Cirque - An image from Legers famous Cirque.
As you will read below, with the greatness sadness and reluctance I decided not to include this work in the exhibition. So here is an image to enjoy



The Curators Struggle – What works to select.

I am beginning to appreciate what a curator must feel when trying to translate their vision to reality. The key question is what works should be selected to represent the curators objective. I was struggling to determine which of the livre d’artiste produced by Picasso, Miro, Chagall and Matisse were considered their best. There in lies a problem – can we really say that there is a single painting or sculpture that is the best produced by that artist. Probably not. Therefore, I had to go back to first principles and work out what it is I wanted. I wanted five excellent livres d’artiste created by these five artists, preferably in different print media and hopefully each would be different and have its own distinctive mark. I spoke at length and many times to Tony Bond. I learnt that curators should not compromise – at least not at the start. I also consulted widely and did an enormous amount of research. To cut a long story short I finally selected five works; Matisse – Jazz, Picasso – Vingt Poemes, Miro – A Toute Epreuve, Chagall – Daphnis and Chloe and Leger – Cirque. However, these represented an enormous number of pictures to display. For a number of long and complicated reasons I dropped Leger – Cirque. Perhaps the best explanation I can offer is that Leger – Cirque does not necessarily push the livre d’artiste as far as the others and although colourful it does not also necessarily offer a different and value add viewing experience when put next to the other four works. I will give a presentation of each of the four works selected in the next few blogs.