MMFA 2018: Napoleon

NAPOLEON

ART AND COURT LIFE IN THE IMPERIAL PALACE

Welcome to the Imperial Palace!

February 3 - May 6, 2018

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) presents a major exhibition that re-creates the grandiose ambiance of Napoleon’s court through the eyes of the Grand Officers and artists of the “Emperor’s Household.” Over 400 art works and objects from the French palaces, most of them never seen before in North America, reveal the essential role played by the Imperial Household during Napoleon’s reign, from his coronation in 1804 to his exile in 1815.

Some fifty distinguished lenders have allowed MMFA to bring to Montreal works from such institutions as the Louvre, the Château de Fontainebleau, the Mobilier national, the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The public will see the six departments that made up the “Imperial Household”. The institution with its 3,500 employees was responsible for the daily lives and ceremonies of Napoleon and his family. By studying the leading figures of the court, the visitors will discover all the luxury and prestige of palace life. In order to ally himself with the old nobility and register his new dynasty as a continuation of the Ancien Régime, Napoleon dreamed up an etiquette hedged about with strict regulations.

An innovative layout re-creates the splendour of the apartments by incorporating mapping projections. Visitors will discover paintings, sculptures, furniture, silverware and porcelain, tapestries, silk hangings and court dress illustrating the opulence characteristic of the Empire style displayed to serve the spectacle of power.

  

The exhibition is laid out according to the roles of the leading figures in the service of the Imperial family, which helped to shape the image of power. Grand Officers, chamberlains, equerries, master of ceremonies, ladies-in-waiting, pages, artists and artisans were all involved in composing the Imperial legend. Their origins, functions and everyday responsibilities fashioned the Emperor’s life. The exhibition follows the circuits of the courtiers as they moved through the living areas within the palace, the public staterooms that were open to visitors and also the private apartments strictly separated from the rest of the palace, where Napoleon shut himself off to conduct the business of government.

As a new ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte seized power at the end of the French Revolution. Transforming the Republic into a monarchy, he was depicted by the court painters as a modern sovereign and hero. With a series of portraits and historical scenes, the introductory gallery shows how artists like François Gérard, Antoine-Jean Gros and Andrea Appiani had to conform to precise requirements imposed by the Imperial administration in order to create visual propaganda glorifying the head of state.

The MMFA Napoleon Collection

In addition to the items that arrived from other institutions, some twenty of the works and objects presented in this exhibition are from the holdings of the MMFA. Some come from the large collection of objects bequeathed to the Museum by the collector and amateur historian Ben Weider: the recently restored Half-length Portrait of Napoleon in Court Robes (about 1805- 1814), an oil on canvas from the studio of François Gérard; one of Napoleon’s cocked hats worn during the Russian campaign, about 1812; riding gloves and a shirt worn by the Emperor on Saint Helena. Visitors will remark an outstanding pair of spindle vases in Sèvres porcelain, Fire and Water (1806), acquired in 2017. Also from Sèvres, a tea service presented to Cardinal Fesch, Grand Chaplain of the Imperial Household. This collection also contains a discovery, a sketch painted on canvas by Horace Vernet, Napoleon, on the Eve of the Battle of Borodino, Presenting to His Staff Officers the Portrait of the King of Rome Recently Painted by Gérard (1813).

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All photos in this article © Nadia Slejskova
Visit my previous article about a Napoleon exhibition here.

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions and activities, visit the museum's website.

MAC 2018 Programming

Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art
2018 Programming 

Today, the MAC Museum announced its programming for 2018, which includes a number of large- scale exhibitions. This final year of its current location before the significant transformations that are  planned for 2019, MAC will present three new exhibitions.

First, visitors will have the chance to enter the universe of Mexican and Montréal artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, whose work will be showcased as a major solo exhibition. In the fall, the public will be invited to explore a retrospective of Françoise Sullivan, a Québec multidisciplinary artist and co-signatory of the Refus global, and to view Manifesto, a multi-screen cinematic work by Julian Rosefeldt, starring Cate Blanchett.

John Zeppetelli, MAC Director and Chief Curator, presenting 2018 Programming

RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER – MAY 24 TO SEPTEMBER 9, 2018

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is one of the most prominent international artists working in Canada today. Over the past few decades, he has earned a reputation for large-scale, participatory installations that frequently incorporate technology, light and the architecture of public spaces. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s work has gained international prominence and is regularly shown by major art institutions.

More than a mid-career survey, the exhibition offers a new conceptual perspective on the artist’s work over the past decade, exploring its poetic and political dimensions from the standpoint of one of its central principles: the notion of co-presence. This concept refers first and foremost to the coexistence of voices, perspectives and singular experiences in Lozano-Hemmer’s works: to the interactions between strangers, to the situations elicited by the dialogic devices deployed by the work. However, co-presence also evokes other, more asymmetrical relationships, such as forced cohabitations and power relations, and speaks to the interplay of gazes and bodies subjected to contemporary techniques of surveillance and control. Staying clear of techno-optimism, Lozano-Hemmer’s work reminds us that new technologies are often double-edged swords.

Coproduced by the MAC and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the exhibition will also be presented at the Museo de arte contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Mexico, from March to August 2019 and  the SFMOMA from April 25 to September 6, 2020.

JULIAN ROSEFELDT: MANIFESTO – OCTOBER 18, 2018 TO JANUARY 20, 2019

Julian Rosefeldt is Professor of Digital and Time-based Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. Inspired by the histories of film, art and popular culture, he is internationally renowned for his visually opulent and meticulously choreographed moving-image artworks, mostly presented as complex multi-screen installations.

Manifesto is an immersive video installation consisting of thirteen large-screen projections that stands as a tribute to the literary power of artistic manifestos. This artwork/event, which lies at the crossroads between film, performance and installation, allows audiences to experience a series of scenes screened simultaneously showing us the same actor, Cate Blanchett, taking on various roles. In a performance that “invokes immediate awe,” according to The Independent, and was described by the New York Times as a “tour de force,” the actress becomes a chameleon, showcasing the full extent of her extraordinary talent.

All of the monologues spoken—actually, the only words spoken in the piece—are formed out of various artistic manifestos published over the last 150 years or so. From schoolteacher to homeless man, the thirteen characters embodied by Blanchett pronounce the manifestos of Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, Kazimir Malevich, André Breton, Elaine Sturtevant, Sol LeWitt and Jim Jarmusch, among others.

The MAC is particularly proud to welcome this work to Montréal for its second North American presentation, following the one at the Park Avenue Armory, in New York, in 2016. This famous installation was also presented in the world's largest artistic cities, including Paris, Berlin and Melbourne.

 Manifesto trailer

FRANÇOISE SULLIVAN – OCTOBER 18, 2018 TO JANUARY 20, 2019

This retrospective exhibition highlights the key role of artist, painter, sculptor, dancer and choreographer Françoise Sullivan in the history of modern and contemporary art in Quebec. It’s a chance for visitors to discover or rediscover an artist whose major impact on Quebec and Canadian culture deserves to be more fully recognized.

In addition to presenting the artist’s diverse and multidisciplinary practice, the exhibition offers an in-depth exploration of some of the milestones in her career. The various styles and approaches adopted by Sullivan over the years are contextualized with the help of archival documents

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MANIFESTES – OCTOBER 18, 2018 TO JANUARY 20, 2019

In connection with the exhibitions of Françoise Sullivan and Julian Rosefeldt, the Musée will be presenting a documentary exhibition consisting of original manifestos, including a number of the ones cited in Manifesto.

The presentation will also showcase local manifestos, such as the famous Refus Global, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2018, and was co-signed by Françoise Sullivan.

 PERMANENT COLLECTION: PICTURES FOR AN EXHIBITION

Ongoing since November 2016, Pictures for an Exhibition is an evolving cycle of exhibitions based on works from the collection and intended to generate new connections between historical works and recent acquisitions, between the different media and artists of various generations. This evolving series takes on various forms, the most recent being The Gaze Listens (presented until March 25, 2018) and That’s How the Lights Gets In (presented until August 26, 2018).

Pictures for an Exhibition will also take the form of two new exhibitions this year: The Prophets (April 6 to August 26, 2018) with artworks from Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, as well as Josef Albers, Jack Bush, Sol LeWitt and Jana Sterbak, and Alone Together (May 16 to August 26, 2018) with artworks from Sarah Anne Johnson, Graeme Patterson, Jon Rafman and Jeremy Shaw.

Credits for the top-most image above:

Left: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (in collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko), Zoom Pavilion, 2015

Shown here: Art Basel Unlimited - Art Basel 47, Bâle, Switzerland 
Projectors, 9x infrared cameras, 3x robotic zoom cameras, 3x computers, 2x IR illuminators, 1x ethernet switch, HDMI and USB extenders and cables 
Photo: Sebastiano Pellion

 

Center: Julian Rosefeldt, Stills from Manifesto, 2015

13-channel film installation 
Julian Rosefeldt, Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

 

Right: Françoise Sullivan, Rouge no 3, 5, 6, 2, 1997

Acrylic on canvas

152 x 638 cm (total)

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For more information on MAC museum exhibitions and activities, visit the museum's website.

The Baklawa Recipe

Centaur Theatre /49th Season

THE Baklawa Recipe

World Premier 

January 23 -February 18, 2018

Written by Pascale Rafie

Translated by Melissa Bull

Directed by Emma Tibaldo

The play was inspired by the playwright's own family. There are four women on the stage, members of the same family. Two older women came to Canada from Lebanon in the 1960s and settled in Ville St-Laurent, a greater Montreal's neighbourhood. They married two Canadian-born Lebanese brothers who never appear on the stage, and their lives became tied together. Two other characters are their daughters, cousins, who represent a new generation of Quebequers - Canadians.

The stage action takes place from the perspective of two generations. Those who started their new live in a new land represent the generation of immigrants who are trying to preserve their traditional cultural values while embracing their new country. And there are their two daughters who are fully-fledged Canadians but are still struggling with some of their mothers' issues. One accepting the cultural heritage of her mother, the other totally disassociating herself from her Lebanese cultural values, as her mother herself attempted to do quite painfully and unsuccessfully. 

The only constant in the play is the making of Baklawa, which rans as a leitmotiv through the entire play and ties together the two generation of women and the play's separate scenes. It represent the women's cultural heritage. It becomes their grounding activity and an important symbol for the succeeding generations. Many family issues also resurface that the members of the audience couldt relate to.   

The play bergan its journey as La Recette de baklawas. It received its first French public reading at the 2012 Festival du Monde Arabe. Since then, it has been developed through the CEAD (Centre des auteurs dramatiques). Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal’s Artistic Director, Emma Tibaldo, stepped in to direct a French reading at Theatre d’Aujourd’hui as part of Dramaturgies en Dialogue in 2013. In 2015, an independent reading was presented at Theatre La Risée where Ms. Rafie was author-inresidence and from 2015 to 2017 CEAD, in partnership with Les Voyagements, produced several more French readings in various local Maisons de la culture with Ms. Tibaldo at the helm. PWM then commissioned and developed the English translation by Ms. Rafie’s half-sister, Melissa Bull, through the Cole Foundation’s Emerging Translators program and PWM's Translation Workshop program. The Baklawa Recipe had its first public reading in English at Imago Theatre's Her Side of the Story in 2016.

CREATIVE TEAM

Actors Eleanor Noble, Anne-Marie Saheb, Christina Tannous and Natalie Tannous

Set & Costume Designer Eo Sharp

Lighting Designer Bruno Rafie

Composer Nicolas Royer-Artuso

Sound Designer Peter Cerone

Movement Designer Leslie Baker

Dramaturg Élizabeth Bourget

Translation Dramaturg Maureen Labonté

Assistant Director Emily Murdoch

Stage Manager Jacynthe Lalonde

Apprentice Stage Manager Chloé Ekker

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Hover your mouse over images for description and credits.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

Sunday Chat-ups

Sunday Jan. 28 @ 12:30pm

FREE

Join Lucinda Chodan, Montreal Gazette’s editor in chief as she speaks with The Baklawa Recipe Playwright Pascale Rafie, and Lighting Designer Bruno Rafie.

In collaboration with the Montreal Gazette

Saturday Salons

Saturday Jan. 27 & Feb. 10

Following the matinee performance.

FREE

Get to know Centaur’s new Artistic and Executive Director, Eda Holmes, in casual conversation about this production and all things Centaur.

Talk-Backs

Thurs. Feb. 8 & Sunday Feb. 11

Following the performance.

FREE

Audiences are invited to stay 

after the show for a lively Q&A

Auto Show 2018: Toyota Design

Montreal International Auto Show 2018 / Toyota Concept Car
January 19 - 28, 2018

Each year, visitors see many superbly designed cars at the Montreal International Car Shaw. All car makers boost the latests car models, but before each model is actually produced, a lot of work and design skills are needed to bring it to life. Toyota comes with the most intriguing new designs. You can see, for instance, their last year's (2017) stunning concept car here. This year's prototype-concept car is also a marvel. It has a stern metallic finish that projects a a dignified and solid image. It also looks sportier than the last year's prototype.

The car features many interesting design elements, and you might find yourself circling around it several times to catch all or many of them, as one attention shifts from the most prominent features to the other less flashy details that are also of great significance to the overall design of this concept car.

The number of cars presented at the Shaw and their variety is so vast that one can easily miss some gems. But this Toyota prototype design is definitely not to be missed. Look for it at the Toyota exhibition section on Level 2, the last huge exhibition Hall of your Auto Show visit. 

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Location of the Montreal International Auto Show:

Palais des congrès de Montréal

For more information, visit the Montreal International Auto Show website.

Auto Show 2018: Performance Zone

Montreal International Auto Show 2018 / Vintage Cars - Design
January 19 - 28, 2018

The Montreal's annual Auto Show, that draws great crowds year after year, brightening for them the January's cold winter, has once again opened its doors to the visitors at its usual location at the at Palais des congrès. On Friday morning, the first day of the exhibition, the Shaw has welcomed an impressive crowd of people, that once again testified to the great popularity of this show.

Although the latest car models at the Show merit the visitors' utmost attention, this year's Performance Zone had once again proven to be very much appreciated, giving the car lovers the possibility to remember, or for the younger generation to discover, how cars used to look like once upon the time. Several of these old car models are arrange in a situational installation-like setting, with many vintage props completing the effect of seeing how it used to be as when some of the visitors were still young.

I saw one young woman when entering the first Performance Zone room suddenly jumping up with joy and with a loud shout, "WOW!". Her friends laughed and told her their was still more to see...

Definitely plan to spent time to look at the vantage cars on display, as even some small details might amaze you.

You can also purchase at the Auto Shaw toy vintage car models as seen in the photo below.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Location of the Montreal International Auto Show:

Palais des congrès de Montréal

For more information, visit the Montreal International Auto Show website.

McCord 2017: Gabor Szilasi

GABOR SZILASI

THE ART WORLD IN MONTREAL, 1960-1980

December 7, 2017 - April 29, 2018

Gabor Szilasi is a renowned Montreal’s photographer.  This exhibition consists of 43 black and white photographs from the artist's personal collection, 40 of which have never been published and were printed especially for this exhibition.

The exhibited photographs were taken at exhibition openings and other artistic events held in Montreal between 1960 and 1980, and are presented in chronological order. They immortalize galleries that no longer exist, several artists, faces, places and vitality of Montreal's art life at a time of social and cultural upheaval. Shot in a spontaneous documentary style, they capture the art scene of the 1960s and 1970s, a period of great artistic growth and diversification when art was coming into its own in Quebec. Szilasi's images show the restrained elegance of the early 1960s, which slowly gave way to an atmosphere of enthusiasm by the end of the decade, before settling into a mood of relaxed irreverence in the 1970s. Although Gabor Szilasi is one of Quebec's best-known living photographers, this significant aspect of his work has never been exhibited before.

The exhibition offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the artist’s substantial photographic archive consisting of over 100 rolls of film, or approximately 3,600 negatives. Equipped with a 35-mm camera, the photographer shot, printed and archived the images with a method used in the latter half of the 20th century and now largely obsolete. Contact sheets are an integral part of this mode of photography, so they are included in the exhibition with items like Szilasi's camera, negatives and notebook. These items, representing the material nature of the artist’s archive, provide an insight into his creative process.

"As part of our mandate to feature the best in documentary photography from here and abroad, the Museum is honoured to present, for the second time since 2010, the work of Gabor Szilasi," stated Suzanne Sauvage, President and Chief Executive Officer of the McCord Museum. "A major figure in Quebec photography, Szilasi has influenced an entire generation and created an exceptional record of a period in the cultural history of Montreal."

Gabor Szilasi at the press conference 

Gabor Szilasi at his McCord exhibition

Photographer Gabor Szilasi

Photographer Gabor Szilasi was born in Hungary in 1928 and immigrated to Canada in 1957. Soon after settling in Montreal, Szilasi began to photograph the many art openings that he and his lifelong companion, artist Doreen Lindsay, regularly attended. Over the next few decades he produced an extensive photographic record of the individuals that made up Montreal’s visual arts community, a number of whom would shape the history of art in Canada. Presented at McCord Museum for the first time as a body of work, these images exemplify Szilasi’s long-standing fascination with people and, in particular, artists. Photographing openings may at first have helped him integrate into the local art scene, but it evolved into a way of acknowledging the affective relationships that bound him to his adopted city.

Numerous activities like lectures, meetings and film screenings are being organized in concert with the exhibition. The Museum is also marking the occasion with a new annual membership category aimed specifically at photographers, both amateur and professional. A description and schedule of the programming can be consulted at the McCord Museum's Website, on the calendar of activities and the membership inscription page.

Click on images to enlarge them.

All photos in this article © Nadia Slejskova