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Samedi 15 septembre 2018. Bonne nuit à l' hôtel du Cap. Belle église à Jobourg près de l'immense usine de La Hague. Nombreux modillons avec figures de monstres aux églises (**) de Tollevast et Martinvast. Petites routes sinueuses et encombrées pour éviter Cherbourg. Château de Tourlaville, beau parc à l'anglaise. Port et Cap Lévi. Sant-Pierre-Église, château XVIIIe s. au bout d'une longue avenue. Phare de Gatteville, grand soleil sur les camping cars alignés en rang d'oignons. Barfleur. Maison habitée par Signac. Route vers Réville et la pointe de Saire (**). Belles vues sur Saint-Vaast. Dans les champs, choux et poireaux font la loi. La terre est étrangement colorée. Toute cette partie du Cotentin est méridionale d'aspect. Saint-Vaast. Du monde pour les glaces à l'italienne et les huîtres. Beau port. Forts de Vauban. Côte jusqu'à Saint-Marcouf où très belle église avec crypte (**). Batteries allemandes de Crisbecq et Azeville, lourdement bombardées le premier jour du débarquement. Montebourg (!) Baptistère (XIe s.) dans l'église où vient de se terminer un mariage. Abbaye néo-romane dans les faubourgs. Traversée de Valognes (pour demain). Magnifique hôtel (1782) en face de la gare, à vendre et très délabré. Retour par Les Pieux et Flamenville. Beau manoir en bord de route. On voit mal le chantier de l'EPR. Dîner à la crêperie de Jobourg. Serveuse de Montpellier, couverte de tatouages, très bavarde. Excellente journée.
GRONINGER MUSEUM
Groningen
the Netherlands
The realisation of the present-day Groninger Museum had a lengthy and intensive history before a start was actually made on the spectacular design that still evokes much discussion on modern museum architecture. After years of formulating plans and drawing up sketches, after endless discussions and consultations, the ultimate design by the Italian Alessandro Mendini and the three guest architects Philippe Starck, Michele de Lucchi, and Coop Himmelb(l)au was completed in 1994.
HISTORY IMPULSE
The direct opportunity for this large-scale building project arrived on 28 September 1987 when the N.V. Nederlandse Gas Unie donated 25 million guilders (approx. 11.5 million Euro) for the construction of a new Groninger Museum. This was a godsend to the Museum. The old premises on the Praediniussingel, which had accommodated the Groningen Museum for exactly 100 years, had become far too small. The donation, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Gas Company (in 1988), was greeted with delight. This was the beginning of a project that would last 7 years and would finally be rounded off with the opening of the new Groningen Museum by Queen Beatrix on 29 October 1994.
LOCATION
Having examined all kinds of possible locations, a preparatory committee finally decided in favour of the ‘Zwaaikom’, a broader part of the Verbindings Canal on the southern edge of the inner city. It is a historical location, adjoining the stately 19th-century avenues with the mansions that were built on the site of the old city fortifications. The Verbindings Canal, linking other waterways as the name suggests, occupies the place where the city moat once lay. The main railway station and a ribbon of office blocks dating from the last few decades line the other side of the water. It is a unique location, connecting the station area to the inner city.
Mendini
The decision to appoint Alessandro Mendini, an Italian designer/architect whose work also appears in the Groningen Museum collection, was taken almost immediately. The spirit of the 1980s, a period that is strongly represented in the collection of Modern Art, radiates from his work. With regard to the new building, his vision and working method found a perfect match in the ideas of Frans Haks, the erstwhile Director of the Museum. There was one element in particular that was certain: it had to be an extraordinary building, both inviting and accessible – the Museum’s visiting card.
Mendini, born in 1931, is a versatile man. Besides being an architect, he is also a designer, artist, theorist, and poet. In 1988, the Groninger Museum presented a large-scale retrospective of his activities in which his multifaceted artistry was expressed. Mendini also publishes a great deal, writing columns in international magazines, thus reinforcing his reputation as a theorist of new design.
STARTING POINTS
In 1987, the point of departure for the new Museum was the nature and the character of the various collections that constitute the Groninger Museum: Archaeology and History of Groningen; Applied Art, with the collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain as an important subcollection; Traditional Painting (from approx. 1500 to 1950); and Modern Art (from 1950 until the present). These four completely different collections form the identity of the Museum and, as such, should all be visible in the building, each in its own domain. At the same time, the new building had to be a archetype of developments in art and architecture in the 1980s. As a result, initiating a co-operative effort by various architects and/or designers seemed to be a logical step, so that diverse perspectives could be combined and the separate collections could be appropriately expressed.
DEMANDS AND DESIRES
Mendini was bound by a number of demands from the Municipality. A direct link between the station and the inner city (a bridge for pedestrians and cyclists) had to be included in the design, inland shipping had to be able to pass through the canal, and one had to be able to see the one shore from the other (the so-called ‘transparency’ of the design). Taking these requirements into account, there followed a lengthy planning process in which all kinds of ideas and designs were investigated. The definitive design was approved in November 1990. However, due to an appeal to the Council of State lodged by opponents of the Groninger Museum, it took until April 1992 before construction could actually begin.
MENDINI’S PHILOSOPHY
DESIGN
To what principles does Mendini adhere in this kind of design? He believes that the use of decoration is deeply rooted in humankind and, accordingly, decoration must be the starting point of design. Functionalists dismiss decoration because it draws attention away from the true issue, the function of the building. Their work is sober, with full attention being given to the efficiency of the design. This leads to impersonal mass production, according to opponents. In Mendini’s opinion, people no longer want mass products. People are individuals and need something personal rather than the anonymity of the functional environment. ‘Everyone is different,’ says Mendini, ‘so why shouldn’t an object also be different?’
NO ESTABLISHED NORM
Mendini’s work has a number of striking features. Mendini rejects traditional hierarchies (such as painting being on a higher level than applied art, for example) and a historical division into time and place. In his view, art-historical styles, exotic cultures and kitsch are all equally important.
INTERACTION OF DISCIPLINES
This standpoint gives rise to a second characteristic feature of his work, the interweaving of disciplines. Mendini holds the opinion that there are no boundaries between the various activities in which he is engaged. Theatre, painting, sculpture, architecture, and science can all be used freely and interchangeably. He thinks that any distinction between these disciplines is nonsense. He also believes that everything has already been conceived and applied. As a result, the only way of acting is to employ things in new combinations – it is merely a matter of redesign. Existing designs are subsequently given a new decoration, often originating in a different discipline. Painting is a particularly important source of decoration.
CO-OPERATION
A third distinctive feature of Mendini’s work consists of co-operation with others. He works with contemporary artists, architects and designers in creating furniture, objects, clothes, décors, paintings, theatre performances, ceramics, and jewellery. The yearning to transgress the boundaries of the traditional disciplines tends to mean that Mendini is more engaged as a director and deviser of ideas than as an executor.
DIRECTOR
One of the joint efforts in which Mendini acted as a supervisor was the creation of the series of tea and coffee services for Alessi. In 1980-83, eleven silver tea services were created by the Italian firm Alessi in a very limited edition. Mendini commissioned ten of the most important modern architects, each of whom designed one of the sets. They included Hans Hollein (who also designed the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach) and Aldo Rossi (the architect of the new Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht). The assignment was to design a service in which the teapot, milk jug and sugar pot were small buildings on a plaza. Thus arose a series of eleven tea services that belong to
both the history of tea and coffee sets and also to modern design and architecture. In fact, the service project can be regarded as a precursor of the Groninger Museum. Since the beginning of 2002, the Groninger Museum has owned a complete series of these currently famous sets.
A later project by Alessi encompassed 100 porcelain vases. Mendini designed the basic shape and 99 artists and designers from all over the world added decoration. The Groninger Museum has work by many of these artists in its collection. In another project, 33 mirrors for the Glas Company, Mendini supplied the decoration and different designers repeatedly determined the form. The decoration here is a Signac motif, borrowed from a pointillist painting by Paul Signac (end 19th century). This motif, first applied to Proust’s chair (1979) recurs in all kinds of variations in the Interno di un Interno installation, and again in a Swatch watch (Lots of Dots, 1991), the staircase of the Groninger Museum, and on the exterior of the east pavilions. All the above-mentioned designs by Mendini and the guest designers are part of the Groninger Museum collection.
GUEST ARCHITECTS
A number of guest architects were invited to design sections, pavilions, of the new Museum: the Italian designer Michele de Lucchi, Philippe Starck from Paris, and, at a rather late date, the Coop Himmelb(l)au group which has offices in Vienna and Los Angeles. There was also co-operation with Dutch architects and designers, such as the Groningen architects’ office Team 4 (project architect), Albert Geertjes and Geert Koster.
THE BUILDING
Mendini’s basic design consists of three separate, simple and austere building units lying longitudinally in the Verbindings Canal, connected by passageways. These passageways also serve as bridges. A sky-blue lift bridge for cyclists and pedestrians traverses the complex. It not only links the two shores, it is also a section of the route between the station and the inner city. Thus, the Museum has become an entrance gate to the centre.
Each building block has several sections: pavilions that are superposed or juxtaposed. Each pavilion has its own special function and, consistent with this, its own shape, colour and material.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OUTSIDE AND IN
The exterior gives a direct indication that this is a building presenting various forms of art and design. The bridge, marked by a blue, arched gate, also conceals a surprise. When the bridge has been lifted to allow ships to pass, a work of art by Wim Delvoye can be seen on the underside. Magnified Delftware tiles, with apparently 17th-century emblems, refer to the collections of applied art and traditional painting. In contrast, the form is completely modern. The games depicted are not genuine representations but are cartoons thought up by Delvoye and the tiles are actually large stickers.
A sculpture by Mendini graces the centre of the piazza, in front of the entrance. It is an autonomous work, a sofa and also a guide: the ground plan of the Museum is expressed in a vertical form, thus producing a hominoid figure. Looking from the doorway, the red neon ceiling by François Morellet can be seen in the entrance hall. The oval lines of this artwork, specially created for this location, continue the lines of the exterior architecture.
THE CENTRAL PAVILION
The first eye-catcher is, of course, the gold-coloured central tower, which is over 30 metres tall. This tower accommodates the repositories and also the entrance to the Museum. In Mendini’s opinion, the repository, often muffled away in cellars or inconspicuous auxiliary buildings, is the heart of a museum, the treasure chamber in which the most valuable possession, the Museum collection, is kept. For this reason, it has been given a central position and a gold-coloured laminate coating. The tower dazzles in the sunshine and no longer resembles a ship but evokes notions of a church. Mutually identical blocks flank the tower. One is clad in pink concrete slabs, the other in pastel green. The repetition of the squares emphasises the symmetry: laminate, concrete slabs,
small square mosaic stones, and the office windows on the upper floors.
The green part on the south side has large windows. This section accommodates the café-restaurant with its splendid view of the water and passing ships.
THE ENTRANCE HALL
The entrance hall was radically renewed in 2002. On the left-hand side is a large counter with cash registers and a plasma information screen, showing prices and information on current exhibitions. Adjoining this is the entrance to the Museum shop. On the right-hand section of the hall are two smaller counters with screens that provide information on activities in the Museum and cultural-historical information on Groningen, furnished by the Tourist Information Office. The entrance to the café-restaurant lies between these two information points. The hall is open public space and entrance during opening hours is free. The renovation has made the hall more of a meeting place and an information area.
THE CENTRAL STAIRWAY
The spiral stairway is the actual entrance to the Museum and its treasures and is also the central point of orientation. Furthermore, it is also an autonomous work of art. The characteristics of Mendini’s work are again expressed here. The visitor must descend rather than climb the staircase as in almost all other museums (to the ‘higher’ arts). The mosaic stones, applied by Italian craftsmen, are reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics from Ravenna, while the form of the spiral stairway recalls Moorish structures.
Via the stairway, the visitor enters the passages to the exhibition pavilions. Oval exhibition areas, supporting small plazas on the outside, lie between the central section and the exhibition pavilions.
The semicircular windows in the passageways evoke the ambience of a cloister. The dominant colour of the windows, light blue, refers to the water outside and is reflected in the exterior coating where capricious water channels have been applied to the material.
WEST SECTION
West of the central section are two pavilions, one above the other. The lower one, a square slightly tapering towards the top, was originally constructed to house the Archaeology and History of the Town and Province of Groningen collection. This is clearly evident on the exterior of the building: it is clad in red brick, traditionally the most common building material in Groningen. Furthermore, it gives the impression of a fort and calls to mind the roundels of the strongholds that were constructed on this site in the middle of the 17th century. Two lions from the collection, which originated from the Farnsum estate house, guard the fort.
This layout has been consigned to the annals of Groningen history since 1998. The historical layout could no longer satisfy expectations. The recently renovated pavilion currently bears the name ‘Beringer-Hazewinkel Ploeg pavilion’, referring to its new content: a safe home for the Groningen artists’ association De Ploeg and other North European Expressionists. The pavilion was also called after the family Beringer-Hazewinkel that funded the pavilion. The new layout was also made by the Italian Michele de Lucchi (1951), who designed the original pavilion.
BERINGER-HAZEWINKEL PLOEG PAVILION
The Beringer-Hazewinkel Ploeg pavilion consists of a central part, presenting objects from Groningen cultural history, and six rooms for temporary exhibitions of De Ploeg and other expressionists, three on either side, with a connecting zone behind the central area. Through a window, the visitor can gain a glimpse of the Villa Heymans, now a part of Groningen’s architectural history, designed by Berlage and built in the same red brick as the De Ploeg pavilion. Berlage was also the first to formulate a plan to connect the central station with the inner city and, as such, anticipated the function of the present Museum. A striking feature is the vividly coloured walls of the exhibition areas, whose intensity is reinforced by the application of coloured light.
STARCK PAVILION
Above the brick section lies a circular pavilion displaying objects in the Applied Art category. The exterior is clad with aluminium plates upon which vase shapes can be seen in the embossment. Thus, here is also a direct reference to the contents. The building was designed by the French designer Philippe Starck (1949), in close conjunction with Albert Geertjes.
Starck created an illuminated circular showcase for this area, entirely girdling the diagonal interior wall. This showcase presents the internationally renowned collection of porcelain from the Far East, in which the emphasis lies on East-West relations. With the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, the Princessehof in Leeuwarden and the Gemeente Museum in The Hague, the Groninger Museum has one of the richest collections of Asian ceramics.
The round hall is divided by means of winding curtains. Exceptional arrangements are presented in the spaces that are thus created, where the visitor can concentrate on the porcelain or on other user items such as furniture and Japanese lacquer ware.
The method of presentation is attuned to the nature and special features of the objects. Large artificial fissures have been applied to the concrete floors and walls, resembling the craquelé of porcelain. The lift is bell-shaped and thus refers to applied art and also to Starck’s own designs, such as the cheese rasp/container Mister MeuMeu, dating from 1992, which is a stylised cow’s head. Starck combines form and content in a light-hearted and humorous way. On opening, one of the horns of Mister MeuMeu turns out to be a spoon. A playful element in the applied art pavilion is the aquarium filled with porcelain. It contains some of the famous collection of 'Geldermalsen porcelain', Chinese porcelain from the middle of the 18th century which lay at the bottom of the South China Sea for centuries after the wreck of the VOC ship ‘De Geldermalsen’. Many important pieces were donated to the Groninger Museum after the porcelain had been recovered by Captain Michael Hatcher in 1986. These pieces have again ‘put to sea’ in this pavilion.
The curtains, the splendidly designed showcases, and the remarkable lighting effects collectively produce elegant and alluring spaces that do full justice to the objects. In addition, the curtains have a useful soundproofing effect. A visit to this pavilion resembles a voyage of discovery with all kinds of surprising effects.
The theatrical layout by Philippe Starck is exceptional and original, and commands the attention of the visitor. It is an excellent example of the latest ideas on exhibition layout, where traditional methods of display in a neutral area alternate with exciting arrangements that fire the imagination.
EAST SECTION
MENDINI PAVILIONS
‘Classical’ museum architecture is also represented in the Museum, on the east side of the complex. The lower pavilion (Mendini 0), which is trapeziform, consists of two storeys and was designed entirely – both the interior and the exterior – by Mendini. The pointillist Signac motif on the exterior refers to the interior containing the visual arts. The seven consecutive halls on the ground floor are devoted to temporary exhibitions. Expositions of all kinds and composition are presented here, as long as they fit in with the policy and collection of the Groninger Museum. Recent exhibitions have included Jozef Israëls (1999), Anton Corbijn (2000), ‘Hell and Heaven, the Middle Ages in the North’ by Peter Greenaway (2001), and Ilja Repin (2002).
The spaces on the first floor (Mendini 1) display ever-changing selections from the Museum’s own collection, including objects at the interface of art, architecture and design (Pattern and Decoration, Memphis, Mendini) and, since the end of the 1990s, a sizeable collection of fashion and of staged and documentary photographs. Art from the Museums abundant historical collection is also regularly shown.
CLASSICAL LAYOUT
The largest rectangular area is situated in the middle of the square ground plan, with smaller areas
surrounding it. These, too, are rectangular and differ in size. The various dimensions are necessary because all kinds of art, large and small, must be able to be shown here. The areas are austere and simple and, as a result, have a rather classical appearance. The broad portals, whose metal framing becomes wider towards the bottom, accentuate this. Mendini did not apply the enfilade system, frequently deployed in many museums in the 19th century, in which the portals of consecutive areas lie in line. The further décor of the areas on the ground floor, used for the temporary exhibitions, is dependent on the type of exhibition organised. The colours of the walls, and even of the floors and ceilings, are repeatedly altered.
On the first floor, used for the presentation of Modern Visual Art, each space has its own particular colour, following a colour scheme developed by the Dutch artist Peter Struycken.
Just as in the west pavilions, where ‘traditional’ art objects are displayed in a renewed environment, the classical areas here on the first floor contrast with the modern, often innovative art presented. In Mendini 0, a refuge has been installed where the visitor can relax and look out of the window. As with the other pavilions, there is no daylight here. Mendini 1 accommodates a print gallery, constructed with financial support from the Beringer-Hazewinkel Foundation.
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU PAVILION
The vide with the broad staircase connects the two floors of the Mendini pavilion. The staircase also takes the visitor to the top pavilion, the much-discussed section of the Museum. It was designed by the architects Wolfgang Prix (Vienna, 1942) and the Pole Helmut Swiczinsky (1944), jointly known as Coop Himmelb(l)au. ‘It was as if a bomb had exploded’, said one city resident when the design was published. The capricious pavilion contrasts markedly with the rest of the building, designed by Mendini, with its austere and simple forms.
The first impression of the Coop Himmelb(l)au pavilion is one of randomness and chaos. The structure is comprised of large, double-walled steel plates that alternate with hardened glass at the points where they do not quite meet. The plates, to which the first sketch and a photograph of the design have been applied using tar, are topsy-turvy and even hang over the pavilion underneath at some points.
DECONSTRUCTIVISM
The design is a typical example of the most recent architectural movement, Deconstructivism, in which all architectural traditions are thrown overboard. Traditional constructive elements, such as the wall, floor, window or ceiling, have been torn out of their normal coherence. Thus, a wall can also be a ceiling and a window a floor. According to Prix, the spaces that are created in this way are a result of force fields and movement. ‘Many of the techniques that we use originate from art, such as the adherence to the first sketch and automatic drawing,’ he says. ‘We wish to make use of the subconscious and develop new forms from there. We want to try to bring emotion back into architecture.’
He does not take established values and norms as his starting point but prefers to seize the spirit of the times: fragmentation, chaos, contrast, movement. Another example of deconstructivist architecture is the glass pavilion by Bernard Tschumi at the Hereplein, near the Museum, designed in 19.. for the What a Wonderful World exhibition – music videos in architecture.
Three exhibition areas have been created within the pavilion, separated by indentations and recesses. The walls are made of steel and glass so that daylight can enter at unexpected places. This also contrasts with Mendini’s closed realm. Coop Himmelb(l)au aims to generate ’open architecture', an interaction between inside and out, so that the visitor is regularly surprised by sudden glimpses of the outside world. Paths at different levels ensure that the visitor can view the artworks from all sides: at ground level or from the gantry that cuts through the exhibition area a few metres above the floor. The original idea was to display paintings from the 16th-19th centuries here, to emphasise the contrast. Later, the pavilion came to be used primarily for three-dimensional work, such as exhibitions of the work of the British artist Mark Grinnigen and the American Rona Pondick. The areas here are extremely suitable for large receptions. Even dance parties are held here
occasionally at festive openings. The whole Coop Himmelb(l)au pavilion is a three-dimensional artwork, resting on the pedestal formed by the Mendini volume clad in colourful laminate.
THE MUSEUM AS A WORK OF ART
The new Groninger Museum is not merely a shell to accommodate art, it is a work of art in itself – a principle that is increasingly being applied in modern (museum) architecture elsewhere. In fact, the Museum itself is the most valuable item in the Groninger Museum collection of art. It is a work of art at the heart of the city, traversed by public areas where passers-by are directly confronted by all kinds of artwork. Could it be more inviting?
Source: www.groningermuseum.nl
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Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1
Paul Signac : vue agrandie du "clocher de Saint-Tropez" (1896) ; Collection Bemberg exposée à l'Hermitage sur la hauteur de Lausanne
Poseuse de profil, poseuse de face, poseuse de dos"
Trois oeuvres de Georges Surat (1859-1891)
1887
Huile sur toile
Paris musée d'Orsay
Ces oeuvres célèbres faisaient partie de la collection de Félix Fénéon, elles ont été vendues le 30 mai 1947 et préemptées par les musées nationaux.
Félix Fénéon est mort le 29 février 1944, dans la clinique du docteur Le Savoureux à Chatenay-Malabry, installée dans l'ancienne maison de Chateaubriand, dans la Vallées aux Loups.
www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/40579645572/in/album-721576...
Félix Fénéon est le créateur du terme néo-impressionnisme qui qualifie le mouvement pictural fondé par Georges Seurat et Paul Signac.
Notice de l'oeuvre "Poseuse de profil" sur le site du Musée d'Orsay, Paris
www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/catalogue-des-oeuvres/r...
Oeuvres présentées côte à côte dans l'exposition "Félix Fénéon. Les temps nouveaux, de Seurat à Matisse" au musée de l'Orangerie à Paris
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Aucune exposition n’a encore rendu hommage à Félix Fénéon (1861-1944), acteur majeur de la scène artistique de la fin du XIXe siècle et du tournant du XXe siècle. Le musée de l’Orangerie en association avec le musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac et The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) propose de célébrer sa personnalité hors du commun, encore injustement méconnue. Extrait du site de l'Exposition "Félix Fénéon. Les temps nouveaux, de Seurat à Matisse" au musée de l'Orangerie à Paris
www.musee-orangerie.fr/fr/evenement/felix-feneon-les-temp...
Épisode de la vie de Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159-1189)
Oeuvre d'Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858)
Non daté
gravure sur bois en couleur
nishiki-e, ôban tate-e, triptyque
Archives Signac
Oeuvre présentée dans l'exposition "Signac collectionneur", musée d'Orsay, Paris
www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/expositions/signac-collectionneur-423
Autodidacte, Signac apprend son métier en regardant les œuvres des impressionnistes, en particulier celles de Claude Monet, d'Edgar Degas, de Gustave Caillebotte ou d'Armand Guillaumin qui pour la plupart figurent dans sa collection. Sa première acquisition est un paysage de Paul Cézanne.
Issu d'une famille aisée sans être riche, Signac peut envisager de réunir des œuvres importantes, mais se doit d'être réfléchi dans ses choix. D'emblée, le rôle qu'il joue dans la fondation puis l'organisation du Salon des artistes indépendants, dont il devient président en 1908, le place au carrefour des différentes tendances de l'avant-garde. .. Extrait du site de l'exposition.
Essen is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr district, the largest urban area in Germany. Because of its central location, Essen is often regarded as the Ruhr's "secret capital".
The city dates back to the Essen women's monastery founded before 850. In addition to this monastery, Werden Monastery, founded by Liudger around 800, was a center of late antique and early Christian textual tradition. Elevated to the status of a free imperial city by Emperor Charles IV in the 14th century, Essen had been an arms manufacturer since the late Middle Ages and, with industrialization, rose to become one of the most important centers of the mining industry. After a massive decline in heavy industry from the mid-1960s onwards, Essen developed a strong service sector as part of structural change.
With the Museum Folkwang, Essen boasts a renowned collection of modern art. It was opened in Hagen in 1902 by Karl Ernst Osthaus under the name Folkwang Museum and long played a pioneering role in the field of modern art. After Osthaus's death in 1921, his collection was sold to Essen. The collection has been housed there ever since. During the Nazi era, the museum lost 1,400 works, including significant parts of its collection, in the "Degenerate Art" campaign. After the war, these losses were largely replaced through repurchases or new acquisitions.
Paul Signac (1863 – 1835)
Die Seine bei Sint-Cloud / The Seine near Saint-Cloud / 1900
L' Anarchiste.
Oeuvre de Félix Vallotton (1865-1925)
Félix Vallotton était un peintre, dessinateur et graveur, franco-suisse assez peu connu en France (dernière exposition au Grand Palais à Paris en 2013-2014) qui a remporté un grand succès comme dessinateur de presse, souvent à tendance anarchiste. "Il n'est pas mauvais... que certains dessous de la bête humaine soient révélés et qu'on sache ce dont elle est capable." (Félix Vallotton, Corbehaut, 1920).
1892
Xylographie
Archives Signac
Oeuvre présentée dans l'exposition "Signac collectionneur", musée d'Orsay, Paris
www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/expositions/signac-collectionneur-423
Autodidacte, Signac apprend son métier en regardant les œuvres des impressionnistes, en particulier celles de Claude Monet, d'Edgar Degas, de Gustave Caillebotte ou d'Armand Guillaumin qui pour la plupart figurent dans sa collection. Sa première acquisition est un paysage de Paul Cézanne.
Issu d'une famille aisée sans être riche, Signac peut envisager de réunir des œuvres importantes, mais se doit d'être réfléchi dans ses choix. D'emblée, le rôle qu'il joue dans la fondation puis l'organisation du Salon des artistes indépendants, dont il devient président en 1908, le place au carrefour des différentes tendances de l'avant-garde. .. Extrait du site de l'exposition.
Le Seuil, rue Cortot
Oeuvre de Maximilien Luce ((1858-1941)
Vers 1880
Huile sur bois
Collection particulière
Oeuvre présentée dans l'exposition "Signac collectionneur", musée d'Orsay, Paris
www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/expositions/signac-collectionneur-423
Autodidacte, Signac apprend son métier en regardant les œuvres des impressionnistes, en particulier celles de Claude Monet, d'Edgar Degas, de Gustave Caillebotte ou d'Armand Guillaumin qui pour la plupart figurent dans sa collection. Sa première acquisition est un paysage de Paul Cézanne.
Issu d'une famille aisée sans être riche, Signac peut envisager de réunir des œuvres importantes, mais se doit d'être réfléchi dans ses choix. D'emblée, le rôle qu'il joue dans la fondation puis l'organisation du Salon des artistes indépendants, dont il devient président en 1908, le place au carrefour des différentes tendances de l'avant-garde. .. Extrait du site de l'exposition.
Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield with Crows
Vincent van Gogh - Weizenfeld mit Krähen
The Van Gogh Museum (Dutch pronunciation: [vɑŋˈɣɔx mʏˌzeːjʏm]) is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on 2 June 1973, and its buildings were designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa.
The museum contains the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world. In 2017, the museum had 2.3 million visitors and was the most-visited museum in the Netherlands, and the 23rd-most-visited art museum in the world. In 2019, the Van Gogh Museum launched the Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience, a technology-driven "immersive exhibition" on Van Gogh's life and works, which has toured globally.
History
Unsold works
Upon Vincent van Gogh's death in 1890, his work not sold fell into the possession of his brother Theo. Theo died six months after Vincent, leaving the work in the possession of his widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. Selling many of Vincent's paintings with the ambition of spreading knowledge of his artwork, Johanna maintained a private collection of his works. The collection was inherited by her son Vincent Willem van Gogh in 1925, eventually loaned to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where it was displayed for many years, and was transferred to the state-initiated Vincent van Gogh Foundation in 1962. In the years following her husband’s death, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger organized exhibitions of Vincent van Gogh's work in the Netherlands and abroad, significantly contributing to his posthumous recognition.
Dedicated museum
Design for a Van Gogh Museum was commissioned by the Dutch government in 1963 to Dutch architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld. Rietveld died a year later, and the building was not completed until 1973, when the museum opened its doors. In 1998 and 1999, the building was renovated by the Dutch architect Martien van Goor, and an exhibition wing by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa was added. In late 2012, the museum was closed for renovations for six months. During this period, 75 works from the collection were shown in the H'ART Museum.
On 9 September 2013, the museum unveiled a long-lost Van Gogh painting that spent years in a Norwegian attic believed to be by another painter. It is the first full-size canvas by him discovered since 1928. Sunset at Montmajour depicts trees, bushes and sky, painted with Van Gogh's familiar thick brush strokes. It can be dated to the exact day it was painted because he described it in a letter to his brother, Theo, and said he painted it the previous day 4 July 1888.
Art thefts
In 1991, twenty paintings were stolen from the museum, among them Van Gogh's early painting The Potato Eaters. Although the thieves escaped from the building, 35 minutes later all stolen paintings were recovered from an abandoned car. Three paintings – Wheatfield with Crows, Still Life with Bible, and Still Life with Fruit – were severely torn during the theft. Four men, including two museum guards, were convicted for the theft and given six or seven-year sentences. It is considered to be the largest art theft in the Netherlands since the Second World War.
In 2002, two paintings were stolen from the museum, Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen and View of the Sea at Scheveningen. Two Dutchmen were convicted for the theft to four-and-a-half-year sentences, but the paintings were not immediately recovered. The museum offered a reward of €100,000 for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. The FBI Art Crime Team listed the robbery on their Top Ten Art Crimes list, and estimates the combined value of the paintings at US$30 million. In September 2016, both paintings were discovered by the Guardia di Finanza in Castellammare di Stabia, Italy in a villa belonging to the Camorra drug trafficker Raffaele Imperiale. The two artworks were found in a "relatively good state", according to the Van Gogh Museum.
Buildings
The museum is situated at the Museumplein in Amsterdam-Zuid, on the Paulus Potterstraat 7, between the Stedelijk Museum and the Rijksmuseum, and consists of two buildings, the Rietveld building, designed by Gerrit Rietveld, and the Kurokawa wing, designed by Kisho Kurokawa. Museum offices are housed on Stadhouderskade 55 in Amsterdam-Zuid. Depending on the season, sunflowers are displayed outside the entrance to the museum.
Rietveld building
The Rietveld building is the main structure and houses the permanent collection. It has a rectangular floor plan and is four stories high. On the ground floor are a shop, a café, and an introductory exhibition. The first floor shows the works of Van Gogh grouped chronologically. The second floor gives information about the restoration of paintings and has a space for minor temporary exhibitions. The third floor shows paintings of Van Gogh's contemporaries in relationship to the work of Van Gogh himself.
Kurokawa wing
The Kurokawa wing is used for major temporary exhibitions. It has an oval floor plan and is three stories high. The entrance to the Kurokawa wing is via a tunnel from the Rietveld building.
Collection
Works by Vincent van Gogh
The museum houses the largest Van Gogh collection in the world, with 200 paintings, 400 drawings, and 700 letters by the artist.
The main exhibition chronicles the various phases of Van Gogh's artistic life.
His selected works from Nuenen (1880–1885):
Avenue of Poplars in Autumn (1884)
The Potato Eaters (1885)
His selected works from Antwerp (1886):
Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette (1886)
His selected works from Paris (1886–1888):
Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin (1887)
Wheat Field with a Lark (1887)
View of Paris from Vincent's Room in the Rue Lepic (1887)
His selected works from Arles (1888–1889):
The Zouave (1888)
Bedroom in Arles (1888)
The Yellow House (1888)
Sunflowers (1889)
His selected works from Saint-Rémy (1889–1890):
Almond Blossoms (1890)
And his selected works from Auvers-sur-Oise (1890):
Wheatfield with Crows (1890)
The permanent collection also includes nine of the artist's self-portraits and some of his earliest paintings dating back to 1882.
A newly discovered work has temporarily gone on display. Van Gogh created three unknown sketches of peasants, which were then used as a single bookmark. Stylistically, they can be dated to autumn 1881.
Works by contemporaries
The museum also features notable artworks by Van Gogh's contemporaries in the Impressionist and post-Impressionist movements and holds extensive exhibitions on various subjects from 19th Century art history.
The museum has sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Jules Dalou, and paintings by John Russell, Émile Bernard, Maurice Denis, Kees van Dongen, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience
The Van Gogh Museum manages an official Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience, described as a travelling "3D immersive exhibition" using technology and computer audio-visual techniques to cover the story of Van Gogh's life through images of his works. The first "experience" was in 2016 in Beijing, and it has since been toured globally to Europe, Asia and North America.
The Meet Van Gogh Experience does not present original artworks, as they are too fragile to travel. The "experience" was designed in collaboration with the London-based museum design consultancy, Event Communications (who designed Titanic Belfast), and it won a 2017 THEA award in the category of Immersive Museum Exhibit: Touring.
Visitors
The Van Gogh Museum, which is a national museum (Dutch: rijksmuseum), is a foundation (Dutch: stichting).
Axel Rüger, who had been the museum director since 2006, left the museum in 2019 to become secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The Van Gogh Museum announced that Managing Director Adriaan Dönszelmann would act as general director until a new director is appointed.
Since 2000, the museum had between 1.2 and 1.9 million visitors per year. From 2010 to 2012, it was the most visited museum in the Netherlands. In 2015, the museum had 1.9 million visitors, it was the 2nd most visited museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, and the 31st most visited art museum in the world.
The Van Gogh Museum is a member of the national Museumvereniging (Museum Association).
(Wikipedia)
Wheatfield with Crows (Dutch: Korenveld met kraaien) is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.
It is commonly stated that this was Van Gogh's final painting. This association was popularized by Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic Lust for Life, which depicts Van Gogh painting it immediately before shooting himself. His final painting in actuality was Tree Roots. The evidence of his letters suggests that Wheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890 and Daubigny's Garden. Moreover, Jan Hulsker has written that a painting of harvested wheat, Field with Stacks of Wheat (F771), must be a later painting.
Provenance
The Van Gogh Museum's Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890, in the last weeks of Van Gogh's life. Many have claimed it as his last painting, while it is likely that Tree Roots was his final painting.
Wheat Field with Crows, made on a double-square canvas, depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field. A sense of isolation is heightened by a central path leading nowhere and by the uncertain direction of flight of the crows. The windswept wheat field fills two-thirds of the canvas. Jules Michelet, one of van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of crows: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything. The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird." Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end. The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection. The road, in contrasting colors of red and green, is said by Erickson to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.
About 10 July 1890 Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo and his wife Jo Bonger, saying that he had painted another three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July. Two of these are described as immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to be Wheatfield under Clouded Sky and Wheatfield with Crows, and the third is Daubigny's Garden. He wrote that he had made a point of expressing sadness, later adding "extreme loneliness" (de la solitude extrême), but also says he believes the canvases show what he considers healthy and fortifying about the countryside (and adds that he intended to take them to Paris as soon as possible).
Walther and Metzger, in Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, state that "There is nothing in Van Gogh's words to support a simplistic interpretation along the lines of artistic angst and despair – nor is there any evidence for the widely-held belief that it was this painting that Van Gogh had on his easel at the time he killed himself." They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage, and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life".
These painting are all examples of Van Gogh's elongated double-square canvases, used exclusively by him in the last few weeks of his life, in June and July 1890.
The painting is held in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as is Wheatfield under Clouded Sky.
Wheatfield with Crows was stolen and quickly recovered in 1991 along with 19 other Van Gogh paintings; the painting was "severely damaged" during the heist.
The Indonesian composer Ananda Sukarlan composed a piece with the same title for flute and piano inspired by this and three other paintings, under a cycle titled "The Springs of Vincent".
(Wikipedia)
Das Van Gogh Museum ist ein Kunstmuseum am Museumplein im Amsterdamer Stadtteil Oud-Zuid, Stadtbezirk Amsterdam-Zuid, das am 2. Juni 1973 eröffnet wurde. Es beherbergt die größte Sammlung mit Werken des niederländischen Malers Vincent van Gogh. Seit dem 1. Mai 2013 ist das Museum nach Umbau und einem vorübergehenden Umzug in ein anderes Gebäude wieder zugänglich. 2016 hatte das Haus 2.076.526 Besucher und gehört damit zu den meistbesuchten Kunstmuseen der Welt.
Geschichte
Als van Gogh 1890 mit 37 Jahren starb, hinterließ er mit etwa 900 Gemälden und 1.100 Zeichnungen ein umfangreiches Werk. Hiervon hatte er nur wenig verkauft und einige Arbeiten an Freunde verschenkt. Seinen Nachlass erbte sein jüngerer Bruder, der Kunsthändler Theo van Gogh. Dieser hatte neben den Werken von Vincent auch Arbeiten von Künstlern wie Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Léon Lhermitte und Jean-François Millet gesammelt. Nachdem Theo bereits ein Jahr nach seinem Bruder verstarb, verwaltete seine Witwe Johanna van Gogh-Bonger das Erbe. Sie kehrte in die Niederlande zurück und organisierte erste Ausstellungen mit Werken Vincent van Goghs und trug wesentlich dazu bei, den Künstler einer größeren Öffentlichkeit bekannt zu machen. 1905 fand die erste große Ausstellung im Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam statt, während sich das Rijksmuseum geweigert hatte, Leihgaben mit van Goghs Werken anzunehmen. Da van Gogh häufig mehrere Versionen des gleichen Themas gemalt hatte, konnte Johanna van Gogh einzelne Bilder der Sammlung verkaufen, ohne den Gesamteindruck wesentlich zu schmälern. Sie war es auch, die frühzeitig die Veröffentlichung der Briefe Vincent van Goghs in mehreren Sprachen vorantrieb. Nach ihrem Tod 1925 erbte ihr Sohn, der Ingenieur Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978) die Sammlung. Er stellte verschiedenen Museen Werke als Leihgabe zur Verfügung, bevor er 1960 die Vincent van Gogh Stiftung gründete und ihr die Sammlung übergab. Zunächst gelangten die Bilder als Dauerausstellung ins Amsterdamer Stedelijk Museum, bevor 1973 das Van Gogh Museum eröffnet werden konnte.
1991 war das Van Gogh Museum Schauplatz eines aufsehenerregenden Kunstraubs, bei dem 20 Gemälde im Wert von mehreren Hundert Millionen Euro entwendet wurden. Dank einer Reifenpanne des Fluchtfahrzeugs konnten die Gemälde aber kurz nach der Entdeckung des Raubs von der Polizei sichergestellt werden. 2002 wurden bei einem Einbruch die Van-Gogh-Gemälde Stürmische See bei Scheveningen und Die Reformierte Kirche in Nuenen gestohlen, sie wurden 2016 wieder aufgefunden. Die im Haus eines neapolitanischen Drogenbarons sichergestellten Malereien konnten erst mit Zustimmung der Italienischen Justiz im Januar 2017 nach Amsterdam zurückkehren.
Gebäude
Das Museum besteht aus zwei Gebäuden. Der ursprüngliche Bau geht auf einen Entwurf von Gerrit Rietveld zurück. Nach seinem Tod im Jahr 1964 wurde der Bau von seinen Partnern J. van Dillen und J. van Tricht fortgeführt und nach Fertigstellung am 2. Juni 1973 eingeweiht. In diesem Gebäude ist heute die ständige Sammlung untergebracht. 1999 wurde ein Ergänzungsbau für Sonderausstellungen eingeweiht, der vom japanischen Architekten Kishō Kurokawa in Form einer Ellipse entworfen wurde. 2015 wurde der Ausstellungsbau durch einen neuen, großflächig verglasten Eingangsbereich ergänzt, dessen Entwurf ebenfalls aus dem Büro des 2007 verstorbenen Kurokawa stammt. Beide Gebäude sind durch einen unterirdischen Übergang miteinander verbunden.
Sammlung
Das Museum besitzt über 200 Gemälde Vincent van Goghs aus allen Schaffensperioden und 400 seiner Zeichnungen. Zu den ausgestellten Hauptwerken gehören Die Kartoffelesser, Das Schlafzimmer in Arles und eine Version der Sonnenblumen. Außerdem bewahrt das Museum den Großteil der Briefe Vincent van Goghs auf. Auch findet sich in der Sammlung die Suizidwaffe van Goghs, eine verrostete Lefaucheux à broche. Die von Theo van Gogh begonnene Sammlung mit Werken anderer Künstler des 19. Jahrhunderts wurde mit Stiftungsgeldern kontinuierlich ausgebaut, sodass das Museum heute auch Werke von Alma-Tadema, Bernard, Boulanger, Breton, Caillebotte, Courbet, Couture, Daubigny, Denis, Gauguin, Israëls, Jongkind, Manet, Mauve, Millet, Monet, Munch, Pissarro, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon, Seurat, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Dongen und von Stuck besitzt.
(Wikipedia)
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1
Oil on canvas
A trained musician, PK shared with many artiss the idea that music was the key to producing a new form of abstraction. He was interested in the temporal character of music and its possible translation into art. His works in the 1930s also incorporate the influence of the French Post-Impressionst painters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, as well as complementary color theory and pointillist technique. Sunset demonstrates K's principles of rhythm: linear structures, forms, and tonal values are orchestrated into a measured, vibrating image. The resulting composition--balancing stillness adn movement, shallowness and depth--relates to K's larger project of looking to music to produce an art that "does not reproduce the visible but makes visible."
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1
Well, after my last puzzle I was wondering if I needed to change my glasses prescription, but I guess I still "have it," as this chaotically detailed puzzle flew by much faster than I was expecting.
These Blue Kazoo puzzles are remarkable. When I heard about the company a year ago, I admired their puzzles of the planets and outer space scenes, but was less excited about all of the travel poster and old advertisement images they were favoring at the time. So it's a revelation to see them branching out into fine art, and the three Signac puzzles they have dropped are impeccable. I hope that you can see from the photo just how high-resolution and perfect the print is. As I said earlier, the 2mm black board backing is the best card stock I've ever seen. With these kind of production values, it's about time that they ventured out into fine art reproductions instead of wasting their talent on travel posters and solid-color puzzles.
About every week they release a new puzzle, and for the most part sell direct to their customers rather than going through retailers. They have some Rousseau puzzles, as well as by Russian artist Alexej von Jawlensky, and more recently, a trio of circular puzzles featuring the work of Paul Klee.
While I try to refrain from hyping puzzle brands too much, I really believe that Blue Kazoo is the brand to pay attention to, far more than Art & Fable or Cloudberries or some of the other recent "indie" brands. What they are doing with their packaging, high-end materials and great web site, to me is near the level of Springbok founders Robert and Katie Lewin, who changed the puzzle game 60 years ago with their innovations.
For some reason - probably the flawless manufacture - I seem to blast through all of their puzzles very quickly, regardless of the image. This pointillist scene, I thought, would be a bit more of a challenge than my previous choices, but I got it completed in just over 3.5 hours, without ever looking at the box picture.
Completed in 3 hr., 33 mins. with no box reference. 1000 total pieces: 12.8 secs./piece; 281.7 pcs./hr. Difficulty rating: 1.3/10.
Paravent "Joséphine Baker"
Oeuvre d'Émile Compard (1900-1977)
1926
Huile sur toile
Collection particulière
Courtesy Galerie 1900-2000, Paris
Ancienne collection Fénéon
Oeuvre présentée dans l'exposition "Félix Fénéon (1861-1944). Les arts lointains", au musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris
m.quaibranly.fr/fr/expositions-evenements/au-musee/exposi...
Cette exposition, très érudite, est le premier volet d'un hommage à Félix Fénéon (1861-1944), critique d'art visionnaire, éditeur, marchand d'art, ami de Seurat et de Signac, qui a été l'un des premiers collectionneurs d'art extra-occidental, notamment "d'art nègre" comme on l'appelait à l'époque ou plus généralement d'arts lointains.
Félix Fénéon de Paul Signac (photo dalbera prise lors de l'expo "Être moderne. Le MoMA à Paris à la Fondation Vuitton)
www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/24697856998/in/album-721576...
Elle sera suivie d'une exposition complémentaire au musée de l'Orangerie dès le 16/10/2019 intitulée "Félix Fénéon. Les temps nouveaux, de Seurat à Matisse", puis d'une exposition regroupant les deux volets au MoMA à New-York.
Commissaires : Isabelle Cahn (musée d'Orsay) et Philippe Peltier (ex-Musée du quai Branly)
Statue féminine
Baga, République de Guinée
19è siècle
Bois,
Collection Dr. Philippe-Guy E. Woog
Collection Fénéon n°239
Vente Fénéon 1947 n°61
Acquis par M. Rousset probablement un marchand parisien
vendu par Parke-Bernet, New-York le 11 mars 1948
Oeuvre présentée, à coté de "la Poseuse de Seurat" pour sa parenté morphologique, dans l'exposition "Félix Fénéon (1861-1944). Les arts lointains", au musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris
m.quaibranly.fr/fr/expositions-evenements/au-musee/exposi...
Cette exposition, très érudite, est le premier volet d'un hommage à Félix Fénéon (1861-1944), critique d'art visionnaire, éditeur, marchand d'art, ami de Seurat et de Signac, qui a été l'un des premiers collectionneurs d'art extra-occidental, notamment "d'art nègre" comme on l'appelait à l'époque ou plus généralement d'arts lointains.
Félix Fénéon de Paul Signac (photo dalbera prise lors de l'expo "Être moderne. Le MoMA à Paris à la Fondation Vuitton)
www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/24697856998/in/album-721576...
Elle sera suivie d'une exposition complémentaire au musée de l'Orangerie dès le 16/10/2019 intitulée "Félix Fénéon. Les temps nouveaux, de Seurat à Matisse", puis d'une exposition regroupant les deux volets au MoMA à New-York.
Commissaires : Isabelle Cahn (musée d'Orsay) et Philippe Peltier (ex-Musée du quai Branly)
1890. Oli sobre tela. 73,5 x 92,5 cm. Museu d'Art Modern de Nova York, Nova York. 85.1991. Obra no exposada.
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1
Eglise romane Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-Signac ; commune de Signac, département de la Haute-Garonne, région Midi-Pyrénées, France
Ce modeste édifice roman, à vaisseau unique terminé en abside en cul-de-four, est typique de la montagne commingeoise. Le portail de l’église fin du XIIème siècle ou début du XIIIème siècle permet de prendre conscience de l’influence régionale qu’a eu l’atelier de sculpteur de l’église de Saint-Béat. On est ici en présence d’une oeuvre d’art local, malhabile mais touchante : le sculpteur, avec ses moyens, a tenté de reproduire le tympan sculpté de Saint-Béat, réalisé au début du XIIème siècle. On retrouve, notamment, le cloisonnement des espaces : le Christ est isolé du symbole des quatre évangélistes par des baguettes sommaires remplaçant les colonnes boursouflées qui font la particularité du tympan de Saint-Béat.
(extrait de : www.festival-du-comminges.com/eglise-saint-jean-baptiste-...)
Coordonnées GPS : N42°54.325’ ; E0°37.641’
Exposition au Palais Lumière à Evian :
« Paris Bruxelles 1880-1914 ».
« Effervescence des visions artisitiques ».
Au temps d'harmonie, 1895-96.
Paul Signac (1863-1935).
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1
Huile sur toile, 73 x 92 cm, 1927.
Néo-impressioniste du mouvement pointilliste, P Signac est un peintre de la couleur qui aimait la mer, les bateaux (il possédait un voilier "Olympia"), les ports, les reflets dans l'eau et les couleurs du ciel. S'il est le peintre de de la côte d'Azur et particulièrement de Saint Tropez, il aimait toute la côte française et notamment La Rochelle dans les années 1920. Il rencontre à Paris C Monet et G Seurat en 1884, puis V van Gogh en 1886 qui admirait au départ sa technique de peinture et avec qui il peint en 1887. C'est l'inspirateur des peintres H Matisse et A Derain (cf. peintres de la marine.com).
Huile sur toile, 60 x 92 cm, 1886, Art Institute, Chicago.
Cette vue sur le port des Andelys, village de la Seine près de Giverny, fait partie d’une série de 10 oeuvres réalisées par Paul Signac en été et au début de l’automne 1886. C’était la première série qu’il peignait en utilisant les points et les traits de couleurs fortes qui étaient la marque du groupe néo-impressionniste centré autour de son ami Georges Seurat (cf. Art Institute).
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Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
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Pointilism is a painting technique that uses small distinct dots of color.
Georges Seurat was influenced by the discovery in Physics that a beam of light is made of a number of distinct quanta each of whose energy is given by: E = h ν
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" was coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists and is now used without its earlier mocking connotation.
IMG_0458 - Version 2
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Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1
GRONINGER MUSEUM
Groningen
the Netherlands
The realisation of the present-day Groninger Museum had a lengthy and intensive history before a start was actually made on the spectacular design that still evokes much discussion on modern museum architecture. After years of formulating plans and drawing up sketches, after endless discussions and consultations, the ultimate design by the Italian Alessandro Mendini and the three guest architects Philippe Starck, Michele de Lucchi, and Coop Himmelb[l]au was completed in 1994.
HISTORY IMPULSE
The direct opportunity for this large-scale building project arrived on 28 September 1987 when the N.V. Nederlandse Gas Unie donated 25 million guilders (approx. 11.5 million Euro) for the construction of a new Groninger Museum. This was a godsend to the Museum. The old premises on the Praediniussingel, which had accommodated the Groningen Museum for exactly 100 years, had become far too small. The donation, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Gas Company (in 1988), was greeted with delight. This was the beginning of a project that would last 7 years and would finally be rounded off with the opening of the new Groningen Museum by Queen Beatrix on 29 October 1994.
LOCATION
Having examined all kinds of possible locations, a preparatory committee finally decided in favour of the ‘Zwaaikom’, a broader part of the Verbindings Canal on the southern edge of the inner city. It is a historical location, adjoining the stately 19th-century avenues with the mansions that were built on the site of the old city fortifications. The Verbindings Canal, linking other waterways as the name suggests, occupies the place where the city moat once lay. The main railway station and a ribbon of office blocks dating from the last few decades line the other side of the water. It is a unique location, connecting the station area to the inner city.
Mendini
The decision to appoint Alessandro Mendini, an Italian designer/architect whose work also appears in the Groningen Museum collection, was taken almost immediately. The spirit of the 1980s, a period that is strongly represented in the collection of Modern Art, radiates from his work. With regard to the new building, his vision and working method found a perfect match in the ideas of Frans Haks, the erstwhile Director of the Museum. There was one element in particular that was certain: it had to be an extraordinary building, both inviting and accessible – the Museum’s visiting card.
Mendini, born in 1931, is a versatile man. Besides being an architect, he is also a designer, artist, theorist, and poet. In 1988, the Groninger Museum presented a large-scale retrospective of his activities in which his multifaceted artistry was expressed. Mendini also publishes a great deal, writing columns in international magazines, thus reinforcing his reputation as a theorist of new design.
STARTING POINTS
In 1987, the point of departure for the new Museum was the nature and the character of the various collections that constitute the Groninger Museum: Archaeology and History of Groningen; Applied Art, with the collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain as an important subcollection; Traditional Painting (from approx. 1500 to 1950); and Modern Art (from 1950 until the present). These four completely different collections form the identity of the Museum and, as such, should all be visible in the building, each in its own domain. At the same time, the new building had to be a archetype of developments in art and architecture in the 1980s. As a result, initiating a co-operative effort by various architects and/or designers seemed to be a logical step, so that diverse perspectives could be combined and the separate collections could be appropriately expressed.
DEMANDS AND DESIRES
Mendini was bound by a number of demands from the Municipality. A direct link between the station and the inner city (a bridge for pedestrians and cyclists) had to be included in the design, inland shipping had to be able to pass through the canal, and one had to be able to see the one shore from the other (the so-called ‘transparency’ of the design). Taking these requirements into account, there followed a lengthy planning process in which all kinds of ideas and designs were investigated. The definitive design was approved in November 1990. However, due to an appeal to the Council of State lodged by opponents of the Groninger Museum, it took until April 1992 before construction could actually begin.
MENDINI’S PHILOSOPHY
DESIGN
To what principles does Mendini adhere in this kind of design? He believes that the use of decoration is deeply rooted in humankind and, accordingly, decoration must be the starting point of design. Functionalists dismiss decoration because it draws attention away from the true issue, the function of the building. Their work is sober, with full attention being given to the efficiency of the design. This leads to impersonal mass production, according to opponents. In Mendini’s opinion, people no longer want mass products. People are individuals and need something personal rather than the anonymity of the functional environment. ‘Everyone is different,’ says Mendini, ‘so why shouldn’t an object also be different?’
NO ESTABLISHED NORM
Mendini’s work has a number of striking features. Mendini rejects traditional hierarchies (such as painting being on a higher level than applied art, for example) and a historical division into time and place. In his view, art-historical styles, exotic cultures and kitsch are all equally important.
INTERACTION OF DISCIPLINES
This standpoint gives rise to a second characteristic feature of his work, the interweaving of disciplines. Mendini holds the opinion that there are no boundaries between the various activities in which he is engaged. Theatre, painting, sculpture, architecture, and science can all be used freely and interchangeably. He thinks that any distinction between these disciplines is nonsense. He also believes that everything has already been conceived and applied. As a result, the only way of acting is to employ things in new combinations – it is merely a matter of redesign. Existing designs are subsequently given a new decoration, often originating in a different discipline. Painting is a particularly important source of decoration.
CO-OPERATION
A third distinctive feature of Mendini’s work consists of co-operation with others. He works with contemporary artists, architects and designers in creating furniture, objects, clothes, décors, paintings, theatre performances, ceramics, and jewellery. The yearning to transgress the boundaries of the traditional disciplines tends to mean that Mendini is more engaged as a director and deviser of ideas than as an executor.
DIRECTOR
One of the joint efforts in which Mendini acted as a supervisor was the creation of the series of tea and coffee services for Alessi. In 1980-83, eleven silver tea services were created by the Italian firm Alessi in a very limited edition. Mendini commissioned ten of the most important modern architects, each of whom designed one of the sets. They included Hans Hollein (who also designed the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach) and Aldo Rossi (the architect of the new Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht). The assignment was to design a service in which the teapot, milk jug and sugar pot were small buildings on a plaza. Thus arose a series of eleven tea services that belong to
both the history of tea and coffee sets and also to modern design and architecture. In fact, the service project can be regarded as a precursor of the Groninger Museum. Since the beginning of 2002, the Groninger Museum has owned a complete series of these currently famous sets.
A later project by Alessi encompassed 100 porcelain vases. Mendini designed the basic shape and 99 artists and designers from all over the world added decoration. The Groninger Museum has work by many of these artists in its collection. In another project, 33 mirrors for the Glas Company, Mendini supplied the decoration and different designers repeatedly determined the form. The decoration here is a Signac motif, borrowed from a pointillist painting by Paul Signac (end 19th century). This motif, first applied to Proust’s chair (1979) recurs in all kinds of variations in the Interno di un Interno installation, and again in a Swatch watch (Lots of Dots, 1991), the staircase of the Groninger Museum, and on the exterior of the east pavilions. All the above-mentioned designs by Mendini and the guest designers are part of the Groninger Museum collection.
GUEST ARCHITECTS
A number of guest architects were invited to design sections, pavilions, of the new Museum: the Italian designer Michele de Lucchi, Philippe Starck from Paris, and, at a rather late date, the Coop Himmelb(l)au group which has offices in Vienna and Los Angeles. There was also co-operation with Dutch architects and designers, such as the Groningen architects’ office Team 4 (project architect), Albert Geertjes and Geert Koster.
THE BUILDING
Mendini’s basic design consists of three separate, simple and austere building units lying longitudinally in the Verbindings Canal, connected by passageways. These passageways also serve as bridges. A sky-blue lift bridge for cyclists and pedestrians traverses the complex. It not only links the two shores, it is also a section of the route between the station and the inner city. Thus, the Museum has become an entrance gate to the centre.
Each building block has several sections: pavilions that are superposed or juxtaposed. Each pavilion has its own special function and, consistent with this, its own shape, colour and material.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OUTSIDE AND IN
The exterior gives a direct indication that this is a building presenting various forms of art and design. The bridge, marked by a blue, arched gate, also conceals a surprise. When the bridge has been lifted to allow ships to pass, a work of art by Wim Delvoye can be seen on the underside. Magnified Delftware tiles, with apparently 17th-century emblems, refer to the collections of applied art and traditional painting. In contrast, the form is completely modern. The games depicted are not genuine representations but are cartoons thought up by Delvoye and the tiles are actually large stickers.
A sculpture by Mendini graces the centre of the piazza, in front of the entrance. It is an autonomous work, a sofa and also a guide: the ground plan of the Museum is expressed in a vertical form, thus producing a hominoid figure. Looking from the doorway, the red neon ceiling by François Morellet can be seen in the entrance hall. The oval lines of this artwork, specially created for this location, continue the lines of the exterior architecture.
THE CENTRAL PAVILION
The first eye-catcher is, of course, the gold-coloured central tower, which is over 30 metres tall. This tower accommodates the repositories and also the entrance to the Museum. In Mendini’s opinion, the repository, often muffled away in cellars or inconspicuous auxiliary buildings, is the heart of a museum, the treasure chamber in which the most valuable possession, the Museum collection, is kept. For this reason, it has been given a central position and a gold-coloured laminate coating. The tower dazzles in the sunshine and no longer resembles a ship but evokes notions of a church. Mutually identical blocks flank the tower. One is clad in pink concrete slabs, the other in pastel green. The repetition of the squares emphasises the symmetry: laminate, concrete slabs,
small square mosaic stones, and the office windows on the upper floors.
The green part on the south side has large windows. This section accommodates the café-restaurant with its splendid view of the water and passing ships.
THE ENTRANCE HALL
The entrance hall was radically renewed in 2002. On the left-hand side is a large counter with cash registers and a plasma information screen, showing prices and information on current exhibitions. Adjoining this is the entrance to the Museum shop. On the right-hand section of the hall are two smaller counters with screens that provide information on activities in the Museum and cultural-historical information on Groningen, furnished by the Tourist Information Office. The entrance to the café-restaurant lies between these two information points. The hall is open public space and entrance during opening hours is free. The renovation has made the hall more of a meeting place and an information area.
THE CENTRAL STAIRWAY
The spiral stairway is the actual entrance to the Museum and its treasures and is also the central point of orientation. Furthermore, it is also an autonomous work of art. The characteristics of Mendini’s work are again expressed here. The visitor must descend rather than climb the staircase as in almost all other museums (to the ‘higher’ arts). The mosaic stones, applied by Italian craftsmen, are reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics from Ravenna, while the form of the spiral stairway recalls Moorish structures.
Via the stairway, the visitor enters the passages to the exhibition pavilions. Oval exhibition areas, supporting small plazas on the outside, lie between the central section and the exhibition pavilions.
The semicircular windows in the passageways evoke the ambience of a cloister. The dominant colour of the windows, light blue, refers to the water outside and is reflected in the exterior coating where capricious water channels have been applied to the material.
WEST SECTION
West of the central section are two pavilions, one above the other. The lower one, a square slightly tapering towards the top, was originally constructed to house the Archaeology and History of the Town and Province of Groningen collection. This is clearly evident on the exterior of the building: it is clad in red brick, traditionally the most common building material in Groningen. Furthermore, it gives the impression of a fort and calls to mind the roundels of the strongholds that were constructed on this site in the middle of the 17th century. Two lions from the collection, which originated from the Farnsum estate house, guard the fort.
This layout has been consigned to the annals of Groningen history since 1998. The historical layout could no longer satisfy expectations. The recently renovated pavilion currently bears the name ‘Beringer-Hazewinkel Ploeg pavilion’, referring to its new content: a safe home for the Groningen artists’ association De Ploeg and other North European Expressionists. The pavilion was also called after the family Beringer-Hazewinkel that funded the pavilion. The new layout was also made by the Italian Michele de Lucchi (1951), who designed the original pavilion.
BERINGER-HAZEWINKEL PLOEG PAVILION
The Beringer-Hazewinkel Ploeg pavilion consists of a central part, presenting objects from Groningen cultural history, and six rooms for temporary exhibitions of De Ploeg and other expressionists, three on either side, with a connecting zone behind the central area. Through a window, the visitor can gain a glimpse of the Villa Heymans, now a part of Groningen’s architectural history, designed by Berlage and built in the same red brick as the De Ploeg pavilion. Berlage was also the first to formulate a plan to connect the central station with the inner city and, as such, anticipated the function of the present Museum. A striking feature is the vividly coloured walls of the exhibition areas, whose intensity is reinforced by the application of coloured light.
STARCK PAVILION
Above the brick section lies a circular pavilion displaying objects in the Applied Art category. The exterior is clad with aluminium plates upon which vase shapes can be seen in the embossment. Thus, here is also a direct reference to the contents. The building was designed by the French designer Philippe Starck (1949), in close conjunction with Albert Geertjes.
Starck created an illuminated circular showcase for this area, entirely girdling the diagonal interior wall. This showcase presents the internationally renowned collection of porcelain from the Far East, in which the emphasis lies on East-West relations. With the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, the Princessehof in Leeuwarden and the Gemeente Museum in The Hague, the Groninger Museum has one of the richest collections of Asian ceramics.
The round hall is divided by means of winding curtains. Exceptional arrangements are presented in the spaces that are thus created, where the visitor can concentrate on the porcelain or on other user items such as furniture and Japanese lacquer ware.
The method of presentation is attuned to the nature and special features of the objects. Large artificial fissures have been applied to the concrete floors and walls, resembling the craquelé of porcelain. The lift is bell-shaped and thus refers to applied art and also to Starck’s own designs, such as the cheese rasp/container Mister MeuMeu, dating from 1992, which is a stylised cow’s head. Starck combines form and content in a light-hearted and humorous way. On opening, one of the horns of Mister MeuMeu turns out to be a spoon. A playful element in the applied art pavilion is the aquarium filled with porcelain. It contains some of the famous collection of 'Geldermalsen porcelain', Chinese porcelain from the middle of the 18th century which lay at the bottom of the South China Sea for centuries after the wreck of the VOC ship ‘De Geldermalsen’. Many important pieces were donated to the Groninger Museum after the porcelain had been recovered by Captain Michael Hatcher in 1986. These pieces have again ‘put to sea’ in this pavilion.
The curtains, the splendidly designed showcases, and the remarkable lighting effects collectively produce elegant and alluring spaces that do full justice to the objects. In addition, the curtains have a useful soundproofing effect. A visit to this pavilion resembles a voyage of discovery with all kinds of surprising effects.
The theatrical layout by Philippe Starck is exceptional and original, and commands the attention of the visitor. It is an excellent example of the latest ideas on exhibition layout, where traditional methods of display in a neutral area alternate with exciting arrangements that fire the imagination.
EAST SECTION
MENDINI PAVILIONS
‘Classical’ museum architecture is also represented in the Museum, on the east side of the complex. The lower pavilion (Mendini 0), which is trapeziform, consists of two storeys and was designed entirely – both the interior and the exterior – by Mendini. The pointillist Signac motif on the exterior refers to the interior containing the visual arts. The seven consecutive halls on the ground floor are devoted to temporary exhibitions. Expositions of all kinds and composition are presented here, as long as they fit in with the policy and collection of the Groninger Museum. Recent exhibitions have included Jozef Israëls (1999), Anton Corbijn (2000), ‘Hell and Heaven, the Middle Ages in the North’ by Peter Greenaway (2001), and Ilja Repin (2002).
The spaces on the first floor (Mendini 1) display ever-changing selections from the Museum’s own collection, including objects at the interface of art, architecture and design (Pattern and Decoration, Memphis, Mendini) and, since the end of the 1990s, a sizeable collection of fashion and of staged and documentary photographs. Art from the Museums abundant historical collection is also regularly shown.
CLASSICAL LAYOUT
The largest rectangular area is situated in the middle of the square ground plan, with smaller areas
surrounding it. These, too, are rectangular and differ in size. The various dimensions are necessary because all kinds of art, large and small, must be able to be shown here. The areas are austere and simple and, as a result, have a rather classical appearance. The broad portals, whose metal framing becomes wider towards the bottom, accentuate this. Mendini did not apply the enfilade system, frequently deployed in many museums in the 19th century, in which the portals of consecutive areas lie in line. The further décor of the areas on the ground floor, used for the temporary exhibitions, is dependent on the type of exhibition organised. The colours of the walls, and even of the floors and ceilings, are repeatedly altered.
On the first floor, used for the presentation of Modern Visual Art, each space has its own particular colour, following a colour scheme developed by the Dutch artist Peter Struycken.
Just as in the west pavilions, where ‘traditional’ art objects are displayed in a renewed environment, the classical areas here on the first floor contrast with the modern, often innovative art presented. In Mendini 0, a refuge has been installed where the visitor can relax and look out of the window. As with the other pavilions, there is no daylight here. Mendini 1 accommodates a print gallery, constructed with financial support from the Beringer-Hazewinkel Foundation.
COOP HIMMELB(L)AU PAVILION
The vide with the broad staircase connects the two floors of the Mendini pavilion. The staircase also takes the visitor to the top pavilion, the much-discussed section of the Museum. It was designed by the architects Wolfgang Prix (Vienna, 1942) and the Pole Helmut Swiczinsky (1944), jointly known as Coop Himmelb(l)au. ‘It was as if a bomb had exploded’, said one city resident when the design was published. The capricious pavilion contrasts markedly with the rest of the building, designed by Mendini, with its austere and simple forms.
The first impression of the Coop Himmelb(l)au pavilion is one of randomness and chaos. The structure is comprised of large, double-walled steel plates that alternate with hardened glass at the points where they do not quite meet. The plates, to which the first sketch and a photograph of the design have been applied using tar, are topsy-turvy and even hang over the pavilion underneath at some points.
DECONSTRUCTIVISM
The design is a typical example of the most recent architectural movement, Deconstructivism, in which all architectural traditions are thrown overboard. Traditional constructive elements, such as the wall, floor, window or ceiling, have been torn out of their normal coherence. Thus, a wall can also be a ceiling and a window a floor. According to Prix, the spaces that are created in this way are a result of force fields and movement. ‘Many of the techniques that we use originate from art, such as the adherence to the first sketch and automatic drawing,’ he says. ‘We wish to make use of the subconscious and develop new forms from there. We want to try to bring emotion back into architecture.’
He does not take established values and norms as his starting point but prefers to seize the spirit of the times: fragmentation, chaos, contrast, movement. Another example of deconstructivist architecture is the glass pavilion by Bernard Tschumi at the Hereplein, near the Museum, designed in 19.. for the What a Wonderful World exhibition – music videos in architecture.
Three exhibition areas have been created within the pavilion, separated by indentations and recesses. The walls are made of steel and glass so that daylight can enter at unexpected places. This also contrasts with Mendini’s closed realm. Coop Himmelb(l)au aims to generate ’open architecture', an interaction between inside and out, so that the visitor is regularly surprised by sudden glimpses of the outside world. Paths at different levels ensure that the visitor can view the artworks from all sides: at ground level or from the gantry that cuts through the exhibition area a few metres above the floor. The original idea was to display paintings from the 16th-19th centuries here, to emphasise the contrast. Later, the pavilion came to be used primarily for three-dimensional work, such as exhibitions of the work of the British artist Mark Grinnigen and the American Rona Pondick. The areas here are extremely suitable for large receptions. Even dance parties are held here
occasionally at festive openings. The whole Coop Himmelb(l)au pavilion is a three-dimensional artwork, resting on the pedestal formed by the Mendini volume clad in colourful laminate.
THE MUSEUM AS A WORK OF ART
The new Groninger Museum is not merely a shell to accommodate art, it is a work of art in itself – a principle that is increasingly being applied in modern (museum) architecture elsewhere. In fact, the Museum itself is the most valuable item in the Groninger Museum collection of art. It is a work of art at the heart of the city, traversed by public areas where passers-by are directly confronted by all kinds of artwork. Could it be more inviting?
Source: www.groningermuseum.nl
Photo © Eddy Westveer
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
EW0_8316
W 855, detail treetop of the palm
Painting from 1884
It's amazing, how many different and opposite colours constitute the palm branches.
The whole painting can be seen here:
www.flickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/3820003335/
In my eyes Monet was in some respect a scientific fanatic, who tried to solve problems of optical reproduction and mechanisms of optical perception by means of painting variants (20 or more variants of the "meules" or grainstacks), and there are very early examples of doublets from exact the same point of view (e.g. W 29 & W 30 or W 31 & W 32 or W 33 & W 34, only the latter pair at present being available in middle resolution quality and posted.)
And he was also an early inventor of some kind what we call today pointillism. Monet as a genius avoided that brutal and dominating dotting of Seurat, Signac, Cross and the others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism),
but he put in (only seeming) random manner quite different or even opposite colours just in neighbourhood, being aware of the "melting together" effect in the eye of the observer: Above an example from 1884.
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com.
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter. Together with Georges Seurat, Signac developed the Pointillism style. He was a passionate sailor, bringing back watercolor sketches of ports and nature from his travels, then turning them into large studio canvases with mosaic-like squares of color. He abandoned the short brushstrokes and intuitive dabs of color of the impressionists for a more exact scientific approach to applying dots with the intention to combine and blend not on the canvas, but in the viewer's eye. We have digitally enhanced some of his landscapes and seascapes, both from sketches and paintings into high resolution quality. They are free to download and use under the CC0 license.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: https://www.rawpixel.com/board/1328402/paul-signac-artworks-i-high-resolution-cc0-paintings-sketches?sort=curated&mode=shop&page=1
ДАРИО ДЕ РЕГОЙОС - Сети
☆
Private collection.
Source: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dar%C3%ADo_de_Regoyos
This painting was shown at the exhibition "Impressionism and Spanish Art" in Moscow at the 'Museum of Russian Impressionism' in 2019.
By Juan San Nicolas
DARIO DE REGOYOS Y VALDES was born in Ribadesella (Asturias) in 1857 and died in Barcelona in 1913. He spent his childhood and teenage years in Madrid. He began his artistic training in 1877 as a pupil of Carlos de Haes in the landscape department, receiving classes in landscape drawing. His eagerness to travel and learn about emerging foreign art movements spurred him in 1879 to visit Brussels, where his musician friends Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Fernández Arbós were then staying.
On the advice of Carlos de Haes, while in Brussels he contacted the man who had been Haes’s master years earlier, the Belgian painter Joseph Quinaux (1822–1895). Regoyos received classes at his studio for two years and Quinaux became his master, as Regoyos would recognise years later. At the same time he also enrolled for a course taught by Van Sevendonck in drawing heads after the antique at the École Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for the academic year 1879–80.
Regoyos trained as a painter in Belgium, where he spent long periods until the 1890s. In 1881 he joined the L’Essor circle and the group of artists who later on, in 1883, founded the outstanding and now highly regarded circle of Les XX that spearheaded the liberation of art in Belgium. Regoyos was the only non-Belgian founding member. The group split up in 1893 as the members felt they had achieved their chief aim of gaining “acceptance for free art in Belgium”; its dissolution gave rise to the creation of La Libre Esthétique, a circle that existed for 20 years and in which Regoyos showed his work on several occasions. In 1914, after his death, a major exhibition was staged as a tribute to him, promoted by the poet Émile Verhaeren and the painters Théo van Rysselberghe and Ignacio Zuloaga with the support of the circle’s director, Octave Maus.
Regoyos’s style progressively developed through his constant contact with his artist friends, among them the painters Camille Pissarro, Whistler, Seurat, Signac, Ensor, Van Rysselberghe, etc., and the poet Émile Verhaeren, with whom he collaborated in publishing La España negra and travelled around Spain, France and Italy.
His painting spans various stages: the first is connected more closely with the Belgian period, in which he produced many portraits; the second, known as the España Negra series and focused on Spain of the black legend, is a more philosophical or pre-Symbolist stage; and the third, in which his style and palette show stronger affinities with Impressionism, is the best known.
Regoyos showed his work primarily at group exhibitions aimed at promoting freedom in art. He exhibited in France (often at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris and at the Galeries Durand-Ruel), Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Argentina.
In Spain he exhibited in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and San Sebastian. He was often relegated to the so-called “Sala del Crimen” at the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts for being an “Impressionist”. His early death shortly before the age of fifty-seven prevented him from seeing how his efforts to overcome the predominance of academicism were finally understood, and a posthumous tribute was paid to him at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid eight years later