At the end of the year Magcentre takes you to visit some exotic Parisian exhibitions: from the madmen seen by artists of the end of the Middle Ages, to the atomic bomb, another major madness of humanity, to the zombies of Haiti, including the sculptures of the artist Barbara Chase-Riboud scattered in eight Parisian museums. Journey into strangeness #2.
By Bénédicte de Valicourt.
“The Atomic Age”
Bruce Conner Bombhead, 2002
Artwork Location: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA
Permission for usage must be provided in writing from Scala.
While with war on our doorstep, the fear of a nuclear explosion returns, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris reminds us how the atom has changed the destiny of humanity and marked artists. From the pioneers of abstraction, like Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint, inspired by the first discoveries of the atom and radioactivity at the beginning of the 20th century, to the terror of the end of the world after the explosion of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 , with the invasion of the planet by nuclear industries, the greatest artists have taken up the subject. However, they offered very different readings of it, as shown by the 250 works exhibited (paintings, drawings, photographs, videos and installations), as well as the often unpublished and sometimes a little too abundant documentation. As a result, you get a little lost, but you have to move on and take your time to admire the often major artists, pressed against each other. Some seem to be committed to an aesthetic neutrality and a fascination for the unknown worlds revealed by physics, others on the other hand preferred to represent the irruption of tragedy, like Luc Thuymans or Barnett Newman (1905-1970), to name just a few. It is rich and there is something to meditate on but above all to understand the sequence of scientific, political, cultural and artistic events and the invasion of the planet by the nuclear industries which have shaped our “Atomic Age”.
The exhibition catalogue, including numerous essays by specialists (philosophers, historians of art and architecture, historians of science, etc.), explores the subject from the three angles of art, science and politics. It also gives voice to contemporary artists and writers and brings together largely unpublished documentation and iconography.
www.mam.paris.fr
Photo de une: Charles Bittinger Late stage of Baker 1946 Huile sur toile Naval History and Heritage Command ©Photo : Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command
“Zombies. Death is not an end? »
Who are the zombies, these soulless bodies of Haitian voodoo? Where do they come from? Response to the Musée du Quai Branly which with this fascinating little exhibition delves into the anthropological roots of zombification and Haitian voodoo. We learn that all this is not witchcraft, but a religion structured in secret societies, including that of the Bizango. These are responsible for questions of justice, and therefore for the zombification of individuals judged guilty of crimes and condemned to wander like the living dead. Practices still in progress.
Bizango musée du quai Branly@Thierry Olivier Michel Virtago
It's better to have a strong heart to look into the eyes of the bizango fetishes, draped in black and red fabric, human-sized and with mirrored eyes. Or to walk alongside the reconstruction of a life-size voodoo temple, as well as the cemetery. Fans of Vaudou (1943), by Jacques Tourneur, filmed in Haiti, or those of Hollywood and globalized zombies, contagious and gory, who transmit their state by biting, from Night of the Living Dead (1955), by George Romero, will particularly appreciate and be able to understand everything about this phenomenon which has spread through the global collective imagination to end up flourishing in popular culture, in films, series (Walking Dead, 2010), songs (Thriller by Michael Jackson; Zombie by the Cranberries), comics, video games and events like Zombie Walks, alongside ghosts and other vampires, to make a figure of it frightening, symbol of contagious death. The Hold of Darkness (1988), based on the work of Canadian ethnobotanist Wade Davis and Haitian biochemist Max Beauvoir, ultimately illustrates this revival of the Haitian zombie.
www.quaibranly.fr
Also read: Exhibitions for a Parisian journey into strangeness #1
Related News :