Exhibitions International – författare

This fourth book by Agnes Geoffray La Lettre Volée offers a constellation of images and texts. The visuals of Agnès Geoffray's artistic work are set in dialogue with short notes by J. Emil Sennewald, more poetic than critical, revealing the singularity of her writing. At the end of the book, an analytical text that takes an innovative look at the question of the act of image concludes all the exchanges. The story of the image could be summarized as that of violent acts. The image penetrates, the eye devours, the body undergoes, the gaze pierces.

Agnès Geoffray's work explores these violent acts: starting from photographs found, she experiments this induced latency of images, which supposes a dramatic event to come. For the photographic image, this latency will be at the closing of the diaphragm of the camera or that of the eye looking at the photographed image. Incarnated by the flapping of the eyelid, this brief moment is the one before the eyelid arises. It is a pause. An intermediate moment between object and image, vision and look. A moment when one holds one's breath.

Text in English, French and German.

From Art Nouveau to today's creations, via post‐war functionalism, this exhibition explores, among other things, the work of designers and the production of Belgian companies and publishing houses. Among these designers and producers are: Gustave Serrurier‐Bovy, Huib Hoste, Jacques Dupuis, Willy Van Der Meeren, Jules Wabbes, Maarten Van Severen, Meurop, Alain Gilles, Christophe Gevers.

Text in English, French and Dutch.

Maëlle Dufour creates complex systems. It seeks to question the progress at the heart of past eras, known but also those to come. The visual artist explores the traces of decadence as the beginnings of hope by questioning progress. She seeks to question the origin, memory and rebirth or sometimes absence. Are the ruins destroyed by the force of nature itself or by men in battles for territories? Can they be the foundations of a renewal? The viewer's physical confrontation with Maëlle Dufour's work can be unsettling because the size and weight of the pieces surpassing any human scale constantly remind us of the vulnerability of our own existence. Through her “sculpture‐systems”, she explores “an archaeology of waste”. These are valuable sources of information from past societies, physical legacies bequeathed to those yet to be born.

"I build in situ devices that destabilize the visitor, disrupt his senses and his environment, with the aim of questioning a reality that has always interested me: that of the destruction of humans by humans" (Maëlle Dufour) "Maëlle Dufour sculpts with the dizziness that each exhibition venue gives her. Its monuments of wood or earth, on the scale of excess, stun the viewer and lead him down adrift paths." - Adèle Santocono, head of the plastic arts sector of the province of Hainaut, BE

Exhibitions: Au MAAC in December 2021, À la Maison CFC 19 of November to 31 December 2021.

Text in English and French.

In the wake of its 30th anniversary, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint‐Etienne Métropole wishes to publish a large‐scale retrospective catalogue, intended to offer a fresh look at its collection. This substantial work is in line with the two previous catalogues, published on the occasion of the 10th and 20th anniversaries of MAMC +. Aimed at a large audience, it aims to become the institution's new reference work. It will also be sent to the museum's many partners and collaborators (artists, curators, curators, art critics and historians, journalists, institutional and political leaders). The MAMC + wishes to approach the collection through its strong axes, constituting markers of the museum's identity, such as American art or post‐war German art. But it also intends to make visible groups that are less well known: the Symbolist collection, the collection of primitive art by Victor Brauner, the photographic collection of Raul Hausmann or the collection of contemporary drawings, will thus be the subject of substantial developments. The book will also be punctuated by short focuses intended to deepen certain aspects of the collection.

Text in English and French.

Often celebrated as a kind of genius trained in the “school of life” who managed to produce a singular body of work despite a lack of professional training, the autodidact questions and challenges our conceptions of art. Entitled The Self‐taught Riddle, the new exhibition presented at the MAMC + in Saint‐Étienne aims to revisit this idealising vision of the figure of the self‐taught artist in the history of contemporary art in an attempt to grasp what actually happens when artists learn by themselves. The exhibition assembles over 200 works by self‐taught artists from a wide range of backgrounds who implement, emblematically, different modes of constructing knowledge autonomously. It also features the works of a few professional artists who decided to start from scratch and launch themselves into the unknown. It seeks to identify the intentions, processes and gestures that lead – consciously, intuitively, or unconsciously – to aesthetic innovation and to obtain, sometimes retrospectively, to a prominent place in the history of art.

Text in English and French.

This lavishly presented book is dedicated to the Lecoanet fashion label, founded in 1981 by Didier Lecoanet and Hemant Sagar. The label initially was based in Rue du Faubourg Saint‐Honoré, Paris and focussed only on haute couture designs. However, the label has transitioned the focus to ready‐to‐wear and has moved their base to Gurugram, India. Hemant and Lecoanet met in Paris, France, at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. Both of them were learning Haute Couture at that time and decided to launch something together. They started a store in Paris and were one amongst only 24 Haute Couture Houses. They eventually became a part of the Haute Couture Club and also joined Syndicat as a member. They presented their collections in various international events and later decided to move to India to launch two new brands namely GENES and Ayurganic.

Photographer Jeffrey Van Daele is an internationally renowned nature and animal photographer. This striking and intimate duotone report on African wildlife not only shows us wild animals in their habitat, but also warns that they need this place to survive.

Text in English, French and Dutch.

The first international exhibition of 2022 for Louvre Abu Dhabi tells the story of Versailles as a central diplomatic instrument that solidified the prowess of the French royal court and served as the stage for its fascination with various civilisations in a rapidly globalising world. Objects from the palace on show range from wallpapers and porcelain to Chinese and Japanese lacquerware.

The exhibition has been curated by Hélène Delalex, Curator, Furniture and Decorative Arts, and Bertrand Rondot, Chief Curator, Furniture and Decorative Arts, at the musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon.

The extraordinary abundance of French sculptures in the United States is indicative of a specific taste for this area of French art, but also of the close proximity of Franco-American historical and artistic relations. The United States is the country outside of France with the largest number of French sculptures and the latter represent by far the majority of foreign sculptures.

Once gathered, combined, connected, they weave the story of a taste. Their study makes it possible to detect trends and periods, to identify the personalities of dealers, collectors and curators, and to understand the supply channels of this transatlantic trade, from the place of production to the place of consumption, from the place of creation to place of appreciation.

The purpose of this book is to give life and meaning to these works by placing them in their American context. The first part emphasises the eminently political and official role, tool of political message when it comes to celebrating the heroes of the American independence, or commercial and industrial propaganda when France shows up at universal exhibitions. From its birth, French sculptors have been associated with the development of the American nation and its society.

The second part is devoted to the role played by French sculptors in American urban decor, as well as in the art of parks and gardens. They largely contributed to the introduction of the Art Deco style in ornamental sculpture.

The third part celebrates sculpture as a collector's item, sought no longer for the character it represents, nor for its role as a complement to architecture, but truly as an object whose formal beauty is the primary asset.

The fourth and last part is dedicated to the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Rodin was all at once: he represented the art of today, that of the Salon to which he regularly sent his works, sometimes the art of yesterday in his few creations in the style of the 18th century, and above all, he was gradually recognised as the path to the art of tomorrow.

In conclusion, an assessment is made of the taste for French sculpture since the 1950s, which saw a change in the relative importance of the various actors, dealers, collectors, academics and curators.

From 5th September until 1st March 2020 the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, in conjunction with the City of Antwerp, VisitFlanders and the Flemish Community, presents From Titian to Rubens: Masterpieces from Antwerp and other Flemish Collections, an exhibition curated by Ben Van Beneden, director of Rubenshuis in Antwerp. The magnificent Doge's apartments have been transformed into veritable 'constkamers', rooms filled with exquisite art demonstrating the riches of Flemish collections. Featuring masterpieces by artists including Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Michiel Sweerts, the exhibition offers a dazzling array of works, and the finest group of Italian and Flemish art to come to Italy.

Three icons of Venetian painting return to their hometown of Venice: Titian's Jacopo Pesaro presenting Saint Peter to Pope Alexander VI, the altarpiece of the former San Geminiano church, covered by the press worldwide as David Bowie's Tintoretto, and Titian's Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter (thought to be a depiction of Titian's mistress Milia and their daughter Emilia). These masterpieces from Flemish collections, both public and private, are rarely lent and some have never, until now, been shown in public.

From Titian to Rubens is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A special section of the exhibition is devoted to Flemish star composer Adriaan Willaert who settled permanently in 'la Serenissima' to become Maestro di Cappella of the Basilica di San Marco in 1527. It was Willaert who founded the celebrated Venetian School of music that was to instruct, among others, Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudio Monteverdi.

Produced to accompany the first Belgian exhibition of the work of Fernando Botero, this catalogue invites us to explore the entire span of the Colombian artist's career and the origins of his distinctive style, which seeks, regardless of subject, to exalt the formal qualities of volume. Five previously unpublished essays by international specialists, each tackling Botero's work from a different point of view, shed new light on a rich repertoire of images that is already part of our collective imagination, but which, at first glance, seems to evade the conventional codes of modern painting.

Beyond Forms and keeping well clear of received ideas and preconceptions, we discover an oeuvre where the great sense of formal freedom never detracts from the rigorous mastery of traditional techniques; where the apparent simplicity is the result of an in‐depth study of the history of art and popular cultures; and where the decision to opt for figuration and the desire to create a body of work accessible to anyone and everyone are born of a constant reflection on what the art of his time has achieved and on its role in society.

With its joyous, enduring caress of shapes and colours, this is a book that offers the reader an array of keys to unlock a deeper, more rewarding understanding of this prolific, generous, and constantly evolving artist.