COSA MENTALE

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1 PRE- PRESS KIT COSA MENTALE IMAGINARIES OF TELEPATHY IN THE 20 th CENTURY ART 28.10.15 > 28.03.16

Transcript of COSA MENTALE

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PRE- PRESS KIT

COSA MENTALE IMAGINARIES OF TELEPATHY

IN THE 20th CENTURY ART

28.10.15 > 28.03.16

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CONTENTS

1. OVERVIEW OF THE EXHIBITION ................................................................................. 2

2. EXHIBITION LAYOUT .................................................................................................. 3  

3. ILLUSTRATIVE LIST OF ARTISTS ............................................................................... 6

4. VISUALS FOR THE PRESS .......................................................................................... 7  

REGIONAL PRESS CONTACTS

Centre Pompidou-Metz Noémie Gotti

Manager of Press and Communications Tél : + 33 (0)3 87 15 39 63

Email : [email protected]

Christophe Coffrant Manager of Communications and Development

Tél : + 33 (0)3 87 15 39 66 Email : [email protected]

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL PRESS CONTACT

Claudine Colin Communication Diane Junqua Press Officer

Tél : + 33 (0)1 42 72 60 01 Email : [email protected]

Front cover : Susan Hiller, Homage to Marcel Duchamp: Aura (Blue Boy), 2011 © Susan Hiller

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1. OVERVIEW OF THE EXHIBITION

COSA MENTALE ART AND TELEPATHY IN THE 20TH CENTURY 28.10.15 > 28.03.16 GALERIE 3

COSA MENTALE is a unique exhibition that offers a re-reading of the history or art from 1990 to modern day by exploring artists’ fascination with the direct transmission of thought and emotion. It invites the spectator to re-live one of the unexpected adventures of modernity: telepathic art in the 20th century. This exhibition traces a chronological path from symbolism to conceptual art with a collection of some one hundred works by major artists, ranging from Edvard Munch to Vassily Kandinsky, and from Joan Miró to Sigmar Polke. These artists provide innovative ways of communicating with spectators that take us beyond conventional linguistic codes. The exhibition enables the spectator to understand how, throughout the 20th century, attempts to give material and visible form to thought processes coincide with the experiments of avant-garde artists. This fantasy of a direct projection of thought not only had a decisive impact on the birth of abstraction but also influenced surrealism and its obsession with the collective sharing of creation and, in the post war period, it gave rise to numerous visual and sound installations inspired by the revolution in information technology, leading to the declaration of “the dematerialisation of art” in conceptual practices. The exhibition begins with the invention of the term “telepathy” in 1882, at a time when the study of psychology interacted with rapid developments in telecommunications. Endeavours ranged from the creation of “photographs of thought” in 1895 to the first “encephalograms” in 1924 (the year when the Surrealist Manifesto was published) and it was the actual activity of the brain which was to be shown in all its transparency, which encouraged artists to reject the conventions of representation by suppressing all restrictions of translation. Telepathy was far from remaining an obscure paranormal fantasy and consistently intrigued and enthralled artists throughout the 20th century. Always present in the world of science fiction, it resurfaced in psychedelic and conceptual art in the period from 1960 to 1970 before reappearing today in contemporary practices enraptured by technologies of “shared knowledge” and the rapid development of neuroscience. Curator: Pascal Rousseau, professor of contemporary history of art at the University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. Pascal Rousseau has also curated Robert Delaunay exhibitions: From impressionism to abstraction, 1906-1914, at the Centre Pompidou (1999) and To the origins of abstraction (1800-1914) at the Musée d’Orsay (2003).

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2. THE EXHIBITION LAYOUT

The exhibition has a chronological layout taking the spectator on a journey from the 1880s to modern day, covering the major artistic movements of modernity from symbolism to conceptual art in five parts.

1. THE INTRODUCTION The exhibition starts with a version of the famous figure of Rodin’s Thinker, set off against a sequence of seven photographs from the start of the century, in which the pictorialist dimension seems to attempt to show lighting emissions produced by the cerebral concentration of the subject. This collection is presented opposite TV Rodin, a video installation created by the artist Nam June Paik who, in the 1970s, reinterpreted electromagnetic animation of closed-circuit thought, when interest in cybernetics was at its peak.

2. AURAS The direct visualisation of thought and emotional states and the impact of this on the beginnings of abstraction at the start of the 20th century. The first room focuses on the passion during the century for “photography of thought”. As a direct response to the discovery of radiography by Röntgen, in 1895, numerous amateur researchers attempted to produce images of the brain on photosensitive plates. Since it was possible to see through opaque bodies, why not try to see through the skull, which was now transparent? A curiosity cabinet presents the photographic experiments of Hippolyte Baraduc and Louis Darget with “psychicones” or “images of thought”. This selection of photographs interacts with two film animation extracts by Émile Cohl, showing, with some humour, the direct projection of thought onto the big screen with the arrival of the cinema. In the second room, a collection of engravings from the theosophical works of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, presented by the American artist Christian Sampson, reveals the close relationship between the representation of emotional states (thought-patterns) and early abstract painting. They inspired many pioneers of abstract painters, including Kupka and Kandinsky. A group of auras and halos is shown, associated with a colour code for different effects, captured by Kandinsky in order to paint authentic abstract (auto) portraits. In the same vein, paintings by Wilhelm Morgner, Janus de Winter and Jacob Bendien present “psychic portraits” which illustrate a psychological range of emotions by means of chromatic signs. The third room presents a sequence of ten “blackboards” by Rudolph Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy (the “science of the mind” that was a major influence on some of the members of the avant-garde abstract movement), showing how he developed his theories of the “mental body” and “psychic force”. Next to this is a collection of watercolours by the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, a pioneer of abstract art. Around this area a multimedia installation by the artist Tony Oursler has been specially created for this exhibition reinterpreting the historical imagination of these “mental projections”.

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3. MAGNETIC FIELDS The spread of telepathy in the inter-war period and its influence on surrealism. In 1924, André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto (1924) just when the neurologist Hans Berger invented the first electroencephalogram as a result of experimental research into telepathy: this being a less than accidental coincidence, relating to automated transcriptions of the mind. The “exquisite corpses” or “communicated drawings” of the surrealists are linked to experiments that took place at that time into the telepathic transfer of images. The first room presents a sequence of photographs of the surrealist group in poses in which heads and bodies communicate with each other to produce a collective work under the mysterious influence of “magnetic fields”. Tusalava (1929), a film by the Australian artist Len Lye, illustrates the cinematographic solution found to make mental activity visible, in the form of abstract ideograms taken from aboriginal language. The second room shows a collection of photographs from the 1920s, some of which are presented by the artist Frédéric Vaesen, relating to the materialisation of psychic entities, the famous “ectoplasms” which give a more tangible reality to imponderable thought. Next to this is a series of works by Joan Miró, in which the painter depicts coloured auras, including a mental map of emotional states, a “photograph of his dreams”.

4. MIND EXPANDER With the reconstruction of the post war period, divided between the cybernetic model and psychedelic liberation, telepathy remained more than ever a creative horizon for artists in search of perception extended to the electromagnetic manifestations of consciousness. The New Age spirit of the 1960s witnessed the curious revival of “photographs of thought” (Ted Serios and Salas Portugal), which influenced experimental cinema and psychedelic video (Jordan Belson), a well as some photographic practices (Anna and Bernhard Blume, Dieter Appelt, Suzanne Hiller, John Baldessari and Sigmar Polke). Under the influence of psychotropic drugs or immersed in highly intense audiovisual devices, electric thought in motion is captured with a penetrating eye. Experimental and radical architectural patterns embody “expanded consciousness”, as is seen in the Mind Expander project (1967) by the Austrian group Haus Rucker Co, which invites the spectator to venture into “superception”. Music has its role here, with the rise in “biomusic” at the end of the 1960s, led by Alvin Lucier, Pierre Henry and David Rosenboom, who produced authentic “brain symphonies”, by means of the sound transcription of the activity of electric waves emitted by the brain, directly captured by electrodes.

5. TELEPATHY The establishment of telepathic art in the 1970s influenced by conceptual practices. On the margins of pop art, avant-garde artists in the 1970s produced a critique of both form and the art market, by means of strategies that emphasised language and sociological discourse. This also involved a major project in the dematerialisation of art works in which telepathy could be an ideal model for a new non-standard form of communication.

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The American artist Robert Morris produced his own Autoportrait in the form of an encephalogram (EEG Portrait) at the same time as his compatriot Robert Barry, a central figure in conceptual art, produced Telepathic Pieces (1969) and Vito Acconci explored extra sensory perception through the form of video (Remote Control, 1971). Against this backdrop, we see considerable new interest in a utopia of shared creation (Robert Filliou and Marina Abramovic) in the era of global communication and the “noosphere” prophetically declared by Teilhard de Chardin and Marshall McLuhan. The exhibition ends with a vast installation by the artist Fabrice Hyber, a major figure of contemporary art in France, with experimental telepathic booths, paintings, drawings and “prototypes of operating objects” (POF). Hyber invites the spectator to participate, alone or in groups, in an experience which has several surprises, reminding us how, today, under the influence of information networks, neuroscience and the globalised internet, telepathy (ultra democratic and utopian yet also obscure) is more topical than ever and can be explored by artists with the same spirit of derision or anticipation.

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3. ILLUSTRATIVE LIST OF ARTISTS

Marina ABRAMOVIC & ULAY Vito ACCONCI Dieter APPLET

John BALDESSARI Robert BARRY

Claude BELLEGARDE Jordan BELSON Jacob BENDIEN

Anna et Bernhard BLUME Victor BRAUNER

Émile COHL Robert DESNOS

Janus DE WINTER Marcel DUCHAMP

Robert FILIOU Philippe HALSMAN HAUS-RUCKER-CO

Pierre HENRY Susan HILLER Fabrice HYBER Nam JUNE PAIK

Vassily KANDINSKY Hilma AF KLINT Frantisek KUPKA

Alvin LUCIER Len LYE

Émile MALESPINE Joan MIRÓ

Wilhelm MORGNER Robert MORRIS Gianni MOTTI

Edvard MUNCH Max OPPENHEIMER

Tony OURSLER Sigmar POLKE

MAN RAY Odilon REDON Auguste RODIN

David ROSENBOOM Armando SALAS PORTUGAL

Christian SAMPSON Ted SERIOS

Jan SLUYTTERS Rudolf STEINER Fred VAESEN

Stan VAN de BECK Jacoba VAN HEEMSKERCK

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4. VISUALS FOR THE PRESS

Visual material from the exhibition can be downloaded at : www.centrepompidou-metz.fr / photothèque. Username : presse Password : Pomp1d57 Other visual material is also available online

Victor Brauner, Signe, 1942-45 © ADAGP, Paris, 2015

Vassily Kandinsky , Bild mit rotem Fleck [Tableau à la tache rouge], 25 février 1914 Centre Pompidou - Musée national d'art moderne, Paris © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Adam Rzepka

Haus-Rucker-Co, Mindexpander 1, 1967 © Droits réservés © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Georges Meguerditchian

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Susan Hiller, Homage to Marcel Duchamp: Aura (Blue Boy), 2011 © Susan Hiller

Joan Miró, La Sieste, juillet-septembre 1925 © Successió Miró/ ADAGP, Paris, 2015

Edvard Munch, Madonna, 1895 Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'Art moderne © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Georges Meguerditchian

Odilon Redon, Portrait de Paul Gauguin, 1903-1906 Paris, Musée d'Orsay © RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski