Divina Dali

 

DIVINA DALI

AT GRAND QUAY

OF THE PORT OF MONTREAL

July 16 - October 31, 2021 

  

This exhibition is a journey into Dante Alighieri’s the beyond world, passing through Dali’s surrealism. Thes exhibition presents more than100 works that celebrate the Spanish artist Salvador Dali as well as the Italian writer Dante. It also features Dali’s monumental work he created n 1945 that had never before been exhibited. Additionally, there are several large scale photos.

Dali’s  works on display are his original watercolour illustrations of the Dante Alighieri’s narrative poem The Divine Comedy written between 1308 and 1320. Allegorically, the poem represents a state of the soul after death, including the divine justice, punishment or reward. According to the Western church's postulates established at about those times, both Dante’s poem and the exhibition are divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatory and Paradiso. The Divine Comedy is considered to be the pivotal work in Italian literature. It helped to establish the Tuscan language in which it was written as the standardized  Italian language.

When planning Dante’s 700th birthday celebrations in the early 1950s, the Italian government commissioned Salvador Dali to create 100 illustrations for a commemorative edition of the Divine Comedy. They considered Dalí’s hyper-realistic, bizarre, and nightmarish imagery the perfect pairing to Dante’s visions of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. However, the public outcry against the commissioning of a Spanish artist to accompany the work of an Italian cultural hero forced the Italian government to revoke its support for the project. Undaunted, Dalí worked with a French publisher to have 100 wood engravings (one for each of The Divine Comedy’s verses) made after his watercolours which were completed and published in 1963. Those same original watercolours are presently exhibited in Montreal.

Divina Dalí offers visitors a unique opportunity to travel through three imaginary worlds: Hell, the Purgatory and Heaven. It represent a return, an encounter, seven centuries apart, between the literary work of Dante and the pictorial talent of Salvador Dalí.

The exhibition was based on an original idea from LaGirafe en feu. It was conceived in a spirit of innovation and even driven by some current issues. It twill allow visitors to experience a more intimate and often overlooked dimension of Salvador Dalí's creation by becoming familiar with Dante's major work Divina Commedia, one of the prominent humanist treatises in literature.

This is the exhibition's premiere. It has never been presented anywhere else in the world. It was curated by Raynald Michaud.

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ABOUT

LaGirafe en feu plans, designs, scripts and produces exhibitions dedicated to the work of Salvador Dalí. Embodying Dalí's very spirit of surprising and creating events, it initiates unusual collaborations with current artists; drawing on Quebec know-how and genius, without ever losing the essence of the works of the Catalan master.  Divina Dalí is an original idea from La Girafe en feu.

Raynald Michaud - the Commissioner Artistic director, author, director and designer of exhibitions, shows and events in public and private cultural enterprises. Developer of innovative animation concepts and collaborator of numerous cultural bodies including the Pointe-à-Callières Museum, Space for Life and the Just for Laughs Museum. Recipient of many prestigious awards.

Visit the DIVINA DALI website.

To buy tickets.

MMFA 2020-2021: Riopelle

RIOPELLE                                                                                 

THE CALL OF THE NORTHERN LANDSCAPES AND INDIGINOUS CULTURES

Until September 12, 2021

Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), a major Quebec and Canadian artist, is internationally acclaimed as a prominent figure in modern art. This exhibition, based on original research, explores the artist’s interest in North and Indigenous cultures. On view are nearly 160 works and more than 150 artefacts as well as archival documents. The exhibition sheds new light on the artist’s work during the 1950s and 1970s by retracing his travels and influences that led to his fascination with Canadian northern regions and the North American Indigenous communities.

The exhibition reveals Riopelle’ interest in non-Western arts, as inspired by his friend and collector Georges Duthuit and the writings of anthropologists and ethnologists such as Marius Barbeau, Jean Malaurie and Claude Lévi-Strauss.

It explores the influence of Riopelle’s hunting and fishing trips with seaplane owner Dr. Champlain Charest in the North and Far North of Quebec and Canada during the 1970s, as evidenced in the Jeux de ficelles (1971-1972), Rois de Thulé (1973) and Icebergs (1977) series. Using an intercultural approach, the exhibition offers a novel parallel between Riopelle’s creations and some of the sources that inspired him, in particular a selection of Inuit masks and works of Pacific Northwest coast First Nations.

Following a path that is both chronological and thematic, the exhibition includes nearly 110 works by Riopelle (paintings, sculptures and works on paper) from the MMFA’s collection and some 30 institutional and private collections in Canada, the United States and France. Of special interest is the unveiling of two recently restored major works: the monumental sculpture La Fontaine (circa 1964-1977), displayed for the first time, as well as the imposing canvas Point de rencontre

(1963), the artist’s sole commissioned work, previously exhibited at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Also on display is a 1946 watercolour by Riopelle that belonged to André Breton; a little-known series of remarkable works on silver-point paper; and several major works, including Blizzard Sylvestre (1953), L’étang – Hommage à Grey Owl (1970), D’un long voyage (1973) and Pangnirtung (1977). Artifacts and an extensive selection of documents (correspondence, publications, photographs and videos) help contextualize the artist’s work.

This exhibition is not to be missed!

Visit the the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website to check on the opening hours and to purchase your ticket online.

National Gallery Prague

 

NATIONAL GALLERY PRAGUE - NÁRODNÍ GALERIE PRAHA

Virtual Experience

The National Gallery Prague was founded in 1796 and is one of the world's oldest public art galleries and one of the largest museums in Central Europe.

The gallery's collections are not housed in a single location. They are showcased in a number of historic buildings within the city of Prague, as well as other localities. The largest of the gallery sites is the Trade Fair Palace (Veletržní Palác), which houses the National Gallery's collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. Other important exhibition spaces are located in the Convent of St Agnes of Bohemia, the Kinský Palace, the Salm Palace, the Schwarzenberg Palace, the Sternberg Palace, and the Wallenstein Riding School.

Presently, the National Gallery Prague is offering virtual visits of its collections. Consult the National Gallery's website.

The number of individual works available for viewing is quite enormous. On this webpage, it is possible to choose a collection within a particular historical period, works of an individual artist, or view specific artistic techniques and materials.

Since it is not indicated for how long this free virtual experience will be available (maybe only during the pandemic?), do not hesitate to visit the National Gallery Prague website before this offer might be retracted.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover over images for more information.

National Gallery Prague website.

Choose individual works here.

MAC 2020-2021: Materiality of Language

La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux

34 local artists reflect upon the materiality of language

Virtual preview of the exabits available from December 17, 2020

Click on 3 images on this MAC webpage

The Montreal Museum of Contaporary Art (MAC) presents La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux. It showcases two curators Mark Lanctôt and Francois LeTourneux and their engagement with the local art scene, as well as the notion of language in all its permutations. These ideas evolved considerably over the course of the past two years, with visits to more than eighty local artists’ studios, conversations with a multitude of artists, writers, researchers, thinkers and diverse art practitioners, culminating in the current exhibition. 

 
“The artists and collectives selected for the show represent an extensive and richly diverse body of works around the theme of language, and how, beyond its spoken and written form, it can also be inscribed upon bodies, gestures and on the very material world around us,” explain the curators. “These works enable us to observe the transmission and translation of knowledge, memory and affects as these come toe to toe with the boundary between the body and technology”.                         

World events shape the narrative
 
Numerous questions were raised during the preparation of this show, which bringing forth new meanings especially in light of the current circumstances. “What is body language at a time when a world-wide health crisis literally force the confined separation of our bodies? How our focus, awareness of time, and our physical senses have been transformed? How can the tools we now rely on to communicate with others subjugate their just scrutiny?”

The show assembles a number of works that explore these issues and offer responses that are, according to the curators, “significant for their kaleidoscopic voices each of which fragment into a unique view of the world.” Every piece contains its own logic while concurrently weaving conversations with other pieces at the exhibition, inviting the visitor to discover and to interpret.

Artists:

• Vikky Alexander
• Trevor Baird
• Thomas Bégin
• Simon Belleau
• Scott Benesiinaabandan
• Sandeep Bhagwati
• Jacques Bilodeau
• Rosika Desnoyers
• Mara Eagle
• Surabhi Ghosh
• Carla Hemlock
• Kristan Horton
• Sheena Hoszko
• Isuma
• Kelly Jazvac
• Suzanne Kite
• Moridja Kitenge Banza
• Karen Kraven
• Marlon Kroll
• Nicolas Lachance
• Yen-Chao Lin
• Anne Low
• Luanne Martineau
• Manuel Mathieu
• N.E. Thing Co
• Jérôme Nadeau
• Isabelle Pauwels
• Guillaume Adjutor Provost
• Walter Scott
• Erin Shirreff
• Eve Tagny
• Samuel Walker
• Nico Williams
• Thea Yabut

Noteworthy: digital preview, film program, podcasts, catalogue

• A free digital preview acting as an introduction to the exhibition, the works and the artists will be available on the MAC’s website starting December 17th.
   
• Author, Ronald Rose-Antoinette, proposes as guest curator a film program entitled chorus, talk through life during the course of the exhibition with artists Denise F. da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, Esery Mondésir, Darlene Naponse, Jamilah Sabur, Kengné Téguia, and Suné Woods.
   
• Daisy Desrosiers, an independent curator, will host a series of podcast interviews with some of the artists of the exhibition.  Available soon on the MAC’s website.
   
• A catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes an essay by Krista Lynes, several short texts written by Nicole Brossard, Marie-Andrée Gill, Rawi Hage, Symon Henry, Joana Joachim, Michael Nardone, Madeleine Thien, Maude Veilleux, Jacob Wren, as well as a number of extracts compiled by Raymond Boisjoly, by Maya Deren, Jeanne Favret-Saada, Branden Hookway, Alfred Jarry, Catherine Malabou, Ferdinand de Saussure and Michel Serres.

MAC is fully committed to supporting and encouraging the Québec art scene. 

 

McGill Library 2020: Greetings that Pop

SEASON'S GREETINGS THAT POP

The McGill University's Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) has a fast number of books with cut out images inside them that pop out when you open the page. This season, the McGill Library's RBSC is bringing into focus three festive pop-up scenes from the Sheila R. Bourke Collection that consists of over 2000 items and is rich in the “golden age” of book illustrations from the 19th and to the mid-20th centuries like chapbooks, “toy books” as well as deluxe gift books. Watch the following video.

McGill rare pop up remix video

You can read about the McGill Pop-Up collection here.

The following two videos might also be of interest to you:

McGill rare wintry remix

A Rare Wintry Martlet Remix

 

McGill Library 2020: DIY rare holiday phenakistoscope

DO IT YOURSELF HERITAGE HOLIDAY PHENAKISTOSCOPE

With a slogan Trot away from 2020 with our DIY rare holiday phenakistoscope, the McGill University Library is offering to the public, especially to children and all those young at heart, a real treat of HOW TO make your own phenakistoscope. If you do not know what it is, do not worry. All you have to do is go to this library website and download a .PDF file with a cut out template. Than watch this YouTube video with the instructions how to make it.

Enjoy returning into the past discovering an ingenious invention from those past times.

Happy Holidays !!!

MMFA 2020: Virtual Exhibitions

MMFA MUSEUM'S GIFT OF THE HOLIDAYS:

THE MONTREAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS OFFERS ITS EXHIBITIONS VIRTUALLY

December 1,2020 - January 11, 2021

MMFA's  Gift of the Holidays has been extended until January 24, 2021.

To celebrate the holiday season despite the closure of cultural institutions, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is giving its large audience a present, it is inviting the public to explore its exhibitions in the comfort of their home. Go to mbam.qc.ca/en/museums-gift-of-the-holidays/ to access free 3D virtual tours of four exhibitions. After January 11, 2011 these virtual exhibitions will be reserved exclusively for Museum Members. It is a tremendous opportunity to experience these great exhibitions during the times when many of us are not with friends or family.

With great image quality, these virtual tours allow visitors to stroll through the exhibition space at their own pace, admiring each work, reading all the texts on the wall, and viewing the smallest details up close. There is no time limit on the tours, and visitors can return as often as they wish until January 11, 2021. The premature closure of Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism in early October due to the pandemic disappointed members of the public, and this virtual version provides a last chance to visit it. The audio guide has been integrated into the tour, letting you stroll through the exhibition almost as if you were there.

The virtual tours on offer are:

Riopelle: The Call of Northern Landscapes and Indigenous Cultures
This major exhibition dedicated to Jean Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), a towering figure in Canadian, Quebec and international modern art, is based on original research. The exhibition explores the artist's interest in the North and Indigenous cultures, with nearly 160 works and more than 150 artefacts and archival documents. It sheds new light on the artist's work during the 1950s and 1970s by retracing the travels and influences that fed his fascination with northern regions and North American Indigenous communities.

Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism: Signac and the Indépendants
Presented exclusively at the MMFA in the summer of 2020, this major exhibition invites visitors on a journey to the artistic effervescence of France at the turn of the 20th century. Through over 500 works from an outstanding private collection, the public will discover a magnificent body of paintings and graphic works by Signac and avant-garde artists: Impressionists, Fauves, Symbolists, Nabis, Cubists, Expressionists, and Neo‑Impressionists. (You can read more about this Impressionists exhibition in my blog here).

Yehouda Chaki: Mi Makir; A Search for the Missing
This exhibition pays tribute to the victims and survivors of the Shoah, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. It immerses the visitor in a poignant installation composed of shadowy portraits of individuals executed in concentration camps, as well as a sculpture of books sadly reminiscent of the burnings of Jewish, liberal or leftist books declared non-German by groups of Nazi students.

In mid-December, one other virtual exhibitions will be added to the list:  

Manuel Mathieu: Survivance
The exhibition brings together some twenty paintings never before shown in Canada, as well as an installation created especially for the MMFA, in which the artist's roots and memories gradually reveal themselves, punctuating the vivid, striking compositions. This first solo exhibition of the artist in a North American museum reveals a fluid, expressive, quasi-Expressionist and sometimes even abstract painting style, revealing a world of contrasts and tensions.

Enjoy the MMFA's Virtual Exhibitions and have a very Happy Holidays!

mbam.qc.ca/en/museums-gift-of-the-holidays/ 

Acknowledgments

The immersive 3D virtual tours were created by Gaspésie Virtuelle,
 
Riopelle: The Call of Northern Landscapes and Indigenous Cultures
An exhibition presented by Hydro-Québec.
Major public partner: Government of Canada.
Major patron: Audain Foundation.
In collaboration with Hatch, the Jean Paul Riopelle Foundation, the Heffel Fine Art Auction House, Tourisme Montréal, RBC and the MMFA's Angel Circle.
 
Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism 
The MMFA gratefully acknowledges the anonymous private collector for the very generous loan of his works for this exhibition.
Presented by Hydro-Québec
In collaboration with: XN Worldwide Insurance, Tourisme Montréal, MMFA's Angel Circle

Yehouda Chaki: Mi Makir; A Search for the Missing
Major Patron: Bensadoun family
In collaboration with: The Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal and the Azrieli Foundation
With the generous contribution of Roslyn Margles and the Jonathan and Susan Wener family
And support from the exhibition ambassadors: The Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation, The Saryl and Stephen Gross Family Foundation, Riva and Thomas O. Hecht, Sari Hornstein, Amy Weinberg and Norbert Hornstein, Joel A. and Rhoda Pinsky, Julia and Stephen F. Reitman, Irwin and Sara Tauben and Viscofan Canada
 
Manuel Mathieu: Survivance
In collaboration with the MMFA's Young Philanthropists' Circle.

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

All images courtesy of @MMFA, 2020.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover over images for description and credits.

MMFA 2020: Post-Impressionism

Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism:

Signac and the Indépendants

July 1 - November 15, 2020

This magnificent exhibition by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) reveals the exuberant artistic innovations and experimentations that took place in France at the turn of the 20th century. It features over 500 works from an outstanding private collection that were generously landed to MMFA by an anonymous collector.

Rare loans

In addition to the over 500 works from the private collection, two rare pieces have been loaned to the Museum from the archives of Paul Signac's descendants. One is the portrait Paul Signac as a Yachtsman (1896) by Theo Van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) - see image just below, and the other is a sketch for In the Time of Harmony (1893) by Paul Signac that will enable the public to learn more about this masterpiece, which cannot be transported owing to its size.

The visitors will discover a striking and significant  body of paintings and graphic works by Paul Signac and other avant-garde artists of that era: Impressionists (Degas, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro), Fauves (Dufy, Friesz, Marquet, Vlaminck), Symbolists (Gauguin, Redon), Nabis (Bonnard, Denis, Lacombe, Sérusier, Ranson, Vallotton), observers of life in Paris (Anquetin, Ibels, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec), Cubists (Picasso, Braque), Expressionists (Feininger, Heckel), as well as the Neo-Impressionists (Angrand, Cross, Hayet, Lemmen, Luce, Seurat, Van Rysselberghe).

The exhibition also brings into focus the social and pictorial issues of the era that prompted a group of artists led by Signac to create the Salon des Indépendants in 1884. What was so innovative and special about that Salon? It promoted the  ideal of a democratic exhibition with neither jury, nor award. Instead they believed that art should be accessible to all and could contribute to the common good. From its inauguration in 1884 to the First World War, the Salon des Indépendants served as a platform for major and historical art developments of the time, including: Neo-Impressionism, the Nabis movement, Symbolism, Fauvism and Cubism. The exhibition situates the Indépendants in the sociocultural and political context of Paris during the Belle Époque.

Paul Signac and the Salon des Indépendants, 1884-1914

Paris, 1900: a revolution was underway in the Belle Époque.

“Art for all!” declared artists who exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants under the motto “neither jury, nor reward.” Co-founder of the Salon des Indépendants, Paul Signac (1863-1935) made a name for himself as the theoretician of the so-called “postimpressionist scientists.” Inspired by the chromatic theories of Charles Henry, Ogden Rood and Michel-Eugène Chevreul, he applied pure colour to the canvas in tightly placed dots, such that the form would emerge from the optical blending in the viewer’s eye. With his “divisionist” technique, he sought to create total art somewhere between the paradise lost of the golden age and social utopia. Signac championed positivist painting, which promoted technical and political modernity. The new pointillist style of his “Neo” peers spread quickly from Paris to Brussels, glorifying the better days to come. According to the writings of such critics as Fénéon, Signac positioned himself as an engaged intellectual in the era of the Dreyfus affair.

“Justice in sociology, harmony in art: one and the same thing.” These words by Signac sum up the vision he applied to both politics and his quest for social justice and harmony. His nearly 80 works on display also attest to his pursuit of social and chromatic harmony. In addition, the exhibition also reveals other movements born of that turbulent era, including Symbolism, Nabism, Fauvism and Cubism.

Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism is the first Canadian exhibition of this scale dedicated to Neo-Impressionism. It offers a unique opportunity to view these works together, many of which have never been exhibited before.

Do not miss this exhibition if you live in Montreal or can travel to Montreal during the next few weeks before the exhibition closes on November 15, 2020. The tickets have to be purchased online. Due to Covid-19, the number of people who can attend at the same time is strictly controlled. I found my visit and the spacing between the visitors very comfortable, and the works on display to be a real delight to my eye!

Click on images to enlarge them.

Hover over images for description and credits.

All images courtesy of @MMFA, 2020.

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

CATALOGUE: Scholarly publication

The exhibition is complemented by a 384-page catalogue, featuring over 550 illustrations and published in French and English by the MMFA’s Publishing Department in collaboration with Éditions Hazan, Paris. Edited by Gilles Genty and Mary-Dailey Desmarais,it presents research findings and scholarly essays by experts in Post-Impressionism. Contributors to the book include Mark Antliff, Nathalie Bondil, Charlotte Hellmann, Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Claire Denis, Phillip Dennis Cate, Marina Ferretti Bocquillon, Gilles Genty, Hilliard T. Goldfarb, Anne Grace, Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, Patricia Leighten, Katia Poletti, Véronique Serrano, Nicole Tamburini, Belinda Thomson and Richard Thomson.

P.S.

Unfortunately, due to Covid, MMFA announced a temporary closure of the Museum until October 28, 2020.