Back in Paris, bright sunshine, iconic sites, and Olympics are a past dream. I visited a section of the Louvre that I have never visited before and so glad I did. The Metropolitan Museum in New York is renovating its Near East collection and have sent some of their most valuable pieces to the Louvre for the duration. I expected the Louvre’s collection to be mostly cylinder seals, cuneiform tablets, and small artifacts with a stone sculpture here and there. There was plenty of that and so much more.
Sumerian gods, 3rd millennium BCE top row from the Louvre and bottom row from the Metropolitan Museum.
Top row from the Louvre including the very famous Stele of Naram Sin and the top of Hammurabi’s Code. Bottom row are from the Metropolitan with a cuneiform cylinder seal image in the center.
More amazing treasures first mother of pearl tiny images (abalone shell) and some items of gold and coral with the gold jewelry from the Met and the bull holding the flask also from the Met.
So much to look at and here once again the question, are these works better off in the Louvre or the Metropolitan or back in their war torn country, where Isis regularly destroys images it deems pagan. It’s that question again. The lamassu half man half bull figures are real and taken from Iraq many years ago. Some of those remaining in Iraq have been totally or partially destroyed.
The Pompidou is celebrating 100 years since the birth of Surrealism with a massive exhibition laid out in the form of a labyrinth (not terribly successful in my estimation) as it was so crowded at the start it was hard to see anything. Many artists I have never heard of or seen before, especially women artists made the show a wonderful experience.
Some familiar faces (left to right): Max Ernst, “Triumph of Surrealism” 1937, Salvador Dali, “The Dream” 1931, and Giorgio De Chirico, “The Song of Love” 1914. The manifesto of Surrealism was published in 1924 though surrealist ideas stemmed from Dada much earlier and the surrealism movement lasted well into the 1960s. One of the longest lasting artistic movements and of course its influence is still felt in today’s art.
Dreams were important to the surrealists for exploring the unconscious. Andre Breton worked at a neuropsychiatric center and discovered under the influence of Freud, how to interpret dreams. Left to right: Edith Rimmington, “Museum” 1951, Dorothea Tanning, “Birthday” 1942, and Dora Mara, “Untitled” 1934. There was much taken from Breton’s writings and he really got around including a trip to the US where he visited New Mexico and the southwest.
The Chimera comes from ancient Roman art and is part lion, part serpent, and part goat. You can imagine that peaked the interest of surrealists. Victor Brauner “Loup Table” 1939 is just such a chimera and the other works; Man Ray’s “Gift” 1921, and Wolfgang Paalen “Umbrella” 1937 plays on Duchamp’s idea of transforming ordinary objects (he called them readymade) into non usable works of art.
Exquisite Corps was a group activity surrealists engaged in and you could try it yourself where paper is passed around and each person creates part of an image on a folded paper where the others can’t see and then passes the paper on to the next person to add also without seeing the others until the image is complete. In this one you can actually see the folds of the paper. It was a joint effort of Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Morise, 1928.
One artist creating chimeric images that is new to me is Unica Zürn, Untitled 1963 an artist I’d like to get to know more about. This work is ink and gouache on paper.
This has just been a taste of what this comprehensive show was about and I’ll conclude with these three artists. Left to right: Meret Oppenheimer, “Daphne and Apollo” 1943 (we usually only see her fur lined tea cup and saucer), Jane Graverol “Les Belles Vacances” 1964, and Ithel Colquohoun, “The Dance of the Nine Opals” 1942.
Concluding a visually rich time in Paris this seems like a fitting final image. Looking inside a shoe repair shop. Yes, people in Paris still get their shoes repaired rather than tossing them though I don’t know how you’d ever get both shoes back from this place.
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