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.

Checking the works for the exhibition

This is an image from Miro's Ubu Roi. truely a great work
- but I felt not to Miro's normal standard. For example see the image from his A Toute Epreuve which I think is a truly a classic piece. Any way just enjoy the image. Seems like i need to do a bit more thinking.





Checking the works for the exhibition

I reconsidered the works I proposed in my original submission to Tony Bond. I was comfortable with the selection of Matisse – Jazz and Leger – Cirque. These were clearly amongst the best Livre d’Artistes produced and certainly the best works produced by these two artists. However I felt that Miro – Ubu Roi was neither Miro’s best work nor did it rank among the leading Livre d’Artistes produced. Although I liked the work I felt that the images were childish, as they were probably meant to be, and unrepresentative of his great abstract graphics. There were better works. Also unfortunately the Chagall – Four Tales from Arabian Nights was a bound volume. My concept of the exhibition was for the loose pages of the book to be lifted out, framed and displayed in its entirety. They were not to be displayed as books would normally be, as the viewer would not get a full appreciation of the richness of the works. The Matisse and Miro are loose books, i.e. they are not bound into the spine and covers. I also needed to further research on the appropriate Picasso Book

Initial views of the Curating Process.

Sometimes it is best to just enjoy an image instead of trying to learn about it. For example, this is Icarus in Matisse classic livres d’artiste Jazz. Matisse sometimes called it “trapeze artist”. Here the trapeze artist is flying through the air with the circus spotlights in the background. A beautiful interpretation. However, the real Icarus story is that he died trying to fly from imprisonment with wax wings - flew too close to the sun, the wax melted and he fell to his death. The real interpretation is Matisse’s concern at the arrest of his daughter by the Gestapo. The figure here is his daughter being shot in the heart with the flash of bullets in the blue background. Real sad!! Icarus will never be the same to me.

Initial views of the Curating Process.

As I mentioned earlier the AGNSW is very well organised and there is a well structured and understood curating system. Broadly speaking my initial view is that the curating system has three components, one is the artistic component, second is the organisational component and third is the value adding component. While it is early days, I find that the artistic component is flexible and there is no one size fits all approach. The artistic component is totally the curator’s responsibility and depends on the type, scale and theme of the exhibition. The curator develops the exhibition theme and concept, does a preliminary nomination of art works and in some instances sources the artwork. There is considerable research and discussions at this stage and the concept may be discussed at the Executive Curating Committee. The organisational component is more structured and is designed to make the curators artistic vision a reality. This component is responsible for negotiating the art work loans, transportation, security, art work protection, gallery design and hanging. The value adding component is also a very well organised and comprises the press relations, publicity, floor talks, symposium, catalogues, education programs, brochures and special sales.

Many researchers believe it was Bonnard’s outstanding lithographic illustrations of Paul Verlaine’s poems in Parallelement that was the modern precursor to the livres d’artiste. It was the high quality, a new benchmark, published by the father of livres d’artiste Ambrose Vollard in France 1900 and set a new standard of excellence. It was Bonnard’s red drawings going into the margins, entering the space usually reserved for text creating a new genre uniting images and text. This integration of image and text seems commonplace today but in the mid 19th century, it was new, experimental and contemporary. No wonder the bibliophile establishment questioned whether it was a book or whether it was art.

Progress.

In the first two weeks I spoke with Charlotte Cox, Exhibitions Registrar, Erica Drew, Senior Exhibitions Manager, Susanne Briggs, Media Relations Manager, Hendrick Kolenberg, Senior Curator Australian Prints Drawings and Watercolours and Peter Raissis, Curator European Prints and Drawings’ Tony Bond and Josephine Touma. I learnt that the AGNSW was a well organised curating machine. I have begun to document the curating process. This will have to be continually revised. I spent some time getting to know the AGNSW website and its own intranet. This is a very rich and well populated website with considerable useful material. I have also commenced preliminary research on the Livres d’Artistes that I want to include in the exhibition. However I found there was a danger of spreading my limited time in all directions and decided to strictly discipline myself and give priorities to my work. I felt it was important to first do a preliminary flow chart of the AGNSW curating process

Preliminary Organisational Steps

This is one of the earliest works that combines image and text. It is from " Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry". The image is rich and luxurious today as it was when it was first painted on to the text which was pre printed. This was created in 1485 and there is only one original in the Musee Conde, Chantilly, France. Truly magnificent.

Tony found that many of the potential supervisors of my internship at the AGNSW were busy and so agreed to supervise it himself. (There is more here than meets the eye - I will consider if I will reveal all at some later stage) Our agreed protocol was that all meetings would be organised by him so as to avoid undue pressure and extra work on the very busy gallery staff. I cleared the way with Joanna Mendelssohn and Arianne Rourke of COFA. The various bits of paperwork were exchanged between the AGNSW and COFA. I was to start on Wed 25 Nov 2009 and work 2 -3 days a week. Tony had organised the first batch of meetings. I initially sat in the AGNSW Library. Josephine Touma, Public Programs and Tertiary Internships, sent me a welcome message and suggested we meet. She organised me a seat in her office, also got my IT and security pass organised.

My Proposal

This is a beautiful image from Miro's most celebrated livres d'artistes A Toute Epreuve. Notice how Miro uses Paul Eluard's poem as the body of the bird walking away from the centre of the page. On the right page is a whimsical bird with a central eye and the iconic ladder body. Miro spent over 10 years between conception and final publication with the creation of 253 woodblocks requiring over 42,000 passes through the press to create a magnificent work of 52 folded sheets of interwoven image and text. The juxtaposition of image and text become inseparable components of the work.

My Proposal

My proposal was sent to Tony Bond stating that I would like an internship to work with the AGNSW to plan and prepare, within a curatorial context, an exhibition of livres d’artiste. The exhibition will focus on this very popular and spectacular art form showing some of the most beautiful graphic works produced by the 20th century European Masters in the post war period.

The livres d’artiste is an elegant and masterful limited edition of art in which the artist combines a series of exclusively designed fine art prints with literature. The size, presentation and the high quality materials is a special characteristic of the livres d’artiste. They display the imaginative and varied relationships between image and text created by these artists. The print makers of these works are also considered the grandmasters of European fine art graphics having detailed and intimate knowledge of the artist’s preferences and with a unique ability to produce prints reflecting the artist’s intentions. To paraphrase Matisse, the livres d’artiste is a work that is meant to be looked at and admired but not read.

My aim will be to select the best and most renowned works from among the most prominent 20th century European masters. I would aim to exhibit between 2 to 4 livres d’artistes depending on the number of pages and images in each work. As a starting point, I suggested the selection be considered from, but not limited to;

1. Marc Chagall. Four Tales from Arabian Nights. 1948, Published Pantheon
2. Jean Miro. Ubu Roi 1966. Written by Alfred Jarry, Published Teriade
3. Henri Matisse. Jazz. 1947. Written by Matisse, Published Teriade
4. Fernand Leger. Cirque. 1950. Written by Leger, Published Teriade
5. Pablo Picasso – One of many to be chosen but example Sable Mouvant,(1966) Written by Pierre Reverdy, Published Broder

I had spoken with MOMA and they confirmed that they own a copy of each of these works.

The objective would be to produce a complete planning document, which will include some or all of the following,

Develop the conceptual shape of exhibition
Select the works
Organise loans of works from appropriate institutions (please note the works nominated are available from MOMA.)
Develop public lecture and other education programs
Prepare marketing and press plan
Identify sponsorship opportunities
Prepare budget
Prepare draft catalogue and other documentation.Prepare interior exhibition design
Prepare installation plan

How it began

For you to enjoy


Here we have an image from the livres d'artiste by Chagall called Daphnis and Chloe. One of the 20th century's most outstanding works. This work took 24 lithographic stones to produce and was very tightly controlled by Chagall. There are another 58 colour lithographs in this truly monumental work.

How it began

Over a period of time the idea of an exhibition on livres d’artiste had been swirling around my mind. I approached Tony , Assistant Director, INNOVA with this idea and supported it with some well prepared research stating

1. there has been no livres d’artiste exhibition in Australia since the Brisbane Art Gallery exhibition 1992
2. such exhibitions have been increasing in popularity in Europe and the USA in recent years
3. it is time to have such an exhibition in Australia
4. the exhibition would comprise the best livres d’artiste produced post WW2 by the European Modern Masters
5. the focus would be a limited number of works chosen from Matisse, Miro, Chagall, Leger and Picasso

At Tony’s request I made a written submission and after further discussions he agreed.