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Kunsthaus Zurich courts controversy with Nahmad show

Henri Matisse, La lecture (deux fillettes, bouquet de pivoines sur fond noir), 1947. Oil on canvas, 46 x 55.2 cm, The Nahmad Collection © 2011 Succession H. Matisse / ProLitteris, Zurich

Article first published by Swissinfo on 26.10.11

Zurich’s Kuntshaus was bound to rock the art establishment when it invited the notorious Nahmad dealers to exhibit their goods. The museum’s director stands by his choice.

Kunsthaus Director Christoph Becker is convinced that the quality of the works on show in “Miró, Monet, Matisse – The Nahmad Collection” will dispel any thoughts that a world-class art institution is catering to the commercial interests of a family who happens to deal art on a global scale. He explains his decision in an exclusive interview.

Christoph Becker, Director of Kunsthaus Zürich, photo Laird

The latest exhibition at Zurich’s fine arts museum is a direct consequence of its centenary celebration in 2010, when it revived the 1953 Picasso retrospective. Because the Nahmads had loaned key paintings, Becker “suspected” that they possessed many more and hoped that they could be convinced to show them.

The Nahmads have been dealing in art for five decades, ever since the three sons of a Sephardic banker from Syria left Beirut for Milan, then Paris or New York, London and Monaco, to escape the tensions in the Middle East.

Depending on the source, the Nahmads are said to have accumulated between 3’000 and 5’000 works of art – including more than 200 Picassos, a collection that is second only to that of the Picasso estate.

Most of the works are squirrelled away in a secure duty-free warehouse near Geneva airport. Even the Nahmads had never seen them displayed together before the Zurich exhibition.

But is not so much a collection, the art world says, than a stockpiling of works by specific artists in order to corner markets and influence prices. Hardly an art auction takes place in premier auction houses today without the Nahmad family either selling or buying. With a fortune estimated by Forbes at more than $3 billion – also amassed from currency and commodity trading – they have the financial clout to invest, possess, squeeze or drive markets. Occasionally, they hold on to their goods.

Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Guillaume, 1916, Oil on board laid down on cradled panel, 53 x 37 cm, The Nahmad Collection

“When I first approached the Nahmads, they said that they did not believe that they had a collection. I told them to think about it,” Becker said. Two weeks later and following many internal discussions, the publicity-shy family acquiesced and agreed to produce a core selection of 150 pieces, later reduced to a hundred.

“The selection met the highest museum standards. If it had not, I would have cancelled the show,” Becker said. Furthermore, he discovered what he qualifies as a “Nahmad taste”, with the prominence of some artists and the exclusion of others.

“Miró, Monet, Matisse – The Nahmad Collection” focuses on the five artistic periods between 1870 and 1970 favoured by the Nahmads, including Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Abstraction, Surrealism, and Picasso.

Claude Monet, Canotiers à Argenteuil, 1874, Oil on canvas, 60 x 81 cm, The Nahmad Collection

Visitors at the opening commented on the odd hanging, as if they were invited to discover crucial developments in art history, rather than the paintings themselves. A row of seven Modiglianis from the artist’s period of greatest artistic intensity in the years before his death in 1920 are lined up like models all sitting in the same chair facing the same window (they probably were).

Picasso’s colourfully riotous interpretations of Manet’s “Déjeuner sur l’herbe” or Delacroix’s “Les Femmes d’Alger”, all splashed on a single wall, prove to us that, yes, there can sometimes be too much of a good thing.

Becker wants us to understand that a collection “must be regarded as existing in a state of becoming.” What he is celebrating is the commitment of a group of individuals to art.

However, unlike the legendary art merchants who would discover and sustain artists, the Nahmads respond to auction barometers. “It’s the world upside down,” said Sami Kinge, who went to school in Beirut with David Nahmad. Contacted in Paris, where he runs an eponymous gallery in the tradition of the old-style merchants, he said laconically: “The Nahmads only buy and sell.”

Becker admitted that the exhibition, even before it opened, had caused a stir. Accused of becoming an ally to the most influential art dealers in the world, he insisted that his aim is only “to bring something into being.” There was no deal, he emphasized.

He added that the value of the works presented was “above money” and that the exhibition would therefore not influence auction prices any more. “With works of this quality, it’s impossible. If we thought we were turning the screw, we wouldn’t have done it.”

Urs Lanter, Director of the Swiss Art Department at auction house Sotheby’s concurred with Becker’s opinion. “Exceptional works command exceptional prices,” he said, “especially when they enjoy great provenance and when they are important in the art history and the career of the artist”.

Simon de Pury refuted the suggestion that the Kunsthaus could become the backdoor of auction houses. As head of Phillips de Pury & Company, the youngest and some say most dynamic of the three auction houses, he said that some of the greatest art collections in the world are the creation of art dealers. He gave the examples of Ernst Beyeler and Heinz Berggruen who built museums to house their collections, respectively in Switzerland and Germany.

“Museums cannot exist without collectors, and collectors cannot exist without art dealers,” he said, adding simply: “Greats museum show great art.”

What we perhaps learn from this exhibition is that market forces have become part of the fabric of museums. Art collectors donate to reduce their fiscal liability, art dealers take risks and get caught in monetary spirals.

Nobody knows what will become of the Nahmad collection. There are rumors, unconfirmed by Becker, that the present exhibition has inspired the Nahmads to make long term plans, now that they have discovered that they have a collection after all.

Pablo Picasso, Le petit pierrot aux fleurs (Portrait of the artist’s son, Paulo, as Harlequin), 1923/24, Oil on canvas, 92.1 x 73.6 cm, The Nahmad Collection © 2011 ProLitteris, Zurich

The Nahmads

Joe (Giuseppi), the elder and more flamboyant of the three Nahmad brothers, started his collection by commissioning paintings by Lucio Fontana and Wilfredo Lam in the lively Milan of the sixties. Almost 80, he now lives the life of a recluse.

His younger brothers, Ezra (1945) and David (1947) demonstrated entrepreneurial skills at a very early age and began investing in the stock market at the age of 15. They became interested in art through Joe.

For his first art transactions, David would lend a buyer the money to buy the work of art he was selling, then use the debt as collateral to obtain a loan from the bank.

Ezra’s son, Helly, opened the Helly Nahmad Gallery in London in 1998. He attended the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and has played a pivotal role in the organisation of the Zurich exhibit. David’s son, also named Helly after the grandfather, opened the Helly Nahmad Gallery in New York in 2004. He is often pictured with celebrities.

Art dealers

The legendary pre-Nahmad art merchants who bought directly from the artists (as opposed to auction houses) were Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (Cubism), Paul Rosenberg (Picasso and French Modernists), Sidney Janis (American Abstract Expressionism), Alexander Iolas (late Surrealism, Tinguely, Niki de Saint Phalle), Leo Castelli (Pop art) and more recently Bruno Bischofberger (Basquiat).

The exhibition

‘Miró, Monet, Matisse – The Nahmad Collection’ features more than 100 paintings by Miró,

Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, Monet, Magritte and many others. The Impressionist section is dominated by Monet; Abstraction is represented by Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian; Surrealism represented by De Chirico, Magritte, Tanguy, Max Ernst and especially Joan Miro.

Picasso’s “Petit Pierrot aux fleurs” (Harlequin with Flowers), a portrait of his son painted in 1923/24, is considered one of the highlights of the show.

The lavishly illustrated and commented catalogue is sold for CHF 45.00.

The exhibition runs until 15 January 2011.

The Kunsthaus Zurich averages 300’000 visitors a year, with records between 2’000 and 3’000 daily visitors for the major exhibits, including the recent Picasso retrospective.

Links

“Miró, Monet, Matisse – The Nahmad Collection”

Kunsthaus Zürich

Helly Nahmad (London)

Helly Nahmad Gallery (New York)

 

Joan Miró, Soirée snob chez la princesse, ca 1946, Pastel and gouache on paper, 31.4 x 51.4 cm, The Nahmad Collection © Successió Miró / 2011 ProLitteris, Zurich

Photos that expose “The Other America”

Mitch Epstein, American Power, Plate-forme pétrolière “Ocean Warwick”, Dauphin Island, Alabama, 2005 / Ocean Warwick Oil Platform, Dauphin Island, Alabama, 2005, © Black River Productions, Ltd./Mitch Epstein. Courtesy Thomas Zander, Cologne

Article first published on 21 September 2011 by Swissinfo.ch: http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/Photos_that_expose_The_Other_America.html?cid=31187806

In the wake of the 9/11 commemorations, three major contemporary American photographers present unfamiliar and intriguing images from the United States.

Emotion, power and nostalgia are the distinct themes presented in three parallel exhibitions under the collective title, “The Other America”, at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne.

By revealing the paradoxes of their homeland with images of sometimes brutal beauty, Frank Schramm, Saul Leiter and Mitch Epstein show us a different America.

The photographic language of the artists whose works fill Switzerland’s premier photography museum could not be further apart. But they share a sharp sobriety and elegance that challenges the divide between documentary photography and art.

“These three exhibitions encourage us to question our attitudes towards the US,” Elysée Director, Sam Stourdzé, said at the opening.

Frank Schramm, Stand-ups – Reporting Live from Ground Zero, 28 septembre, 2001 (#4) / September 28, 2001 (#4), ©Frank Schramm. Courtesy Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Reporting from Ground Zero

Frank Schramm was in New York on September 11, 2001. But rather than chronicle the event, he stepped back to portray those who were on the frontline of the news delivery. Over the following weeks, he photographed the TV presenters who provided the news in an endless loop.

Segregated in an area on the West River at some distance from the cordoned-off Ground Zero, they became the “stand-ups” reporting the live events that they themselves were not allowed to see.

“Photographing the journalists became my way of dealing with my own emotions,” Frank Schramm told swissinfo.ch. “In my emotions, I was wondering how they were dealing with theirs.”

The resulting portraits, many of which have the glossy perfection of a fashion shot, have never been shown publicly before this year. None carry any names, although many of the portrayed presenters are well known.

“This work is not about the journalists. It’s not about who they are. It’s about: can a tragic event bridge towards art,” Schramm observed.

Pauline Martin, who curated the show, explained that the journalists, as they became the mediators of a nation’s collective trauma, were also unwittingly contributing to the success of the terrorist act by amplifying the media coverage.

“The series serves as a manifesto: terrorism cannot exist without the major role played by the media and the images they broadcast,” she insisted. Press fortunes and careers are made overnight by disasters.

“Life goes on, we move forward. I wanted to remember what we were feeling,” Schramm recalled.

Frank Schramm, Stand-ups – Reporting Live from Ground Zero, 17 septembre, 2001 (#5) / September 17, 2001 (#5)

“American Power”

Under the provocative and ambiguous title, “American Power”, Mitch Epstein documents the massive reliance of the US on unlimited amounts of energy.

From 2003 to 2008, Epstein crisscrossed the country in search of the installations either in use, or abandoned, that have contributed to the “power of America”.

“He uses an artistic approach to tackle important social issues,” Stourdzé said of Epstein, whom he considers to be one of the most important photographers today.

“By looking at the larger American landscape and identifying the sites that produce energy, I watch the story between communities, corporations and the government unfold,” Epstein explained, adding, “This work is a reflection on American culture at this time.”

He said that he was not an environmental activist, but that he realised that America takes a lot for granted. “We were handed a lot and we expect a lot. This has created a sense of entitlement.”

Mitch Epstein, American Power, Barrage de Hoover et Lac Mead, Nevada/ Arizona, 2007 / Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, Nevada/ Arizona, 2007, © Black River Productions, Ltd./Mitch Epstein. Courtesy Thomas Zander, Cologne

Politics are the driving agenda, according to Epstein. Workers who have contributed to the might of the nation become renegades when the power plants are abandoned or relocated. He sets out to tell their stories too.

“My pictures are complex because I want to produce a metaphorical narrative of things American and compress as much as I can into a single image,” he said.

It is not without irony that his panorama includes images of lakes once used to cool off nuclear power plants and that have now become leisure areas, mostly for immigrant workers.

The 65 pictures of scarred landscapes have a stand-alone perfection that makes them almost abstract. We are looking at a country’s destructive reliance on energy, but at its optimism as well.

Photography is a language, Epstein stated. “It is my job to use that language in all its fluency.”

“Early Color”

Sam Stourdzé, who curated the third show in a theatrical display that occupies the entire third floor of his museum, presented the works of Saul Leiter, too aged to be present.

Leiter, born in 1923, first trained as a painter before exploring photography. He discovered “street photography” by visiting the exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson at MoMa in 1947 and from there on began to photograph his environment. But he was less interested in scenes, than in capturing fragments of scenes.Saul Leiter: Early Color, Taxi, 1957

“His early attempts in black and white were fairly ordinary, but when he switched to colour, his eye as a painter and a colourist took over,” Strourdzé explained. Images become compositions, each one the beginning of a story.

“Leiter plunges us into a nostalgic America of the Fifties,” Stourdzé explained. “He is sharing his solitary moments of reverie.”

It is precisely the poetic dimension of The Other America that allows a documentary exhibition to emerge as art. Stourdzé is convinced that “visual narratives can transform the way we look at things”.

This is the first time the pictures have been shown in Switzerland.

Saul Leiter: Early Color, Parade, 1954

Innovative young designer Georgacopoulos takes over as head of ECAL design school

Alexis Georgacopoulos, new head of Ecal (photo Michèle Laird)

Article published by www.swissinfo.ch in an edited form on 15 August 2011

Taking risks will continue to be the order of the day for Switzerland’s premier design school under its new director.

Recently appointed to the helm of the Lausanne University of Art and Design (ECAL), Alexis Georgacopoulos has big shoes to fill following the 16-year reign of legendary Pierre Keller.

Keller transformed the small Lausanne art school into a major design university and relocated it to a former hosiery factory in Renens, which was redesigned by renowned Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi.

Bernard Tschumi’s renovation of the Iril Factory that now serves as ECAL © Peter Mauss

The school is now regarded by design magazine Wallpaper as “one of Europe’s leading art and design schools”,  and by Business Week as one of the top ten design schools in the world.

THE NEED TO SURPRISE

As he prepares his first year as ECAL director, he tells Swissinfo how he believes that risk-taking sparks the creativity that is the key to the school’s success.  It will continue to guide the school’s visual arts, industrial design and visual communication branches, he assures.

“We need to surprise our public, as well as our students.”

Georgacopoulos is no newcomer to ECAL since he arrived as a student in 1994 and has taken an active part in its spectacular development. By the age of 24 he had become the head of the industrial design department and has clocked up a number of design successes in his own right. He is now 35 years old.

“We realised very early on that good design results from taking risks and never repeating ourselves,” he said.

He identifies three events that allowed Ecal to become an international player: a prize in 2000 for a portable bread baguette design from the Saint Etienne Design Biennal; 2001’s inventive milking stools that continue to be presented at design fairs around the world; and anti-seismic tables.

“Baguette Portable”. By ECAL second year industrial design students under the direction of Alexis Georgacopoulos, 2000. Photo ECAL/Pierre Fantys

“People said we were completely mad, but in fact we were gaining the credentials that would allow us to create innovative partnerships with the companies that wanted to take the same risks as us,” Georgacopoulos said.

Furniture and kitchen makers B&B Italia and Boffi were the first on board, followed by Swiss International Air Lines, Nestlé, Swatch Group and Baccarat to name a few of the international companies which sought Ecal’s expertise.

PARTNERING UP WITH ALESSI

More recently, Italian design company Alessi asked Ecal design students to develop projects around the theme of the office and home study. The results were presented in Alessi’s showroom during the Milan Furniture Fair in April, and will travel to Belgium as part of Design September Brussels before heading to Tokyo’s Design Tide fair in October.

Alessi’s President Alberto Alessi said of the collaboration: “I am amazed by how much enthusiasm and depth was given to analyze the single functions, by the freshness of expression in all proposals and the pleasant quest for simplicity,” adding that the collaboration will carry on.

ECAL/Alessi, Salon international du Meuble de Milan 2011. Photo ECAL/Julien Chavaillaz

“Our students jump in the deep end,” Georgacopoulos indicates of the opportunity that ECAL offers them to work on partner projects already in their second year. “They receive immediate visibility and exposure and often cultivate the relationships that will serve them well when they leave the school.”

Nicolas Le Moigne began his training at Ecal in 2001. Two years later Italian interior design company Serralunga had already started producing his inclined “Pot au mur” flowerpot .

“It was unbelievable,” Le Moigne told swissinfo.ch while on his way to Mexico, where he will be teaching in a design school. “Ecal opens so many doors.”

He is now producing a magnetic candleholder with Atelier Pfister, created by the Swiss furniture store as a launching pad for young designers.

More than design

For Georgacopoulos, Ecal is much more than a design school. As evidence, he cites Ecal’s success at this year’s the Locarno Film Festival, at which three Ecal entries received prizes in the national short film competition.

“3 out of 3! An unbelievable success!” enthused Georgacopoulos. “Ecal is an art school where creativity is used to foster ideas and explore new directions in all areas.”

The short films presented in Locarno were the result of an alliance between the cinema section and Lausanne-based theatre school, La Manufacture. The project will be presented again at the Centre culturel suisse in Paris in November.

As for the visual arts, Georgacopoulos pointed to alumni artist Cyprien Gaillard, whose work will be exhibited at the Pompidou Centre modern art gallery in Paris this autumn, and David Hominal, Valentin Carron and Philippe Decrauzat whose work is also exhibited widely abroad.

“These are artists who reinvent themselves every day, often experimenting in new mediums,” he said.

This year more than 400 people applied for the 120 places at Ecal, and Georgacopoulos said his role is to act as something of a talent scout when interviewing prospective students.

“Under the layers of insecurity, you can usually spot those who have true potential and you start imagining the kinds of projects that they can start on. This is the thrilling part of my new job,” he said.

Designer Alexis Georgacopoulos

Class photo, ECAL/Lauris Paulus

Lust and Vice censored in Bern

Bruce Nauman, Vices and Virtues, 1983–1988/2008, Neon-Schrift (18-teilig), Courtesy of the artist and Stuart Collection, University of California, San Diego. Photo: Markus Mühlheim © 2010, ProLitteris, Zürich

A remarkable panorama on the portrayal of sin by artists over the last 11 centuries is being held at the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Zentrum Paul Klee. But the last-minute removal of 3 works on the theme of lust and the decision to restrict access to under 16 year-olds sends worried ripples through the art world. The public flocks, but is it for art or titillation?

The exhibition ‘Lust and Vice, the 7 deadly sins from Dürer to Nauman’ until February 13 at the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern has become a succès à scandale, precisely what it was seeking to avoid.

Coming hot on the trail of the much-disputed censorship of a retrospective in Paris of the American photographer Larry Clark, the last-minute removal of two pictures by the same artist from the exhibit has met with criticism, especially since one of the works is on the web anyway.

“There is definitely a before and after the Paris decision,” admits Juri Steiner, director of the Paul Klee Zentrum, where the section on lust is displayed.

He and his Kunstmuseum Bern counterpart, Matthias Frehner, made a last-minute joint decision to take out the two Larry Clark photographs, as well as an explicit watercolour of female genitalia by the German political expressionist George Grosz. They also established the age restriction rule.

In Paris, the popular Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë took the unprecedented decision to ban under 18 year-olds from seeing the Larry Clark photography retrospective Kiss the past hello at the Modern art museum.

For the past 50 years Clark has chronicled teenagers in situations of great vulnerability and sometimes distress as they discover lust and drugs. Google his name and you will understand.

“We decided to remove Clark’s photographs,” Steiner explains, “because we realized that they had the power to focalize attention at the cost of the 250 other works in the exhibition.”

Vice and Lust is the culmination of two and a half years of work by curators Fabienne Eggelhöfer (ZPK), Claudine Metzger (KMB) and Samuel Vitali (KMB).

The vivacious and spirited Fabienne Eggelhöfer takes time off to explain how the two major Bern institutions worked together to cover a theme that would be any curator’s dream.

“We have already collaborated together,” Eggelhöfer says, “but this is the first time we have worked on a theme,” adding that the combination  secured more significant loans.

“It has been interesting, if not always easy,” she develops, explaining that the three curators met together every week. Without any subject segmentation, they discussed their different perceptions of sin and come to an agreement on the choice of the art works.

 

Jealousy: Fernand Cormon, Jalousie au sérail, 1874, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon

The seven deadly sins, Fabienne Eggelhöfer explains, were defined as early as the late antiquity under the Egyptians to preserve the monastic vow of an intact relationship with God. This meant proscribing the sinful thoughts or behaviours that could get in the way.

These included pride, greed, envy, anger, laziness, gluttony and lust.

 

Lust: Sigmar Polke, Ohne Titel, 1973, Kunstmuseum Bern Sammlung Toni Gerber
Bern – Schenkung, 1983 © 2010, ProLitteris, Zürich

 

“The seven sins became a reoccurring theme throughout art history,” Eggelhöfer says, although it was sometimes difficult for the curators to decide to which category a work should be assigned.

Furthermore, she points out, values change. Greed is now cultivated by contemporary marketing strategies. We are constantly being invited to gain points, clock up miles, win a car.

 

Greed: Thomas Couture, La soif de l’or, 1844, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse

Lust is another case in point, she says, since the notion of lust being sinful was society’s attempt at limiting unwanted births and children without families. The advent of the pill in the 60s transformed the situation.

(Notice how it also ushered into art the male member in its erectile state. Various examples are on display.)

“When selecting the pieces to illustrate sin, we were careful to choose artists who had more than a single work to suit the themes,” Fabienne Eggelhöfer emphasizes, “and who showed an interest in the human condition.”

“I would be mistreating an oeuvre if I were to use it to illustrate my own ideas,” she says.

 

Sloth (laziness): Markus Muntean / Adi Rosenblum, Untitled (Everything was as it had…),
2001, Sammlung Dr. Fuchs, Wien

The three curators have succeeded in creating a harmonious ensemble that avoids a moralistic stance. “We don’t refer to homosexuality,” Eggelhöfer specifies, “because this is an exhibition on sin.”

When it came to distributing the works between the two museums, decisions came easily, she indicates.

The Kunstmuseum, with its smaller rooms was to receive the more spiritual pieces and cover the themes of pride, envy, greed and anger, whereas the Zentrum Paul Klee would expose the larger and more “carnal” works, while concentrating on lust, gluttony and sloth.

“But in some instances, we changed our minds at the last minute and transferred a selected piece from one category to another.”

Delightful fine-lined drawings by Klee are dispersed throughout, some of them decidedly naughty, others a lot of fun and they could belong anywhere.

 

Gluttony: Martin Parr, Luxury USA, Los Angeles, 2008, Galerie Nicola von Senger, Zürich

The section on lust is divided into two sections, the one with works of more overt sexuality is sectioned off with the warning:

“Lust and Vice is not suitable for adolescents under the age of 16. Some of the works on display in the Zentrum Paul Klee may be considered as pornographic and might shock them and perhaps even you. The cultural value of these works justifies their protection.”

Would such a warning not have sufficed?

Bernard Fibicher, director of the cantonal fine arts museum in Lausanne, does not understand a decision that he qualifies as “irresponsible”.

“The organisation of an exhibition implies an internal mechanism of censorship,” he says. “At each stage, you have to ask yourself what are the risks and if you can stand by your choices.”

In 2005, Fibicher organised the controversial exhibition on contemporary Chinese art at the same Bern Kunstmuseum in which the head of a human foetus grafted onto a seagull’s body was exhibited to general outcry.

“You have to think things through before, not afterwards,” he argues.

“I also find it disturbing that self-censorship in Switzerland should be the result of something that is happening elsewhere,” Fibicher points out.

In recent interviews with the Financial Times and Le Monde, Larry Clark says of the censorship of his Paris show, “I think it’s just the stupidest thing in the world . . . it’s an attack on youth and on teenagers in general,” whom, he believes, receive the message that they should be swallowing garbage from the web instead of going to art museums.

Over 18 year-olds, he suggests, should be the ones barred from the exhibition.

 

Pride: Daniela Rossell, Untitled (Itati next to her pool), from the serie “Third World Blondes“
2001, Galleria Alberto Peola, Turin

“It is true,” Fabienne Eggelhöfer concedes, “that we would probably have done a different choice of works had we known.”

“But nevertheless, we had a great time putting it together,” she says, reminding us of the many prestigious works that can be admired until February 20, including by Marina Abramovic, Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, Albrecht Dürer, Fischli / Weiss, Gilbert & George,  Paul Klee, Bruce Nauman, Martin Parr, Sigmar Polke, Peter Paul Rubens, Cindy Sherman, Yinka Shonibare, Andy Warhol and many more.

Zurich museum recreates key Picasso exhibition

Pablo Picasso, 1933, photo Man Ray © Man Ray Trust/2010 ProLitteris, Zurich

To celebrate its centenary, Kunsthaus Zurich restages the mythical 1932 retrospective that was to establish Picasso as one of the most radical artists of the 20th century. Originally curated by Picasso himself, the show offers insight into his creative genius and keys to understanding his work. The last major Picasso retrospective took place 30 years ago.

There has not been a major Picasso retrospective since the one that took place in 1980 at MoMA, the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Exhibitions with Picasso’s works are programmed continuously all over the world (see list of recent examples at end), but none of the displays can claim to illustrate the meaningful journey of an artist into his creativity through his own selection of works.

Picasso, his first museum exhibition 1932 at the Kunsthaus in Zurich until January 30, 2011 revives the show that took place at Kunsthaus Zurich in autumn 1932 and in which Picasso played a major curatorial role.

Pablo Picasso, Mandolin and Guitar (Mandoline et guitare), 1924, Oil with sand on canvas, 140,7 x 200,3 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York © 2010 ProLitteris, Zurich

A first version of the exhibition had taken place in Paris in the spring of 1932 at the private Georges Petit gallery.

Piqued by his rivalry with Matisse, who had exposed in the same venue a year before, Picasso selected emblematic pieces from 1899 onwards, which he scattered amongst the large-scale compositions that he had feverishly prepared for the show.

Discovering Picasso’s more recent works, the then director of the Kunsthaus, Wilhelm Wartmann, who had travelled to Paris to see the show, had the foresight to distinguish that Picasso “was in a league of his own” and dropped his original idea of a joint Picasso/Braque/Léger presentation.

“What we have done at the Kunsthaus is a retrospective in retrospective,” curator Tobi Bezzola says of a project that took five years to complete. Because the original catalogue contained no illustrations, he and his collaborators have painstakingly reassembled the exhibition’s puzzle.

Pablo Picasso, Pitcher and Fruit Bowl (Pichet et coupe de fruits), 1931, Oil on canvas , 130,2 x 194,9 cm
Saint Louis Art Museum, Legat Morton D. May © 2010 ProLitteris, Zurich

They were able to identify and locate the 240 works that were included in the original Zurich exhibition and have obtained the loan of more than 100 of them.

Interestingly, the largest number of works in the 1932 exhibition came from a collection in Lausanne belonging to Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber (1880-1959), who was described during a visit to America in 1930 as “without any question the most important collector of modern art in Europe today”.

The timing for the first exhibition was perfect, Bezzola believes, because, coming right after the stock market crash, a number of collectors, including Reber, needed to sell, whilst gallery owners and art dealers needed to collaborate to survive. The status of the Kunsthaus allowed the sale of the works on show.

“The scientific reconstitution of a historically important show,” he indicates, “was the legitimatization to knock on important doors” and secure loans that would have been virtually impossible to obtain otherwise.

But not a single painting was obtained without lengthy negotiations, he points out. More than 40 institutions and countless private collectors have agreed to part with their works during the show, which is exclusive to Zurich and will travel nowhere else.

Installation view, photo © jpg-factory.com

“We toyed with the idea of holding it in the galleries of the Kunsthaus where it originally took place, but this proved to be impossible for reasons of flow and access of visitors and also because it would have meant emptying out our permanent collections.”

Insurance costs, which already represent two thirds of the budget, would have soared even higher.

Because this ruled out the idea of visually recreating the original show, Bezzalo decided on an installation that clearly divides Picasso’s earlier production from his conceptual breakthrough in the late 20s and early 30s. “I really wanted to preserve two distinctive parts to the show,” he indicates.

Visitors first walk into an intimate display of Picasso’s pink and blue periods and Cubist and neo-classical phase that resonate gently against walls painted in the Kunsthaus’s signature green-grey.

Another section is devoted to Picasso’s immense ability as a draughtsman, reminding us that he was not just a painter.

Loves of Jupiter and Semele, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1930, Copperplate etching on paper, 22.5 x 17.2 cm
Kunsthaus Zürich, Collection of Prints and Drawings © 2010 ProLitteris, Zurich

The selection of paintings is an instant lesson in art history covering the beginning of the last century, whilst tossing up clues to Picasso’s evolution from one style to the next, particularly the influence of African art on subsequent Cubism.

Then suddenly a wide open space, with glaringly white walls that are fanned out diagonally, introduces visitors to Picasso’s febrile new production leading up to the 1932 exhibition. Following his encounter with the blond Marie-Thérèse Walther who was 27 years younger, the 50-year-old artist entered into a period of explosive creativity.

“I wanted these works to be visible together at a glance,” Bezzola explains, “to allow us to better understand the relationship between them.”

Installation view, photo © FBM Studio Zürich

Picasso, he points out, worked simultaneously in several styles and was constantly experimenting in different mediums. “He would work on a neo-classical composition in the morning, launch into Cubism in the afternoon and finish with Surrealism.”

“This exhibition allows people to see the elements that he chose and combined,” the curator underlines, as well as the variety of techniques in which he experimented, including adding sand to oil paint.

Shocked by the apparent chaos of the artist, the world-famous psychologist and psychotherapist C.G. Jung pronounced the painter a schizophrenic, claiming that his pictures “immediately reveal their alienation from feeling”.

“One has to remember that the flow of information was very different at that time and people were easily confused,” Bezzola points out.

“But by 1932, Picasso had developed most of his formal repertory, so this exhibition can be said to cover the important part of his oeuvre,” he suggests.

Pablo Picasso, Bathers with Beach Ball (Baigneuses au ballon), 1928, Oil on canvas, 15,9 x 21,9 cm
Private collection © 2010 ProLitteris, Zurich

It is also an exhibition of historical importance, since it “may have been one of the first times a living artist was invited to present his works in a museum environment,” the curator says, pointing out that the Zurich Kunsthaus was actually founded as an artist’s association and not a museum.

The concept of presenting contemporary art by a living artist was to lay the foundations for the creation of modern art museums, but only several decades later.

Asked if there were any pieces that he regretted not including in the exhibition, Bezzola mentions the sensuous masterpiece Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, a portrait of Walter that Picasso is said to have painted on a single day in March 1932.

Cecil Beaton, Pablo Picasso, 1933. Courtesy the Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s
(not in exhibition)

To be loaned from the Brody estate, where it has been since 1951, the painting was sold one month ago by Christies following the recent decease of Sidney Brody. It sold for more than 106 million US dollars, the highest amount ever paid for a work of art in an auction.

“Traditionally, art collectors love to be involved in the art world,” Bezzola observes, “but I am now encountering for the first time collectors who are not in the least bit interested in art. They are simply investors who are approachable only through their lawyers.”

Major works of art will predictably become more difficult to expose. Combined with mounting insurance costs, exhibitions like the current one at Kunsthaus Zurich may become a rarity.

To gain overall insight into the kaleidoscope mind of a genius, this might be your last chance.

Picasso
Until January 30, 2011

Kunsthaus Zürich
Heimplatz 1
CH–8001 Zurich

Opening times:
Sat/Sun/Tues 10am–6pm
Wed–Fri 10am–8pm
Closed Mondays

Recent examples of how Picasso keeps museums busy and publics flocking through recent partial expos: Picasso: themes and variations (MoMa, New York), Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (Gagosian, London), Klee meets Picasso (Zentrum Klee, Bern), Picasso and the masters (Grand Palais, Paris), Picasso: portrait of soul (Suntory, Tokyo), only a few examples of many more.

Landmark exhibition presents wallpaper as art

Astrid

Astrid Berglund from the Pully Museum before Andy Warhol’s Mao wallpaper, 1973

To celebrate wallpaper not as decoration, but as a new medium for artistic expression, the mudac in Lausanne and Pully museum present a landmark exhibition. Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst and Jenny Holzer are amongst the 50 international artists and designers whose wallpapers, some of them rarely seen before, are included in the show. The result is elegant, intriguing and not a little provocative.

“Covering the wall. Contemporary wallpapers” – a close collaboration between mudac, the Lausanne museum of contemporary design and applied arts, and the Pully museum – celebrates the artistic revival of wall paper.

Long abandoned in favour of white wall minimalism, wallpaper is now being revitalized and revisited.

Contemporary artists over the past ten years have become interested in a medium that offers the possibility to make a statement in a profoundly poetic manner while finding a way into people’s homes.

Inspired by Warhol’s forays into art multiplication in the 70s (his 1973 Mao wallpaper is in the exhibition), publishers have followed closely behind.

Independent curator Marco Costantini is one of the first art historians to have become interested in the use of wallpaper by contemporary artists and designers. The exhibition he has organized for Lausanne and Pully is a panorama of his research started in 2002 and includes several gems.

Studio Job, Perished, 2005 © Studio Job, one of several wallpapers that use disquieting images to remarkable decorative effect

 

Dan Graham, Two-Way Mirror Hedge Labyrinth For Korea, 2009  © Dan Graham, Courtesy Maharam (New York)

 

Jenny Holzer, Inflammatory Essays, 1979-82 and Sarah Lucas, Tits inspace, 2000
make strong statements of subtle feminism

 

“We are experiencing a revolution in wallpaper,” he says, “as it abandons its decorative purpose to become something more meaningful.”

Working on the preparation of the exhibition for the last three years, Costantini has divided the display into 13 themes, which he has organized to spectacular effect in the two museums.

Topics covered range from consumerism to political statements, but they also include colour-by number decors, effective hybridizations between different patterns and some examples that are boldly ironic or simply humoristic.

Reviewed within the context of the development of contemporary art, the show reflects a clear return to narration by many artists. These are walls that tell stories.

 

Rudolf Herz, Zugzwang, 1995, with the ironic juxtaposition of portraits of Marcel Duchamp and Adolf Hitler taken by same photographer. Custom-edited to fit a room at mudac, the work is exposed for only the third time

 

 

Virgil Marti, Beer Can Library, 1997 (left) and Claude Closky, Sans titre (Supermarché), 1996-99 (right)

It also opens a door to the democratisation of art. Although several of the wallpapers by artists can only be obtained through their galleries, others can be purchased directly through publishers. Wallpapers by artists and Maharam even provide online catalogues.

The work by the designers on the other hand has always been more readily available, although an opening frontier due to the potential of new technologies is producing interesting developments. Wallpapers that heat, absorb sound or respond to Iphones (by Nodesign.net) complete the display at mudac.

Other designers come up with novel ways to hang wallpapers. M/M (Paris), composed of Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak, consider that their wallpaper should be treated as a poster that is hung by stapling only the upper corners to the wall.

“I was really interested to work together with museums that have fundamentally different vocations,” Costantini told Swisster. The mudac covers design, whereas Pully is essentially dedicated to the fine arts.

“By showing how very contemporary artists and designers are rediscovering the medium, but how wallpapers are dissolving the frontiers between their two practices,” he believes that the joint exhibition acts something like a metaphor.

“Some happy accidents have occurred,” Costantini observes, when, for example, Damien Hirst’s butterfly wallpaper echoes the beauty of the original painting on the wooden beams of the mudac, or a fireplace in Pully interrupts a wallpapered surface that beckons old-fashioned portraits.

He admits that the exhibition is also a tribute to his own grandfather, a house painter whom he often saw papering walls.

 

Brigitte Ziegler, Shooting Wallpaper, 2008, video projection © Brigitte Ziegler
The artist highjacks the pastoral scenes of Toile de Jouy with the interruption of a blasting device like a tank

The two museums where the exhibition takes place have been stripped bare to allow the wallpapers to be plastered directly on the vertical surfaces: the 60 different examples espouse the space and are set out in a way where miraculously none rivals the other.

“Both were originally homes,” says Chantal Prod’Hom, director of mudac, “and this project, although ephemeral, allows them to regain their initial status.”

The fact that the project is purpose-built, custom-tailored and site-specific gives it a natural beauty and elegance, while being eye-arresting and intellectually engaging.

“We decided on this radical approach, accepting the fact that the exhibition cannot travel, since the wallpapers will be ripped off at the end,” which is why, Chantal Prod’Hom explains, the teams from the two museums have produced a milestone catalogue in English and French.

Damien Hirst, Pharmacy Wallpaper, 1997-2004, (c) Hirst Holdings Limited & Damien Hirst (all rights reserved, 2010) / 2010 Prolitteris Zurich

“The project grew out of a common desire to show how wallpaper is positioned at the crossroad of art and design,” says Delphine Rivier, who directs the Pully museum, highlighting the fact that the project was able to grow in size and importance due to an “exceptional partnership” that doubled the surfaces.

She believes that the project is opening a new field of research, as the many art historians who contributed to the catalogue appear to testify.

“But two museums were not enough,” she jests, so they have also teamed up with the Swiss national museum Château de Prangins that is presenting From wall to wallpaper, subtitled ‘The poetry of walls’.

A rich collection of examples from the 16th century to the contemporary are on show until May 1, 2011, with tickets that can be combined with Pully and Lausanne.

“I wasn’t at all convinced by the subject,” Jean-François Thonney, mayor of Pully, said at the opening, “but I’m delighted by the result.”

“It is the role of cultural institutions to lead us to discoveries and this team has surpassed itself,” he said.

A roundtable discussion will take place on Sunday, November 21 at the Pully Museum with the participation of Gill Saunders, Senior curator of prints, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (UK). Entrance and a brunch will be free.

Key to understanding Andy Warhol on view in Basel

Warhol, Flowers [Large Flowers] 1964, Glenstone, Md © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich

The 70 paintings and drawings by Andy Warhol on view at Kunstmuseum Basel cover a pivotal period in the development of an artist best remembered for his flaming silk-screened prints of American icons. But the Basel expo, covering years 1961 to 1964, aims to show that Warhol was much more than just a Pop designer.

When Warhol produced the silk-screened portraits of American icons, including Coca Cola bottles, Campbell soup cans and Liz Taylor and presented them as art, he acquired instant fame, but was he really being taken seriously?

The exhibition “Andy Warhol. The Early Sixties” at Kunstmuseum Basel until January 23, 2011 sets out to show how Warhol’s reputation as a master of Pop art should not obscure his authenticity as an artist.

The four years between 1961 and 64 represent the pivotal period during which Warhol progressively abandoned painting in favour of silk-screening and other methods of multiple production.

“It was a time during which Warhol developed his entire pictorial language,” Bernhard Mendes Bürgi, director of the Kunstmuseum and co-curator of the exhibition indicates.

  

Left: Big Torn Campbell’s Soup Can (Vegetable Beef), 1962 © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich

Right: Do It Yourself (Flowers), 1962, Photo: Daros Collection, Schweiz © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich

Kunstmuseum Basel has completed its own Warhol collection with loans from private collections and American museums to produce a show that contains pieces that are engagingly familiar, but that are presented in a way to cast a new light on Warhol.

Nina Zimmer, who co-curated the exhibition with Mendes Bürgi explains in an exclusive interview how the project was developed and why it only covers a short period in Warhol’s artistic life.

The starting point, she says, was the prescient acquisition of three early Warhol works at the beginning of the 70s by the then Kunstmuseum director, Franz Meyer.

“We are proud of our tradition of buying American art when it was still considered revolutionary and controversial,” Nina Zimmer points out.

The museum also purchased a large number of Warhol drawings for a 1998 retrospective.

Ginger Rogers, 1962, Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett, Karl August Burckhardt-Koechlin-Fonds, Photo: Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin P. Bühler © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich

“But it wasn’t until we prepared the present show that we discovered that we own the second largest collection of Warhol drawings in the world, after the Pittsburgh Warhol Museum,” Zimmer says.

Born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1928, Andy Warhol was the son of a coalminer from Slovakia who studied pictorial design at what was to become Carnegie Mellon University before moving to New York at the age of 21.

For more than a decade he worked in illustration and advertising, successfully earning a living as a commercial artist closely associated with the fashion and record making industry. By the time he was 30, he had begun a parallel career.

In 1961, the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles presented Warhol’s first fine arts solo exhibition on the theme of Campbell’s Soup Cans, followed the same year by the Stable Gallery in New York, so named because it was located in a former livery stable in lower Manhattan.

Coca Cola, dollar bills, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley were already part of his imagery.


 

Left: Double Elvis [Ferus Type], 1963, Sammlung Froehlich, Stuttgart, Photo: Sammlung Froehlich, Stuttgart © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich

Right: Liz #1 [Early Colored Liz], 1963, Private Collection © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich

“He originally painted everything by hand,” Zimmer points out, “but gradually, as he starts to introduce mechanical means, he abandons painting.”

“We decided to concentrate on this precise passage from painterly expression to silk-screening, but we also wanted to show how Warhol preserves smudges and mistakes in his reproductions as if to constantly remind us of a human presence,” she reveals.

“Warhol’s gradual and deliberate detachment from painting was a truly radical gesture,” she says, adding that there is belief defended by art historians and critics that Warhol’s ‘anti-painting’ changed the course of art.

On the occasion of a 2000 exhibition in New York dedicated to the same “heyday” between 1962 and 1965, Jerry Saltz wrote in the Village Voice: “You can hear the clang of history around him. The train of American art history leaps off the track and begins a new course, the one we’re on now, with Warhol. It’s hard to imagine where we’d be without him.”

“If you think you know these most famous paintings, think again, because these works can set your mind on fire,” Saltz adds.

The years covered by the exhibition saw the assassination of Kennedy and the death of Marilyn Monroe in the US, but according to Zimmer, Warhol’s stance is always one of indifference.

Green Disaster #2, 1963, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Photo Robert Häusser © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / 2010, ProLitteris, Zurich

“When he deals with the subject of death, he empties it of meaning to retain only the shock value and use it as ornamentation, as he does is the series where he uses the images of car crashes to create a pattern.” (In the exhibition).

By 1964, according to Zimmer, Warhol had completed the trajectory of his pictorial language.

He turned to filmmaking and became a fixture of the New York nightlife before almost dying from gunshot wounds inflicted by a disgruntled female former collaborator.

When he eventually returned to painting in the 70s with his portraits of Mao, he basically used the same techniques, Nina Zimmer points out.

Warhol died unexpectedly in 1987 of complications from a gall bladder operation. But his estate was in remarkable order and is managed by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, a formidable watchdog for the authenticity of the works that spilled out of Warhol’s “Factory”.

“By concentrating on his early period, we are claiming that Warhol’s rich artistic practices were already in place by 1964,” Zimmer summarizes.

Until January 23, 2011

Andy Warhol. The Early Sixties
Paintings and Drawings 1961-1964
Curators: Bernhard Mendes Bürgi & Nina Zimmer

With works on loan from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum and MoMa (Museum of Modern Art) and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh

Additional insight into showman Warhol (not in the exhibition) can be obtained by viewing a short 1981 film by Danish director Jorgen Leth in which Andy Warhol eats a Hamburger. He nibbles at a hamburger, the ultimate symbol of Americana, but instead of smothering it with Ketchup, he dips it gingerly into a tiny dollop on the side of the plate.

Vevey lives up to its ‘Images’

Li Wei, ‘Levels of freedom’, one of the highlights of Vevey ‘Images’ posted on a gigantic bill board opposite the train station

Branded “City of images”, Vevey lives up to its reputation. “Images” is a free visual arts festival that invades the lakeside city every two years. A myriad of international artists contribute to an ambitious programme that runs indoors and outdoors until September 26, featuring works by cult American film director David Lynch and by French art activist JR, whose monumental frescoes speak louder than words.

When Stefano Stoll, head of the cultural department of Vevey became director in 2008 of Images, an event created in 1995, it was a a biennial attended mainly by photography professionals.

He tells Swisster how he decided to transform it into an open-air festival of the visual arts for the public at large. “I don’t generally like open-air exhibitions,” he admits, “because they are often disconnected from their environment.”

“So we decided to take another approach. In our festival, each image has been carefully chosen in relation to a specific part of the urban and lakeside environment of Vevey,” Stoll says, adding that only then can it resonate with the setting and become meaningful. His hope is that even the artists will look at their works differently.

Stefano Stoll, Director of ‘Images’ festival and head of Vevey culture department, 3 September 2010 photo  Laird

This year’s edition is spread out amongst 30 different venues, all within a distance of less than a kilometer. Like a treasure hunt for adults and children, startling discoveries are to be made at the different street corners of Vevey.

“To find the right fit between 45 artists and a particular spot in an urban environment is what takes a long time,” Stoll explains.

When a choice is finalized with the artist, a technical team comprising of a full-time photo-lithographer, two graphic designers and eight technicians steps in. It takes several months to deck out the city with a site-specific display that does not shy away from complexity.

During the final stages of mounting, more than 20 people are at work, not to mention the communication and project managers. “I have a dream team this year,” Stoll recognizes.

Monumental pictures larger than Broadway billboards rub elbows with delicate photographic friezes dotted along the streets. Two examples give an idea of the contrasts obtained:

The work of Chinese artist Li Wei from his series “29 levels of freedom” drapes over the entire facade of the BCV on the Grande Place, arresting the busy train passengers pouring out of the station, while a triptych on the theme of “Love at the high place” adorns the empty spaces of the covered market on Place de la Grenette.

Li Wei, whose improbable pictures of flying individuals are real, obtained with pullies and mirrors, not Photoshop, gave a spectacular performance for the opening of “Images” during which he climbed onto the fork sculpture in the lake off Vevey and stood upside down at its summit.

Li Wei ‘Love at the high place’ at Grenette (partial view)

Li Wei stands upside down on fork sculpture, Vevey, Lake Geneva, 5 September 2010 © Céline Michel

Jean-Christian Bourcart requires a more intimate environment. The pictures he shot at weddings to earn his living before he left France wrap around the lovely Eglise Saint Claire, whereas his series “Camden”, his stark portraiture of violence in the US, where he has been living since 1997, find refuge in Théâtre de Vevey.

 

Jean Christian Bourcart, ‘The most beautiful day of my life’, (Paris, 1980 – ongoing) at Eglise Saint Claire

Jean Christian Bourcart ‘Camden’ at Vevey Theatre

Stoll stresses how “Images” is the result of an intense collaboration between local cultural institutions and galleries, with the generous support of the city of Vevey and sponsors, including home-based Nestlé.

It also celebrates the seventh Vevey International Grand prix of photography (that received over 1,000 submissions from five continents this year) and the fifth European Grand prix of first films, both of which have rewarded young talents that have since made a name for themselves.

The ‘Images’ programme this year includes a David Lynch film retrospective, that partners an exhibition organized by the Vevey Jenisch Museum of his equally disturbing art work entitled David Lynch. I hold you tight.

David Lynch, Mulholland Drive

The headquarters of the festival, complete with welcoming centre, boutique and bookshop, are housed in the former EPA department store that was ripped of its fixtures before refurbishment. The place in its present state is magical.

The four floors have become an ephemeral museum with 15 exhibitions, including the world-famous Carola et Günther Ketterer-Ertle video art collection.

An annexe to the festival, but one that stays open all year is Quai No. 1, the gallery located on the first floor of the train station that was inaugurated by Stoll at the beginning of the year.

“I’m especially pleased to be presenting the first photographic work of Belgian artist, Hans Op de Beeck,” Stoll enthuses.

“At his request, we have painted the walls of the gallery the same deep grey as the new carpeting to envelope his black and white pictures. A lone figure lost in thought lounges in a hyper-realistic environment that is in fact computer generated. There is a Hopper-like dreaminess in the pictures,” Stoll points out.

Hans Op de Beeck at Quai No. 1

“I’m not aiming for the experts,” the director reveals. “My target is the step-mother, or if you prefer, the person who does not go into a museum.”

“But you cannot show photography in the open air without provoking reactions,” he says. “You can show pictures that have no message, but as soon as you present something that is meaningful it relates one way or another to someone’s life. Intrusion is the theme running throughout the exhibition.”

Stoll mentions the reaction of a Vevey inhabitant who said that it was a scandal to show how beautiful a nuclear bomb can be.

Michael Light ’100 Suns’ along Quai Perdonnet

The aptly named American photographer Michael Light retrieved a hundred photographs of nuclear explosions taken between July 1945 and November 1962 (by Hollywood cameramen sworn to secrecy) that were lying dormant in American military archives.

“100 Suns”, the alarmingly aesthetic images of nuclear bombs line Quai Perdonnet against the tranquil beauty of Lake Geneva.

Ironically, the project “Unframed” by French art activist JR and coproduced by the Elysée photography museum in Lausanne, has not caused a public stir so far.

the 27-year-old JR has attained worldwide notoriety with his pictures of imams and rabbis disposed without permission on both sides of the Palestine/Israel divide, or with his portraits of women that serve to protect the favela shacks in Rio from rain.

JR, Lehnert & Landrock, Egypt 1923- 1930, the mosque of Imâm Ash-Shâfi î, Cairo / JR with team at work pasting on the strips © Céline Michel


Amongst the 14 images that he chose in the Elysée archives to plaster on monumental surfaces in Vevey – and that alone would form a festival – is the photograph of an Egyptian mosque.

The minaret towers over Vevey train station, raising more smiles in the country that voted against minarets, than it does scowls.

Around 2,000 visitors attended the inauguration of “Images” this weekend, more than 3,000 visited the shows.

Delirious musical ‘Silo 8’ lights up summer skies

Karl’s kühne Gassenschau ‘Silo 8′ sets St Triphon quarry alight, photo Laird

“Silo 8″, the latest show by the cult Swiss-German Karl’s kühne Gassenschau, packs in crowds of all ages with its distinctive mixture of adventure, comedy, music and fireworks. An abandoned quarry near Aigle serves as an open-sky theatre for adventures that are wild and funny, with no need to understand the words.

With Monty Python humour, Wallace & Gromit poetry and Barnum and Bailey antics, the Karl’s kühne Gassenschau produces delirious shows for all audiences in the most unexpected places.

The troupe, started 25 years ago and still run by the four founding members, is the living proof that the Swiss can be imaginative, irreverent, outrageous and funny.

With its spoofy title – “Karl’s kühne Gassenschau” means “Charles’ bold street show” – the company has presented more than 2,000 performances before a million people over the years without ever losing its initial vitality.

The latest production, Silo 8, describes the hilarious attempts by a pack of oldies to escape their futuristic retirement home. The abandoned quarry of St Triphon (visible from the motorway) near Aigle serves as the dramatic backdrop for their frantic frolics.

Human car wash with elevated conveyor belt, photos Laird

This is the fourth time the Karl’s kühne Gassenschau has taken over the quarry for the summer months, after r.u.p.t.u.r.e in 1995, t.r.a.f.i.c in 2001 and akua in 2004 and 2005.

“After shows on the themes of traffic congestion and water, we wanted to do something on air and flying,” says co-founder Ernesto Graf, “but the idea developed into a metaphor for escape.”

Karl’s kühne Gassenschau ‘Silo 8′, photo Bernhard Fuchs

“Because they are confined to retirement homes and to their aging bodies, we thought that old people would make the perfect candidates for a tale of escape,” he adds.

The show spins the clock forward by 40 years and takes us to 2050 where the elderly are packed off to silos in the “autumn of their lives”.

“Silo 8″ is the kingdom of the terrifying Dr. Wolf who rules with an iron hand and bouncing iron legs. The first thing he does when the pensioners arrive is to “free them of their past and nostalgia” by pumping the memory out of their heads.

But the love between Alfredo and Aurora, a frail and darling Italian couple remains. It serves as the poetic anchor of the show, while the four other pensioners go wild.

Karl’s kühne Gassenschau ‘Silo 8′, photo Bernhard Fuchs

“Our old-age pensioners aspire to become as light as air,” explains Brigitte Maag, who together with Paul Weilenmann, invents the imaginative scenarios. They also direct and play in all the shows.

“We start by making a series of sketches to give the show its visual force. Then master technician Markus Heller, who is also one of the founding members, makes the prototypes with his team, while Neil Filby writes the musical backbone.”

With an imagination worthy of Monty Python’s Terry Gillian in his landmark film Brazil, weird and wonderful machines carry the action and make the scenes unforgettable.

In an atmosphere halfway between a circus and a rodeo, we assist wild chases on motorized wheelchairs, human car-washes with the pensioners hanging in mid-air and meals delivered straight into their gullets by petrol pumps.

Karl’s kühne Gassenschau “Silo 8″, photo Bernhard Fuchs

Inventive and lively music by Neil Filby, a Brit who has been with the company since 1994, and who plays with three other accomplished musicians, paces the show and serves as its emotional cement. They make up the Pheromones (catch a sample on their website).

Neil Filby and the Pheromenes, photo Laird

“The actors then give life to the show. As always, improvisation is part of our creative process,” indicate Magg and Weillenmann.

The whole thing could be terribly camp and cruel, especially when dealing with the sensitive subject of old age. Who wants to see decrepit oldies prancing on a stage?

But rest assured: the caricatures are so outrageous that they are never mean. The pensioners are having such a good time that they forget their arthritis and so do we.

Good Morning, nurse Jessica get the pensioners out of their locker beds, photo Laird

“Take in a good breath,” says Jojo the rebel rouser to his accomplice Pierrot. “This is the smell of liberty!” he declares enthusiastically before discovering with disappointment that their great escape has failed once again.

But it all comes together and the final scene alone – with its intense poetry – is worth the trip to St. Triphon.

“We like to play out of doors because we like grand images in big open spaces,” the artists declare, “and we like to play with earth, water and fire.”

Although the audience is comfortably protected from the weather on bleachers covered by an awning, the actors play come rain or shine. “We are constantly flirting with danger,” they admit.

The result is slapstick comedy with a sweep of tenderness and the exhilarating danger of a tightrope act.

Museum receives major works as confidence mounts for new home

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), Glion, Vue sur le lac Léman, Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Vaud

The ill-fated project to move Vaud fine arts museum out of its present premises may be reaching a new turn. As plans begin in earnest to transform part of Lausanne’s train station into a jewel museum that unites photography and design as well, the mood is upbeat. A philanthropist and a collector show their confidence by making major gifts by Kokoschka and Giacometti to the museum.

During a ceremony organized on 1 June 2010, the Vaud Culture Minister, Anne-Catherine Lyon and Bernard Fibisher, the Vaud Fine Arts Museum Director accepted a gift from the collector Dr Marcel Bahro of two drawings by Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966):  Annetta and an unidentified personne playing halma, s.d. (c. 1925) et Child’s head from front and side (recto), Plate of Apples (verso), s.d.

Thanks to the donation of a generous amount in favour of the new museum, a painting by Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), Glion, Vue sur le lac Léman (1956), has recently been purchased and was unveiled on the same occasion.

Bernard Fibisher, Director museum and Anne-Catherine Lyon, Vaud culture minister present Oskar Kokoshka view of the Leman, 1 June 2010

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