Vittorio Fiorucci Posters Exhibition

MONTREAL THROUGH THE EYES OF VITTORIO:
50 YEARS OF CITY LIFE AND GRAPHIC DESIGN

September 25, 2015 - April 10, 2016

McCord Museum presents works by internationally celebrated Montreal poster artist Vittorio Fiorucci. The public is invited to discover the graphic work of Vittorio Fiorucci who captured some great moments in the social and cultural life of Montreal from the 1960s to the end of the last century. His style is marked by simple shapes, bright colours and humour.

The exhibition consists of about 125 posters, photographs, illustrations, magazines, toys and comics, most of them from the collection of Judith Adams, Vittorio’s partner. Screenings, videos and interview excerpt are also part of the display.

The exhibition is divided into five zones. This offers a continuous journey through the unique world of Vittorio Fiorucci. The zone entitled Montreal, Cultural Metropolis depicts the Montreal’s flourishing cultural world in the early 1960s, when Vittorio’s vocation as a poster artist was established. The development of a number of artistic disciplines in Montreal at the time opened for him unexpected horizons in cinema, theatre, contemporary dance, and popular music. Some of his collaborations with the Opéra de Montréal, the Just for Laughs Festival, the Montreal International Film Festival, and the making of album covers for major Quebec artists are on display.

Another zone, Vittorio’s passion, introduces the social environment in which he evolved, as well as and his great passion for the Montreal of European restaurants, cafés, women, friendships, cars and the mixing of cultures. These themes presented an opportunity to experiment with photography, comics and collages.

The zone Vittorio the ambassador highlights photographs taken by him for publications and famous magazines, including Time. The zone Montreal, close to Vittorio’s heart reflects Vittorio’s commitment to humanitarian and charitable concerns. He was not a man of great causes, but he created posters with social and political criticism, even taking positions on international issues.

The exhibition ends with the zone Vittorio, prodigal son, which takes the visitor into the colourful childlike world that inspired his creative process. Among other objects, visitors will see Vittorio’s toy robots.

In collaboration with Les Éditions de l’Homme, the McCord Museum has also published an illustrated book on the life and career of the artist, Through the Eyes of Vittorio, written by Marc H. Choko, Curator of the exhibition. The book is available in French and English.

A Montreal street was named in his memory in 2011.

Various activities and lectures are available in conjunction with the exhibition. Find the description and schedule on the McCord Museum website.

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The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God

Centaur Theatre
September 22 – October 18, 2015

Written and Directed by Djanet Sears

This is the opening play of the Centaur Theatre 47th season, written and directed by Djanet Sears who received numerous awards, including the Governor General Award for Literature. She is a playwright, director and composer and explores new ways to tell compelling and intriguing stories based on different cultural backgrounds that surround her as well as originate within her.

In this play, the main character Rainey is a country doctor with family roots going back to the origins of Negro Creek, a 200-year-old Black community in Western Ontario. She turned away from her husband, her practice, and her faith after the death of her daughter. Though becoming locked within her ongoing private crises, she is brought to face the neighbours' rally to uphold their dignity and their town’s rich black community history. She also discovers that her elderly father has mobilized a group of proud septuagenarian activists. But there is much more to the plot to be discovered by watching the staged play.

The play is rooted in African storytelling traditions. An unusual element: there is a chorus of ancestors creating the mood and the background to the main story line. They are also dancers with sensuous choreography accompanied by an intriguing soundscape. The play has a cast of 22 artists, the largest on the Centaur stage in decades. All these elements make this stage production visually compelling.

The play is 3 hours and 15 minutes long, including a short intermission. In case you have to get up early for work, plan to attend on a weekend.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

PAC Museum: Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie, PAC Museum Upcoming Exhibition
December 8, 2015 -  April 17, 2016

Yesterdsy, Pointe-à-Callière (PAC) Museum of Archeology celebrated the 125th anniversary of Agatha Christie birth on September 15, 1890. 

PAC is now preparing a new exhibition Investigating Agatha Christie. The exhibition will look at Agatha Christie through her work, her imagination and her world, including archaeology. Archeology played an important role in her personal and professional life. She met her second husband, who was an an archaeologist, at an archaeological dig. Sir Max Edgar Lucien Mallow made an important contribution to the prehistoric chronology of Mesopotamia. Between 1930 and 1960, Christie witnessed some major finds at ancient Mesopotamian sites in Syria and Iraq. In addition to her personal and novel-writing memorabilia, various artefacts unearthed at Mesopotamian digs led by her husband and other archaeologists, and also from places she visited in Egypt and the Middle East, will be part of the exhibition. Many other archaeological treasures will also be displayed, from vases to bas-reliefs, figurines, jewellery, bronze plaques, cuneiform tablets, cylinder sealsm and objects made of ivory, along with manuscripts, photos, and films taken by the author while she was on those dig sites.

Agatha Christie drew heavily on archaeology and history as inspiration for many of her famous novels, including Murder in Mesopotamia, They Came to Baghdad, Appointment with Death and Death Comes as the End. She also described daily life on dig sites in a fascinating little book entitled Come, Tell Me How You Live. She wrote that an archaeologist and a detective have much in common: both must come to understand an event (recent or in the distant past) using their observation skills and clues that are brought to light, piecing them together and relying on a bit of luck, too! PAC exhibition Investigating Agatha Christie will be a journey to a time when many of the treasures of mankind’s heritage were discovered and an encounter with a passionate woman, a brilliant individual who invented a new literary genre: the historical detective novel.

Agatha Christie’s wrote 66 mystery novels, 6 novels, 150 short stories, 18 plays and 2 memoirs. She is the world’s most-translated author, far surpassing Jules Verne: her writing has been translated into over 100 languages and sold 2 billion copies – only the Bible is more popular. Dubbed the Queen of Crime, she created such unforgettable characters as detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and her colossal body of work has inspired numerous films and television series.

PAC Museum will host many different activities for this exhibition. As the exhibition's date will approach, check PAC Museum website for information, schedules, and updates.

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Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel Hidden Messages

  

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Montreal Exhibition

Last Day on October 12, 2015

There are still a few weeks left to immerse yourself in the magnificent images Michelangelo created for the Sistine Chapel in Vatican. True, they are not the originals, the real frescoes in the chapel, but they are the most impressive reproductions to see for those who cannot travel all the way to Rome. Also, keep in mind that the tourist interest in visiting the chapel is so great that the Vatican is bringing in a limit on how many people can visit per day. Beside the overcrowding, the breathing of thousands of people who go through the chapel daily creates too much humidity that is detrimental for the frescoes. 

There is more to the Michaelangelo's creation than meets the eye. Although he was originally commissioned to illustrate the New Testament, he chose to depict scenes from the Old Testament. He brought to life the stories from the Genesis, and also showed us the prophets and sibyls who foretold the coming of the Christ. The prophets were followers of Judaism, whereas sibyls were pagan women-oracles whose prophesies were also included in the Old Testament.

There are many interesting elements in Michelangelo's frescoes that one does not notice without a more careful investigation. So, for instance, in The Creation of Adam (the image at the top of the article), the God-creator is delineated by a shape that is identical to the cross section of a human brain. This seems to state that God implanted wisdom into his creation, Adam, to be accessed through Adam's brain.

Additionally, God is surrounded by angels. His left arm is paced over the shoulders of a figure that might be a more mature angel but is generally interpreted to be Sophia, the Holy Wisdom. 

If you are planning to visit the Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel exhibition, search online before your visit for the hidden meaning in the Michelangelo frescos. You might agree or disagree with what you will find, but this will definitely make you to appreciate the frescoes' complexity and enrich the quality of your visit. This is a good website to start your search.

Visit the exposition's website.

Read more about this exhibition in my previous article here.
http://artframe.blogspot.ca/2015/07/michelangelos-sistine-chapel-in-montreal.html

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For those who are too far away from either Rome or Montreal and cannot travel, there is a 3D virtual visit of the Sistine Chapel provided by Vatican here.

MMFA 2015: Owen Kydd

OWEN KYDD

DURATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS

September 10 – December 6, 2015

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in partnership with Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, presents Durational Photographs by Owen Kydd. This 14th edition of the Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal explores The Post-Photographic Condition, a theme formulated by the Catalan guest curator Joan Fontcuberta. The post-photographic era is characterized by mass production of images and their wide circulation and availability online. Digital technology encourages conceptual fracturing and restructuring of photo-imagery, leading to the fundamental changes in values, as well as the social and functional role of photography.

Owen Kydd started as a film maker, as he stated at the vernissage of his exhibition. He realized, though, that nothing was happening in his movies, they were basically composed of a collection of still video shots of long duration. This is how he found his very specific niche in the art world.

Kydd puts a camera on a tripod in front of a static subject. He takes a photo-shot. Then he switches to video mode and records a short sequence in high definition. The results of the two ways of depicting his subject are almost identical. In conceptual terms, they explicitly show two conflicting ways of representing temporality. In the still photograph, a fragment of the subject’s life is captured, corresponding to the length of the exposure (the time the shutter has been left open). In the video, time is presented in a continuous fashion. The photograph is a slice in time, the video - an unfolding sequence.

Owen Kydd’s  Durational Photographs (the project started in 2006) merge the static image and kinematic lapse. The inclusion of very slight movements shows video-graphic nature of his images, which have been additionally edited to form a continuous loop, with no beginning or end. This captures a circularity quality of time in the imaginary world he creates. In his photo-video installations, the still life (nature morte) has been made to move in time, thus acquiring some live qualities.

Owen Kydd was born in 1975 in Calgary; he lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of California, Los Angeles (2012), and has exhibited his works in solo and group exhibitions at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas (2015), the Oakville Galleries (2015), the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (2014), the International Center of Photography in New York (2014), FOAM Photography Museum Amsterdam (2014), Galerie Xippas in Paris (2014), Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver (2013), Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York (2013), and the Daegu Photo Biennale (2012), among others. He has received many prizes and grants, such as the Toby Devan Lewis Award in 2012 and the Elaine Krown Klein Fine Arts Fellowship in 2011. He was nominated for the AIMIA–AGO Photography Prize in 2014 and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Grant in 2013. He is represented by Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver, and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York.

For more information on Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal program, exhibitions, artist talks, conferences, and educational programs, click here.

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Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website.

Top image courtesy Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
All other photos by Nadia Slejskova
© Nadia Slejskova

MMFA 2015: George S. Zimbel

George S. Zimbel
A Humanist Photographer

September 9, 2015 - January 3, 2016

An active photographer for over seventy years, George S. Zimbel, an American-born Canadian (born in 1929), has a documentary approach rooted in the social background and realities of his subjects. That was his way to participate in the world that reflected his ideals. The present MMFA exhibition features seventy images from his collection and covers three years of his career: 1953, 1954 and 1955.

The result of photographic commissions for magazines and personal projects, some of these photos have become iconic, such as his series on Marilyn Monroe shot in 1954 during the production of the film The Seven Year Itch by director Billy Wilder.

Zimbel had a liberal education at Columbia University – including literature, philosophy and the social sciences. With a camera in his hand since his teenage years, he made the American society around him his subject during the 1950s and 1960s. Beside immortalizing some cultural and political figures, including the activist and author Helen Keller and pastor Billy Graham, the former US president Harry S. Truman, he was mainly interested in everyday life. His photographer’s approach is discreet, intuitive and spontaneous. He is at once an onlooker and narrator.

In those years, New York street scenes were held to be the quintessential reflection of the social and economic climate of postwar America. The photographic act went beyond social commentary to become a commitment to a human community. But the artistic aspect was far from neglected, as is apparent in Zimbel’s compositions with the different camera angles (bird’s-eye and worm’s-eye views), the focus dissolve and the ambient lighting. Trained at the Photo League, a New York collective of amateur and professional photographers active from 1936 to 1951 who advocated documentaries focussing on social commentary and creativity, Zimbel applied both these principles during trips taken to France and Italy while on leave from military service. The scenes he captured in 1953 reveal his sympathy with his subjects, at times laced with a touch of humour. In 1955, he immortalized the night life of the clubs along New Orleans’s famous Bourbon Street in the same spirit.

“1953, ’54, ’55 — those were tense years. I was in the U.S. Army in Germany working on the Rhine River, but on leave I was seeing Europe for the first time. Then back to New York to freelance for magazines, industry, any assignment, anywhere — New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Texas — I was on my own, shooting all the time, had to make a living doing what I loved,” Zimbel explained.

 Scorning the latest technologies and trends in photography, Zimbel still prefers the black-and-white gelatin silver prints that have become his signature. For him, an image is not fully finished until it is printed, which is why he spends so many hours in his darkroom. Another reason for us to enjoy discovering the work of this photographer and his subjective interpretation of the America of the 1950s.

Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1929, Zimbel has lived and worked in Montreal since the early 1980s. His work has been presented in galleries and museums in collective or solo exhibitions, including two retrospectives. Many museums here and elsewhere, notably the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the National Gallery of Canada and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

A sixty-page lavishly illustrated monograph entitled Momento will be on sale at the Museum Boutique and Bookstore. Published by Black Dog, it features 118 of the artist’s images, arranged in pairs.

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Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website.