Review of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot: persistances at Aubette 1928, Strasbourg

03/10/14

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot: persistances

Aubette 1928, Strasbourg, France

6 September – 22 November 2014

The original Aubette was built on Strasbourg’s Place Kléber by architect Jacques-François Blondel  between 1765–72. At the end of the 18th century the changing of the guard used to take place in front of the building at dawn each day. Between 1926 and 1928, Aubette was redecorated by Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jean Arp and the De Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg – the latter of whom envisaged the complex as a Gesamtkunstwerk – earning it the epithet of  “the Sistine Chapel of abstract art”. Covered over and partly destroyed after just 10 years, the avant-garde decor was only restored – and, at that, only in part on the first floor – in the 1990s and 2000s, following classification as a historic monument in the 80s. This first floor trio of foyer bar, function room and cine-dancing space now form an impressive contemporary art gallery.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/celeste-boursier-mougenot-persistances-review-aubette-strasbourg 

Review of Daniel Buren: Comme Un Jeu d’Enfant / Like Child’s Play, Work In Situ at Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg

23/09/14

Daniel Buren: Comme Un Jeu d’Enfant / Like Child’s Play, Work In Situ

Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg

14 June 2014 – 4 January 2015

Admittedly, I don’t know what the exterior of the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCS) looked like before Daniel Buren (b1938) coloured its glass walls and 25-metre-high canopy with his tinted films, but it is hard to imagine it now without this stained-glass effect, sitting as well as it does on the Adrien Fainsilber building to the edge of the picturesque Petite France quarter of Strasbourg, seat of the European parliament. Reflecting the colours of the late summer flowers that spill from the window boxes and over the edges of the nearby ponts couverts, they alter the interior of the museum as much as they do its external appearance. Whichever gallery you enter, both in the modern and contemporary permanent collections, there are few corners in which you can stand where the dappling effect of pinks, blues and yellows doesn’t fall across your feet, reminding you that the touchstone of all art – of all visual perception – is colour.

“For me, colour is pure thought, and therefore completely inexpressible, every bit as abstract as a mathematical formula or a philosophical concept,” Buren once explained in an interview. “Colour is a huge problem. It seems to me difficult to apply rules to it. Are there any? At every moment, colour has to be invented. There are no safeguards.”

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/daniel-buren-like-childs-play-work-in-situ-review-musee-d-art-moderne-strasbourg