Library Culture Picks by Mike Duffy: April 2019

The Fondation Custodia once again brings to Paris an outstanding exhibition, in this case 200 European and Russian prints and drawings spanning five centuries, showcasing major artists and movements through examples almost never seen since their acquisition by Russian collectors and state museums. Works on paper are particularly sensitive to light and even those in much smaller collections are displayed sparingly, so this is an opportunity to revel in watercolor, goache, pen and ink or colored pencil finished drawings, preliminary sketches and prints, featuring famous as well as unknown artists from the past 500 years. With roughly half of the pieces from before 1900 and half after, this is a veritable history of Western art.

While the survey of drawing and prints from 1500 to 1900, the first half of the exhibition, is in itself impressive in scope (Véronèse, Tièpolo, Watteau, Renoir, Degas), there are several standouts among the 100+ works. Albrecht Dürer’s twisting and turning pudgy putti from 1495 displayed in a case in the first room start the earliest Renaissance drawings on a fun note while Parmigianino’s delicate, sweet, red ink Études de têtes (Studies of heads, 1525-1527) reveal the skill and attention to details that characterize the period. Among four Ruben’s pieces, Centaur conquered by Love (1605-1608) shows how lifelike strength can be captured by black chalk (while a marble version resides in the Louvre), and in a few lines a small Rembrandt from 1650 reveals a quick impression of a pose, a real person even if only seen from the back. A true highlight is Fragonard’s The Attack (late 1770s) the brown ink fluid lines of which attract your eye across the third room. This surprising, intense drawing contains dynamic movement as one boxer recoils or flinches away from the fist of the other. Adding a distinctive and special note to the first part of this exhibition are several Golden Age drawings of humble cottages in the Dutch countryside and four Romantic period works of dreamy melancholy by the notable German artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774 – 1840). As the 19th Century section closes, a preliminary sketch for a painting by Vincent Van Gogh illustrates the role of drawing in preparing for another work and, in this case, the careful, detailed attention Van Gogh paid to planning the colors he would use in a work influenced by Japanese prints.

Among the excellent examples of 20th Century drawings, there are concentrations of works by Picasso, Matisse, and Léger. The avant-garde, the experimenters, the Futurists, the Blue Rider appear here — Robert Delaunay, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Giorgio De Chirico, Amedeo Modigliani, among others — presenting a panorama of modern styles and techniques. About a quarter of this half of the exhibition, though, is found in the works of several major figures of the century. An alcove containing 6 Picasso pieces brings the start and development of Cubism to the fore, while 7 Léger works round out Cubism and his particular move beyond its initial thrust. In an exceptional display, 7 Matisse artworks appear, confirming his status as one of the great innovators of his time. In particular, La Danse (The Dance, 1909), is one of several studies and finished masterpieces on this theme from the century’s first decade, others now residing in New York’s and Paris’ Museums of Modern Art, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and Saint Petersburg’s Hermitage. All these share his great interest in color and dramatic, sweeping lines to form figures gliding through space. One truly stellar portrait — of Lydia Delectorskaya — is revealed in a few long, black charcoal lines, unmistakably modern, unmistakably masterful, unmistakably a high achievement near the close of his long career.

A great feature of this exhibition is the extent of 20th Century works by Russian artists, some unknown outside the borders of their country. The great Kandinsky is represented by four works, including Composition E (around 1915), with red, blue, purple, pink, yellow and green moving across the paper in a stellar example of contemporary attempts to capture sound and rhythm through color and line. There are also three Chagalls, an early work by Kasimir Malevich (before his move to geometric abstraction), beautiful pastels by Natalia Goncharova and Mikhaïl Larionov and others known from their careers in Paris or Berlin. The real surprises, though, are works by artists unknown outside Russia, for example, Alexandre Deïneka (1899-1964) whose 1920’s Soviet propaganda drawings of idealized female factory workers or May Day poster painters exemplify post-Revolution artistic endeavors or Pavel Filonov (1883-1941) whose marvelous, modern pen and ink drawings fell into disfavor in the Stalinist USSR. Among others, Alexandre Kouprine, Aristarkh Lentoulov and Nikolaï Koupreyanov stand out as artists of fine, intriguing works which will be seen by many for the first time in this exhibition.

Since the 1950s, the mission of Fondation Custodia has included bringing rarely seen works, mostly on paper, to Paris. This outstanding exhibition drawn from the Pushkin Museum’s collection of 350,000 prints and 27,000 drawings surely more than meets its goal.

A colorful exhibition brightens the Jeu de Paume, bringing 1970s Italy to Paris through the exceptional photographs of Luigi Ghirri (1943 – 1992). He wrote, “I always thought that photography was a language to see and not to transform, obscure, change reality.” He sought to combine his earliest experiences with photography—looking at a family photo album and an atlas—in a brief career delighting in the reality of maps and the region of the country in which he was born. This is a celebration of The Map and the Territory of Luigi Ghirri, a celebration well worth joining.

The surveyor who became a photographer still loved straight lines; direct, framed views; places more than people; and these essential elements appear in the earliest photographs in this exhibition. There is clear, straight line geometry with a lot of prominent vertical lines and interesting surface textures such as in a Zurich photo with the pavement prominently featured in the foreground. Ghirri mostly avoided fancy angles to shoot straight-on urban sites in the early 1970s. People appear from behind and are generally part of the shoot rather than individuals. His photographs appear in series or sets and one presents doorways and windows always with a plant but never with a person. These very modern, flat pictures emphasize right angles, vertical lines, planes of color and are fun even if formal; one exceptionally beautiful photo shows a green and pink rose bush behind a silver gray fence and in front of a gray wall with a very dark gray shadow. Horizontal lines, too, could attract Ghirri and his 1972 photograph of the side-to-side lines created by a Paris stairway contrasting with the verticals of a pleated skirt testifies to how fine his eye was even at the earliest stages of his career. He once summarized his approach: “No violence, no visual-emotional shock and no exaggeration, but silence, lightness and rigor to be able to relate to things, objects, places.”

The amateur picture taker who became a professional, full-time photographer never stopped using the small Canon camera and Kodachrome film that were used by everyday picture takers. He avoided the art-school, black and white, experimental work of those hoping for acceptance by museums (which did not afford recognition to photography) and, instead, worked as commercial and amateur photographers did with color film. This is not to say that he took pictures casually. In fact, he rejected chance as part of his method which distinguishes his work from that of many street photographers of the time and he cared about the fixing of colors and a matte finish through the developing process. His photos, therefore, often combine everyday subjects which might be found in a family album with exacting composition under an indisputably fine eye. 1970s Italian life in his hometown of Modena and its region fed him images of buildings, advertising posters, reminders of the consumer culture which flourished after World War II, all of which he captured not as banal aspects of modern life, but as reflections and moments for reflection on “desires, dreams and memories”. In fact, he saw photos as presenting a pause in a world increasingly overwhelmed with images both static and moving.

Even though most of his work is utterly realistic, several pieces are exceptional, not just because these abstracts are rare among his oeuvre, but they are also exceptionally beautiful. A 1972 blurred picture of sailors, abstract in black, white, yellow and blue circles is a wonder, but it is his Atlante (1973) project based on an atlas that astounds. Moving from photos of pages of an atlas, one of those beloved books of his childhood, to closer and closer photos of those pages, the works evolve from gray and green map sections, grainy, with, perhaps, a curving red line, a graphic design or a word to completely abstract works, strangely beautiful. Among the L’Île-Rousse series (1976), there appear flat gray planes at an oblique angle, marked with single, small squares with only a bit of mountain and light blue sky angled above. The reality behind this tremendous geometric simplicity is revealed only later, at the same time revealing Ghirri’s artistry and instinct. Also from L’Ïle-Rousse is a picture of black horizontal lines across a light blue sky, seeming to be another abstraction, which can be seen to be wires when viewed up close.

He started out as a practical worker, a building surveyor, and at the end of his life was a respected photographer and deep thinker about photography, representation and life. He once explained that he let the photograph’s “magic reveal to our eyes the spaces, the objects, the landscapes that I want to represent.” In the Jeu de Paume’s recreation of a 1979 exhibition of his works we encounter that magic.