with the sensual fantasies and erotic experiences of an obsessive teenager during a non-specified summertime. The second is the flamoboyant figure of Lady Emma Hamilton (1765-1815), well-known for her extravagance and a symbol of Romantic love because of her wretched love affair with Lord Nelson (1758-1805). Her presence is announced to be the red thread of the exhibition since entering the gallery: She enigmatically beams from an etching (copy of a painting by the portraitis George Romney), her head covered with a pure-white veil. Exactly in front of her, Helen Chadwick’s Ruin (1986) parallels an interest in the body as main agent of conformation or not to the mainstream of aesthetics. The late artist’s naked body, in contrast with Emma’s covered attire, twists in an unconfortable yet intriguing pose, while with her left hand she covers her face from direct eye-contact with the viewer, and rests the right hand on a skull, probably referencing Shakespeare. Behind her, a still-image of fruit decomposition completes the work, where the artist is both photographer and photographed, maker and object, in a game of attraction-repulsion with the viewer that challenges the Platonic conception of beauty as positive attribute.
Two video installations, one by Kindersley himself (Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes, 2014), one by Julie Verhoeven (Phlegm & Fluff, 2015), make use of the body too in addressing, in different ways, questions of genre, sex, perversity, grotesque. I found that watching each of them with the relevant soundtrack, while the other was in silent mode, would give a completely different atmosphere to the entire exhibition. Interesting how different music enables diverse emotional responses to the same space.
Works by David Parkinson.
The exhibition also features some charming pieces of jewelry, like the sophisticated gold string with charms by Julia Muggenburg recalling again Lady Emma in its ancient style. Roman coins, red coral, black pearls and citrine drops, as suggested by James Cahill in his introduction to the exhibition, recall different aspects of Lady Emma’s personality, while the string itself let us face an ambiguity – chastity belt or erotic ankle necklace?
I find The Conformist an interesting experiment of mixing fields. It is imaginative and witty. I won’t steal the pleasure of surprise by giving away too much of it! If you are looking for a fresh, nonconformist show, visit The Conformist at Belmacz show room, until 16th April 2016. Entry is free.
Useful links: http://www.belmacz.com/gallery/
All pictures credits: http://www.belmacz.com/gallery/current
Paul Housley, Head of an English Iconoclast, 2016, glazed painted clay, 8x14x20cm.
This morning I got the chance to know (East) London a bit more and I patiently waited for the Overground to take me to Wapping. This maritime borough hosts the latest travelling exhibition by U.S. photographer Annie Leibovitz, WOMEN: New Portraits. Starting off as a photojournalist, Annie (born 1949) has gained international recognition since the 1970s, specialising in portraits. She has worked for Rolling Stone and Vogue among others, producing some of the most famous pictures in the Western popular culture.
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station
The WOMEN project was born some fifteen years ago, as the joint effort by Annie and the writer and activist Susan Sontag (1933-2004) to help women empowerment within contemporary society. The “update” I visited today actually deals mainly with portraits of famous women mainly coming from the U.S., whether by birth or education.
The arrangement of the display is very interesting. A former hydraulic power station gives an unusual the setting for the exhibition. Only a few photographs are actually pinned on a wide board in the main room, each of them carrying a biographical note on the subject, which helps situating her in contemporary history. However, I found the script to be quite small and difficult to read because of the natural light reflecting from the plexiglass.
Most of the works instead are displayed on two maxi-screens made up by different tv screens assembled together. Therefore, the images can result out of their axis at times, which cripples the quality of the experience. Moreover, the choice of video display doesn’t allow the viewer to behold a picture for as long as one wishes, and even if you wanted to wait for that same image to come back on the screen, you would wait at length because the queued works are so many!
Nevertheless, I loved the portraits as motivational pieces for everyone in the world towards gender equality, and the evolving notions of respect and self-consciousness during time. They also help people to get into contact with powerful female figures in today’s world, some of whom I wasn’t aware of. Maybe it is not surprising, but I felt more interested in the portraits of those women I didn’t know rather than in the familiar and almost always present figures of, just to pick two, Aung San Suu Kyi and Adele.
Annie Leibovitz, Alice Waters and her daughter Fanny Singer, Hillview Farms, Gillette, New Jersey, 2015.Annie Leibovitz, Cindy Sherman, New York City, 2012.
At any rate (passing over my personal ignorance), as mentioned all of the women portrayed for this new part of the project are somehow rich and famous, apart from Denise Manong, who deals with AIDS in South Africa. I do not know whether this was the artist’s intention or it was so by will of the commissioning Swiss finance firm UBS. This interest is only partly mitigated by a few pictures coming from the older part of the project, featuring four unknown casino dancers both in their costumes and as they appear in their daily life (many photos for the original project also had an important commissioner, e.g. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue).
Overall the experience is enjoyable and enables some critical questions. What is the role of the woman nowadays? What makes a woman? How many stereotypes have been deconstructed, how many are still common? Is the dualism male – female a cultural tag? The foreword to the exhibition by feminist Gloria Steinem vividly paints an holistic approach to humanity and its affairs – I like to think that the ex-hydraulic power station was chosen as a metaphor of the fresh use that we can give to old, worn concepts. From the backwall of the exhibition space, as suspended between past and present, the still image of Queen Elizabeth II in her White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace towers on all the other all-shifting portraits, sending a somewhat ironic yet politically strong message.
And then, is photography art? Can we capture something of an individual’s personality from these mere instants? A bonus point is that the exhibition comes with no gift shop, giving some relief from having to pass through the commodified versions of these exquisite portraits. Instead, visitors can enter a second, smaller room furnished with a big wooden table, 1900 lamps and some very cosy armchairs, where you can enjoy browsing thorugh plenty of old and new catalogues of Annie’s work, as well as Cartier-Bresson’s and Cindy Sherman’s.
The exhibition space.
WOMEN: New Portraits is on until February 7th at
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Wapping Wall, London E1W .
Opening Times: from Monday to Sunday 10:00 – 18:00, except on Friday 10:00 – 20:00.
Entrance is free and there is no booking required.
Useful links:
UBS official exhibition page: www.ubs.com/microsites/annie-leibovitz/en/tour/london
Here we come to the end of the first year for Diotima in the Gallery! What a perfect occasion to close with a post that in some ways brings me back to my origins…
I have been so lucky to get a week off from the Christmastime frenzy in London and I happily reached Milan, Italy, for a week of pleasures. One of these was certainly my visit to the MUDEC (Museo delle Culture, i.e. Museum of Cultures). In contrast with its old-fashioned name, MUDEC is set in a very contemporary space by architect David Chipperfield and hosts a plethora of events and exhibitions so that it has already become a centre of Milan’s cultural life. Considering that the opening was just in Summer 2015, I must say the amount of happenings that have already taken place at MUDEC is quite amazing.
I went there to visit the exhibition regarding Gauguin and I definitely recommend it. Entitled “Gauguin, Tales from Paradise”, it displays not only paintings but also some magnificent wood carvings as well as pottery and zincographs by the artist. Some paintings by Cézanne, Pisarro, Van Gogh are on display too in order to emphasize differences and similarities within the artists.
The aim of the curators was to tell a story of the different places visited by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), an artist who always escaped defining tags. Through his work, the visitor can come into contact with many regions of the world, very distant and different from each other: In his restless artistic search, Gauguin explored in fact Brittany, Denmark, Paris and Arles, as well as Martinique, Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. Gauguin was keen on drawing material form other cultures to use in his work, in an artistic synthesis that ended up being something very different from the Impressionist style to which he was associated at first.
The developement of the exhibition, divided in five sections, shows this metamorphosis of Gauguin’s style neatly. It also underlines the importance of Gauguin as an indefinable figure, who always pushed the limits of art convention. He approached Primitivism in his own original way, creating works that leave behind the European, “civilised” artistic conventions and enclose the most disparate elements, from everyday life to dreams to local myths. In his practice, we can appreciate a fusion of real, symbolic and decorative, a fusion operated by the artist’s mind through abstraction. No wonder that his work deeply influenced Picasso and the Cubism movement, Matisse and the Fauves. I could actually stretch his influence to the Surrealists without doubt.
Paul Gauguin, Arii Matamoe (The Royal End), 1892, Oil on coarse fabric, 45,1 x 74,3 cm, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Gauguin_(French_-_Arii_Matamoe_(The_Royal_End)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Most of the artworks displayed come from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek of Copenhagen, being the first time they are shown all together outside their usual setting. The choice of lights and materials for display reflect the importance given to Gauguin’s relationship with Primitivism: low lights, ground red or night blue reed mats and wooden cases are disposed to create a labyrinth where, as you turn the next corner, you enter a new level of understanding of Gauguin’s revolutionary originality. I must say I found it a bit disorienting and at first didn’t follow the intended path, but on the other hand I’ve always had a very bad sense of direction…
The museum doesn’t allow to take pictures so I had to use the ones available from the Internet. The show includes some famous masterpieces, however the real revelation are the wood carvings, little jewels to enjoy maybe for the first time. Don’t miss this chance if you find yourself nearby!
At a month from Christmas, and despite the festive lights that adorn the city, everybody goes mad and anxious with deadlines. My personal to-do list includes a bunch of university essays, lots of projects related to work, heaps of presents and last but not least moving to a new home with all the hardships and disorientation that come from it. Believe me, November has been a though month!
London hosts many beautiful exhibitions at present, and I have been long undecided on which to report on my blog. Finally, I chose to go for something more difficult this time, because, you know, I’m always looking for new trouble! So, merrily and carelessly, here I am, dealing with the role of art museums in shaping people’s perception of art. I hope you enjoy my reflections.
When people go to an art museum, they know they will “see” particular objects. My aim will be to develop an understanding of what a museum is, and why and how art museums in particular have a significant role in shaping people’s views on art. I will enclose what various authors have said concerning the experience of looking at objects in a museum. Finally, I will try to evaluate three theories of art that in my opinion are mostly influential in the museums’ world, one by Arthur Danto, two by George Dickie. By doing this, I hope to give reason of the multiplicity of aspects that comes into play within the viewer’s experience, and to suggest a particular relevance of his or her personal synthesis.
First of all, we need to bear in mind that the concept of museum is a Western construction. In the Classic world, the “mouseion” was a place consecrated to the Muses, goddesses of learning and inspiration. In the twentieth century there has been a true proliferation of museum types. The institution spread to virtually all the countries around the world, often becoming a symbol of power and independence, and helping the establishment of national identities. In fact, as Carol Duncan rightly argues, a Western style national museum in a non-Western country is a sort of business card to show «to the West that one is a reliable political ally» (Duncan, in eds Karp and Lavine, 1991, p. 88).
As many authors have noticed, museums closely resemble religious spaces: They often show splendid façades, similar to classic temples or in a neo-classical style (e.g. the British Museum), which recalls republican ideas of democracy and education. We can also notice fences, steps, porticos and columns outside the museum, to signify a clear delimitation of its space. Even in the architecture of modernist and post-modern buildings (e.g. the Tate Modern) there are clear thresholds marking the difference between outside and inside. Moreover, moving into this sacred space, we will never go to see the displayed objects straightforward; on the contrary, the entrance of a museum is a sort of liminal space that stresses again the passage from a realm to another. Thus the outside, profane world is juxtaposed to the museum space, which retains many aspects of a sacred area. Finally, museums are usually in the centre of the city, a location that also hosts other important sites of civic and politic life (town halls, law courts, etc.).
Just from these simple observations, we can already say that the museum is part of a geography of power, and not a neutral zone of pure contemplation. Whenever someone decides to open a museum, there are already necessarily some ideas and views that permeate the institution, so that even in principio we are talking of something ideologically constructed. There is no such a thing as a neutral museum, since every exhibition may present objects in some other way. When we talk about museums, we inevitably talk about power too.
Actually, museums not only look like religious places, but they also work like them. A whole series of unwritten rules provides the behaviour one must hold inside the galleries, e.g. prohibition of quotidian activities (no talking, no eating, etc.), appropriateness of movement, special state of receptivity. Now, focusing on art museums, it is interesting to recall what Brian O’Doherty tells us about the purpose of this kind of space: They want to give the impression that the works displayed are untouched by the passing of time, just like religious verities (O’Doherty, 1999, p. 7). Galleries in this sense are truly ritual spaces, because walking through the museum is a ritual act, with its codes and rules of behaviour, and while walking the visitor «is prompted to enact and thereby to internalize the values and beliefs written into the architectural script» (Duncan and Wallach, 1980, pp. 450-51). The ideas conveyed in these «chamber[s] of eternal display» (O’Doherty, 1999, p. 8), where the outside world is completely left out and a systematic camouflage of time and change takes place, are the ones of «artistic posterity, of undying beauty, of the masterpiece» (p. 9). Thereby, an art museum is always evaluating one particular point of view on art, that is, the one of the group that holds the power in the institution. This perspective does not come to a comparison with others; conversely, it claims to be the only one possible, and so to be exclusively right and eternal. Any possibility of starting a dialogue is precluded: The museum or gallery states its supposed eternal truth in a monologue that is also, again, a strong statement about power and the status quo.
In a space like the one described, anything can become object of pure visual interest. Svetlana Alpers calls “museum effect” «the tendency to isolate something from its world, to offer it up for attentive looking and thus to transform it into art» (Alpers, in eds Karp and Lavine, 1991, p. 27). Although she speaks about objects taken out from other cultures, I think we can talk about the museum effect even regarding those objects considered works of art in the Western context. I am referring in particular to the most recent contributions to the Western artworld, which are mostly controversial. If we stop for a moment to consider the objects displayed in a contemporary art museum, it will not be difficult to discover that artists may have taken them out from our daily life – sometimes without even attempting to redefine them in some way or another. The simple fact that the object is there, in an art gallery, makes it an art object by right. Actually, the museum effect is «a way of seeing» (ibid.) peculiar of the Western world, which, through conventional devices and visual technologies (e.g. the special use of light), offers virtually any kind of object to the viewer’s «attentive» gaze. Nevertheless, as I pointed out before, the museum display is always articulating a particular way of seeing (usually the one of the curator). Consequentially, we should be aware at all times of the fact that it is not in our range of possibilities to “see” an artwork without being conditioned by the context, even if the context itself was developed to give an impression of objectivity. Thus, on the one hand I agree with Alpers when she claims more freedom for visitors, less explicative panels, audio-guides and general information, all elements that tend to divert the attention from the object to what it is saidaboutit (pp. 30-31). Information regarding the display should be placed in the catalogue and, in any case, people should read them after having looked at the object in the first place, since the experience of art is more powerful when it is not mediated at all. On the other hand, I recognise that the museum effect is a cultural construction and we should experience it with at least a basic cognition of its mechanisms of power.
I would like now to concentrate on the active roles that come to play within the art museum. Indeed, we can see three diverse subjects operating at different levels (I follow Baxandall, in eds Karp and Lavine, 1991, pp. 33-41): Firstly, there is the artist, the maker (or at least the founder) of the art object, who has an immediate and spontaneous understanding of his or her work. She may have thought of what he was doing, but his interpretation of it is not necessarily verbal and shareable. The second subject is the exhibitor, namely the gallery curator(s). The artist and the curator are both cultural operators, but the «purposes and conditions» (p. 37) of the first differ from ones of the latter, who is the main agent for the creation of the gallery as we see it, the display arrangement, the information given and, generally, the museum effect as we experience it. The curator is a powerful figure not only in shaping our perception of the objects, but also, subtly, in handing out a theory regarding what art is. However, what I think can be the most important agent is the third and last, that is to say, the viewer. A “standard” viewer will be a product of his or her culture. Although each visitor has «his own cultural luggage of unsystematic ideas [and] values» (p. 34), all of them have in common that they visit the art gallery to see objects of visual interest. This means that the viewer comes to the museum already accepting the fact that, if the displayed objects are there, that is because they must be worthy of appreciation. Some humean judges (the curator or anyway the bunch of connoisseurs whose opinion has been asked while choosing the pieces for the collection) have imposed their authority on those works, which thereby must be works of art.
At this point, I would like to highlight a peculiar link between the role of the museum in shaping our perception of art, and the theories of art formulated in recent years by Arthur Danto and George Dickie (Danto, 1964, and Dickie, 2001). In Danto’s view, there is no such a thing like Art in general; rather, an object can be art only in a precise context, namely, the Artworld, a philosophical space created by history of art and art theories. What is most appreciable of Danto’s theory is the fact that it defines art in a very broad manner: «To see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry – an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld» (1964, p. 580). In this way, he can include all those contemporary works that could not find space in prior theories. They may be not so great, but still, they are art. The theory is great in its simplicity also because it gives only one necessary condition for objects to be art: only through theories of art, we can give voice to artworks. Thus, he answers to all the contemporary voices who want to stop defining art at all and gives way to relational theories on art, like the one later formulated by Dickie.
Dickie’s version of the artworld is less metaphysical, as it includes all the people that have some kind of relation to art: artists, museum curators, critics. These are in charge in admitting any piece of work in this hub – only by obtaining this admission the object will acquire the status of artwork. The artworld is then a cultural institution, and that is why we call Dickie’s contribution on this matter “Institutional Theory of Art”. He formulated two versions of this theory, but for a matter of interest I will focus only on the second and most recent, which is divided in five definitions:
1) An artist is a person who participates with understanding in the making of a work of art.
2) A work of art is an artefact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public.
3) A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared in some degree to understand an object that is presented to them.
4) The artworld is the totality of all artworld systems.
5) An artworld system is a framework for the presentation of a work of art by an artist to an artworld public (Dickie, 200, pp. 58-61).
The main problem of this definition is that it is circular. Furthermore, it gives way to many questions. What exactly is an artefact? Who are the members of this artworld? Why should we care to have something like the artworld? However, it seems to me that it remains one of the deepest reflection on art as it is today, and anyway it is indeed very useful in trying to leave value out of art. Moreover, both Danto’s and Dickie’s contributions have a strong influence in the way we look at artworks when we visit a museum, because they have cleared the way for potentially everything being art. Thus, we are not amazed to see the most hazardous installations within the walls of a gallery, since we are used to the fact that, nowadays, anything goes. Both theories also strengthen the role of the art museum as the institution where art is made accessible; no other place has this crucial role.
Untitled Painting 1965 Art & Language (Michael Baldwin; Mel Ramsden) born 1945, born 1944 Presented by Tate Patrons 2007 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T12331
Considering all that I said, you might now think of the artworld, rather sadly, as a closed circle, where the people who detain the power decide everything regarding art, museums are spaces for ideological display and the uncultivated viewer is left with no choice but accept everything he sees,. Nevertheless, I still think that the role of the viewer is the most important, precisely because her set of unsystematic ideas let her be free of boundaries and approach art with a fresh gaze. The personal experience, both emotional and rational, that takes place when we look at an artwork can be stronger than anything the artworld can say. Of course, I recognise the strong influence that the institution of the artworld and its representative, the museum, has on the public – I hope I explained it in detail in this essay. However, within the «intellectual space» (Baxandall, 1991, p. 37) that exists between object and label, the viewer can make the other agents (the artist and the exhibitor) come into contact: in that space the viewer is trying to give reason of the others’ purposes. This highly active role is desirable for the viewer, if he wants to create a personal synthesis out of the museum effect.
To conclude, I still think as the artworld as the space of connoisseurs, critics and artists who decide what art is, where the philosophical thinking on the art issue takes place. It is indeed a space that looks like an institution, because even if its laws are not written, it still has a strong influence on the individuals who get into contact with it. This is especially true for the visitors of museums and art galleries, which are the bodily incarnation of the artworld. However, the influence a museum can have is not necessarily overwhelming the viewer’s attentive activity, so that, in the end, I would suggest a balance between the role of the museum and the viewer’s personal sensibility.
Now I hope you’ll go out there and experience what I tried to outline here…
If you are interested in reading the authors I cited, here’s my bibliography:
Alpers, Svetlana (1991) “The museum as a way of seeing”, in Karp, I. and Lavine, S. (eds) Exhibiting cultures: the poetics and politics of museum, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, pp. 25-32.
Baxandall, Michael (1991) “Exhibiting intention: some preconditions of the visual display of culturally useful objects” in Karp, I. and Lavine, S. (eds) Exhibiting cultures: the poetics and politics of museum display, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, pp. 33-41.
Bennett, Tony (1995) The birth of the museum: history, theory, politics, Routledge, London.
Carroll, Noel (1999) Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction, Routledge, London.
Danto, Arthur (1964) “The Artworld”, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 61, no. 19, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting (Oct. 15, 1964), pp. 571-584.
Dickie, George (2001) Art and Value, Oxford, Blackwell.
Dickie, George (2006) “The Institutional Theory of Art” in Janaway, C. Reading Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary, Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 166-185.
Duncan, Carol (1991) “Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship” in Karp, I. and Lavine, S. (eds) Exhibiting Cultures: the poetics and politics of museum display, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, pp. 88-103.
Duncan, Carol (1995) Civilizing rituals: inside public art museums. Routledge, London.
Duncan, Carol and Wallach, Alan (1980) “The universal survey museum”, Art History, vol. 3, issue 4, pp. 448-469.
Janaway, Christopher (2006) Reading Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary, Oxford, Blackwell.
Karp, Ivan (1991) “Culture and Representation”, in Karp, I. and Lavine, S. (eds) Exhibiting Cultures: the poetics and politics of museum display, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, pp. 11-24.
Karp, Ivan and Lavine, Steven (1991) “Introduction: Museums and Multiculturalism”, in Karp, I. and Lavine, S. (eds) Exhibiting Cultures: the poetics and politics of museum display, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, pp. 1-10.
McEvilley, Thomas (1986) “Introduction” in Brian O’Doherty (1999) Inside the White Cube:The Ideology of the Gallery Space, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, pp. 7-12.
O’Doherty, Brian (1999) Inside the White Cube. The ideology of the gallery space (Expanded Edition), University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London (first ed. 1976-1986 in Artforum).
Perry, Grayson (2014) Playing to the Gallery: Helping contemporary art in its struggle to be understood, Particular Books, Penguin Random House, London.
Hassan Musa, I have a drone (Obama’s portrait), 2014, textiles, 241 × 247.5 cm. Image credits: Galerie Maïa Muller, Paris.
Some nights ago I had the chance to meet Dr. Hassan Musa at SOAS, where he held a conference on the “Mis-connections in contemporary artworlds”. Here is an account of his speech plus the thoughts I flowered mixing this experience with my visit at the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, a couple of weeks ago.
Dr. Musa was born in Sudan in 1951 and now dwells in the South of France. He is an artist, or as he prefers to call himself, an image-maker drawing from a variety of traditions: His most famous works are textiles, linking him with the Sudanese practice of hanging cloths on walls for decorative purposes. He nevertheless uses images from the European painting tradition, and combines them with a witty political discourse conveyed through icons of contemporary times, such as Osama Bin Laden, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and so on. He also makes use of elements of Arabic calligraphy as well as Chinese watercolour. All these references are finally tied together by his original research within the technical dimension of the chosen medium.
Valuing curiosity as one of the most important factors in a viewer, Musa feels the technical dimension as a space of total freedom where he can experiment and get to always new ways of fascinating the audience. His use of transparent pieces of fabric, overlapped, glued and finally sewn together is truly skilful; it gives birth to amazing pieces where the delicacy of the medium contrasts with the strong message conveyed by the painstakingly created image.
Hassan Musa, I love you with my Iphone, 2011, assembled textiles, 290 x 255cm. Image credits: Galerie Pascal Polar, Brussels.
Interestingly, Hassan contends that nowadays an artist can be vitually anything: There is no proper definition to apply to this term, which has such a disparate application that it has become extremely vague. An artist could be a traditional painter, but also someone involved in a performance of any kind, from a quasi-teathrical installation to a man who let his friend shoot him in the arm, like Chris Burden in Shoot (1971). Therefore Hassan’s preference for the more specific “image-maker” tag. However, if we really want to be specific, even the latter contains a mis-connection: Seeing is certainly a political problem, as what I see may differ from what you see in the same object! An image-maker is thus entangled in a political discourse, in which (s)he will try to make us see what he sees – as in politics.
Not only a problem of terms, mis-connections travel also through the competition between different image-makers using the same image. The use Musa makes of the U.S. dollar, for example, is exquisitely ironic. Some others may nevertheless use that very dollar to create an opposite metaphor. For example:
Hassan is not the first to lament the double conception of history held by the Western culture: Europeans in particular tend to consider the rest of the world as if it didn’t have a history comparable to the one of their geographic region. This bias leads us to see other places as “barbarian”, immerse in a lack of history that is a permanent stagnation. It is easy to spot that this is particulary true in the case of the African continent. Following this view, the advent of European colonialism was a positive event, a fresh start, the redemption of backwards peoples now sharing modernity with and thanks to the magnanimous Europeans… Far from being true, this colonial discourse does not take into account that there is no modernity without freedom. In Musa’s elaboration of the theme, there are therefore two kinds of modernity: the European modernity, embued with colonialist bias; the local modernity, coloured by nationalistic discourses.
However, after the fall of the Berlin wall, Europeans started to question themselves about identity; in the globalized world, we realised that we all share the same destiny. I definitely agree with Musa when he says that the importance given to identity nowadays is the fulcrum of the absurd attempt to categorize artists by their regional origin. So does a fair like 1:54, especially dedicated to “African” art. But the question arises spontaneously and quite simply: What is African art? Or even better: Is there actually something that we can call “African art”? If a Sudanese artist lives and works in France for most of his life, do we still call the result of his artistic effort “African art”?
Youssef Ouchra, Ma Taaboudoun, 2015, painetd and cut metal, 88-58 cm. Galerie Venise Cadre Casablanca (GVCC), Casablanca.
I think 1:54 is an interesting example of this mis-connection originated by the identity issue. To some extent it also helps another one of the mis-connections Hassan pointed out during his conference: the trauma mis-connection, or the expectation for African artists to have experienced some kind of emotional shock on their arrival to Europe. This organises African art under an umbrella of psychological distress that is completely misleading, and unifies what is in fact a reality of scattered and variegated identities. I can concede that many image-makers nowadays are troubled with the urbanization issue, with all the links to themes like poverty, alienation, technology, pollution, etc. However, this is true not only of artists of African origin – it is a problem that concerns sensible people anywhere. The Contemporary African Art Fair held during the second week of October at Somerset House hosted many works dealing with this theme. But it also gave (rightly) space to other themes. In fact, it is the variety of themes, medias, galleries and artists that makes up the good side of 1:54. Musa strongly affirmed that artists are very individualistic, unless of course they are part of a political discourse – and in that case, most probably, their work is being used to serve someone else’s scope.
Paa Joe and Jacob Tetteh-Ashong, Coffin- Pepsi Bottle , 2015, wood, acrylic, and interior fabric, 112 × 51 × 51 cm. Art Twenty One Gallery, Lagos.
This leads us to the last two mis-connections Hassan dealt with at SOAS. First, the diaspora mis-connection, which allows critics to put together all black-skinned artists, no matter where they come from and what their experience is. Second, the curator mis-connection, as curators often are both agents and victims of the other mis-connections considered above. As a result, it is very common to see exhibitions displaying works by artists that come from the most different parts of Africa – grouped together only by the fact that the authors are Africans. As Hassan bitterly remarked, curators often serve their own interests, becoming the real artists behind an exhibition. Curiously enough, a curator is not only someone in charge of a collection, but also, by the law, “aguardianofaminor,lunatic,orotherincompetent,especially withregardtohisorherproperty” (see: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/curator).
Qubeka Bead Studio, Mpelaveai (End of the week), 2015, glass seed beads on board, 110 x 75 cm. Qubeka Bead Studio, Cape Town.
Art is individual, it is about the singularity of the person. “Africa” is not a good category, neither politically speaking, nor aesthetically, nor philosophically – it is simply a geographic area. The simplicity by which Hassan reminded us that there are no real borders, just political, superimposed, artificial ones, struck me. The question is not, therefore, “Is there an ‘African’ art?” but: What could be a better working term?
Sokari Douglas Camp CBE, Walworth Ladies, 2008, steel, 50 x 17 x 18 cm. October Gallery, London.
Hassan Musa is African as an individual. Nevertheless, he was raised in the European art tradition, because, as he puts it, there is no other History of Art as a discipline. Therefore, he is not an African artist. As Picasso used elements of African art and culture, Musa heavily relies on elements from traditional European paintings. His project as an art-maker clearly unfolds a political dimension. Remaining very realist, he acknowledges that art can’t change the world. But at least it can offer some consolation.
To take the chance and get some relief, you can visit Hassan’s latest solo exhibition in Paris, Yo Mama, at Galerie Maïa Muller, until Nov. 28th.
Hassan Musa, Le tableau qui fait dialoguer les Cultures, 2008, assembled textiles, 207 x 236cm. Image credits: Galerie Pascal Polar, Brussels.
As I entered the luminous space of the Saatchi Gallery with a friend, a week ago, I was suddenly rapt into a quiet, ethereal world, where the silence was not even interrupted by the thundering rain outside, and the artworks on display would simply but blodly disclose themselves in all their beauty, almost challenging you to fade away and leave the stage to the unfolding of their meanings.
The artists presented in the exhibition “Pangaea II: New Art from Africa and Latin America” come from these continents, and some of them had already shown their works in a previous collective exhibition, held at the Saatchi Gallery last year, across Spring, Summer and Autumn 2014. The earlier show was named “Pangaea”, so that the second was clearly linked to the first in the extent in which they both displayed contemporary artists coming from economically developing parts of the world that are miles and miles away from each other, but can reunite through art (as the probably geographically were millennia ago).
The show was divided into different rooms, onto two floors of the gallery, with no explanation whatsoever of the works, which most of the time were presented only by a plain collective label at the entrance of every room, stating the basic information (author, title, year, medium, size). This gave a chance for attentive and meditative looking at the pieces, without focusing on written text as we are so much used to. In this case, though, a bit of knowledge of the background of every artist would have been indispensable to get a better understanding of their works. I had done my homework research before reaching the gallery, so I felt enough comfortable in the sole presence of the artworks, but I am not sure the friend who was with me had the same kind of experience. At any rate, the way the objects were presented, the ubiquitous white light cascading from the ceiling and probably the silent gallery environment itself gave space for personal reflection and I soon lost sight of my mate, getting back to him only at the shop entrance. He told me he had really enoyed the show.
Many of the works contained a political or socio-economical reference to the countries the artist belongs to. Some addressed a blue reflection on burocracy and the way human beings are swallowed by technology and urbanization. Others would tackle the power-games in which an individual must mix him or herself up in in order to gain political authority and prestige. Others again would reflect on the situation of the poorest sections of society.
I particularly felt an association with the series of paintings by Dawit Abebe (1978, Ethiopia), giving a portrait of ailing figures always turning their back to the viewer and to the worldly reality, from which nevertheless they are surrounded in the form of official papers, tickets, ties, …The melancholy they aroused was the same one feels when you ask yourself if this is really the only way things could be.
Dawit Abebe, No.2 Background 1, 2014, mixed media painting, 150×130 cmDawit Abebe, No.2 Background 5, 2014, mixed media painting, 150×130 cmDawit Abebe, No.2 Background 3, 2014, mixed media painting, 150×130 cm
Ephrem Solomon’s (1983, Ethiopia) Political Game 3 reminded me of a fish in a sea full of sharks:
Ephrem Solomon, Political Game 3, 2012, woodcut and mixed media, 85×86 cm
Armand Boua’s (1978) humble carboards well fitted his reflection on the hinumanity he experiences in everyday-life in Abidjan (Ivory Coast):
Armand Boua, various works, 2013, tar and acrylic on cardboard, 82×95 cm
Other works had a humorous vein than made me openly smile, like Alexandre da Cunha’s (1969, Brazil) nude series, in which the author uses found objects and different media to obtain a painting which is also a sculpture, conveying an ironic message on the way we see and appropriate material objects. I particularly enjoyed this piece:
Alexandre da Cunha, Nude VI, 2012, hats, canvas, thread, 220x300x17.5 cm
A couple of artists, namely Alida Cervantes (1972, California, U.S.A.), Virginia Chihota (1983, Zimbabwe), but also Eddy Ilunga Kamuanga (1991, Democratic Republic of the Congo) dealt with feminine figures in different ways. I felt a strong connection with Virginia’s reflection on marriage and the developing of personal relationships that she conveys through her work Raising Your Own (Kurera Wako). Unfortunately I was not able to take a picture of it, but her delicate, almost phantom-like bride, her white skin almost melting away with the unnatural white background, gave me a sense of strength and impotence at the same time. She stands beside her husband-to-be, both wrapped in an unusual black veil, which shadows them from the viewer and make them close and fearfully intimate. Their feet are bare, and the woman covers her womb with her black hands as a blood stain widens on her white wedding dress.
Eddy’s women are the heroines of the new cultural diversity which is emerging in his hometown, Kinshasa. He is strongly influenced both by traditions and pop culture and the resulting works seems to me vibrant and positive. I really appreciated the use he made of written word in his paintings, a device that conveys particular meanings (if you can read the language!) and helps the old mixing with the new.
Eddy Ilunga Kamuanga, Voile, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 120×100 cm
However, my favourite pieces were the ones welcoming the visitor in the first room of the exhibition. I left them for last because of their power, their marvellous quality as art objects and the activism that they inspire. I am talking about the selection of works by Diego Mendoza Imbachi (1982, Colombia), who links gardening and art-making in a process that juxtaposes the natural elements of the forest with the harmful industrialisation that more and more affects the landscape in South America. Diego truly is a poet, even in the choice of titles. His medium, mainly graphite, reflects his intention of giving space, in some ways, to a reconciliation between human destructivness and natural life. His works, of very large dimensions, make you feel like you really are in some magical forest made up of beautifully crafted, tall, silent trees whose branches resemble in some ways electrical wires. The element of sacred is surely present, it makes you reflect on the beauty and delicacy of nature and on the stubborn dullness of multi-national corporations. After staring at these works, my Greenpeace soul aroused, and even talking about it now, some days after the exhibition has already closed its doors, I still feel a sense of courage, of urgence for doing everything I can to respect the planet. Now I can really start my day in a positive, proactive way.
Diego Mendoza Imbachi, The Poetics of Reflection, 2014, graphite and binder on canvas, 300×600 cm
Pangaea II: New Art form Africa and Latin America, Saatchi Gallery, 11 March – 17 September 2015.
Useful links:
The exhibition’s webpage has links to the bios and abstracts of the partecipant artists, and it’s a mine for more information: http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/pangaea_II/
I am usually based in London and I am “Londonholic” too. However, I have recently been wandering somewhere else, having decided to take a holiday from the rain with my brother, Lorenzo.
This lead us (quite unpredictably, since the weather is even worse), to the Netherlands, and I must say I fell in love with Rotterdam.
The newly-built Markthal, Rotterdam.
Rotterdam is everything but a ordinary place. Completely destroyed during WW2, as many people know after the war it has undergone a massive reconstruction; the latter, however, didn’t follow the lines of traditional northern Europe architecture, rather the one of post-war avant-garde.
Thus Rotterdam is the most interesting place in terms of architectural innovations, and you can see many buildings here displaying an interest in aesthetics, the game between form and light, the laws of physics – an interest which sometimes overcomes functionality issues. The resulting skyline is extremely particular and you can bet every corner you turn in Rotterdam, you’ll find something to surprise your eye!
Kubuswonig (cubic houses), Rotterdam. By Piet Blom, 1984.
Notwithstanding some examples which I personally found quite distasteful, the city is generally very well constructed and I must say all the new additions (there are always men at work!) perfectly fit the context.
The Museumpark is an example of this equilibrium. As its name tells you, here you will find a conglomeration of different museums, all around a very nice park full of perfumed flowers, which must be lovely for a pic-nic (no sun at all when I visited it though!). I must definitely recommend both the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and the Kunsthal, where I spent delightful hours.
The Boijmans is a traditional fine art museum that also includes a huge library and as a special wing for temporary exhibitions. I made my way through the permanent collection, which is displayed in a chronological order, from religious art of the XIV c. to the most contemporary installations. Every room is arranged around some certain theme and the general explicative panels always give some historical reference to fit the artists in both their regional and European context. I particularly appreciated the way the curators emphasized the links between Italian and transalpine artists, whose works and techniques influenced each other.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, circa 1565. oil on panel.
Moreover, a comparison with the famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam shows how the latter is more intended to be a shrine for Dutch masters, while the Boijmans collection looks more to Europe in general, even if of course the Dutch masters are heavily present. Nevertheless, I praise the effort put in showing artists coming from different parts of our continent, from Italy to Spain to Germany. The Boijmans holds some true jewels of Flemish and Dutch art, such as the famous Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Staring at this painting is a very strong experience; the canvas itself is not even that huge, but the tower, still unfinished, touches the clouds above and makes the natural world around it look like a miniature – not to talk of the tiny, almost invisible human figures who, like busy ants, struggle to complete this absurd task. The sense of humility which this scene instills in the viewer makes you recognise that The Tower of Babel truly is a masterpiece.
In the rooms concerning the XVII c. Dutch genre you will find some Rembrandts, including a very intimate portrait of the painter’s son, entitled Titus at his desk, which actually doesn’t fit the moralistic tone usually found in pictures coming from that period.
In the following rooms at some point you will be surprised to see the head of a man popping out the floor to stare at the paintings with curiosity and a bit of insolence. This is in fact a piece by Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled (Manhole). While I don’t find many of his jokes so funny, this one is not only ironic but also engages me in questions regarding contemporary art as the loss of beauty, and the position of contemporary artists in relation to the Old Masters.
Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled (Manhole), 2001, painted wax, hair and fabric.
Medardo rosso, Femme à la voilette, 1895 (cast 1919-1923), wax over plaster.The Dutch poet Ingmar Heytze (Utrecht, 1970) wrote this lines taking inspiration from Medardo Rosso’s sculpture at the Boijmans. The two artworks are now on display next to each other.
I would also like to mention the room of Impressionism, where among a copy of Degas’s Little dancer of fourteen years and some other important representatives, you can take a look at some of Van Gogh’s earlier works, and admire Medardo Rosso’s enchanting Woman with a Veil, flanked by a touching poem inspired by it.
At any rate, the most interesting works are displayed in the rooms dealing with Expressionism and Surrealism. It must be said the museum has a stunning collection of paintings and sculptures by Oskar Kokoschka, Paul Signac, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico. As the panels explained the relationship between the British connoisseur Edward James and both Magritte and Dalí, I particularly enjoyed Magritte’s enigmatic portrait of James sitting in front of a mirror in his house in London.
René Magritte, La reproduction interdite, 1937, oil on canvas.
While this first visit was more meditative, the one I had to the Kunsthal was actually physically enjoyable. Scattered through different levels, there are various temporary exhibitions, but the place was undergoing a reorganization I suppose, because some were out of the visitor’s reach. I experienced the most different installations of the exhibition Do it! in which the underlying theory is that people must enjoy and be part of an artwork, and the curators wanted to encourage this by putting on display an idea by the artist that must be carried out by the audience. The funniest was an installation with two armchairs where you can book a breakfast with an artist – for the reasonable price of 35€. The exhibition overall was a very entertaining experience, in which maybe I didn’t think as much as I did in the Bojimans, but indeed I had a good time.
And that’s what’s all about, in the end.
Ben Kinmont, The possibilities of trust as a sculpture and the question of value for each partecipant, 1997. (Wake Up In It, Breakfast in Art)
Don’t miss these beautiful temples of art if you get the chance to go to Rotterdam! The city itself was a very pleasant discovery.
Diotima in the Gallery 
