Musée de l’Orangerie
Monet, Water Lillies
cycle of eight paintings perfectly installed across two elliptical rooms as a landscape [1] > a true ‘Sixtine of Impressionism’ — André Masson in 1952 // similar exhibition approach to that of Twombly’s Lepanto cycle
all-ecompassing of the viewer, particularly at the ends of the rooms / beautiful dusty pink/orange glow > tranquility
lots of dry scumbling // a touch unsatisfying up close > coarseness of texture (un-water like) and dryness of surface is frustrating / similarly, there’s frustrating avoidance of the edge which detracts from the all-overness > a tentativeness apparent in the brush work which reveals the canvas [2]
nearly abstract in (large) parts > scribbles are like those of Twombly [3] > the Twombly, Turner, Monet exhibition continues to makes sense
Collection & Tokyo-Paris: Chefs d'œuvre du Bridgestone Museum of Art de Tokyo Collection Ishibashi Foundation
lots of impressionism in Japan
Kazuo Shiraga [4-6] > something like action painting x calligraphy
more Don Quixote: Honoré Daumier, Don Quichotte et Sancho se rendant aux noces de Gamaches // is Daumier responsible for this idea of Quixote’s appearance?
Jeu de Paume
Oscar Murillo, Estructuras resonantes [7]
no painting, but a wall piece and three-channel video installation // text on wall is about “the economy of all living things / from modernism to thirdworldism” > provocatively stating “long live Paris” followed by repeated assertions of the pan-African and pan-Aribicana invasions // strategies for grad show?
Ismaïl Bahri, Instruments [8-9]
From the wall text:
The work of Israel Bari cultivates slowness. It is based on a close exploration of simple elements and the often tenuous reactions that occur when those elements are brought into contact. The artist runs through series of small gestures, repeating them assiduously — he activates things, sets them in motion, transform them, ties them in knots, crumples them — and he welcomes the unforeseen developments that ensue. [...] It is [at] that moment of perceptive focus, poised on a tight rope between preciseness and insubstantially, that the force of things and the potential for variation emerge.
This was stunning. Just simple gestures: rolling up a spool of thread; crumpling a glossy magazine page until it became blank; burning a hole in a sheet of paper. Video portrait of Bahri.