So…how does it feel to enter this new and exciting culture of blogging? I have to admit that I am incredibly nervous and feverish about the possibility of real and actual people reading our blog! Eeep! I am sure the water is warm however, so I’ll dive right in.
A few weeks ago, whilst I was in Paris and when I was not stuffing my face with tarte au citron, I had the opportunity to visit the Musee D’Orsay’s current exhibition, Art Nouveau Revival. As soon as I stepped into the museum and the show itself, I immediately thought of you and how incredibly interesting you would find this place. Now, I’m not sure if you’re even a fan of the Art Nouveau style or not, but it was not the art that reminded me of your happy little face. It was the atmosphere of the institution, the layout of the exhibition and some of the remarkable methods of display that the curators of the show, had innovatively used to show a wide range of work.
Have you ever visited the Musee d’Orsay? During my visits to Paris in the past, I somehow overlooked this gem of a museum, perhaps more in favour of the Pompidou. Silly silly me. I was expecting a staid museum environment, I had visions of paintings displayed in the RA tradition (walls covered in paintings from floor to ceiling are incredibly problematic for us short-folk – neck strain hurts and once it’s there, it’s there to stay) and I thought it would be pin-drop silent. How wrong I was. The museum still felt like a train station; crowds of visitors were queuing outside to purchase tickets and once inside, it was impossible not to find yourself being dragged along by flocks of people. I overheard animated conversations in French and saw children running around statues and felt the camera flashes from the obligatory tourists taking photographs. It was lively and exciting and thriving and completely cuckoo…and I haven’t even got to the art bit yet! Jeez!
Utterly enthralled, I certainly did not expect to find nirvana so soon after my entrance, in the form of Art Nouveau Revival. Seeking to compare the style’s distinctive flourishings in the twentieth century, from its origins in the 1900s to its rediscovery in the 1930s (mostly by Dali) and then again during the sixties and seventies, the exhibition was separated into four small rooms. Every room had an individual entrance and so to progress through the show, the visitor had to exit via the entrance of each room and walk along the balcony to the next room. A fairly simple format of exhibiting, but I found it incredibly unusual. Maybe it’s down to the weekly pilgrimages I make to Tate Modern (I am obsessed with Pop Life), but I was somewhat surprised that these rooms did not have interconnecting doors or entrances. It is something that I am so accustomed to, that it felt strange and sort of constricting to have an already pre-destined route through the exhibition. How do you feel about this? Am I right in recalling that you chose to let the visitor roam freely through the space in the Healey exhibition?
Back to the d’Orsay, each room was dedicated to a specific aspect of Art Nouveau and it’s revival incorporating the style’s influence on the Surrealist group, home furnishings, psychedelic posters, and some other bits of ephemera. Personally, the exhibitions that I enjoy the most are the ones that integrate the everyday and mundane, or insert unexpected objects within a context of priceless works of art; so of course, seeing original Beardsley and Mucha illustrations aside Grateful Dead posters and Jean Paul Gaultier perfume bottles was absolutely mind-blowing! One of the earlier rooms was mostly dedicated to chairs and I swear to you Mr. Smith, I squealed when I saw a sensually curved wooden Gaudi chair paired with Allen Jones’ infamous lady coffee table.
However the best was yet to come. I cannot remember the specifics (I guess, I’m still recovering) but this is what I can recall. I entered one of the four rooms and I walked towards a glass display case. I tried to focus on what was on display, despite someone’s music on their iPod or something being fairly loud. I couldn’t concentrate so I looked around the room, preparing to glare at the idiot who thought listening to music at an unreasonable volume was a good idea in an exhibition. And then it hit me. I looked up towards the ceiling and saw a speaker above my head, pumping out the classic Femme Fatale by the Velvet Underground. Across from me, on the opposite side of the display case, I saw a friend stood beneath another speaker suspended from the ceiling, rocking out and humming along to Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower.
What?! Who does that?! Which curators of today or of ever, have the cojones to do that? We have read about the influence that Art Nouveau had on the psychedelic era of the 1970s but who dares to place those objects (and sounds) together in a relatively small scale but widely visited exhibition? The sight of objects of everyday consumption juxtaposed with drawings and paintings of a high monetary value, is still astonishing at present, despite the fact that this juxtaposition has been demonstrated before in the past. But the concept of hearing the music of Andy Warhol’s darkly notorious, unnatural and drug-addled house band of the sixties, whilst studying a beautiful, handmade chair by Gaudi, clearly referencing the natural world – is undoubtedly revolutionary.
Admittedly, we have both been fortunate enough to be taught by a person whose mind works in this way, linking incredibly varied and abstract ideas and concepts together as naturally as an astronomer would link up stars to form a constellation; ultimately however, we have to remember people with minds like this in the art world are absolute rarities. At least, I thought they were rarities. As previously mentioned, I have visited Tate Modern’s Pop Life: Art in a Material World on a number of occasions now. If you haven’t seen it, I really do recommend you do so, as soon as possible. I won’t reveal the specific details but in a similar way to Art Nouveau Revival, Alison Gingeras, curator of the Pop Life exhibition, really does expand the methods of display that are available to today’s curators. (I have a funny anecdote from one of my Pop Life visits, but I’ll save that for our long-awaited reunion next week!)
The question of whether we can place exhibitions like Art Nouveau Revival and Pop Life as perhaps early indicators of the future of art shows is of huge interest to me. Will the curators of tomorrow continue to follow this exploration into deeper and more sensory methods of displaying objects and sharing information? Personally, I really do hope that this is not a passing trend or dismissed as a few token exhibitions. But you’re a cultured kid and a visitor of many art institutions – what do you make of this? Am I getting excited over nothing? If your path should lead you to the road of curating, can you envision yourself creating shows like these?
Update me on how you are, William Smith. I very much look forward to hearing about what’s new in your (art)world!
Toodles,
Jacques Derrida
p.s. Here’s a rather spooky and melancholic version of Femme Fatale. Oh, how I wish I could be Nico! Maybe in my next post… ;)
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