WUNRN
Centre Pompidou - Paris -
Exhibitions:
elles@centrepompidou,
Women Artists in the Collections of the National Modern Art Museum
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elles@centrepompidou is the third thematic exhibition of the National
Modern Art Museum's collections, following Big Bang in 2005 and the Mouvement
des Images (Image Movements) in 2006-2007. ________________________________________________________ Women's Feature Service India - New Delhi |
FRAia06f:
Marie Laurencin, Apollinaire et ses amis, 1909 [Une Réunion à la campagne]. Oil
on canvas, 130 x 194 cm. (Credit: Jean-Claude Planchet, Centre Pompidou\WFS)
By Barbara Lewis
Paris (Women's Feature Service) - With
more than 200 artists and 500 works of art spread over 8,000 square metres,
elles@centrepompidou is a vast, overwhelming showcase of art that happens to be
by women. In the first event of its kind,
The ultimate aim is to overcome the
need for such feminist statements, as women acquire the same universal status
as men.
One criticism in the French press of
elles@centrepompidou has been to accuse the museum of ghettoising women.
Morineau had anticipated that, she said, and her answer is that it is a
necessary counterblast to years of under-representation. "Paradoxically,"
to use her word, this massive manifesto for female art is a step towards not
having to think about the gender of the artist, only of the quality of his or
her work. "The goal is neither to show that female art exists nor to
produce a feminist event, but to present the public with a hanging that appears
to offer a good history of twentieth-century art," Morineau writes in an
essay in the exhibition catalogue. "The goal is to show that
representation of women versus men is ultimately no longer important."
The "ghettoising" criticism
aside, there has been a positive response. The Pompidou press office did not
give precise figures, but said visitor numbers had "increased
considerably" since elles@centrepompidou opened in May. It is to run for a
whole year until May 2010.
Not so surprisingly, the artists on
display have also been supportive. "I don't like ghettoes, but it seems
important to show the Pompidou Centre has actually bought quite a lot of women
artists' work. It's an example to other museums," French artist Annette
Messager was quoted as saying by
The 'Guardian' argued the pressure was
on for
The Tate Modern, opened as part of the
events to mark the Millennium, caused a stir with its non-chronological hangs,
also a feature of elles@centrepompidou, which opts for seven themes to group
its work.
"Fire At Will", a reference
to art that is engaged and militant, and "The Body Slogan", in which
women treat their bodies as subject-matter, are overtly feminist. The first
includes Israeli artist Sigalit Landau's "Barbed Hula", a video of
the artist spinning a hoop of barbed wire around her naked belly against the
backdrop of the sea -
Equally thought-provoking, "The
Body Slogan" juxtaposes French artist Valérie Belin's untitled 1964
photograph of a mannequin who is unsettlingly life-like with a 1961 photograph
by
"A Room, of One's Own" takes
its title from novelist Virginia Woolf and the need to establish space to
create. It is an artistic portrayal of rooms, not necessarily with any feminist
agenda. Among them are French artist Sophie Calle's 1981 photographs of the
rooms and guests' belongings she captured after managing to get temporarily
hired as a chambermaid in a Venetian hotel. In theory, also gender-neutral,
"Eccentric Abstraction", "Words at Work" and "Immaterials"
demonstrate how women artists played just as great a role as men in pushing at
the boundaries of artistic genres.
All of the above is on the Pompidou's
fourth floor. "Pioneering Women", the first section - or last,
depending on where the visitor begins - is on the fifth floor and is
surrounded, as the pioneering women were by male artistic giants, such as
Georges Braque and Henri Matisse. In pride of place at the front of the
"Pioneering Women" is Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's 1938 self-portrait
"The Frame". Compared with many of the vast, confident statements of
the fourth floor, it is a small, anxious work. Kahlo's enduring face peers out
of a frame of birds and flowers, based on folk art that almost overwhelms the
portrait.
Since Kahlo's painful struggle for
self-expression, women artists have travelled a very long way, even if it's not
yet far enough.
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