In 1892, 30-year-old Loïe Fuller came to Paris from New York to stage the Goddess's Amusement Hall. The short, plump woman lifted the hem of her large skirt, her body hidden in the flying cloth, dancing and spinning under the light of dozens of colored lights. People "no longer see a woman, but a giant violet, a flapping butterfly, a dancing snake and a white wave." For 30 years, Europe was fascinated by her.
Snake dance, fire dance, white dance, black dance... The viewer's expression is concrete, but Fuller's real challenge is more abstract, in her own words: "We stand on the threshold of light, as if on the edge of infinity." ”
▲ West Bund Art Museum and Pompidou Center five-year exhibition special exhibition "They and Abstraction", exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Li Naiqing, reporter of Southern People Weekly
On November 11, 2022, the West Bund Museum and the Pompidou Center Five-Year Exhibition Collaboration presented the blockbuster special exhibition "They and the Abstraction". What opens the entire exhibition is a "snake dance" under the lens of Lumière Brothers Film at the end of the 19th century. Because Fuller refused to photograph at the time, all he was left with was the dance of an unknown imitator of his time, which seems to reflect the "anonymous" nature of women's creation in the early 20th century.
Curator Christina Marcel ©as J.C. Planchet
"When people walk into the hall and see the portraits of the 34 participating female artists specially presented at the entrance, I bet few viewers can name them." Christine Macel, the curator of the exhibition, emphasized that "female artists 'disappeared' in that period of history, and because their images lacked opportunities and means of transmission, in contrast to the photographs of their male counterparts." These male artists are hailed as legendary genius pioneers who created a school of art named after a rather masculine military term – the 'avant-garde'".
"They and the Abstract" was well received in 2021 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, and at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, with Le Figaro calling it "a pioneering feat, a great explosion of knowledge." This touring exhibition, which came to the West Bund Art Museum in Shanghai, can be described as the first thematic exhibition focused on female abstract artists seen by domestic audiences. The exhibition displays nearly 100 works by 34 female artists, covering painting, dance, video, sculpture, installation and other media, covering various genres such as new visual photography, abstract expressionism, dynamic optics, fiber art, etc., in an attempt to present the "abstract" art history of the 20th century in the West written by "them".
These works fill a hitherto incomplete story of 20th-century art history, as the museum selects men primarily as creators of modern art. Will we find a hidden truth that women and men have come together to create modern art that coexists in every movement and every dimension of this great project? As art critic Griselda Pollock puts it: "Through creative participation in the most challenging artistic practices: abstraction, they are inscribed and imprinted in various cultural forms and historical processes." ”
Blend in and escape, the Valkyrie of the film world
If empathy and abstraction are two ways of understanding the world, then empathy is about integration and convergence, and abstraction means escape and separation.
"When I made my first film, I understood what cinema is... An art that creates reality, blending into it while escaping it, this cinematic spirit is about existence and things themselves. ”
French filmmaker Germaine Dulac is best known for directing the world's first surrealist film, The Shell and the Priest (1927). She worked as a journalist for Le France in her early years, decided to devote herself to cinema in the mid-1910s, and in 1920 co-directed "Festivals in Spain", moving towards avant-garde cinema in which aestheticism prevailed over narrative and performance. In 1927, Dirac founded the magazine Charts, and developed her theory of "pure cinema" - "lines, surfaces, volumes are directly formed, without any artificial explanation... Strip away any overly human meanings and make them more abstract... Pure cinema".
Dirac explored the possibilities of cinematic abstraction, and in 1929 she produced three "pure cinema" short films, including Record 957, presented in this exhibition. The image of the raindrop diffuses with Chopin's music, allowing the rhythmic image to play a visual symphonic poem, and the inspiration for Dirac's light and shadow game is Fuller's dance. It is worth mentioning that Fuller befriended the likes of Marie Curie and Edison, the most creative scientific brains of the time that drove her artistic practice of capturing "magical" light and shadow on stage.
The German-American artist Germaine Krull was a representative of the new visual photography genre of the time. After moving to the Netherlands in 1923, she became fascinated by the architecture of the ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, photographing the bridges, pulleys, towers and cranes of the city from the perspective of up, over, close-up, off-center framing, etc., which she named "Iron". After moving to Paris in 1926, he photographed buildings such as the Eiffel Tower. Krull's industrial landscape seems to be disconnected from reality, and through the clever use of shadows and frames, she achieves a truly abstract composition. In 1928, her "Metal" photography collection (a collection of 64 photographs of "iron") was a huge success, and she was hailed as the "Valkyrie of Film", applauding the visual spectacle she created, which also led her to work as photographs for news reports and publications.
▲ West Bund Art Museum and Pompidou Center five-year exhibition special exhibition "They and Abstraction", exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Li Naiqing, reporter of Southern People Weekly
"Above all, my requirement for photography is to compose it like a painting. Volume, lines, shadows, and light have to respond to my intentions and say what I want to say. Florence Henri, a contemporary of Krull, is also a representative of a very stylistic new visual photography.
On the wall, a portrait of the abstract pioneer Sonia Delaunay-Terk was created by Henry, who collaborated for many years. Delaunay-Turk's artistic practice, which extends from painting to applied design fields such as textiles and homes, is an original combination of art and everyday life. She has been creating abstract works since 1911, known for the "synchronic contrast" law (the perception of any color must be achieved through its complementary colors), and also inspired by the lyrical associations of literary creation.
Delaunay-Turk, her husband Robert Delaunay and others, co-founded Orphism, an attempt to create through imagination and instinct in pursuit of pure cubism. The exhibition is a masterpiece of this style, inspired by Delaune-Turk's observation of power lighting, in which she captures the brief changes in the color halo emitted by light bulbs, creating strong and bright optical vibrations on canvas through color contrast. Delaune-Turk was quite successful in the field of art, but she chose to stay behind her husband more often, and after his death in 1941, she devoted herself to promoting his paintings, and her own work was temporarily ignored. In 1964, her work was unveiled at the Louvre, and Sonia Delaune-Turk became the first living female artist to have a retrospective at the museum.
Soaked landscapes, dripping memories
"I paint both the landscapes in my memories and the feelings that these memories inspire, and these feelings, of course, change over time."
Joan Mitchell, one of the greatest American painters of the 20th century, began creating abstract paintings as early as 1951, describing herself as a "visual, sense-seeking painter." Step into the "Abstract Expressionism" exhibition hall, Mitchell's Goodbye Gate (1980) stops at a striking scale. It was the saddest moment of her life, a year before painting the painting, when she had just left her lover. Scattered with rapidly messy blue-green brushstrokes, the concept of "garden" is abstracted and extended to a huge quadruptych, which introduces people into the meditation space and presents a kind of suddenness.
▲ Joan Mitchell, "Goodbye's Door" 1980 © Centre Pompidou, Paris, French National Museum of Modern Art - Center for Industrial Design
The term "Abstract Expressionism" first appeared in 1946. American artists of the time were inspired by European surrealist currents that emphasized abstraction as a means of self-expression. In 1952, critic Harold Rosenberg used "action painting" to describe a trend in abstract expressionism, in which artists accompanied the process of creation with large body movements, the most famous of which was Jackson Pollock.
Since the 50s of the 20th century, more and more photographs have documented the images of female artists, either in the studio or next to their own works, presenting a picture of "female artists in action". In the case of American filmmaker Marie Menken, the black-and-white photo suddenly turns into a color photo, with a faint green light reflected on the background glass, Menken wearing a bright red blouse and her face hidden behind the camera, which is a photo of her film "Duel".
▲ West Bund Art Museum and Pompidou Center five-year exhibition special exhibition "They and Abstraction", exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Li Naiqing, reporter of Southern People Weekly
Mencken is the unsung hero of American avant-garde cinema, and as a muse and mentor to the likes of Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol, she has created a series of stunning experimental films. Mencken was a trained painter whose work was exhibited early in prestigious galleries. In the mid-1940s, she and her husband co-founded the first experimental filmmaking company, the Gryphon Group, which brought together artists, filmmakers and intellectuals. During this time, Mencken abandoned static shelf painting and began experimenting with filmmaking with dynamic compositions. In 1945, she released her first film, Visual Variations of Noguchi, which was well received in the experimental film industry. Menken used the hand-cranked Polaroid camera that was popular at the time, and her lens language was delicate and agile. The exhibition shows Mencken's three-minute short film "Ribbon Drops" from 1961 to 1963: rose-colored paint dripping silently in pitch black, leaving behind delicate and beautiful traces. To make the film, Mencken placed a piece of glass vertically in front of a stationary machine to capture the real-time movement of the paint dripping on the glass, and she recorded this unique "painting" experience on 16mm film: an action painting in which "the splashed pigment autonomously forms its pattern and color combination due to gravity." This short film is an ironic reinterpretation of Pollock's deified "drip painting method", because Pollock's technique is to splash paint on a canvas on a tiled floor...
"The painting is amazing! You can't imagine it being written by a woman. You can't imagine that this was a compliment from the painter Hans Hoffmann to his schoolgirl, Lee Krasner. Hoffman spoke highly of her, believing that Pollock's work was heavily influenced by his wife Krasner.
"Without Lee Krasner, Pollock would not have gained the international fame he enjoys today."
Curator Marcel suggested that New York art critics at the time were pushing Pollock and others to the altar, while leaving female artists in the shadows.
In 1942, Krasner joined the "American Society of Abstract Artists", which young painters spontaneously formed, and in an exhibition that year, she met Pollock, married him, and has since become a benefactor in the eyes of outsiders. But the "Lady Pollock" never put down her brush, and she was well aware of the art world's view of women, often finishing her paintings without leaving a signature or leaving only her initials "K" in the corner.
In 1956, Krasner, tired of Pollock's emotional impulses and various erratic behaviors, went to France on his own. During the time she was away, tragedy struck: Pollock died drunk driving. After a period of deep depression, Krasner moved into Pollock's studio to create the Long Night Journey series, which is covered with dizzying dark brown swirls. She vents her inner pain in her creations... In 1971, Krasner created a brightly colored work with various shapes of dark green, emerald green, rose and magenta blocks, borrowing from Greek, and she gave the painting the title "Rebirth".
In the 1970s, more than a decade after Pollock's death, Krasner, who lived under her husband's halo, seemed to become the darling of American art critics overnight, and people finally turned the spotlight to her, this time not "Mrs. Pollock", but one of the best abstract painters in the United States.
Guard from the low, look at each other from the height, swing like a goldfish
"I don't want to do abstract sculptures, but I'm always looking for people in sculpture... The anticipation of the birth of a child touched me deeply, which led me to make this series, a transcendent mother. ”
In the gallery of "They and Abstraction", abstract sculptures developed in France by female artists from different backgrounds in the 50s of the 20th century are lined up, and these works present a rich and colorful appearance in terms of treatment of materials and connection with space.
▲ West Bund Art Museum and Pompidou Center five-year exhibition special exhibition "They and Abstraction", exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Li Naiqing, reporter of Southern People Weekly
Mother - Matmata is a sculpture by Parvine Curie from burnt or blackened wood. The theme of motherhood recurs in her work: Mother-Hive, Mother-House, Mother-Wall, and titles are often associated with architectural vocabulary, pointing to the primitive and protective womb. Bell towers, tombs, pyramids and cathedrals, these constitute the imaginary vocabulary in Curie's work, and she seeks to create a spiritual refuge in the practice of abstract sculpture.
▲ West Bund Art Museum and Pompidou Center five-year exhibition special exhibition "They and Abstraction", exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Li Naiqing, reporter of Southern People Weekly
A representative of post-war French abstract sculpture, the creation of Algerian-born Simone Boisecq was also inspired by historical monuments. In the mid-70s of the 20th century, she was commissioned by a secondary school to make the large-scale stone sculpture "The Wall". Borrowing from the background wall of ancient Roman theaters common in the Mediterranean, the sculpture has a slightly recessed stone base and mottled faults on the surface, many holes that allow the surrounding environmental space to be reflected in this architectural composition. Regarding the wall, Boisek responded, "At the low places we protect ourselves, and at the high places we watch each other. ”
Throughout the gallery dedicated to abstract sculpture, a video is played on a loop: in the summer of 1956, the dance artist Maurice Begaard created the ballet "Teak" on the roof of architect Corbusier's Marseille apartment, a unique "three-person dance" - two dancers plus a sculpture called "Teak", in which the Hungarian-French sculptor Marta Pan injected his special interest in movement and body. At the end of the show, this wooden "dance partner" is buckled on the dancer Michel Xenore.
▲ West Bund Art Museum and Pompidou Center five-year exhibition special exhibition "They and Abstraction", exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Li Naiqing, reporter of Southern People Weekly
Teak presented at the exhibition site is a wooden sculpture that is put together to unfold in space. In fact, many of Pan's sculptures are movable, and they always strike a balance at some point. Pan's sculptures focus on balance, symmetry and geometry, valuing connection with their surroundings. In 1961, she created the "floating sculpture" that she would later become famous for in polyester.
Compared with the calm and restrained wood, terracotta, and bronze sculptures, Claire Falkenstein's wire sculpture "Untitled" presents a certain form of continuous expansion, flow, and openness. She claims that Einstein's theories inspired her to create sculptures out of tinsel, exploring the concept of infinite space. "I'm thinking in Einstein's way... I'm thinking about the whole of space. ”
▲ West Bund Art Museum and Pompidou Center five-year exhibition special exhibition "They and Abstraction", exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Li Naiqing, reporter of Southern People Weekly
In her early years making abstract sculptures in ceramics and wood, Falkenstein exhibited her first Wire Drawings in San Francisco in 1948. After settling in Paris in 1950, she began to explore various unconventional materials: lead strips, chimney pipes, wire, molten glass, etc., and used welding, twisting, assembling and other methods to achieve what she saw as "real writing in space".
In 1953, Falkenstein's sculptures were included in Michel Tapière's exhibition of "amorphous" works, and she immediately became a leading figure in the Parisian art scene. That same year, she began the Sun series, in which entangled metal wires were hung from the ceiling to create "an ever-expanding space." Falkenstein emphasized, "Everything can be painted, and sculpture is painting." Because of her use of unconventional materials, in 1966 art critic Lucy Lippard regarded her as a pioneer of "weird abstraction."
Falkenstein depicts expanding space with entangled wire, while Argentine artist Martha Boto expresses her concern for the universe with the dynamic sculpture installation Cluster Reflections (1965). Based on optical illusions and visual perception, Boto assembled a light-emitting box from aluminum, stainless steel and plexiglass, the motor drives the steel disc to rotate, and a large number of reflective surfaces interact with each other in motion, giving life to the surrounding space.
▲Marta Boto, "Cluster Reflection" 1965 © Centre Pompidou, Paris, French National Museum of Modern Art - Centre for Industrial Design
In 1955, Parisian gallerist Denise René presented the exhibition "Movement", many of which were later recognized as pioneers of dynamic and op art. In the early 1960s, European and American artists began to delve into incorporating movement into their work, such as the introduction of electric motors, multisensory public participation, or experimental optics and perception games. Counterpart to Voto's Cluster Reflections is Italian artist Grazia Varisco's Mercury (Double Cross) (1969), in which she explores the fluidity of mercury and the various changes in the composite material of the lenticular glass surface, which quietly changes the form of the whole work as the viewer's gaze moves. "I want the symbols to be alive, swinging like a goldfish in a glass jar in Matisse's painting."
▲ West Bund Art Museum and Pompidou Center five-year exhibition special exhibition "They and Abstraction", exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Li Naiqing, reporter of Southern People Weekly
The poster for the "They and the Abstract" exhibition also comes from the work of OPP artists: "Red and Red Triptych" by British artist Bridget Riley, 2010. Riley's abstract work is a bit like a visual game puzzle. Interested in futurism and fragmentation in her early years, she painted in a geometric style close to the "hard edge", challenging people's perception of stable painting elements (size, form, color) through different compositional processes such as superposition and dissolution. In 1962, her first solo exhibition caused a sensation in London. In 1968, Riley represented the United Kingdom at the 34th Venice Biennale and won the International Painting Award, the first British contemporary painter to win this award, and the first female artist to win the award. Today, Riley is recognized as one of the most important and unique artists of our time.
▲Brigitte Riley, "Red and Red Triptych" 2010 © Centre Pompidou, Paris, French National Museum of Modern Art - Center for Industrial Design
Pillar of doubt, rose-colored fog, "stele" of Segelan
"Textiles are relegated to a secondary role in our society, only functional or decorative. I wanted to give it another status and show what an artist can do with these amazing materials. ”
Inside, where cylindrical "Rainbow Waterfall" pours down from the zenith, American artist Sheila Hicks' Pillar of Doubt (2016), created by woven rope, forms a group of abstract sculptures on an overwhelming scale, questioning the boundaries between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary art. When she places the "pillar of doubt" in different fields around the world, she sharply throws out questions about class, race, gender, etc. As curator Marcel puts it, "Abstract art, which was seen as an artistic language that has nothing to do with politics in nature, is in fact often located not far from these debates." ”
Since the early 1960s, a number of Eastern European and American artists have worked to create huge "new wall hangings" that break away from traditional decorative functions and actively intervene and occupy exhibition spaces. In 1969, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition called "Wall Hanging," a material that had been overlooked because it was too feminine and closely related to everyday life, and began to establish its identity in the art world.
In addition to Hicks' woven colourful columns, the exhibition's "Fiber Art" section presents masterpieces by Eastern European artists Magdalena Abakanowicz and Jogoda Buić. Polish artist Abakanović made the large, three-dimensional sculpture "The Great Black of Abakán" from hand-dyed sisal, and when the iconic work debuted, critics titled the work with her surname; Buik was the first female stage designer in Yugoslavia. Drawing on traditional techniques from the Balkans, she creates abstract sculptures that focus on weaving structures and capturing tactile memories, and her work Fragments of the Night (1976) resembles a deep set of wool, sisal and metal thread.
As the exhibition draws to a close, more and more female artists' works are trying to "go beyond the wall." The practice of Japanese-Brazilian artist Lydia Okumura bears witness to her exploration of the spatial imagination, creating the famous "Situation" series, architectural installations composed of colored geometric shapes arranged on walls and floors, connected by drawn graphite lines or synthetic lines projected in space. Untitled III, Okumura's work first unveiled at the Medellín Biennale in Colombia in 1981, features diamond-shaped or triangular red, yellow, and blue blocks that give the illusion of entering the depths of the wall, or draw or draw real black lines to divide the space to create a virtual volume, inviting the viewer to move freely around the work and explore the two- or three-dimensional form of the work from different perspectives.
The work of Belgian-British artist Ann Veronica Janssens similarly challenges the viewer's perception of space. In 1997, she began creating immersive installations, using artificial fog to capture the form of light in the medium, creating light sculptures that are almost empty but palpable.
Rose (2007) is a light installation conceived by Jensens in a closed, dark, silent space, in which she encloses seven spotlights in a circle, and the seven beams are captured by a suspended mist, creating an untouchable seven-pointed star structure that appears faintly as the viewer moves or changes the perspective of the audience.
▲ Ann Veronica Jensens, "The Rose" 2007 © Centre Pompidou, Paris, French National Museum of Modern Art - Center for Industrial Design
Step out of this rose-misty dream, on the left wall stands a row of pure and calm abstract paintings called "Stone Steles", which are nearly three meters high in gray-blue works that are the pinnacle of French artist Geneviève Asse.
Ace studied at the National Academy of Decorative Arts from 1940 to 1942. Under the influence of the works of Chardin, Cézanne and Braque, Ace began to paint monochrome still lifes. In the early 60s of the 20th century, Ace gradually moved away from still lifes, nudes and landscapes, trying to capture the vibrations of air currents with her brush, presenting her abstract exploration of space and light. At first, it was just a plain white, then blue (which would become her signature color) gradually occupied the entire picture, and the sea surface of her childhood faintly emerged, with a vertical "door crack" in the middle, light blue, blue gray, pale... This gap seems to disappear in search of infinite imagery, and another clear space is opened...
▲ Genavieve As, "Stone Stele No. 1", "They and the Abstraction" at the five-year exhibition of the West Bund Museum of Art and Centre Pompidou, exhibition view, West Bund Art Museum, photo by Alessandro Wang
Ace created this set of steles to pay tribute to the French poet and sinologist Chegarine, also from Brittany. In 1909, as a trainee interpreter in the French Navy, Schelland set foot on the land of China that haunted him. In 1912, when the Qing Emperor abdicated, Xie Gelan's poetry collection "Stele" was published in Beijing, and only 81 copies were printed. He begins his poem by stating that what is written here is "the unspoken," "the king whose heart is illuminated in the light of the morning star," "inscribed in this unique age," and "each person founded and honored in himself." 110 years later, the "Stone Stele", translated by the female painter Ace and carrying blue ethereal memories, crossed the sea to China, and Xie Gelan's words seem to pay tribute to the unspoken and remembered "them".