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October 3, 2024 – 4:55 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) For its new exhibition, the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (MCBA) offers a journey on the theme of the sea. The works presented, between enchantment and tragedy, show how artists have imagined the sea from the 19th century to the present day.
On view until January 12, 2025, “Thalassa! Thalassa! » starts from the entrance hall of the MCBA, whose glass roof was covered with silver leaves by the Lausanne artist Sandrine Pelletier, as if a giant wave had crashed on the glazing. The exhibition then unfolds over two floors, both divided into three parts, like so many territories to explore: shores, depths and abysses.
The sea is seen in all its aspects. The shore, for example, may be that of the muses in the painting “Ancient Evening” by Alphonse Osbert – which serves as a poster for the exhibition – where the sea and the horizon are sources of wonder. These same shores are also evoked in a less romantic form, with for example several paintings on the beginning of seaside tourism, even dramatic, like photos of migrants stranded on Spanish beaches.
After the shores, the exposure becomes “vertical” with a descent into the depths and abysses. This dive is done in particular through two literary classics, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne and “The Little Mermaid” by Andersen. But also thanks to the different objects and works exhibited, from collections of shells to representations of the abyss by the surrealists, including extracts from the first documentaries on marine animals.
Crochet corals
The highlight of the exhibition is undoubtedly the “Crochet Coral Reef” project, the crochet creation of coral reefs. This collaborative work has developed around the world under the initiative of two Australian sisters, Margaret and Christine Wertheim. In Lausanne, six coral islands are on display, created by 4,000 crochet enthusiasts for the Burda museum in Baden-Baden in Germany. Beneath its joyful and colorful appearance, this “immersive” installation is intended, above all, as an artistic action in reaction to the planned death of corals.
Thursday during the presentation of the exhibition to the press, the two curators Catherine Lepdor and Danielle Chaperon explained that they had not designed “an exhibition on the sea, but on the imagination of the sea”. An imagination that embraces all kinds of emotions, even if it is mainly dark and distressing tones that emerge from the exhibition.
It ends with a work by Miriam Cahn, “Our seabed”, where a woman and her child sink into the abyss. Right next to it, a video installation by Yael Bartana shows, on a black background and with an anxiety-provoking soundtrack, an uninterrupted rain of objects evoking collective dramas, notably wars and shipwrecks.
“The title of the exhibition, Thalassa! Thalassa! (i.e. sea! sea!) is a cry of joy. But this tone of joy is no longer really relevant today,” remarked Catherine Lepdor, evoking the tragedies linked to the sea and the various attacks on its biodiversity.
To create this exhibition, the MCBA relied on its own collections, as well as several loans from private collections and Swiss or European museums, such as the Musée d’Orsay and the Petit Palais in Paris or the Museum of Romantic Life in Vienna.
