Eleven years since the idea competition for a new Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts (MCBA) on the Platform 10 site was launched! The time to raise the 84 million necessary for its realization, the time also to make fever rise. It is an understatement to say that the first temporary exhibition of the new MCBA was expected. And … before knowing the theme revealed in November 2018 – with the eight other skirmishes planned this year -, we talked.
We hoped for a size of the contemporary scene of the caliber of Weiwei, which had attracted 106,000 visitors over four months for the final point in Rumine. We’ve heard of Picasso. Difficulty obtaining loans for a building that has not yet proven itself. And here it is… “On the surface. Vienna 1900, from Klimt to Schiele and Kokoschka “is now much more than a poster. After the fifteen journalists present at the press visit on Thursday, including some rare Alémaniques; after the lenders and other happy few who took over in the evening, the general public is expected this Friday to “See here what we do not see elsewhere!”, credo of the management of the MCBA delivered at the same time as his agenda.
The exhibition caresses and scrutinizes
On this point, the promise is kept! After the inaugural hanging “Atlas. Cartography of the gift ”(86,000 visitors over three months), this first temporary exhibition signed by Catherine Lepdor and Camille Lévêque-Claudet caresses and scrutinizes the skin from every angle. The skin, carnal envelope but also plastic when it comes to furniture. The skin mirrors feelings, torments, moods. Or the landscape skin, the imaginary, even mystical membrane skin. And of course, the skin that sculpts the body or serves as an exhibition surface. Addicted to appearance, subscribed to tattoo artist needles and dedicated to the cult of the selfie, the 21st century spirit is fully found there, at the same time as it embarks on a time machine. We are in Vienna, the 19th century saw its last hours at the rate of crises, social, economic, political. They are linked together while the Emperor François-Joseph vacillates on his throne. “Strangely, notes Camille Lévêque-Claudet, this decline coincides with a climax in the field of science. The artists wonder about the human being (note: Freud, if you hear us!), They turn to him and want to find him in his truth. A quest that goes through the skin. ”
The names of these artists ring out loud. Fort. There is Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), the goldsmith’s son, the original who left us a photo of him in his painter’s blouse which could have passed for that of a madman, the genius who signed the iconic “Kiss”, passionate fusion of bodies, perfect harmony, hymn to love. There is also Egon Schiele (1890-1918), his disorganized bodies, his raw, violent, sometimes morbid features, the man who wanted his work to be shown in churches, the libertarian condemned for having left his works to the view of a minor. There is also Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), the seriously wounded soldier who never let peace settle in his work, the painter with the seismograph brush strokes of the tensions of the world and beings. All have moved towards modernity, all have recently been the subject of major retrospectives, in Vienna for the first two, in Zurich for the third.
A difficult leap to make
“The desire to approach and offer a reading of the Viennese scene is one of the dreams of any art historian,” assumes Catherine Lepdor. We did it with the Swiss in Paris, with the Russian landscapes. There, the trigger factor is really the generosity of the Stiftung Sammlung Kamm. ”Deposited at the Kunsthaus in Zug but not shown permanently, it lends about a third of the exhibition. “Afterwards,” continues the chief curator of the MCBA, “we had to construct a point!” I have always been struck by the fact that Klimt is said to ornament, reducing the faces of women to a minimum of surface. For me, it is precisely this whole device that is made available to the skin. We continued on this path, did research and, our intuitions confirmed, we offer this reading of the Viennese scene through this prism of the skin. ”
Bodies contorted to Schiele’s extreme limit, his line around color, those bones, those bloody moods that try to pierce the skin. These other drawings by Klimt (oils are less numerous) where the body masses merge, hardly suggested. Or this series of portraits of Gerstl, Kokoschka, Oppenheim who all work the extra skin, in the form of a halo, a strange aura.
The combined works attract, but the exhibition, by sticking to its theme as to an obsession, risks losing the public. It takes information to understand, arguments to be sure to follow the thread and even more to assume the leap to the second floor, devoted almost exclusively to furniture and decorative arts. Are we still really in the theme? The commissioners speak of the obvious! The revolution of the so-called major arts accompanied by an effort on the living environment, comfort, functionality of interiors, hygiene. And furniture, in its design as in its realization, also has a surface, a skin.
“The general public can be found in the names they know, Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, notes Camille Lévêque-Claudet. Next, there is a thread within the thread, the skin, which provides reading keys. We thought as much of the general public as of a more scientific public and, continues the commissioner, it was by renewing our look at this time that we were able to obtain the majority of the loans. We are not a museum that can sign checks for the loan of works, we also play our existence on the chessboard. ”
Lausanne, MCBA
Until May 24, from Tue to Sun (10 a.m. – 6 p.m.), I (10 a.m. – 8 p.m.)
www.mcba.ch
Created: 02-14-2020, 07:15 am
–
