calendario eventi  :: 

X

6/7/2006

Figures of the Player

Collection Lambert, Avignon

The Paradox of the actor

Curator Eric Mezil,
Director, Collection Lambert en Avignon

In resonance with the sixtieth Avignon Theatre Festival, the Collection Lambert en Avignon proposes a summer exhibition on the portrait and the image of the actor entitled Figures of the Player, theParadox of the Actor: title referring to Diderot's famous text on the art of theatrical performance. The project both reinforces the festival's desire to firmly base its program in contemporary art and confirms the Collection Lambert's desire to mix in the universe of the theatre.

In keeping with other Collection Lambert exhibitions of an historical dimension such as Artists' Collections (Summer 2001), Figures of the Player, theParadox of the Actor is composed of more than 600 artworks spanning four centuries of theatrical creation. This historical mise en abime is at the core of the exhibition which, without wishing to be either exhaustive nor chronological, will reveal the evolution of representations of the actor, their acting, postures, stage costumes but also their social role - from courtesan to prince's closest advisor, from admiration to recognition, from unanimous exemplarity to ironic caricature or finally to a model to follow for generations.

This exhibition has been made possible thanks to two exceptional partnerships: the Library- Museum of the Come'die-Francaise has permitted an ensemble of rare loans and prestigious pages from theatrical history will be presented from the collections of the Department of Theatrical Arts of the National Library of France.

The point of departure for this exhibition is anchored in Roni Horn's series of photographs, never before seen in France, in which the American artist has requested Isabelle Huppert, during various photographic shoots, to reincarnate her great roles - the actress using only her face and her expressivity to evoke her roles in Medea, Madame Bovary or La Dentellie're, Orlando or The Pianist...
Mirroring these images will be a series of artworks featuring late eighteenth century Japanese actors in which the great master printmakers succeed in capturing the poses of Kabuki theatre actors by the requisite speed of their brushstroke and the technique of China ink on rice paper. With ink and a brush for the Japanese artists or a camera for Horn, each time the intention to capture the actor's expression and vitality presides, the essence of the actor incarnating a role, the catharsis operating between the actor becoming the other and the spectator, often dumbfounded, taken in a state of immediate identification.

If this type of aesthetic confrontation is at the very heart of the operation of the exhibition, the great schools, trends or seminal periods in theatre: tragedy and comedy, classical or romantic, expressionist or theatre of the absurd will also be addressed in an original way. Just as three knocks of the baton signal the beginning of a performance, this show will begun as visitors arrive outside the museum, the street decorated with giant flags hoisting up images of theatrical figures from the 1950s to the present day. The first darkened room shall be dedicated to the seventh art. Film extracts in which Preminger and Cassavettes, Truffaut and Lubitsch, Te'chine' and Lars von Trier direct with emotion scenes of stage fright or coquetterie, fear or the consecration of actors being filmed on stage, backstage or in their dressing room.

Next, in reference to the Nietzsche's founding text on the birth of Greek Tragedy, a long transitional passage will retrace an almost mythological approach to the genesis of the art of the stage with thirty nineteenth century photographs. Actors, some of them forgotten, will be offered up for the viewer with ecstatic bodies, almost nude or draped with togas and wreaths of laurel leaves, their transfigured faces, their pregnant pauses in reference to the sources of the first Greek texts: Albert Lambert in Polyphe'me, Segond-Weber in Les Burgraves, Jeanne Samary in Amphitryon, Julia Bartet in Andromaque, Demax in Ne'ron, Pierre Fresnay in Polynice...

The attics of the museum will be transformed into the backstage of theatrical history, with alcoves dedicated to Comedia dell'arte, Molie're and his troupe, travelling theatre with Mime Debureau and Fre'de'rick Lemaitre who both inspired Carne' and his Les Enfants du Paradis and again to the creation of the Avignon Theatre Festival with Jean Vilar, Ge'rard Philippe and Maria Casare's. A gallery filled with busts will recapture the noble and elegant image of salons, foyers and other entrances to the theatre at the Come'die Francaise: Madeleine Roch, Coquelin L''Aine', Mademoiselle Mars...

Other rooms in the exhibition will highlight regroupings of figures from a same period or particular theatrical genre. Such a course will allow for the discovery or rediscovery of the great names of French theatre, from Mlle Clairon to Mlle Georges, from Talma to Louis Jouvet, from Adrienne Lecouvreur to Madeleine Renaud, from Mounet-Sully to Denis Podalyde's. The divine Sarah Bernhardt will also be acknowledged with particular attention to the image of her eternal aura, with a rare ensemble of paintings, sculptures, works on paper, personal objects, presents from the greats - Clairin, Lalique, Mucha, photographs and sound archives, some of which are previously unreleased.

Visual artists as just prestigious and celebrated will be represented along with these monstres sacre's of the theatre. The Collection Lambert has never before had such an opportunity to associate so many masterpieces within its exhibition spaces, from Delacroix to Van Dongen, from David to d'Angers to Renoir, from Ge'ricault to Daumier, from Picasso to Saura, from Brassai to Warhol...

The list of contemporary artists associating with the universe of today's actors who have become stars - Isabelle Adjani and Catherine Deneuve or Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman, is just as impressive with Candice Breitz's videos, or the photographs of Sam Taylor-Wood, Douglas Gordon or Vik Muniz, or the installations of Catherine Sullivan or Francesco Vezzoli. All these contemporary artworks will have the added merit, for the most part, of never having been previously exhibited in France.

Like in the dramas of Antiquity, the last rooms in the museum shall be devoted to the chorus of cries and the twilight of the idols, to fictive death on stage (Hamlet, Lady of the Camelias, La Voix Humaine...) to actors' actual deaths, the communal grave for Molie're to the sublime funerary representation of Talma ou Rachel, to the almost national mourning for Sarah Bernhardt, weaving through history to the planetary turmoil of the tragic deaths of James Dean or Marilyn Monroe, painted post-mortem by Yan Pei-Ming, allegorical figures of our time with their violent accidents and unexplained suicides...

A richly illustrated catalogued will be published with E'ditions Gallimard under the direction of E'ric Me'zil. Very diverse texts will explore historical or almost sociological perspectives with important research made around essays written by actors themselves from Melle Clairon to Talma from Sarah Bernhardt to Sasha Guitry, from Roger Blain to Denis Podalyde's. Joel Huthwohl, curator of the Library-Museum of the Come'die Francaise, will address the history of the representation of actors. Enzo Cormann will offer a very personal view of the man of the theatre.

Co-published with Editions Gallimard, 256 pp; 30 euros
Eric Mezil

THE ARTISTS
Louise Abbe'ma, Amaury Duval, David d'Angers, Miquel Barcelo', Jean-Baptiste de Bay, Pierre Bismuth, Jacques-E'mile Blanche, Slater Bradley, Brassai, Candice Breitz, Jean-Jacques Caffieri, E'tienne Carjat, E'mile-Auguste Carolus Duran, Georges Clairin, Chuck Close, Jean-Francois Colson, Charles- Antoine Coypel, Honore' Daumier, Euge'ne Delacroix, Achille Deve'ria, Francisque Duret, Alexandre Falguie're, Robert Fleury, Flore-David, Jules Franceschi, Jakob Gautel, Edmond Geffroy, Baron Ge'rard, The'odore Ge'ricault, Jean-Le'on Ge'rome, Christoph Girardet & Matthias Muller, Anne-Louis Girodet- Trioson, Douglas Gordon, Joseph Granie', Euge'ne Grasset, Roni Horn, Jonathan Horowitz, Michel Journiac, Anne Kessler, Joey Kotting, Barbara Kruger, Ade'laide Labille-Guillard, Anthelme-Francois Lagre'ne'e, Rene' Lalique, Nicolas de Largillie're, Mathieu Laurette, Bertrand Lavier, Hippolyte Lecomte, Simon-Bernard Lenoir, Zoe Leonard, The're'se Leprat, Eva et Franco Mattes, William Maw Egley, Darmon & Paul McCarthy, Adam McEwen, Me'landri, Duane Michals, Nicolas Mignard, Yasumasa Morimura, Alfons Mucha, Ame'lie Munier-Romilly, Vik Muniz, Nadar, Fre'de'rique O'Connell, Augustin Pajou, Lucien Pallez, Seb Patane, Yan Pei-Ming, Adam Pendleton, Elisabeth Peyton, Roger Pic, Pablo Picasso, Pierre et Gilles, Jean-Baptiste Poncet, Pieter Janz Quast, Auguste Renoir, Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, Ade'le Romance-Romany, Mimmo Rotella, Antonio Saura, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, John Stezaker, Studio Harcourt, Catherine Sullivan, Vibeke Tandberg, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gabriel J. Thomas, Pierre-Antoine Vafflard, Kees Van Dongen, Carle Van Loo, Agne's Varda, Francesco Vezzoli, E'lizabeth Vige'e-Lebrun, Andy Warhol.

Marcel Carne', John Casavettes, Arnaud Desplechin, Ernst Lubitsch, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Ariane Mnouchkine, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean Renoir, Andre' Te'chine', Francois Truffaut, Lars Von Trier

LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION
The Collection Lambert en Avignon would like to thank the Library-Museum of the Come'die- Francaise and the Department of Theatrical Arts of the National Library of France for the loan of artworks and objects of exceptional quality.

Exhibition will be present at the Collection Lambert, Hotel de Caumont, 5 Rue Violette and at the Hotel Forbin de la Barben, 7 Place The'odore Aubanel, Avignon

---

SPANISH INFLUENZE
Miquel Barcelo' & Pablo Picasso
Curator: Eric Mezil, Director, Collection Lambert en Avignon

Josef Nadj, the 'artist associate' of this year's Avignon Theatre Festival, has proposed to create a work with Miquel Barcelo'. This performance a' deux, of a painter and a choreographer will be presented at the E'glise des Ce'lestins. The performance consists of revealing an artwork as it comes into being, each night transforming an enormous virgin backdrop of fresh clay mounted on a wall that will become, with the genius of Barcelo', a pictorial and sculptural surface reminiscent in turn of Medieval bas-reliefs, the parietal walls of Lascaux and Chauvet, or even of the almost shamanistic dances of Yves Klein's blue pigment coated models' evolving on a virgin surface, or the corporal performance art of the 1950s, to the United States with Pollock and his famous drippings or in France with Georges Mathieu and his combats in front of un-stretched canvases or to Japan with the best artists of the Gutai group dancing, running on their artworks, trampling and paddling in paint on the canvases placed directly on the ground, like Shirage or Murakami...

More than anyone, Miquel Barcelo' is an erudite artist, a singular figure in contemporary art, existing outside fashion and current trends. Echoing the performance that will allow festival goers to discover this polymorphous artwork, the Collection Lambert takes up the performance's title Paso Doble in association with the festival. Barcelo' is a regular at the Collection Lambert, he participated in the 2001 exhibition Artists' Collections, loaning artworks as varied as his own portrait by Warhol, paintings by Cy Twombly, Iberian sculptures or even immense Piranesi engravings… In addition, the Collection Lambert en Avignon possesses a rare ensemble of works by the artist - the first works from 1980-84. It was Yvon Lambert who exhibited Barcelo''s work for the first time, allowing the artist to be discovered by the rest of the world.

As a prologue to our exhibition created on the figures of the actor, two large rooms in the museum will be devoted to a handsome Paso Doble between Miquel Barcelo' and Pablo Picasso. Beyond common references to Spain, it seemed obvious to us to associate the two in relation to the performance at the E'glise des Ce'lestins. In effect, the principal of the Avignon project strangely takes up the procedures chosen by filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot in the famous Myste're Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso). The master paints on sheets of glass filmed from the other side in order that the spectator has the impression of participating in the process of creation. Just like the performance in Avignon, Barcelo' had the marvellously simple and brilliant idea of using the immense surface of clay earth to model, at every possible opportunity, the demons of his creative practice: shoals of fishes, skulls, amphorae made of soft clay and corrida in which Josef Nadj is the beast sacrificed by banderilles.

In these rooms the Collection Lambert will associate large-scale canvases by Miquel Barcelo' with an ensemble of beautiful terracotta masks of a very Iberian primitivism alongside an almost unknown series of works on paper by Pablo Picasso: magnificent wax crayon or ink drawings on the theme of the theatre. The troubling black eyes in the works of Picasso - the eyes of Oedipus, dramatic figure par excellence of Greek Tragedy who was so pleasing to the father of Modernity, will appear as a leitmotif to the vanite's and other sacrificial symbols contained in the works of Barcelo'.

A catalogue will regroup Miquel Barcelo'''s artworks presented at the Collection Lambert with those from the E'glise des Ce'lestins, also documenting ceramic pieces and every stage of the project L'heure espagnole created with Josef Nadj. Texts (well known to the artist) by Jean Clotte relating to Paleolithic art and a text by writer Pierre Pe'ju, author of Rire de l'ogre (The Ogre's Laugh) will be featured. The catalogue will be co-published with Gallimard under the direction of E'ric Me'zil, director of the Collection Lambert.

THE COLLECTION LAMBERT IN AVIGNON
The Collection Lambert was created in 2000 by Yvon Lambert, who wished to present his collection to the public. With the view to making a future donation, these artworks have been lent to the city of Avignon for 20 years - creating the Collection Lambert, contemporary art museum. The Collection Lambert is supported by: Ministe're de la Culture et de la Communication, Ville d'Avignon, Conseil ge'ne'ral, Conseil re'gional and private donors: Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain and LVMH.

AN HISTORIC COLLECTION BEGINNING FROM THE 1960S
Yvon Lambert, art dealer, has assembled a contemporary art collection unique in France, a testimony to his passionate engagement in the artistic avant-garde; movements such as Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, Land Art from the 60s and 70s, painting from the 80s, photography and video from the 90s. His collection contains most coherent ensembles of works by artists: Carl Andre, Christian Boltanski, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Anselm Kiefer, Brice Marden, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Ryman, Andres Serrano, Cy Twombly.

ARTISTIC PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS
This collection reveals itself to be a most original and exemplary testimony to the intense complicity, and ties that have been woven between dealer-collector and artist. The collection also comes to life with the commission of specific artworks for the museum. The artists selected may be long-time friends of the museum or new, upcoming artists and their projects enrich the historic site of the museum. In this way many different readings of the history of art come together with these dialogues and confrontations that weave new links between artworks and ideas and liberate the viewer of all aesthetic conventions. This is very much the case with artworks made by Christian Boltanski, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jenny Holzer, Koo Jeong-a, Bertrand Lavier, Claude Le'veque, Sol LeWitt, Jonathan Monk, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Giulio Paolini and Niele Toroni...

Press contact:
Collection Lambert ev Avignon
5 rue Violette, 84000 Avignon
Pascal Guillermin
Collection Lambert en Avignon T. 33 (0)4 90165620. F. 33 (0)4 90165621 p.guillermin@collectionlambert.com

2E Bureau
18 Rue Portefoin, 75003 Paris
Sylvie Grumbach et Martial Hobeniche T. + 33 (0)1 42339318. F. + 33 (0)1 40264353 m.hobeniche@2e-bureau.com Sylvie Grumbach & Martial Hobeniche

COLLECTION LAMBERT EN AVIGNON Contemporary Art Museum
5, rue Violette 84000 Avignon
Museum open everyday 11am - 6pm, closed Mondays (September - June)
Open everyday in July and August 11am - 7pm
Entry : 5,5 euros
Concession: 4 euros (students, unemployed, groups of 10+)
Free for members of the 'Friends of the Collection Lambert en Avignon' and students from the Avignon Art School
Bookshop and cafeteria open the same hours as the museum

stampa

permanent link