The 16th Briscarts

For the sixteenth time in about ten years, some local artists opened the doors of their workshops. The event is organized twice a year by the association of the Briscarts and usually lasts an evening (with a collective exhibition) and two days (Saturday-Sunday). Thirty-seven artists participated to the even this November's event. Bocaj and Seb. M didn't (first time for long). Bernard Lecointre has a too small and narrow place, people might break or leave with some of his works and he certainly doesn't need thieves nor vandals, his great ingenuity is limitated to artistical creation, he needs buyers...

I have written more specifically, and will write, about local artists. You are warmly invited to explore this blog! 

Enclos Tissié Sarrus

The opening exhibition, on Friday evening in the Salle Saint-Ravy, invites people to discover the universe of every artist through one selected work. One work is not enough in most of the cases, but it allows the visitors to  make a personal selection and plan their visit. It would be to stay in an artistically dense part of the city and ignore everything else, or to choose where to go following the colors of the doors. The amateurs wouldn't spot the professionnal and/or most interesting artists in this heterogeneous gathering. Tourists wouldn't find the lovely Atelier du singe vert (Nathalie Le Gall), hiding in a lovely private street, and they would miss a good exhibition.

Visitors would aim at the double addresses, and expect to dive everywhere in a bourgeois 19th century, as at the 34, rue Saint-Guilhem.

Monica Jacquin

Monica Jacquin

Christian Cabanes

Christian Cabanes

Christian Cabanes

Gisèle Cazilhac

Visitors might search Gisèle Cazilhac, if they know her from her collaborations (la Cabane Trempée...), posters for festivals, long presence in the place, or find her place unpurposedly: there is another opened studio in the same street, better advertised (posters, website, large glass door), while her place looks from outside like a garage. It would be a shame.

Fortunately, she has a "gallery": Mica, 36 rue Saint-Guilhem. This tiny shop, often only opened in the afternoon, sells local cheap and good art. Mica presents... Mica (pins, serigraphy, etc.), and for example Bertrand Lecointre, François Bouët, Gisèle Cazilhac. Modest arts? There is nothing naive there. Real personalities, real skills.

Joan Beall

Mica promotes artists who on their turn help pals. François Bouët invited Joan Beall, engraver working in the village of Octon, to share his workplace for an exhibition. They both promote engravers exhibitions...

François Bouët

For more classical tastes and color-lovers, the studio of Raphaël Ségura is rich enough... Former art teacher, M. Ségura paints, draws, illustrates books of poetry.

We missed time to visit the studios of the painters Christophe Aichelmann, Isabelle Marsala, Anne Jean-Joseph or the photographer Sylvie Huet (Débit de Beau... promoted, as for her, by the charming hostesses of Cubik): next time!

It would be quite nice also if Frédérique Dupuis could take part. No?

PAN: A letter always reaches its destinations

Pan: small name for the Panacée, Montpellier's center for contemporary culture. Its name, Panacée (panacea) is linked to the previous use of the place: laboratories of the pharmacy faculty... Students and professors moved long ago to modern installations and buildings out of the historical center of the town. The Panacée hosted punctual exhibitions, before its renovation and re-opening on June 22, 2013.

Since then, it is a success.

The Panacée hosts artists in residence, coherent and free exhibitions, a documentation center, and a nice restaurant-bar. Children are welcome in the restaurant (toys, games, pens at disposal) and in the exhibitions (special visits for day-nurseries and schools, including the lecture of arty pop-up books in the documentation center and afternoon-snack in the garden), and workshops (with street artists for instance) are organized for them during the holidays.

Another "plus": if the clients of the restaurant tend, for a good part, to be slightly posh, the attendants are smiling including to children, and the cultural officers are helpfull, available, and provide clear explanations if you like.

The first "season" lasted more than a year, and was untitled: You received a message. It was divided into four successive exhibitions who treated of the various communication ways. Last one, for now (and ever?): Une lettre arrive toujours à destinations.

It is hard with a kid to listen to all the explanations on the works... One is focused on the child's interpretation and use of the work. Far enough of the intention(s) of the artist. Does it matter? Art and litterature also exist in and by the interactions. Artist-art work, art-work-viewer, artist-viewer... Children know it is art. They have been told so, they have been told that it was made to be watched and that it deserves respect and interest. It is a mystery to them, and they wonder about it, and explore possibilities.

With Message from Andrée, Joachim Koester, 2005

I won't give informations on those works here, but the references of some artists are as passionnating as an old movie - let's say The Maltese falcon. I especially loved, personnally, the story "told" by the Bettina Samson's phone booth. Look for it!

Bettina Samson, Cinder Peak Phone Booth Replica (Bluejacking), 2008 

Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (Placebo-Landscape-for Roni) 1993.
Courtesy Sammlung Hoffman / Courtesy Felix Gonzales-Torres Foundation

Mail-art: the visitors were invited to take part to a permanent workshop. Everyone could take a selfie (the Panacée provided tablets if needed), print it on a post-card, decorate it and write the card. It was pinned on the wall, and sent at the end of the exhibition to a recipient at the address written on the back. You don't even pay the stamp... It was such a good idea it should be institutionnalized in every contemporary art museum.

We "worked" on a photo taken with a work of Mel Bochner:

No Thought Exists Without A Sustaining Support, 1970.

Waiting for the next one exhibition!

Unfortunately, we might have to wait long. Very long.

Everything has a cost, and the municipal authorities don't seem too enthousiast to support this one. The programmation is frozen, the next exhibition postponned. It is sad enough to see those beautiful spaces, pedagogical and communicative skills unemployed. The team of the Panacée and their followers protest and launched a petition on change.org. The city isn't short of money yet. No... the politic of the "grands projets" remains, though the mayor wisely enough decided it would be fine to finish the third tramway line before starting to build the fifth one. I might be wrong, but it seems that some persons suggest that the mayor wants to link his name to a new large museum of contemporary art. I virtuously reject insinuations and trust the seducing admirer of Cambacérès to be culturally and artistically enlightened, as well as historically. But if this last museum might come to life, if will be on the ashes of two "utopias": the Panacée (contemporary art for all) and the musée d'histoire de la France et de l'Algérie (which was aimed to help reconciliating memories, memory and history, in a mediterranean city which was radically changed, in the 1960ies, by the installation of people from north-Africa (whether christian, jewish or muslim)). International scientists worked on the project of the historical museum. There was a petition to save it, too. It has not either decided a reorientation of the expenses - to clean and preserve the historical and natural environment for example.

The free newspaper 'Montpellier notre ville' dedicated this November two pages to the new choices on the culture field. Guide lines: to make dance popular (the next ZAT, to be set Spring 2015, should be very nice, under the direction of Jean-Paul Montanari... and the large place before the City Hall might, surprisingly, turn lively and gay), and to make a large place to contemporary art. Two new places will be dedicated to contemporary art, with the Chapelle des Recollets and the Hotel Montcalm. The action of La Panacée will take a "more social" orientation. Social? It is social: there are artists in residence, people socialize, visitors socialize with artists, artists socialize with students... There could be more meetings with the artists, more activities for kids? Let's invite grand-parents... but not change to much the recipe.
Suspense: the affair has been brought before a powerful academic authority, the weekly Inrockuptibles.
Let's wait and see. 

On the meantime, the cards arrive and bring joy to their destinations.

Thanks!

Exhibitions for everyone

What to do with a kid in August?

Visit art exhibitions!

Montpellier has a great fine arts museum.

Historically and esthetically coherent.

The collection of the museum has been built around the collections of some eminent local art collectors: Antoine Valedeau,  François-Xavier Fabre and Alfred Bruyas. Thanks to them, the museum can present, amongst many others, works from Veronese, Bourdon, Poussin, Greuze, Zurbaran, Metsu, Rubens, David, Delacroix, Bazille, Courbet, and great hotels particuliers to host this all. I discovered the museum as a kid, and used my eyes searching silhouettes in some dark Delacroix paintings in some very dark room... the city library and archives occupied most of the building.

The architects of the modern museum did quite a good job. A lot of paintings formerly kept into the reserves found places on the walls, under a fine lightning. The museum has now enough space to host some prstigious exhibitions, and to presents many impressive works from contemporary artists, all linked to the South of France: Soulages, Bioulès... Claude Viallat.

Entrance hall by Daniel Buren

The Supports/Surfaces group or movement or school has been extremely important in the history of contemporary art in France. We have quite a litterature about it, which doesn't seem to have been much translated in foreign languages. Claude Viallat is one of its most representative members. It would have been quite a waste not to invite kids to discover his works, huge and so pleasant to the eyes. The musée Fabre fortunately grew children-friendly since its reopenning...

Every wednesday morning in Summer, a visit is organized specially for the 2-5 years old with a parent. The recurrent motive of Viallat is presented as a spot travelling during the summer vacations: it goes to the circus (on the tent), on a fishing net, on a boat, on a beach umbrella... Simple but efficient approach. Kids walk and watch, talk about what they like, answer questions about colors, have fun putting stickers on a paper fish and barbababies on an umbrella.

Other kind of experience: La Panacée, center for contemporary art...

With a third exhibition about modern communication: Une lettre arrive toujours à destinations.

The restaurant is good and provides pencils, paper, games and toys to families, the exhibition is free... and kids often knew more on the places than their parents, thanks to the schools...

The staff is very nice and helpfull.

The works question the audience, but a playfull approach is kindly tolerated.

The Center organizes events for teenagers. Though I am not yet interested in these, I was pleased to see young ones work with the street artist Sunny Jim. "So Street" was a free event on 3 days, at the Panastudio during the Panholidays... It succeeded to a "Fluxus remix". 

Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (Placebo-Landscape-for Roni) 1993

Bettina Samson, Cinder Peak Phone Booth Replica (Bluejacking), 2008,
et Yann Sérandour, Miroirs #450, 2012