FIFA 30th Edition: Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei: Without Fear or Favour

(UK / 2010 / 58 min. Director Matthiew Springford)



Ai Weiwei is one of China's best-known artist. He is ranked the most powerful person in contemporary art by Art Review magazine. He also merits an acclaim as an architect since he co-designing the Beijing's ''Bird's Nest'' Stadium for the 2008 Olympics, Ai Weiwei artistic expression is very versatile, he is also a photographer, curator and a blogger.

Among his other artistic achievements this film prominently features his latest work - a carpet of 100 million porcelain hand painted sunflower seeds, tue to their natural size. As this work is unveiled at the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern Gallery in London, narrator Alan Yentob reveals how this most courageous and determined of artists continues to fight for freedom of expression while living under the restrictive shadows of China authoritarian rule. For instance, In April 2011, he was arrested for ''tax evasion'' before being freed eighty days later with restricted free speech and movement.

Ai Weiwei created a variety of amazing art pieces which are shown in this documentary. For instance, he likes to pieces of furniture to create his sculptures. At times, he even cuts or variously modifies and reassembles antique items thus creating his own statements of artistic expression.


Do make a point to see this film. FIFA has awarded it the top prize for the best film made for television. If you wish to acquaint yourself more with this exceptional artist, here are a couple of videos about him in YouTube.

Ai Weiwei's Sunflower seeds at the Tate video

A full version (in English) of Ai Weiwei Without Fear or Favour documentary is presently available  on You Tube

TED Film about  Ai Weiwei

N.B.

In 2015, Art FIFA presented a new documentary film about Al Weiwei: Ai Weiwei - Evidence. You can read about it in my post here:

http://news-reel.blogspot.ca/2015/03/fifa-2015-ai-weiwei-evidence.html

McCord Museum - Inuit Modern

Inuit Modern Art

February 24 - September 3, 2012

Montreal's McCord Museum is hosting a new exhibition, this time on Modern Inuit Art. This exhibition attests that Inuit art has a strong presence in Canada in 2012, and also documents that the Inuit have made a rich contribution to the history of art in Canada.

This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Art gallery of Ontario. It features Esther and Samuel Sarick collection, one of the world's most comprehensive collections of Inuit art. Inuit Modern traces the transformation of 20th-century Inuit art and features more than 175 works by 75 artists, including sculptures, prints and drawings. All of the exhibits on display were privately collected by Esther and Samuel Sarick. They donated 3,000 modern Inuit works to the Art Gallery of Ontario that they collected with great passion for more than 40 years.

The exhibition examines several different topics:

Art in the Face of Colonialism explores the repercussions of the first contacts with Europeans. Starting in the late 18th century, explorers, whalers, merchants and missionaries travelled to the Arctic, bringing home as souvenirs small ivory objects made by the Inuit. These strangers (they were called Qallunaat) soon began commissioning sculptures, often of kayaks and small animals.

In the 1950s, as their lifestyle based on hunting and fishing began to collapse, the Inuit experienced major social and cultural upheaval. The federal government of Canada intervened and urged Inuit families to give up their nomadic habits and settle in permanent villages. Hopping to stimulate the Inuit economy, the government introduced an art program through James Houston and the Canadian Handicrafts Guild. The present exhibition attests to the fact that this art program was extremely successful and fruitful.

If in the USA, in order to discover the new territories it was commonly suggested to go west, In Canada it was definitely stated to go north. However, if you wish to discover the art of the north, you do not have to travel long distances but simply visit the Montreal’s McCord Museum.

Series of films and lectures on Inuit Art will also be presented:

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/activities/guidedtours/

Museum’s Opening Hours

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/info/hours/

 List of Photos as they appear in the text

1. Quvinatuliak Tampauhai, Woman Holding Breads, before 1987, stone, McCord Museum Exibition 2012.
2. Sallualu Quinuajua, Fantastic Figure, around 1970, McCord Museum Exibition 2012, Photo by Nadia Slejskova.
3. Augustine Anaittuq, Muskox, 1990, whale bone, fur, sinew, McCord Museum Exibition 2012, Photo by Nadia Slejskova.
4. Nick Sikkuark, Shaman Performing, 1987-88, whale bone, fur, sinew, McCord Museum 2012, Photo by Nadia Slejskova.

Lyonel Feininger - New MMFA Exhibition

Lyonel Feininger

January 21 - May 13, 2012

at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Lyonel Feininger is an artist of exceptional talent whose works include comic strips, caricatures, whimsical toys, woodcuts, photographs, musical fugues, figurative painting, and the transcendental paintings of architecture and the sea.

Come and see this exhibition, you will discover a great artist who, most likely, you do not know at all, or do not know enough about. He is indeed a surprising find! Multi-talented and diversified, he astonishes with his interpretation of the reality of his subjects, be they people, buildings or seascapes. The shapes and colours he uses create a rhythmical cadence, an illusion of movement in the scene, in the virtual world he has conjured within the canvas. Many of his paintings seem not to stand still, they have a wave-like vibrancy of their own. You will also see in his works both the expressionist and cubist elements, as well as quirky distortions of a caricaturist.

Lyonel Feininger seems to have fallen in the past through the cracks of the art historians’ attention. This was probably mainly due to the fact that his artistic career was torn between two continents: between Germany and America. He was born in America to German parents. He moved alone to Germany at age 16. His artistic career was very much diversified, and even included teaching at Bauhaus, where he was hired by Walter Gropius as the first faculty appointment.

Although Feininger was held in high esteem in Germany, where his career began and took deep roots, he had to flee to America in 1937 at the age of 66 because of the World War II and his Jewish wife. He therefore had to reestablish himself as an artist once again, on a different continent, and at an advanced age, which must have been quite a difficult task. He lived in America until his death in New York City in 1956 at the age of 84.

Also amazing is the diversification of his talent. He loved the fugues of Bach, and had written some fugues himself. You will find exhibited his personal violin, which he often played in the mornings before breakfast. You will also see colourful toys he made for his son, his caricatures, cartoons, and some photographs. He produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and 1956 which he had not shared with the public but only with his friends, and which came to light only after his death.

In addition to Lyonel Feininger’s works, the last room of this present MMFA exhibition also displays black and white photographs of his son Andreas Feininger, an accomplished and a renown American photographer. One can easily discover in his works the influence his father had on him.

I highly recommend this exhibition. Come and discover for yourself this amazingly creative artist. You will also be able to pick up a pamphlet at the museum with all the activities it offers, and all the free films and lectures that are scheduled.

To find out more about this exhibition and the opening hours, visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website.

You can purchase the exhibition catalogue at the Museum's Boutique and Store.

Click on images to enlarge them.

List of photos as they appear in the text

1. Feininger, Bathers on the Beach I, 1912, Oil on canvas 50.5 x 65.7

Harvard Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Association Fund BR54.7, © Estate of Lyonel Feininger / SODRAC (2011)

Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

2. Lyonel Feininger, Bird Cloud, 1926, Oil on canvas 43.8 x 71.1 cm

Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum; Cambridge, Massachusetts; purchase in memory of Eda K. Loeb BR50.414, © Estate of Lyonel Feininger / SODRAC (2011)

Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

3. Lyonel Feininger, Yellow Street II, 1918, Oil on canvas 95 x 86.1 cm

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Purchase; gift of The Maxwell Cummings Family Foundation, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Volunteer Association, John G. McConnell, C.B.E., Mr. and Mrs. A Murray Vaughan, Harold Lawson Bequest, and Horsley and Annie Townsend Bequest.,© Estate of Lyonel Feininger / SODRAC (2011)

Photo MMFA

4. Lyonel Feininger, New York 1871 – New York 1956

The Kin-der-Kids, The Chicago Sunday Tribune, April 29, 1906
59.4 x 45.3 cm Commercial lithograph

The Museum of Modern Art, New York; gift of the artist 260.1944.1
© Estate of Lyonel Feininger / SODRAC (2011)
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

5.  Lyonel Feininger, Locomotive With Big Wheal, 1910, MMFA Exibition 2012

Photo by Nadia Slejskova

MMFA: Big Bang

MMFA - the Montreal Museum of Fine Art is currently featuring Big Bang exhibition. It runs from November 6, 2011 to January 22, 2012.  This exhibition was created and produced by the Museum as a celebration of the creative process. A number of contemporary Quebec artists were invited to choose a work from the museum’s permanent collection as a starting point and on the basis of that work let themselves be inspired to create a work of their own. In this way, the museum is paying tribute to Quebec’s creativity.

Nearly 20 artists from various artistic branches, several of them internationally renowned, responded to the Museum’s invitation. As a result, the works of these artists are presented in this show: Jennifer Alleyn and Nancy Huston (film and literature), Denys Arcand and Adad Hannah (film and visual arts), Melissa Auf der Maur (music), Geneviève Cadieux (visial arts), Marie Chouinard (dance), Collectif Rita (design), Claude Cormier (urban design), Jean Derome (music), En masse (mural art), Pierre Lapoint and Jean Verville (music and architecture), Renata Morales (fashion), Wadji Mouawad (theatre), Jeannot Painchaud (circus arts), Rolland Poulin (sculpture), Michel Rabagliatti (comics), and Gilles Saucier (architecture).

Visit the Museum  and see the result of this creative process. Maybe you yourself will be inspired to created a work of your own based on some of the art piece from the Museum’s permanent collection.

I personally was inspired by one of the Museum’s gems to create and propagate my own artistic expression, inline with the Big Bang's objectives. Here is the result. I rather like it and feel it merits attention. If I had the means, I'd make it into a large poster celebrating the MMFA museum.

The painting to the left is by the French painter James Tissot, entitled October, 1877, from MMFA's permanent collection. On the right is my own take on that painting. It is a photo of the enigmatic and vivacious Grand Dame of the Museum, Madame Nathalie Bondil, the MMFA’s director and chief curator. I took this photo during the press conference inaugurating the Big Bang show on November 2, 2011. The postural likeness and expression of both women, and to some extent of their dress and shoes is quire remarkable, though Madame Bondil's look is obviously quite contemporary.

Parallel to Big Bang runs another show, called In My Mind’s Eye, a collection of paintings and other works by Dorothea Rockburne. It is her first Canadian retrospective. She was born and educated in Montreal, but later moved to the United States, where her works are featured in the collections of numerous institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MOMA.

The admission to all the Museums exhibitions and collections is currently free.

The painting to the left is by Dorothea Rockburne, entitled Mozart and Mozart Upside Down and Backwards, 1985-87.





For more information visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' website

http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/index.html

McCord Museum

There are currently two exhibitions on display at the Montreal's McCord Museum.

Toys 2 

This exibiton which targets mainly children, or those who are children at heart, rans from November 18, 2011 to March 11, 2012.

This is the Museum's second exhibition of toys. The first one took place a year ago. It was a great success and attracted some 30,000 visitors. This year has a special theme: a cat chasing, or rather searching, for a mouse. The young visitors have “to help” a cat to find a mouse. All are assured that the cat does not really want to eat the mouse, but simply to play with it.

The exhibition is broken into four separate themes through which the chasing of the mouse is pursuit. This is an engaging way for children to view more than 200 toys and artefacts, some of which date back almost 150 years. The exhibited pieces for this show were chosen from an amalgamation of some 11,000 items from Museum's various collections.

The children will be engaged in some physical activity as they have to climb under low ceiling entries, as for instance is the case of a masterfully constructed igloo, where pieces of “ice” are made from white pillows which could be lifted to reveal some of the museum’s treasures. Another such crawling entry leads to a treasure trove with costumes, where children can dress up and assume role playing.

Admission to this exhibition is free for children 12 and under. 

The second exhibition currently at the McCord museum:

Edward Burtynsky : OIL

This is another excellent exhibition currently on display at the McCord Museum. It runs from October 6, 2011 to January 8, 2012. It consists of 56 large colour photographs by a Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky explores the subject of oil and how this natural resource redefines the world as we know it, how it affects nature and the natural scenery. The vast landscapes shown in the photographs, offer rarely seen glimpses of oil production and distribution, of oil fields, oil sands, and oil refineries. Burtynsky’s work shows the impact the petroleum industry has on the lives of people, cities, the land, and the environment. His stunning photo images carry a social and ecological message that is disturbing but also thought-provoking. The images are artistically superb and beautiful, yet this does not diminish the intended impact of Burtynsky’s message nor the concerned opinion of the viewer.

To find more about these and other exhibitions and activities, visit the McCord Museum’s website

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/

Colours of India

 

The current exhibition at Pointe-à-Callière, the Montreal Museum of Archeology and History is on display from November 8^th 2011 to April 22^nd 2012.

India, a geographically, socially, and culturally diverse country, expresses its heritage and traditions by means of its different religions, clothing, theatre, celebrations, religious ceremonies, and its daily life customs.

This exhibition  represents “a voyage into a mosaic of landscapes, ethnicities, and beliefs that have shaped Indian life, artistic expression, and culture. Through this exhibition—which coincides with the Year of India in Canada—Pointe-à-Callière is seeking to convey the importance of India’s cultural and religious heritage.”

Objects on display are sculptures, works of art, textiles, clothing, and finery. There are also presented film excerpts and soundtracks depicting major Indian ceremonies and rituals which complete and enrich the visitor’s experience.

One hundred objects deplayed at the Pointe-à-Callière come from  the collections of the Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet in Paris.

The vibrantly coloured Indian textiles on display - including saris, shawls, veils, odhnis, turbans, and coats from the 18th and 19th centuries - come from their impressive textile collection, mainly from the personal collection of Krishna Riboud, the great-grandniece of Nobel laureate for literature Rabindranath Tagore. Krishna Riboud , well aware of the textiles’ priceless heritage value, worked for many years to preserve various fabrics, costumes, and clothing that today are part of this collection. Since the days of antiquity, India has been world-renowned for its variety of textiles.

Other objects on display are captivating terracotta, stone, bronze, and wood statues dating from the 2nd to the 19th century AD, representing kings or mythical gods, deity ornaments, or objects associated with rites. A dozen objects from The Royal Ontario Museum complete the collection of artefacts presented in Montréal, at Pointe-à-Callière.

The great gamut of colour at the exhibition is supplied by superb works of a French photographer Suzanne Held, which were carefully chosen from a vast collection of photos taken by her over 40 years of her travel to India. 

In the following video Suzanne Held speaks about her photos she took in India and exhibited at Musée des Arts Asiatiques at Nice. You can see many of those photos now in Montreal.

Suzanne Held, Inde éternelle

You will find more about the Montreal Museum of Archeology and History at Pointe-à-Callière, about their opening hours and their other activities, at the PAC museum website.

List of Photos as they appear in the text

1. Visual of the exhibition created by Dominique Boudrias from Pointe-à-Callière. ©Suzanne Held

2. View of the exhibition room, Photo by Alain Vandal

3. A woman cuts rushes in Agra. The Taj Mahal is a tomb to the memory of Mumtaz Mahal, favourite wife of the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan, the “king of the world.” She died giving birth to her fourteenth child, a girl who did not survive. In his despair the inconsolable emperor, his hair turned white overnight, summoned 20,000 labourers and master craftsmen to build the tomb. After 17 years the work was finished, but the State’s coffers were empty. Shah Jahan lost his throne and was imprisoned until his death by his son Aurangzeb. ©Suzanne Held

4. View of the exhibition room and textiles, Photo by Alain Vandal

5. Ganesha is the god who removes obstacles, very popular in India because he ensures the success of any undertaking. According to legend, Ganesha was decapitated in error by his father, Shiva. To atone for his mistake, Shiva decided to replace Ganesha’s head with the head of the first living creature he came across. © Musée Guimet, Paris

6. Srirangam temple (17th century) stands on the small island of Koledam, in south India, Dravidian India. This vast religious complex, dedicated to Vishnu, is a microcosm where hundreds of priests reside. The horse courtyard contains 953 pillars sculpted in the round representing armed horsemen mounted on rearing horses. Each statue, six metres high, is carved from a single block of granite. ©Suzanne Held

MMFA – New Bourgie Pavilion

Today, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) inaugurated the new Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion, which will become the home for the museum’s permanent collection of Quebec and Canadian Art. The pavilion also features a new 444-seat concert hall - Bourgie hall - build into the nave of the former 1894 heritage Erskine church, recognized for its excellent acoustics.

The new Bourgie pavilion is architecturally quite amazing. The old church masonry is combined with modern structures of large white marble sheets, glass and steel.

The Bourgie Pavilion of Quebec and Canadian Art

It is spread over 6 levels with 600 works. There are 4 stories above the ground level and one below. Starting from the top, this is how the collection is subdivided:

Level 4 – Inuit Art, featuring 100 works from rich collection of sculpture and prints.

Indian Art and colonial period portraits in the background to the left, Bourgie Pavilion, Level 3.

Level 3 – Founding Identities theme – will feature contemporary and historical Ameridian Art as well as  works of colonial period (1700 to 1870s), dominated by portraiture and religious art.

Alfried Laliberté, Lost in Though, 1924.

Bourgie Pavilion, Level 2.

Level 2 -  Features the Annuals Exhibition Era (1980s – 1920s), and such artists as for instance Maurice Cullen, Ozias Leduc, James Wilson Maurice and Alfred Laliberté.

Lawren S. Harris, Log Cabin, 1923.

Bourgie Pavilion, Level 1.












Level 1 – Towards Modernism (1920s - 1930s) - present the Montreal’s Beaver Hall Group and its Quebec cityscapes and landscapes. This level also highlights the paintings from the Toronto based Group of Seven, and painters like Emily Carr and Marc-Aurèle Fortin.

Paul-Emil Bourdua, Composition 44, 1944. Bourgie Pavilion, Street Level.

Sherbrooke Stree Level -  The Age of the Manifesto (1040s - 1960s), with artists Paul-Emile Bordua and Alfred Pellan. A special place is also devoted for the works of Jean-Paul Riopelle (from 1947 to 1977).

Bourgie Pavilion, The Undeground Level. 

The underground Level – “The Mountain Gallery” – a thick layer of the mountain rock had to be removed to open this space to house the art from 1960s to 1970s with such artists as Louis Archambault, Greg Curnoe, Jean McEwen, Guido Millinari, Michael Snow and Calude Tousignant among others. This level leads directly into the underground passage that links all three MMFA pavilions.

The Bourgie Concert Hall

The artistic highlight of this hall ate magnificent Tiffany stained glass windows, along with the stained glass windows by Haworth and Charles William Kelsey.

Tiffany Stained Glass Windows, Bourgie Concert Hall.

The Hall has two Steinway & Sons’ Grand Pianos. One is on the stage of the concert hall, and the other one is in the practice room below the concert hall. This ensures that if a piece written for two pianos were to be performed, this Bourgie Hall would easily accommodate it.

Bourgie Concert Hall - the back of the Hall, Parterre and Balcony.

125 concerts have been scheduled for this Inaugural Season, spotlighting local musicians. The performances will include classical music as well as jazz, world and new music. Bourgie Hall will also hold a number of concert series with renowned musical ensembles.

For more information visit the Bourgie Hall website

http://www.sallebourgie.ca/

Also visit the website of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/index.html