Review of In the Land of the Gods. Marc Chagall and the Greek World at the Musée National Marc Chagall, Nice

10/01/20

In the Land of the Gods

Marc Chagall and the Greek World

Musée National Marc Chagall, Nice

16 November 2019 – 27 April 2020

In the early 1950s, Marc Chagall (born 1887, Belarus) accepted the suggestion of his Greek publisher friend Tériade (real name Stratis Eleftheriadis) to illustrate a new edition of the second-century AD pastoral prose romance Daphnis and Chloe, attributed to Longus, and set on the Greek island of Lesbos, where the young shepherd and shepherdess fall in love. To get a feel for the country and its history and mythology, Chagall made two trips there, in 1952 and 1954. He also visited a wider range of tourist destinations, including Athens and Olympia. The Jewish artist was bowled over by what he described as “the land of the gods” – a country where every monument transports the visitor back several thousand years, yet with affinities to the ambience of the French Riviera, where he had made his home in Saint-Paul de Vence. What followed were series of illustrations, not only for Daphnis and Chloe, but also Homer’s Odyssey and Sappho’s poetry, and paintings, gouaches, ceramics and large-scale mosaics (for the faculty of law in Nice), and set and costume designs for the Paris Opera. Hellenic culture became mixed in with Chagall’s Jewish motifs and Old Testament illustrations and remained a prominent influence on his work until his death in 1985.

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Review of Queer British Art 1861-1967 at Tate Britain

24/04/17

Queer British Art 1861-1967

Tate Britain, London
5 April – 1 October 2017

“For me, to use the word ‘queer’ is a liberation; it was a word that frightened me, but no longer” – Derek Jarman

In a year when nearly all of London’s – nay, Britain’s – major (and even lesser) museums and galleries are putting on LGBTQI* related exhibitions to mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of sex between men in 1967, Tate Britain’s Queer British Art 1861-1967 is the biggest and boldest of the lot. What could have – and was being feared by many would – become an androcentric, homoerotic romp, is a well-curated, historically informative and aesthetically compelling exploration of the multifaceted interpretations of “queerness” in the century leading up to this milestone.

The self-declared remit of the exhibition’s curators is to explore “a wide range of sexualities and gender identities” – hence the choice of the word “queer”, rather than any combination of letters and asterisks, also influenced by the fact that, with ever-changing labels, many of those that we use today would not have been used, or recognised, by the artists and audiences in their own times. The starting point of the show – 1861 – was selected because it was the year the death penalty for sodomy was abolished (although it was still punishable by imprisonment) and the decades are traversed chronologically, thematically, and through the representation of artistic groups, such as the pre-Raphaelites and – synonymous with fluid sexuality – the Bloomsbury Group.

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Portfolio: Jeanne Mammen

23/01/15

Portfolio: Jeanne Mammen

“I have always wanted to be just a pair of eyes, walking through the world unseen, only to be able to see others.”

Born in Berlin, brought up in the well-to-do Parisian suburb of Passy, and educated in art in Paris, Brussels and Rome, German painter and graphic artist Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976) returned to Berlin in her mid-twenties, where she set up a small studio at Kurfürstendamm 29. She lived and worked here for over 50 years, providing for herself by selling her illustrations to fashion and satirical magazines. She was never without her sketchbook and especially liked to draw women, whom she portrayed in a gentle and understanding way, poignantly depicting them in their social background.

Further information about Jeanne Mammen can be obtained at the website www.jeanne-mammen.de, or contact Cornelia Pastelak-Price at the Förderverein of the Jeanne-Mammen-Stiftung e.V., e-mail: cornpaprice@gmx.net

To read the rest of this portfolio and to enjoy the images, please see the February 2015 print issue of DIVA magazine