Category Archives: Exhibitions

The Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours exhibition at MAH

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Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours 1I meet Philippa Kundig at Geneva’s Museum of Art and History. She is the designer of the current exhibition featuring one of this town’s most famous painters: the eighteenth-century neo-classicist, Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours (1752-1809.) And what a monumental, beautiful exhibition it is! If you like to feast on representation of the classics, the team at MAH serves up Saint-Ours’s full menu of Homer, Olympic games (the original!), Spartans, Cupid and Psyche along with dozens of his meticulous portraits.

Such an important exhibition occupies Philippa and the two curators, Anne de Herdt and Lurence Madeline for more than six months. The works have to be sourced, borrowed and transported. Historical research, deciding on sub-themes, writing the panels and brochures, designing the display, building partitions, printing the materials, lighting the space and finally hanging the pictures are all requisite steps towards what confronts me today.

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The resulting presentation of the works is stunning. Here, by incorporating a vertical break in one of the rich, plum-coloured partitions, Philippa draws the visitor’s eye into the next space, across a rare Saint-Ours sculpture of two naked men wrestling and then on to an Olympian scene where a victorious wrestler is supporting his vanquished foe before the tribune.

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The life and work of Saint-Ours is squarely placed in the Enlightenment. He was profoundly influenced by Geneva’s foremost philosopher of the day, Jean Jacques Rousseau. The painter’s father is said to have possessed a collection of Rousseau’s publications. In one side-room, Philippa shows me a unique, academic and complete body of work. It comprises small oil paintings of scenes from Rousseau’s “The Levite of Ephraim” paired with corresponding ink sketches. Each pair merits minute examination. Tempus fugit!

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“Le Tremblment de terre: version monumentale” 1783 – 1799. Oil on canvas.

The signature painting of the exhibition is a large-scale version of “The Earthquake.” (Saint-Ours painted four smaller versions.) The motivation for this imposing work came with news of a massive earthquake in Messina, Italy in 1783. A family flees the destruction of their home. They look to the heavens as if expecting to find a reason for this punishment. The woman with her terribly vulnerable – possibly dead – baby are centre-stage. Powerful stuff!

Indeed, these were turbulent times. France was in political upheaval and Geneva had its own revolution in 1792. Saint-Ours maintained a fascination for people caught up in cataclysmic and violent events as evidenced by his sketch-book from around that time. My mind automatically makes a link to the paintings of Tahar M’Guedmini depicting the moment when catastrophe hits…… “when time faints.”

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Sketch for “Le Tremblement de terre.”

Needless to say, some of Saint-Ours’s exquisite sketches on this theme are positioned near the final work. This part of the exhibition seems so compelling. Is this because it resonates with current events? I guess that if Saint-Ours was painting today, this is how he would portray heart-rending scenes from the current migrant crisis in Europe. Were subliminal influences from daily news playing on the minds of the curators when conceiving this show and deciding on the signature work?

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Study for “Choix des enfants de Sparte” 1789. Oil on canvas.

Saint-Ours trained at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. For all the splendour of this exhibition, let’s not lose sight of the fact that he was a true master of his chosen medium. I find myself riveted by the sobre concentration on these men’s faces. And this painting was just a study for a bigger, harrowing canvas of the Spartan elders choosing which children would live to be good citizens and which would be left to die.

So…. Bravo MAH! And…. Brava, Philippa!  Many thanks for the private tour of your work-place. I take my leave and enjoy a breath of fresh air. Right in front of MAH, welcoming me back to the crisp October daylight, is my favourite public sculpture in Geneva – Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure: Arch Leg.” I run my hand over the super-smooth bronze and can’t help wondering how a MAH exhibition designer would display Moore’s work in 200 years.

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Henry Moore “Reclining Figure: Arch Leg.” Bronze 1969.

Tahar M’Guedmini at Galerie Cimaise

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I miss the opening of Tahar M’Guedmini’s “Les syncopes du temp” exhibition. Two days later, the impeccable exhibition space of Galerie Cimaise is empty and quiet. An impressive triptych catches my eye and kicks me in the guts. Why does my pulse quicken?

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The large canvases in this exhibition run with a common and, at first, puzzling theme. A man sits alone at a coffee table near a window with curtain. But something happens to throw everything into movement. There are dark, chaotic and instantaneous forces at play in the frame and in the world outside.

Too often, I have been near to explosions. F***k! That was close! Within a second, the organism is caught in fright and flight. Nausea-curl-up-in-a-ball-and-hide. Is this why, standing in Galerie Cimaise, I feel distress and a giddy isolation? Or is it a kind of all-possible-bad-news-arriving-now moment? Has M’Guedmini captured this instinctive reaction on canvas?

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Tahar M’Guedmini was born in Tunisia in 1948. He trained in fine arts in Tunis and in Paris. Over forty years, he has exhibited widely in Great Britain, Switzerland and France. He remains domiciled in Djerba, Tunisia. In the paintings on show here, it is unclear who the central figure is or what M’Guedmini might have experienced himself to portray the instantaneous upheaval of his solitaire. Whether or not I like these paintings is immaterial; aesthetic appeal is secondary. Quite simply, they have an extraordinary impact. A strong parallel and almost certain influence is the work of Francis Bacon. No surprise then that one of M’Guedmini’s works is now housed in the British Museum’s section on Modern Art from the Arab World.

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Is this dark figure running for cover after the impact? Mourad Ghedira, the mastermind behind this exhibition, gives us some relief from the anxiety of the overbearing canvases by interspacing some beautiful water colour and pastel sketches. Although just as mysterious and hunting around the same theme, they serve to lighten my mood.

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Perhaps the best translation of “Les syncopes du temps” would be “When time faints”? This powerful exhibition forces a sober recollection of the occasions when my time fainted.

Twenty years of Pop Art at Galerie ID

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Galerie ID 1

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Galerie ID in Carouge, Geneve. To celebrate, Isabelle Dunkel is planning a sparkling retrospective from 23 September to 17 October. Beautiful stuff by all the major pop artists she has hosted here will be on display. A friend whom she admires greatly is Roger Pfund, creative giant and the only living artist whose work has been exhibited at Geneva’s Museum of Art and History. It’s a fitting tribute to Isabelle that he put together her invitation.

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I call in to see Isabelle. I get a warm welcome as usual. But this time, it is her I want to interview. She’s not keen to talk about herself. She obviously thinks the story of la galerie is more interesting than the story of ID. (This could be hard work!) So… Born in Paris (I didn’t ask the year.) Traveling childhood (11 different schools.) A year in England (loved it.) Trained in languages (four.) Married young (a banker from Geneva.) Grown children (two.) Why pop art? (A hint of enthusiasm for this conversation.) Always loved “art.” Went to the USA in 1992. Saw and fell for the work of James Rizzi. Started a small collection. Met the man himself and offered to represent him in Switzerland. The story of Galerie ID starts here.

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James Rizzi “Girls Like Flowers” 1997

Girls like flowers! So take some along to the birthday girl whose efforts to bring Rizzi’s work to this town were laughed at. “He’s too American!” “It’s just commercial!” And of course… “It’s not ART!” But she had the last laugh. In her first five years of business she sold more than one thousand pieces of Rizzi’s wonderful, whacky stuff. On the back of this success her rapidly expanding portfolio grew to include names such as Robert Indiana and Alex Katz. She now runs the only gallery in Geneva dedicated to Pop Art and is an ardent promoter of limited-edition prints as an art form to be valued.

I ask Isabelle what she sees as her greatest achievement. The answer is surprising and immediate with neither preparation nor pretension. She is proud of the accessibility of what she shows. Drawn by pop images, people who would never think of going into a gallery come in off the street. She wants her exhibitions to brighten the day of anyone and everyone. Popular art! Popular appeal! And now she has really warmed to her subject. I dare to ask what makes her heart sing. Do I see a blush? Pop music!! Beatles? Yes! Rolling Stones? Yes! Michael Jackson? Fabulous! Who else? Supertramp! Abba? Yes! Daft punk? Of course! Taylor swift? Not my cup of tea! Mrs Dunkel is just Miss Pop at heart.

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Last year I had the privilege of meeting Jeff Schaller at his second exhibition at Galerie ID. He pays tribute to Jasper Johns – one of the doyennes of Pop Art – who famously said “just take something and add to it.” Let’s acknowledge what Isabelle Dunkel has been doing with passion and success for the last twenty years. She’s taken James Rizzi and added accessible Pop Art. Enjoy!