ISBN: ‎ 978-0980055603
Godina izdanja: 2007
Jezik: Engleski
Oblast: Slikarstvo
Autor: Strani

ODLIČNO OČUVANA KNJIGA IZ NEPUŠAČKOG DOMA

44 STRANICE, KOMPLETNO ILUSTROVANE

Les Demoiselles d`Avignon Revisited, November 16-December 21, 2007 by Beth S. Gersh-Nesic. 2007 paperback published by Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, LLC, New York. Illustrated with color reproductions/photographs.
“The Demoiselles Revisited” will open at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art in New York on November 16, 2007. Champagne and birthday cake will be served at the opening reception, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a painting that single-handedly altered the entire course of western art.

Twenty-five contemporary artists will be participating in the show. A number of these artists had already investigated the subject of the Demoiselles (Mike Bidlo, Russell Connor, Julien Friedler, Deborah Grant, Nanci Hersh, Alain Jacquet, Dot Paolo and Douglas Vogel), so an earlier work by them will be borrowed for the exhibition. The majority, however, have created entirely new work for the show (Brice Brown, Billy Copley, Damian Elwes, Robert Forman, Eileen M. Foti, Kathleen Gilje, John Goodyear, Kathy Halbower, Alain Jacquet, Don Joint, Pamela Joseph, Elizabeth Kley, Carlo Maria Mariani, Francesco Masci, Sophie Matisse, Jacques Moitoret and Trevor Winkfield). Alain Jacquet is the only artist who fits into both categories, for he has used the occasion of this exhibition to complete a painting based on a photograph taken forty years ago (making this event an anniversary for him as well).

The sheer variety of work submitted to this exhibition is, in itself, a tribute to the revolutionary quality of the Demoiselles, a painting that today resides the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Some artists in the show chose to direct their efforts to formal aspects of the painting, replicating its general structure within the rubric of their own individual styles, while others seized upon its provocative subject, which depicts five naked prostitutes, two of whom—on the right side of the composition—have faces that resemble African masks. In almost all cases, no matter how oblique, traces of Picasso’s painting can be found in the interpretations of each artist, which are by no means restrained by the precedent of this painting, but, in contrast, are expansive, taking the artists in directions that are entirely unanticipated and revelatory.

Jeff Koons’s Split-Rocker (Pink/Orange) of 1999—a sculpture in polychrome aluminum that grafts together in vertical section the half-heads of two rocking horses—is a late entry to the exhibition (and is therefore absent from the catalogue). Koons has revealed that he made this piece with the Demoiselles in mind. With this information at our disposal, we note that the pink and orange colors into which the Koons rocker is divided evoke the background division of Picasso’s painting into two colors: red on the left and blue on the right (perhaps references to his earlier rose and blue periods). Moreover, the division of the head into two sections alludes to Cubist planar fragmentation, and bears a formal resemblance to the geometric divisions of African masks (as of the woman on the lower right in the Demoiselles).

A fully illustrated catalogue with an introductory text by Beth Gersh-Nešić is available through the gallery ($25 postpaid). Gersh-Nešić, Director of the New York Arts Exchange, has written extensively on the French critic André Salmon, one of the first to see the Demoiselles in Picasso’s studio at the Bateau Lavoir and to describe the painting in his writings. In her essay, Gersh-Nešić demonstrates how Picasso’s painting has been interpreted by various critics and art historians in light of their own personal interests and agendas, inevitably by-products of the times in which they lived. This interpretation serves as the ideal springboard through which to examine the works included in this show, for they, too, are not only aesthetic emanations of the artists who made them, but also reflections on the current state of contemporary art and of the complicated world and times in which we live.