Albert Monier, the lone artist inside the postcards of Paris
05 Sep 2009 1 Comment
in exhibits Tags: 1950s, Monier, Paris, photography, postcards
Some of the most popular postcards of Paris during the 1950s and 1960s featured the black and white photography of Albert Monier. The Orangerie of the Senate, located in the Luxembourg Gardens, 
presently is offering an exhibition of Monier’s photography, including images from the postcard series, as well as images of rural France and of North Africa. His images of Paris are less populated than those of Doisneau. He had a special empathy for the men of the working class and those even poorer, and when people do appear in his photography, they are more likely to be homeless or extremely poor than to be nattily dressed and smooching in front of the Hôtel de Ville. In fact, in the one photograph in this exhibit where couples are shown kissing under a bridge, at the end of line of lovers is a homeless man. Paris has changed much since the 1950s, the men labeled “clochards” in these photos would never be called that in the politically correct jargon of today (where SDF or “sans domicile fixe,” “without a fixed address” would be the preferred term). However, this window on an old world is a pleasant way to spend the afternoon and become acquainted with a photographer well deserving of our consideration.
Albert Monier, (1915-1998) worked outside the established world of commercial printing, creating his own postcards on photographic paper in his own lab. Using a small number of images, he managed to gain a popular foothold in the world of postcard photography, then dominated by Editions Yvon. However, I was even more impressed by his photography of people in the villages and the farm fields of the countryside.
Couleur Cantal Video
The exhibition is only for a short period of time, some eleven days, until the 13th of September, 2009. So, if you won’t have the chance to see it, then watch this fine 6 minute documentary clip made in 1995, just a few years before Monier’s death. Click on the Couleur Cantal Video image on the right.
Visages de Naples: 5 photo exhibits in Paris
19 May 2009 1 Comment
in exhibits Tags: 1950s, Garolla, IIC, Naples, Neapolitan, Paris, photography, streetlife
The Italian Cultural Institute in Paris, which, under the direction of Rosanna Rummo, has got to be the most active and exciting Italian cultural center in the world, has inaugurated a series of photographic exhibits focusing on the fascinating and thoroughly frustrating city of Naples.
The first in this series, 40 photographs by Federico Garolla, entitled “Naples années 50″ is currently showing at
the IIC’s exhibition space at it’s home, 73 rue de Grenelle in the historic Hôtel de Galliffet. This exhibit is about people, in the streets, at schools and in the marketplace, and always in public, because, after all, this is Naples. It includes many photographs of children, as most of the prints come from his study, “Enfance Abandonée.” The children are wonderfully expressive of the energetic attempts that were made in that city to move forward in the postwar years. There are photos of children unsupervised, carousing, playing, contemplating and swaggering in the public places of the city. But there are even more photos of children being subjected to an enforced comformity of institutional life: children washing at communal sinks, standing at attention in a descending stairwell, grimacing in a communal mirror. the contrast between the damning liberty of streetlife, and on the other hand, the deadening uniformity of state programs. To me, this is the underlying theme of the exhibit, this juxtaposition. It so ably articulates the inability of postwar Italy to channel the great partenopea energy in a creative way and it gives us some understanding of why the great city has not managed to keep up with the rest of Europe in these decades. It’s hard to know what might have worked better, and this is perhaps the tragedy of Naples that comes through in this wonderfully evocative images.
What makes it worse, is that the doomed exuberance of Neapolitan life is exactly what draws us to the city’s culture. People love to see these Neapolitans, with their anachronistic Mediterranean ways, ways that will get them exactly nowhere in the Twenty-first Century. And the Neapolitans are happy to accept the deadly embrace. Ariane Bavelier in Le Figaro, says, “Les 40 clichés de Garolla mettent en relief cette alchimie de dévotion, d’espièglerie et d’incongru qui définit l’inégalable chanson des rues napolitaines. Un régal !” (Garolla’s 40 images put on display the devotion, the roguishness and the incongruity that together make up the unique music of Neapolitan streets. A treat!) Yes, it is a treat for the viewer, but perhaps a bit less for the city on the bay. In any case, Garolla’s photos magnificently present this paradox and makes these arguments come to life.
This first exhibit runs until May 29, 2009. The catalog for this and each exhibit will be published by Silvana editoriale (click the image for info.)
It will be followed by:
Norma Rossetti: Naples, péripherie nord, (vernissage or opening, June 10, running until July 10, 2009). Like many European cities, Naples has its disastrous “banlieues”, those crumbling townships on the outskirts of town with their apartment blocks full of society’s underclass. The subject here is the banlieue named Scampia, which has become familiar as the locale for the book and film Gomorra.
Antonio Biasucci / Oreste Zevola: Figures rituelles. (vernissage September 16, running until October 23, 2009). This will have ex votos as its subject, those traditional metal objects which are used to embody the hopes and thanks of believers for help gained through saintly intervention.
Alain Volut: Ombres. (vernissage November 12, running until January 15, 2010). The vision of a French photographer who has lived in Naples for 25 years. He is inspired by the looming presence of Vesuvius in the history of the area.
Mimmo Jodice: Naples intime, (Spring of 2010). The great Neapolitan photographer will present a show as a complement to his retrospective at la Maison Européen de la Photographie.
José Maria Sert, murals in photoplay
16 May 2009 Leave a Comment
in exhibits, photography Tags: Chomette, jose maria sert, muralist, Paris, photography, Rockefeller Center, Vich
José Maria Sert, the Catalan muralist who has left vast scenes of swirling humanity on the walls of churches, congress halls and skyscraper lobbies from Geneva to New York, is the subject of a photography exhibit at Michèle Chomette Gallery in Paris. Here dozens of fascinating photographic studies that Sert used for his modeling are shown as works of art in their own right.
New Yorkers may not be familiar with his name, but they will know his New York work, the monumental murals in the former RCA Building (now GE Building or simply, 30 Rock) at Rockefeller Center. These enormous allegorical scenes in sepia browns depict the construction of the great city with Biblical imagery. Great titans and grand masses of workers move the steel and the rocks that will rise up around them, as airplanes make swirls in the clouds above. It is unfortunate that these murals had to be painted atop the ruins of Diego Rivera’s murals for this lobby, after David Rockefeller had them destroyed in an anti-socialist fury. It is useless to compare Sert with Rivera, their styles, their heritage and their aesthetics were from opposite sides of the Earth. I mourn the loss of Rivera’s work, but cherish the opportunity to be thrilled by Sert in its place.
Now, seeing this exhibit, I have come to see another aspect of Sert’s art; the cultural and physical dimension of his inspiration. In these photographs, his assistants and models are set into position, among the paraphernalia of an artist’s studio, unfolding their imperfect and humanly beautiful bodies into the poses that would be used on the gigantic walls. Here and there are figures that have awed me from my earliest youth, now instead of straddling the columns in midtown Manhattan, they are Spanish workmen, atop wooden platforms in the artist’s atelier. The photos also show the marks of Sert’s studies: outlines to trace the flow of arms and legs, cross-hatching that set the bodies in air. The presence of ordinary articles from the period in the scenes is a further level of history and attachment to the cultural context. The viewer can sense the artist communicating, and it is a thoroughly satisfying experience.
Besides the Rockefeller Center murals, these photographs include studies for the Cathedral of Vich and for other works. Michéle Chomette, in her introductory notes regarding the exhibit, states that photography “took revenge” on Sert, by creating an undeniable new perspective and aesthetic for his work, moving his images into a more two dimensional plane, and infusing them with a soft-focus photographic light. Thus, his work with photography became a collaboration, between the artist and the modern technology of art. I believe that nothing could be more appropriate for this great master of the Machine Age.
This exhibit will soon be coming to an end, so if you are interested in seeing it you must hurry up to Galerie Michèle Chomette, 24 rue Beaubourg, Paris. In fact it was set to close on May 16, but it has been extended until the end of the month, May 30, 2009. If you cannot get there in May, don’t despair, because Michèle Chomette Gallery has an exhibit scheduled for June which will include many Sert photographs. It is entitled “Question de Poses, 1915-2005, en contrepoint à José Maria Sert, un laboratoire contemporain. It will run from June 4 until July 11, 2009
NOTA BENE: l’exposition est prolongée jusqu’au 30 mai,
et elle sera suivie par une exposition thématique
où seront maintenues beaucoup d’études photographiques de Sert :
“QUESTION DE POSES” 1915-2005
en contrepoint à José Maria Sert, un laboratoire contemporain
4 juin – 11 juillet 2009
Here is a detail from Sert’s Rockefeller Center mural, my own photograph, toned and touched with oil color:
For an examination of the evolution of Sert’s muralistic art as can be seen on the walls of the Cathedral of Vich, see my article elsewhere on this site. Click on the image of St. Luke, painted in 1941, the third and final commission for the walls of the Cathedral.
