Photographing Monet s Gardens: Five Contemporary Views

Transcription

1 Press Kit / July 2015 : Five Contemporary Views Elger Esser, Stephen Shore, Bernard Plossu, Darren Almond, Henri Foucault From July 31 st to November 1 st,

2 Press Kit / July 2015 Summary 2 Presentation of the exhibition : Five Contemporary Views 4 Overview of the exhibition 8 Biographies of the photographers 12 Catalogue of the exhibition 16 Press images 20 Permanent exhibit Monet in the Middle 22 Useful information Bernard Plossu At Monet s, the Garden on the Other Side, Giverny, June 2011 (detail) Print Fresson, 20,5 13,5 cm Collection of the artist on long term loan at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, MDIG D Bernard Plossu

3 / 3 Press Kit / July 2015 Presentation of the exhibition Photographing Monet s Gardens: Five Contemporary Views Henri Foucault Vibrations Giverny, 7 November 2012 (detail) Photogram, 49.5 x 38.5 cm Collection of the artist Henri Foucault ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Elger Esser, Stephen Shore, Bernard Plossu, Darren Almond, Henri Foucault With this exhibition, the musée des impressionnismes Giverny is exploring Claude Monet s famous garden at Giverny through the lenses of five worldrenowned photographers. Eschewing stereotypical clichés, the works of Stephen Shore, Darren Almond, Bernard Plossu, Elger Esser and Henri Foucault offer a contemporary, multifaceted and resolutely new interpretation of this major tourist destination, which for the master of Impressionism provided the central motif of his painting during the last 25 years of his life. Claude Monet settled in Giverny in He was 43 years old. Seven years later, he bought the house and garden, which he modified to suit his tastes, and a few years later he had a waterlily pond created on the other side of the road. There is no need to know how he made his garden. It is quite sure that he did it in such a way that his eye arranged it, in succession, guided by the invitations of each day, to the satisfaction of his appetite for colors, wrote his friend and biographer Georges Clemenceau. Between 1977 and 1982, the American Stephen Shore, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, photographed the rebirth of Monet s garden. His prints are being exhibited for the first time in France. Between 2010 and 2015, Darren Almond, Henri Foucault, Elger Esser and Bernard Plossu were given carte blanche and took over the painter s garden. They explored every inch of it, contemplated it, and, by day and by night, in the spring, summer and autumn, studied the magic of the place, its ephemeral, endlessly renewed elements of beauty. A source of inspiration, the garden represented a space for experimentation. This exhibition contains images that question the notions of landscape and nature, their links with the history of art and the beginnings of the photographic medium. Be they subjective, fictional or documentary, they explore the experience of time, duration and memory. They create correspondences between past and present, evoking the idea of a lost paradise. Scientific committee: Jeanne FouchetNahas, Curator of exhibitions of photographs, assisted by Vanessa Lecomte, Associate Curator at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny Henri Foucault Vibrations Giverny, 7 November 2012 Photogram, 49.5 x 38.5 cm Collection of the artist Henri Foucault ADAGP, Paris, 2015

4 / 5 Press Kit / July 2015 Overview of the exhibition Overview of the exhibition The exhibition is divided into five sections, one for each artist, and brings together 90 works, small, medium and very large. Darren Almond Fullmoon Impression, 2011 (detail) CPrint, 121 x 121 cm Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Elger Esser, night as a place of memory In 2010, following a proposal by Didier Mouchel, director of the Pôle Image HauteNormandie in Rouen, Elger Esser visited Giverny and executed several series titled Nocturnes à Giverny. A landscapist inspired by 19th and early 20thcentury painting and literature, this former pupil of Bernd Becher chose nights lit by a full moon, when times moves slowly, and twilight to photograph the absence of Monet. From March to July 2010, he set up his two largeformat cameras in the water garden and, using long exposures, recorded the passage of light. The title Nocturnes à Giverny evokes both the silence of night and romantic music. The series Combray (Giverny I V), the name given to the village of Illiers by the narrator of À la recherche du temps perdu, summons the imaginary. Using photogravure, a process developed in Monet s time, it was possible to obtain refined prints with subtle variations in gray. Printed in the colors of the night, these images are a metaphor for memory and absence. Stephen Shore, documenting Monet s garden Stephen Shore stayed at Giverny on three occasions: first of all in 1977, right at the beginning of the estate s restoration, then in autumn 1981 and in spring A leading colorist, famous for his photographs of everyday life scenes that broke with the aesthetic of the beautiful image prevailing up until the 1970s, he had to contend with the intrinsic beauty of the place and the fact that this was a painter s garden that Monet had arranged to serve his art. With an 8x10 inches camera, the American photographer recorded, with extreme precision and in a strictly documentary style, the different facets of the garden as it was reborn. Through closeups and new angles, he produced images whose apparent neutrality enables us to imagine this garden as it was in the 1880s, before it became the painter s favorite model. Darren Almond Fullmoon Impression, 2011 CPrint, 121 x 121 cm Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin /

5 / 6 Overview of the exhibition Bernard Plossu, an intimate garden It s winter. No one. Not a single flower. Exactly what I was dreaming of: discovering the garden s structure rather than its radiance. Bernard Plossu, a photographer of the inbetween, of intermediate landscapes, produced his first series of photographs of Monet s house and gardens during the winter of 2010, at the instigation of the Frac HauteNormandie. He returned there in spring 2011 at the invitation of the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, which exhibited his photographs the following year. Guided by his vision and his sensibility, Plossu worked in the instant, capturing a solitary flower, a color, a dead leaf, a secret path, a reflection. Revisiting the early 20thcentury pictorialist aesthetic, the photographer used the Fresson process, reinstating the presence/absence of the painter in the garden that he was so fond of and where he captured in infinite brushstrokes on canvas the light and the ripples of the waterlily pond, his masterpiece. Henri Foucault, interpreting light Following an invitation from the musée des impressionnismes Giverny in 2011, the photographer, video artist and sculptor Henri Foucault embarked on an interpretation and evocation of Monet s water garden, starting out from an extensive phase of documentation work. Henri Foucault collected plants and leaves from the estate s garden and used them to produce a series of photograms he called Vibrations. These imprints of shadow and light, using a process that dates back to the earliest times of photography, are, for the author, akin to revelations. He then created forms inspired by his drawings and photograms on large sheets of photographic paper, which he covered with thousands of crystals from Swarovski. Titled Green Light, the resulting work, which consists of sixteen luminous panels, is neither a sculpture nor a photograph. It follows on from Deep Blue, in which the sparkling ripples capture the sensations of another time, that of perception. Darren Almond, images colored by night In 2011 and 2012, Englishman Darren Almond photographed Claude Monet s garden at night under a full moon (Fullmoon Impression) and at dawn (Civil Dawn), the magical moment that precedes the appearance of the sun on the horizon. Endowed with a powerful poetic aura, his images are based on the experience of time and memory. Traveller, explorer, landscapist, photographer and video artist, Darren Almond made pilgrimages to artistic lands (from Joseph Mallord William Turner to John Constable, from Caspar David Friedrich to Paul Cézanne) that led him, in the course of a solo exhibition, to Normandy and the home of Claude Monet. There, slowly, and in order to allow more time for the landscape to express itself, he captured the strange and delicate colors of flowers suspended in the light of dawn.. Extracts from the documentaries L Atelier Fresson by Thomas Goupille (Cinq26) and Elger Esser by Ralph Goertz and Werner Raeune (Production: IKS Institute for Art Documentation) will be screened in the galleries. Darren Almond Civil Dawn@Giverny Winter 2, 2012 CPrint, 155 x 121 cm Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin /

6 / 9 Press Kit / July 2015 Biographies of the photographers Elger Esser, Stephen Shore, Bernard Plossu, Darren Almond, Henri Foucault Elger Esser Combray (Giverny V), France (HauteNormandie, 27 Eure), 2010 (detail) Heliogravure, 117 x 133 x 6 cm Private collection Elger Esser 2010 ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Darren Almond (British, born on October 30, 1971 in Wigan) Born in 1971 in Wigan, in England, Darren Almond lives and works in London. He uses video, photography, sculpture and installation in his work. In 1993 he graduated from Winchester School of Arts with a degree in fine arts. In the 2000s he embarked on exploratory trips and began developing the project Fullmoon@, for which he took photographs at night by a full moon. In 2005, he was nominated for the Turner Prize. In 2007, he produced a series titled Night + Fog that captured the devastated, snowy landscapes of the plains of northern Siberia. In 2011 and 2012 he photographed Monet s gardens at Giverny and produced the series Civil Dawn@Giverny. Elger Esser (German, born on May 11, 1967 in Stuttgart) Born in Stuttgart to a French mother and a German father, Elger Esser spent his childhood in Rome. In 1986 he settled in Düsseldorf and, from 1991 to 1997, he studied photography at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf with Bernd Becher, founder of the Düsseldorf photography School. Since 1996, he has been very interested in archaic places in the middle of nowhere, and has travelled regularly in Europe to undertake large landscapes and photographic vedute. From 2006 to 2009, he taught photography at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe and, in 2008, he was guest professor at the Folkwang Universität in Essen. The following year, a retrospective of his work was shown at the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart. In 2010, Esser was awarded the Rhine Art Prize, and, following an invitation from the Pôle Image Haute Normandie, he produced the series Nocturnes à Giverny. Henri Foucault (French, born on June 3, 1954 in Versailles) Henri Foucault, sculptor, photographer and video artist, studied sculpture at the École nationale supérieure des beauxarts in Paris, graduating in Fascinated by silent cinema, he produced his first photograms in 1991 with the series PhotogrammeInox. Henri Foucault then embarked on the representation of the body as a sculptural form. In 2000 and in 2002, he produced the series Sosein and Satori, which explore notions of absence/presence and negative/ positive. In 2008, a retrospective of his work was organized at the Monnaie de Paris. Four years later, at the instigation of the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, he produced a series of photograms of plants, titled Vibrations, and produced the largeformat works Deep Blue and Green Light, which combine revisited photograms with thousands of sparkling crystals Swarovski. Since 1995 he has been teaching at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris. Elger Esser Combray (Giverny V), France (HauteNormandie, 27 Eure), 2010 Heliogravure, 117 x 133 x 6 cm Private collection Elger Esser 2010 ADAGP, Paris, 2015

7 / 10 biographies of the photographers Bernard Plossu (French, born on February 26, 1945 in Dalat, Vietnam) Bernard Plossu spent his childhood and adolescence in Paris, where he frequently attended the Cinémathèque. When he was 13, he discovered the Sahara with his father, and he took his first photographs with a Brownie Flash. In 1965, he went to Mexico to visit the Lacandon in Chiapas, and then travelled through California taking portraits of his friends in the American beatnik community. In 1967, Plossu met the Fresson in SavignysurOrge. In 1970, he travelled to India, then, in 1975 and 1977, to Africa. He started using a 50 mm lens instead of a wideangle. From 1977 to 1985, he lived in New Mexico. In 1979, Le Voyage mexicain, with a preface by Denis Roche, was published by Éditions Contrejour in Paris. He returned to Europe for good in In 1988 he won the Grand Prix National de la Photographie and received a grant from the Villa Médicis Hors les Murs. A retrospective of his work was organized at the musée national d Art moderne in Paris in the same year. In 2012, the musée des impressionnismes Giverny exhibited the photographs he took of Monet s home and gardens in 2010 and Stephen Shore (American, born on October 8, 1947 in New York) Stephen Shore discovered photography at a young age thanks to the book American Photographs by Walker Evans, which exerted a lasting influence on him. At the age of 14 he contacted Edward Steichen, director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who bought three prints from him. He then associated with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground at the Factory for three years. In 1969, he started to work on several black and white conceptual photographic series. In 1972, he was the first photographer to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He embarked on a journey across the United States that led to the visual diaries American Surfaces ( ) and Uncommon Places ( ). In 1973 he stopped using a Rollei 35 mm, adopting instead a 4x5 inches view camera, then an 8x10 inches. In 1977, the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York commissioned him to photograph the restoration of Claude Monet s gardens in Giverny. Since 1982, he has been director of the photography department at Bard College in New York State. In 2014, Phaidon published From Galilee to the Negev, a book devoted to photographs he took in Israel and the West Bank. Stephen Shore Giverny, France, 1977 Chromogenic color print, 91.5 x 115 cm Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

8 / 13 Press Kit / July 2015 présentation Catalogue de of the l exposition exhibition Photographing Monet s Gardens: Five Contemporary Views The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (French and English) that includes fullpage reproductions of all the works in the exhibition. This book will be distributed in France and abroad. Catalogue contents: Forewords by Sébastien Lecornu, President of the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, Guy Cogeval, Vicepresident of the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, and Frédéric Frank, Director of the musée des impressionnismes Giverny. Bernard Plossu At Monet s, the Garden on the Other Side, Giverny, June 2011 (detail) Print Fresson, 30 x 44.8 cm Collection of the artist on long term loan at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, MDIG D Bernard Plossu Introduction by Marina Ferretti Bocquillon, Director for Exhibitions and Research at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny Essay by Jeanne FouchetNahas, Curator of the exhibition: : Five Contemporary Views Portfolio of the works exhibited Biographies of the photographers (Stephen Shore, Elger Esser, Darren Almond, Bernard Plossu, Henri Foucault) by Vanessa Lecomte, Associate Curator at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny Technical glossary by Vanessa Lecomte Catalogue Version : bilingual French/English Coedition : musée des impressionnismes Giverny and Filigranes Éditions Publication : July 2015 Size : cm, hardback Number of pages : 112 pages 90 colors and black and white photographs ISBN : Price : 29 euros

9 / 14 The catalogue of exhibition Marina Ferretti Bocquillon Marina Ferretti is Director for Exhibitions and Research at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny. She has curated such important exhibitions as Signac (Paris, Grand Palais, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum and New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), NeoImpressionism From Seurat to Paul Klee (Paris, musée d Orsay, 2005), Monet s Garden in Giverny: Inventing the Landscape (Giverny, musée des impressionnismes, 2009), Bonnard in Normandy (Giverny, musée des impressionnismes, 2011), Signac, The Colors of Water (Giverny, musée des impressionnismes and Montpellier, musée Fabre, 2013) and Degas, an Impressionist Painter? (Giverny, musée des impressionnismes, 2015). She has written several essays and books on Impressionism, including L Impressionnisme ( Que saisje? series, Paris, PUF, 2004). Vanessa Lecomte Vanessa Lecomte is associate curator at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, where she cocurated the exhibitions Maurice Denis, The Eternal Spring and Private Monet. Photographs by Bernard Plossu in In 2008, she was curator of the exhibition Portrait of a Lady (Giverny, Musée d Art Américain; Bordeaux, musée des BeauxArts, ). In addition, she has contributed to several exhibitions at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, in particular Monet s Garden in Giverny: Inventing the Landscape (2009), Joan Mitchell, Paintings (2009), Impressionism along the Seine (2010), Maximilien Luce, NeoImpressionist. A Retrospective (2010), Bonnard in Normandy (2011), and Hiramatsu, The Lily Pond. Homage to Monet (2013). Jeanne FouchetNahas Jeanne FouchetNahas is chief editor of the HorsSérie collection published by Connaissance des Arts, and was also chief editor of Connaissance des Arts Photo from 2004 to She was cocurator of the travelling exhibition Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces, featuring works by 70 renowned photographers, from Lartigue to Nan Golding, and CartierBresson to Sugimoto (New York, PS1, 2005; Paris, Couvent des Cordeliers, Berlin, Galerie C/O and Tokyo, Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2006; The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, 2007; Moscow, Manege, 2008; Beijing, UCCA, 2009; Seoul, The Museum of Photography, 2011). Before that, she was in charge of the magazine Paris Photo ( ). She also collaborated on Lettre Internationale, an intellectual periodical published in ten European countries between 1984 and Jeanne FouchetNahas has published articles on photography and contributed to Transitions (Éditions Xavier Barral / Rencontres d Arles, 2013). She has taken part in several conferences on photography, notably at the Rencontres d Arles, Christie s Education and the Institut Français in New York. Elger Esser Giverny VIII, France 2010 CPrint, AuDibond, Forex, 123 x 184 x 4 cm Private collection Elger Esser 2010 ADAGP, Paris, 2015

10 / 17 Press Kit / July 2015 Press images The images are only available to illustrate articles about the exhibition and for its duration. All other rights reserved. Henri Foucault Green Light, (detail) Photograms and crystals from Swarovski, 180 x 916 cm, polyptych (16 panels) Collection of the artist Henri Foucault ADAGP, Paris, 2015

11 / 18 Press images / 19 Press Kit / July 2015 Henri Foucault Green Light, (detail) Photograms and crystals from Swarovski, 180 x 916 cm, polyptych (16 panels) Collection of the artist Henri Foucault ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Bernard Plossu At Monet s, the Garden on the Other Side, Giverny, June 2011 Print Fresson, 30 x 44.8 cm Collection of the artist on long term loan at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, MDIG D Bernard Plossu Stephen Shore Giverny, France, 1977 Chromogenic color print, 91.5 x 115 cm Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York Darren Almond Fullmoon Impression, 2011 CPrint, 121 x 121 cm Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Elger Esser Combray (Giverny V), France (HauteNormandie, 27 Eure), 2010 Heliogravure, 117 x 133 x 6 cm Private collection Elger Esser 2010 ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Stephen Shore Giverny, France, 1982 Chromogenic color print, 91.5 x 115 cm Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York Elger Esser Giverny VIII, France 2010 CPrint, AuDibond, Forex, 123 x 184 x 4 cm Private collection Elger Esser 2010 ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Bernard Plossu At Monet s, the Garden on the Other Side, Giverny, June 2011 Print Fresson, cm Collection of the artist on long term loan at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, MDIG D Bernard Plossu Henri Foucault Vibrations Giverny, 7 November 2012 Photogram, 49.5 x 38.5 cm Collection of the artist Henri Foucault ADAGP, Paris, 2015 Darren Almond Civil Dawn@Giverny Winter 2, 2012 CPrint, 155 x 121 cm Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin / Matthew Marks Gallery, New York / Jay Jopling, White Cube, London Darren Almond Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin /Matthew Marks Gallery, New York / Jay Jopling, White Cube, London

12 / 21 Press Release / March 2015 Degas, an Impressionist Painter? présentation Permanent de exhibit l exposition Monet in the Middle from March 27 th to November 1 st, 2015 Theodore Wendel Brook, Giverny (detail), 1885 Oil on canvas, 72,4 x 90,5 cm Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Daniel J. Terra Collection, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago Maurice Denis White Sun on the Corn, c.1914 Oil on canvas, cm Giverny, musée des impressionnismes, gift of Claire Denis, 2012, MDIG D Giverny, musée des impressionnismes / Photo : Thierry Leroy In its mounting of thematic or monographic exhibitions, the aim of the musée des impressionnismes is to illustrate a precise moment in the history of impressionism or Postimpressionism and to explicate its developments in France and elsewhere in the world. These artistic movements, which developed during one of the richest periods in the history of French art, remain a source of inspiration for many artists today. Thanks to the loans made by our partners, the musée d Orsay and Terra Foundation for American Art, we are today able to present, in parallel to our exhibitions, a coherent display of works centred around the figure of Claude Monet. Without the extraordinarily innovative research of the patriarch of Giverny, the art of Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Maximilien Luce would be no more understandable than the works by the American artists of the Giverny colony or the Neoimpressionist painters. The paths for possible exploration are innumerable and open the way to a fascinating programme of exhibitions in the future. Even today, the pond and house at Giverny remain mythical places for many artists. The works presented change each year in accordance with loans received but the theme remains unaltered. Thus, in addition to our temporary exhibitions, each season visitors have the opportunity to admire works on the theme of Monet and his influence. In 2015, within the framework of its policy Le Temps des Collections, the musée des BeauxArts in Rouen will contribute the exhibition programme at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny. The musée Marmottan Monet has also lent three exceptional works by Monet. Joan Mitchell La Grande Vallée IX, Oil on canvas, cm Collection FRAC HauteNormandie, inv. P , on long term loan at the musée des impressionnismes Giverny, MDIG D Collection Frac HauteNormandie / Photo : Jacqueline Hyde Estate of Joan Mitchell

13 Useful information Musée des impressionnismes Giverny 99 rue Claude Monet Giverny T Open from July 31 st to November 1 st, 2015 Every day from 10 am to 6 pm The Museum is accessible to people with reduced mobility. On place: restaurant tearoom, gift shopbookstore. Admission fee Ticket for galleries Adult : 7 Child 12 to 18 / Reduced fee: 4,50 Child 7 to 11: 3 Visitor with disabilities: 3 Child under 7: free Free on 1 st Sunday of the month Family ticket : Buy 3 tickets get one free child admission Annual Pass : 20 Duo Pass : 35 Audioguide : 3 Combined tickets * Musée des impressionnismes + Maison et Jardins de Claude Monet Adult : 16,50 Child 12 to 18 / Student : 10 Child 7 to 11: 8,50 Visitor with disabilities: 7 Child under 7: free Musée des impressionnismes + Musée de Vernon Adult : 9 Student over 26: 6,50 Child under 7: free Available to individuals only, no queuing required. Online purchasing available: * additional charge for management costs

14 N14 Musée des impressionnismes Giverny 99 rue Claude Monet BP Giverny France T : 33 (0) F : 33 (0) contact@mdig.fr For further information Please contact: Anne Samson Communications Léopoldine Turbat T : leopoldine@annesamson.com At museum Head of communication Géraldine Brilhault T : g.brilhault@mdig.fr Open from July 31 st to November 1 st, 2015 Every day from 10 am to 6 pm (last admission 5.30 pm) Rouen rue Claude Monet <VERNON Maison du tourisme chemin du Roy Maison & jardins de Claude Monet BONNIÈRES> Vernon Sortie 16 D181 Giverny D5 N14 bus Bonnières Sortie 14 A13 La Seine D113 A14 A15 A13 Paris The exhibition has been painted using colours by craftsmen in paint and wallpaper, Farrow & Ball. On the cover Stephen Shore Giverny, France, 1982 (detail) Chromogenic color print, 91.5 x 115 cm Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York