PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> Sociopolitic: November 2006

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The Picasso Museum - Paris


It's not easy to get to. In fact, it is quite like attempting to navigate one's way through a maze. But seeking out and finding the Musee national Picasso is well worth the effort. It is located at Hotel Sale 5, on the rue de Thorigny in Paris' 3rd district. On foot it is about 15 minutes from Centre Pompidou, and if one is visiting this city it makes alot of sense to visit both sites during the same day. The Pompidou and the Picasso museum make for a fruitful and colorful day.

Although I was enthralled with the interactive FABRICA exhibit at the Pomipidou, on the day I visited these two museums there was no doubt which locale agitated and excited my senses most. This was surely In part due to the fact that the third floor of the Pompidou was closed for renovations, but even if I had been allowed to see the full selection of works at the Modern I doubt the experience in its' entirety would compare to spending a modest 90 minutes exploring Paris' spectacular Picasso Museum. I confess to being a Picasso fanatic and certainly would love his work wherever it was displayed, however, it had been about 15 years since I last visited, and I am still of the belief that there is not a more magnificent permanent collection of his works on display anywhere; this place is a veritable cornucopia of Picasso, representing the various stages and permutations (in addition to Cubist and classicist paintings, both styles of Picasso's mature work "figuration" and "dissociation" are fully represented) of almost 80 years of vibratory, incantatory, celebratory brilliance.

While the wonderful and unheralded Picasso Museum in Barcelona highlights Picasso's early work (which I for some time have been singing the praises of, and emphasized to my late friend, art historian Wendy Sheard -- she in turn later pointed out a review expressing similar sentiments about Picasso's early work and said dryly: "See, you are not the only one who noticed.") and clearly displays the fact that young Pablo had achieved technical mastery by the time he was 14 years old, the museum in Paris more thoroughly traverses his entire career and gives us tastes of Picasso's excursions into the realm of sculpture , which were by no means insignificant.

Most noteworthy of the paintings are Reclining Nude (1932) , with its' sumptuous curves, broad brush strokes and earthy sensuality. Figures at the Seashore is erotic in a more elemental way, highlighting the sexual puns that Picasso has become known for. The colorful, whimsical pastel toned Crucifixion from 1930 seems a precursor to the best Art Brut paintings. The bright lime greens used in Maya with a Doll remind us that Picasso understood the emotional power of the flat fields of almost florescent color that characterized many works of Van Gogh, especially the portraits. This painting enchanted me the first time I came here and did so again upon my latest viewing. Bullfight: Death of the Toreador (1933) is simultaneously brutal (in content) and beautiful (in form). The majesty of the Bullfight here has turned into a nightmare, occuring in the brightness of the midday sun -- a grotesque spectacle of writhing forms in which the shocking red cape of the toreador calls forth the blood spilled in the ring that day. The inverted colors of the Spanish Flag contribute to the atomosphere of confusion and distorted perception. This is an incredible painting and is one of many of Picasso's lesser known works which is worthy of admiration.

The previously mentioned sculptures housed here, such as Nanny Goat (1950), are evidence of Picasso's versatility and seemingly endless genius in exploring and discovering the essence of human and animal forms. There is an archetypal presence to this work and most of the other sculptures here. Nanny Goat was created out of such diverse materials as a large round basket (for the belly), metal strips (for the lean flanks), carved vinewood (horns), cardboard (ears), twisted wire (tail) and two ceramic vessels (for the udder). According to Ingo Walther, Picasso worked backwards in this project, the genesis of form arising not from a seen object which is then subjected to a process of metamorphosis, but rather by first coming up with the image of a goat, then seeking out a live model that matched his mental picture. The result is a delightful and textured masterpiece.

There are many such treasures to behold at Musee Picasso. More than a glimpse, we are offered a large cross section of art that truly does justice to this temperamental and brilliant poet of the canvas. What was his joie de vivre is still palpable in these works, and I can't think of a more fitting place to experience the magic of Picasso.

Posted by Rogue Scoop at 5:54 PM | | Comments

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Louvre Reflections


PARIS, France -- It doesn't have anything to do with the art. The works themselves are sacred; worthy of not merely fleeting disinvolved admiration, but an intense focusing of the senses, and an immersion of one's being; emotionally, intellectually, spiritually.

Far from disabling my inclination to be uplifted and my ability to experience joy before great works of art, my encountering of a seemingly endless stream of antlike tourists trailing through the Louvre in search of nothing more than photographic proof of their trip to Paris ( something they can download onto their PC's and show their friends back home) only heightened my own appreciation. My sociological observations and remembered revelations over my five day stay in Paris and multiple visits to the Louvre reaffirmed what I value about art, and accentuated the pleasure I took in beholding (for only the second time in my thirty plus years) The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne by Leonardo, or the dynamic and inspirational Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Unfortunately, for most, a visit to the Louvre represents not an opportunity for personal enrichment, but is tantamount to an excursion to Las Vegas; something they can tell their friends about to illicit envy. For many, the Louvre has become like an adult Disneyland, a place invested with greater symbolic than real significance. While children cherish and look forward to a planned trip to Disneyland (which represents the epitome of escape, fantasy and unencumbered play) , the Louvre represents the height of culture and a level of sophistication to which most bourgeois adults aspire.

On the subject of Disneyland it seems appropriate to mention Baudrillard. The "Procession of Simulacra" is alive and well and has penetrated his homeland as well as continuing to characterize modern American culture. Now the instamatic camera, the Polaroid, has been replaced by the digital camera. Thousands of indoctrinated denizens of the Occident (as well as increasing numbers of Eastern and Middle Easterners) have been swallowed up in the ever growing wave. Along these lines it appears that the majority of the museum-goers visiting the Mecca of Art known as the Louvre are predominantly interested in procuring the best reproductions that Sony and other icons of modern technology can deliver; they are not there to engage the works themselves, but to capture them, to seize them. As Baudrillard tells us, "Reproduction is diabolical in its very essence; it makes something fundamental vacillate." He was astute in his analysis that "simulation... is still and always the place of a gigantic enterprise of manipulation, of control and of death (.)" This enterprise involves not only a figurative destruction of the works themselves, but a destruction of our bodies and our senses. In the process there is a basic unwillingness, or more likely an inability, to engage the object; everything sacred is now only experienced through the veil of a lens or a view finder. Most will look more closely at their duplicate images when they get back home than they did at the work itself. Some will complete the mechanical act of downloading said images without ever attempting to even encounter these reproductions. It is more important that they have it or own it than actually appreciate it -- in these cases the mythologizing of life has fully replaced the act of living.

Indeed, the mass of these museum-goers fail to take anything of real value with them when they go back home. Failing to have been truly moved or edified in any way (again, this is no reflection on the inspirational power or artistic brilliance of the works themselves) these folks will take small satisfaction in a series of robotically snapped off inferior photographic reproductions of the great masterworks. Far from requesting an empty intellectual exercise of content analysis, I am bemoaning the lack of impassioned engagement of these works. As Susan Sontag poignantly put it in her landmark 1963 essay Against Interpretation, "What is important ..... is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more." I would agree that we have forgotten how to see and feel and that the essence of what has been lost in the encountering of art is as Sontag wrote, transparence, or "the luminousness of the thing in itself (.) "

For those ready to open themselves, this experience can still be had. The gift of the great poets and artists is their ability to transport us, and ironically, by embracing our senses and truly drinking in the physical world, we are lifted into the world beyond the gross material. And this, rather than mimesis, is the purpose of art. It stimulates in us a desire to live more fully and more immediately.

First, we must put down our digital cameras and look with our eyes. We must put down our cell phone cameras and listen to the live music instead. The world is happening before us, and the more we attempt to capture and control it the more it slips through our fingers like grains of sand.

Posted by Rogue Scoop at 1:33 AM | | Comments