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Centre Pompidou-Metz | Exhibitions in 2014
United Kingdom Architecture News - Dec 10, 2013 - 12:25 2580 views
Beacons
From 14 February 2014
Beginning 2014, and for two years, Centre Pompidou-Metz presents Beacons, an extended temporary exhibition showcasing some twenty major works from the collections of Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne. These will include Pablo Picasso's stage curtain for the ballet Mercure, Composition with Two Parrots by Fernand Léger, and Figures and Birds in the Night by Joan Miró.
From Pablo Picasso to Anish Kapoor, Sam Francis, Joseph Beuys or Dan Flavin,Beacons spans the history of art from the early 20th century to the present, and spotlights important artists and movements of this period.
Staged inside the Grande Nef, a gallery of unparalleled dimensions in Europe, the exhibition is a rare opportunity, given their size, to view together monumental works including Polombe by Frank Stella (over eight metres long) and Survivor(s), a series of seven large-format paintings by Yan Pei-Ming.
Curators:
Claire Garnier, curator, Centre Pompidou-Metz
Elodie Stroecken, curator, Centre Pompidou-Metz
Paparazzi! Photographers, stars and artists
From 26 February to 9 June 2014
In this original exhibition, Centre Pompidou-Metz examines the phenomenon and aesthetic of paparazzi photography through more than 600 works spanning multiple disciplines: photography, painting, video, sculpture, installation, etc.
Covering fifty years of celebrities caught in the lens, Paparazzi! Photographers, stars and artists considers the paparazzo at work by examining the complex and fascinating ties between photographer and photographed, going on to reveal the paparazzi influence on fashion photography.
By associating some of the genre's leading names, the likes of Tazio Secchiaroli, Ron Galella, Bruno Mouron and Pascal Rostain, with works by Richard Avedon, Raymond Depardon, Yves Klein, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol, all of whom reflected on this modern-day myth, Paparazzi! Photographers, stars and artists sets out to define the paparazzi aesthetic.
The figure of the "paparazzi" was invented by Federico Fellini in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita as a contraction of "pappataci" (mosquitoes) and "ragazzi" (ruffians). Thus the practice of tracking celebrities in the hope of a candid shot has been around for more than half a century.
Since then, this post-modern hero has become a legend of the popular press, akin to a war correspondent reporting from the frontline of fame.
The profession of paparazzo is more complex than it seems. Paparazzi must be ingenious. They each have their tricks of the trade and tales to tell which together form the grand story of "paparazzism".
Their targets are almost always women who epitomise their era's feminine ideal: Brigitte Bardot, Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, Liz Taylor, Stephanie and Caroline of Monaco, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears… But celebrities are not just helpless victims. They defend themselves, prevent the photograph from being taken, even attack their assailant. They can also be a willing accomplice, playing up to the camera and even setting up shots. Some go as far as to invent their own way of escaping the star system and its constraints.
Since the 1960s and 70s, the attitudes adopted by these image-mongers have fascinated countless artists who, in one or other work, have stepped into the paparrazo's shoes. Similarly, the paparazzi aesthetic (long lens, enlarged grain, flashes, etc.) has inspired works by many contemporary artists, including Viktoria Binschtok, Malachi Farrell, Kathrin Gu¨nter, Alison Jackson and Armin Linke.
A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.
Curator:
Clément Chéroux, Curator, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Photography Department.
Associate curators:
Quentin Bajac, chief curator of photography at Museum of Modern Art, New York
Sam Stourdzé, Director, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne
1984-1999 The Decade
From 24 May 2014 to 2 March 2015
Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture paints the portrait of a generation of nomads, born between 1965 and 1977. These are the Baby Busts, the kidults, as opposed to the Baby Boomers. "X" refers to the anonymity of this generation of individuals whose anthem is Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spiritand whose life was marked by the advent of the Internet, the end of history and militancy, and the transition from the reproductive age to that of "unlimited" access.
This generation is also the first to revive, in art, remembered stories of pioneers and explorers, disincarnated toons, images of man's first steps on the Moon and Armstrong's distorted voice. Together they define new ways of relating to the world; new forms of experimentation, transgression and re-appropriation which go against earlier (counter-) revolutions.
Over recent years, the generation question has been repeatedly raised on a global scale. Various publications, exhibitions and debates try to pinpoint the critical moment when informal networks of artists, independent curators, galleries, art centres, schools and magazines were formed. These situations laid the foundation for a new exhibition vocabulary, a new way of making art and being contemporary.
1984-1999 tackles a decade that defies definition and disaffirms past attempts to do so. Beyond decennial retrospectives and compilations, it is a biographical space composed of objects, sounds, voices, images, reflections and sensations. Imagined by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, a major international artist, the exhibition scape presents itself as an intermediate space, between city and nature, inside and outside, day and night.
The exhibition does not attempt to recreate an era nor to sanctify an ideal and lost age, but seeks instead to bring up to date the forms and procedures which anticipated today's artistic creation. Working from a survey of some of the 1990s' central figures (artist Liam Gillick, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, writer Michel Houellebecq, filmmaker David Lynch…), its purpose is to collect objects and sources which survived and inspired the decade, and to create new, non-hierarchical arrangements between art, literature, film, music, architecture and design.
The exhibition is the mirror-image of the spirit of the 1990s, defined by François Cusset as "a world where 'young people' - those at least who reached adolescence in the mid-1980s – faced with an abysmal critical void had to reinvent a means of desertion and inner exile, and make this void in some way inhabitable by shaping counter-worlds and more or less temporary autonomies – a dissolved world wherebeing sad becomes a stand-in connection with the world and is even, as one of them says, 'the only way not to be completely unhappy'."
A work edited by François Cusset (intellectual historian and lecturer in American Civilisation at Nanterre University) accompanies the exhibition.
Curator:
Stéphanie Moisdon, art critic and independent curator
Exhibition design based on an artistic project by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Simple Shapes
From 13 June to 5 November 2014
An exhibition by Centre Pompidou-Metz and Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès
This exhibition brings to the fore our fascination with simple shapes, from prehistoric to contemporary. It also reveals how these shapes were decisive in the emergence of the Modern age.
The years between the 19th and 20th centuries saw the return of quintessential forms through major universal expositions which devised a new repertoire of shapes, the simplicity of which would captivate artists and revolutionise the modern philosophy. They introduced, within the evolution of modern art, both an alternative to the eloquence of the human body as developed, for example, by Auguste Rodin, and the possibility that forms could be a universal concept.
Nascent debates in physics, mathematics, phenomenology, biology and aesthetic had important consequences on mechanics, industry, architecture and art in general. While visiting the 1912 Salon de la Locomotion Aérienne with Constantin Brancusi and Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp stopped short before an aeroplane propeller and declared, "Painting is dead. Who could better this propeller?"
These pared-down, non-geometric forms, which occupy space in a constant progression, are no less fascinating today. Minimalist artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra, spiritualist artists such as Anish Kapoor, metaphysical artists such as Tony Smith, or poetic artists such as Ernesto Neto are as attentive to forms as were the inventors of modernity.
The exhibition draws on the senses to explore the appearance of simple shapes in art, nature and tools. This poetic approach is balanced by an analytical view of the twentieth century's history.
It connects scientific events and technical discoveries with the emergence of modern forms. Subjects pertaining to industry, mechanics, mathematics, physics, biology, phenomenology and archaeology are equated with objects from art and architecture, which are in turn set alongside their ancient predecessors and natural objects.
The Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès* is joint producer and patron of Simple Shapes. With craftsmanship as its core, the Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès is concerned with the creativity deployed by Man and Nature when shaping an object, a tool or a work. The Foundation has developed its own programmes that bring artisanal expertise together with innovation and contemporary creation: exhibitions and residencies in the visual arts, New Settings for the performing arts, the Prix Emile Hermès for design, and projects promoting biodiversity. For these reasons, the Foundation wished to be involved with the concept and production of Simple Shapes alongside Centre Pompidou-Metz, thereby giving a wide audience a new view of objects in their purest form, and of the creative energy released through the interaction of these objects with people.
A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.
Curators:
Chief curator:
Jean de Loisy, president, Palais de Tokyo, and art critic
Associate curators:
Sandra Adam-Couralet, independent curator
Mouna Mekouar, curator, Palais de Tokyo
Exhibition design: Laurence Fontaine
*The Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès supports people and organisations seeking to learn, perfect, transmit and celebrate the skills and creativity that shape and inspire our lives today, and into the future. Guided by a central focus on artisan expertise and creative artistry in the context of society's changing needs, the Foundation's activities explore two complementary avenues: know-how and creativity, know-how and the transmission of skills. The Foundation develops its own programmes and supports partner organisations across the globe.
The Foundation's unique mix of programmes and support is rooted in a single, underlying belief:Our gestures define us.