calendario eventi  :: 

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3/9/2004

Two exhibitions

Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Meret Oppenheim
Two trussed ladies'shoes on a silver platter. The enigmatic German-Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim's (1913-1985) oeuvre and persona are eternally linked with surrealism. Her shoe-piece Ma Gouvernante - My Nurse - Mein Kindermädchen from 1936 is exhibited again, together with a selection of works - sketches, objects and paintings, as well as examples of her designs for jewellery and costumes.

Man Ray
The Man Ray (1890-1976) exhibition features a selection of photographs by this illustrious surrealist, including his photo-based work, fashion photography and many portraits. Like many photographers, he made mistakes in the darkroom that led to new technical innovations and many of the abstract photo compositions for which he is famous.

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Meret Oppenheim
Curator: Annika Öhrner

"For women, the implications are that they have to live their own female life as well as the female life that men project on them. Thus, they are woman times two. That's too much."

(Meret Oppenheim, 1975)

The person and the works of German-Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985) are forever associated with surrealism and 20th century art history. Her Fur Breakfast (1936) has often been used to represent the entire movement. Her oeuvre was far more multifaceted than that, however.

The first Meret Oppenheim retrospective was held at Moderna Museet in 1967. Interest in her as an artist and pivotal figure of surrealism has been wide-spread over the past decade. Moderna Museet is now showing Meret Oppenheim again, with a selection of works - drawings, objects and paintings - from public and private collections in Switzerland, Sweden, Germany and France. This is a smaller retrospective focusing on a few facets of a complex and central artist with an intricate relationship to modernism that goes far beyond the museum's most famous piece, Ma Gouvernante.

Aged 18, in 1932, Meret Oppenheim left her home town Basel for Paris, and was soon after introduced to André Breton and the surrealists, not forgetting Man Ray and Max Ernst who would be very important in her life. Oppenheim, who was much younger than her established male artist colleagues, was soon taking part in surrealist exhibitions. In the years leading up to the Second World War, she produced some of her key works, including Ma Gouvernante - My Nurse - Mein Kindermädchen from 1936 (the Moderna Museet replica is from 1967). When war broke out, Oppenheim, who was of Jewish origin, returned to Switzerland, where she went into a long depression.

The surrealists shared the fashion industry's fascination for the female body as a projection surface. Many surrealists also engaged in fashion, partly as a way of earning money. Here we find Oppenheim, both as a model and as a designer of jewellery and clothes. Some of her designs were sold to Elsa Schiaparelli, the great creator of Paris fashions in the 1930s. The exhibition will feature Oppenheim's fur-covered brass bracelets which were made for Schiaparelli, together with some of her fashion drawings. Throughout life, Oppenheim maintained her love for fancy dress and ritual, theatre and carnival. Her performance La Festine (1959), in which she let participants eat a sumptuous meal from the body of a nude woman, will be interpreted by the artist Katrine Helmersson in a recreated version during the exhibition period.

In the course of her life, Oppenheim formulated with growing vigour her abhorrence of the restrictions she felt governed women, and not least women artists. She believed that every individual has a male and a female aspect, and that creativity is androgynous. In the exhibition we can see how Oppenheim reverts again and again to herself, or the female form, as a surface for projection.

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Man Ray
Curator: Leif Wigh

Ray (1895-1976) is unquestionably one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. His idiosyncratic imagery and his experimentation in tune with the times resulted in a broad spectrum of work, from black-and-white photos to sculptural objects. The MMan oderna Museet exhibition is showing a selection of legendary works by this seminal surrealist. The exhibition will reflect his photo-based work, fashion photography and the many portraits.

Man Ray was born in Philadelphia as Emmanuel Rudnitsky, and started his career as a painter, taking the name of Man Ray. His meeting with Marcel Duchamp (in New Jersey in 1915) was a turning point in his artistic career, which is dominated by humour and playful erotic fantasies. In 1921 he travelled to Europe, where he got involved with the avant-garde artists and was especially influenced by the surrealists who became his intellectual sounding-board. Man Ray first acquired a camera and started taking photographs because he was unhappy with the way professional photographers reproduced his paintings. The resulting success of his pictures also induced him to start taking photographs of his friends' works.

Man Ray's interest in fashion was born in Paris in the 1920s, when he became friends with a fashion designer whose clothes he photographed. He started a studio in central Paris and also took portraits there. Soon he was the talk of all the major fashion houses and started photographing their collections for the Haute Couture shows. His photos were circulated to fashion magazines all over the world. In 1934, he signed a contract with Harper's Bazaar, which made him a professional fashion photographer.

Like so many photographers, he made technical mistakes in the darkroom, but found that these mistakes led to new technical possibilities. Man Ray also created abstract compositions using everyday objects which he placed on photosensitive paper and then exposed to light. This is how he produced many of the works for which he is famous.

The hubbub around Man Ray moved many contemporary celebrities to offer their services both as assistants and as models. One of his most popular subjects was Kiki de Montparnasse, a woman who became something of a muse to contemporary artists and to the American writer Ernest Hemingway. Man Ray's studio was also frequented by Meret Oppenheim, whose works will be shown in a parallel exhibition, and who has many similarities with Man Ray.

When the Second World War broke out, Man Ray abandoned Paris and his belongings there, travelling to New York by ship together with Salvador Dalí. He settled in Hollywood, California, where he photographed film stars. His sorrow at having to leave Paris, and his mourning of the things he had to leave behind, prompted him to create a collection of pictures he called "The Objects of my Affection", which now belong to the museum's collection.

Image:
Man Ray, Objet indéstructible, 1923
© Man Ray

Moderna Museet
Island of Skeppsholmen
Stockholm

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