An Imagined Museum. What if art were to disappear? by CENTRE POMPIDOU METZ

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

19.10.16 > 27.03.17 centrepompidou-metz.fr #Unmuséeimaginé Three European collections: Centre Pompidou, Tate, MMK

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

SOMMAIRE 1. EXHIBITION OVERVIEW.. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 03 2. EXHIBITION LAYOUT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 05 3. ARTISTS.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4. LE JOURNAL DE L'EXPOSITION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 5. PARTNERS... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 6. PRESS VISUALS.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

1. EXHIBITION OVERVIEW AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR? THREE EUROPEAN COLLECTIONS: CENTRE POMPIDOU, TATE, MMK From 20th November 2015 to 14th February 2016 at Tate Liverpool From 26th March to 11th September 2016 at MMK Frankfurt From 19th October 2016 to 27th March 2017 at Centre Pompidou-Metz GALERIE 1 OF CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ

2052. Art is in danger of being banned; its total disappearance, even, looms ahead… Over eighty key works have been safeguarded within this endangered transnational museum: confronted with the possibility of an impending disaster, one must find the means to preserve these oeuvres for future generations by experiencing and memorizing them. This fictional scenario is the starting point of this unprecedented “science-fiction exhibition”.

Paul Almásy, Le Louvre, 1942

Drawing on the genre of dystopian science fiction, An imagined museum more specifically refers to the short story by Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953), a story of a community of “book-men” fighting reading censorship and thwarting book burning by learning masterpieces of the world literature by heart, hence becoming living libraries. The exhibition projects visitors in the middle of a fictitious disaster scenario where this time, it is art that seems doomed to disappear.

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

Joseph Cornell, Museum, 1942

An imagined museum gathers pieces from the collections of three major institutions: the Tate, the MMK Frankfurt and the Centre Pompidou – Musée national d'art moderne. For one exhibition, they create together an impressive “imagined museum” travelling in all three museums: the Tate Liverpool, the MMK Frankfurt am Main, and the Centre Pompidou-Metz. Within this “time capsule”, visitors are invited to experience the artworks to the point of being able to reproduce them in case they were to disappear. This scenario raises fundamental issues: why should we preserve the memory of art? What makes art essential in our life and society? These issues seem all the more significant and relevant that they resonate with recent acts of censorship and destruction of cultural heritage. All throughout the exhibition, sound recordings, photographs, pictograms, and performances imagined by artists enable visitors to memorize the work and become like Ray Bradbury’s “book men”, living museums storing up the works of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Lucio Fontana, Bridget Riley, Louise Bourgeois, Sigmar Polke, On Kawara or Isa Genzken. The exhibition invites visitors to question what is at stake in art: the transfiguration of daily life, the capacity of an artwork to transcend and reinvent the notions of space and time, to alter and open our perception of reality, to express essential and sometime contradictory ideas, to capture the unfathomable and celebrate the mystery of the world. The present exhibition confirms museums in their ability to instruct while being a space of intellectual freedom, contemplation and pleasure. The exhibition opens up to a space of experimentation and exchange, the “memorization studio”. Visitors are invited to build their own imagined museum through cards on which they can write their memories or personal interpretations. These stories, anecdotes, schemes, drawings and images create a temple of memory. The project reaches its climax in the last days of the exhibition, with the pure and simple disappearance of the artworks: for one day, they are replaced by “artwork-men” who try to revive the disappeared works through the power of memory in the empty rooms of the museum.

Curators: Hélène Guenin, MAMAC, Nice and Alexandra Müller, Centre Pompidou-Metz Peter Gorschlüter, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main Francesco Manacorda and Darren Pih, Tate Liverpool

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

2. EXHIBITION LAYOUT PREAMBLE Destruction advances undercover, insidiously infiltrating our daily lives. In fact it is no longer even necessary to destroy works of art to alter our culture. Suffice to simply keep people from looking at them and they will slip into oblivion. Terror can cause amnesia. And art will gradually succumb in silence, unnoticed.

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

I. TIME CAPSULE I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 Certain artists, as original creators, delve into chaos in order to comprehend and structure the world. They select, inventory, record and document materials, phenomenon and ideas. The temporal capsules and artists’ museums thus produced testify to their personal perceptions and distillations of the world, be they imagined or true. They question the so-called objectivity of scientific classifications and rankings. Furthermore, they contribute to establishing particular forms of appropriation, conservation and transmission of knowledge which can serve as models crucial to each and everyone’s comprehension of culture. In addition, their artworks are as many reflections of our civilisation offering a precipitate of our culture, the archaeology of our future.

De haut en bas : Reg (Reginald Cotterell) Butler, Musée imaginaire, 1961-63, Tate Mark Brusse, Double relief in 18 colors, New York, 1966-67, Mnam

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

II. TRANSFIGURATION: SUBLIMATED BANALITY Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 Art can be the screen on which we may visualize the poetic stuff of everyday life or that enables our psyche to fathom the hidden figures that sleep within all things. Questioning the functions usually attributed to objects lays bare the possible coexistence of many different interpretations of the physical world, along with their related concepts. It paves the way for oneirism, the bizarre, and a parallel history of the banal. The artist amplifies the power of suggestion of an object, thus giving flesh to the desires as well as the torments of our imaginations.

De haut en bas : Robert Malaval, Grand Aliment blanc, 1962, Mnam Daniel Spoerri, La douche (Détrompe-l’œil), 1961, Mnam

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

III. PERSISTENCE OF IMAGE Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Once accustomed to a constant influx of images there is a dulling of the senses, and the images gradually become interchangeable: meanwhile the past fades out of view. Even abomination loses its poignancy to become banal. Indeed, disaffection impedes any true aesthetic experience, such an adventure requires absolute commitment for it involves a cognitive and sensitive interaction with the world. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s allow art the time to filter the whirlwind of images thrown at us since it introduces a critical perspective. It enables us to find connections amongst all this data, to establish priorities and sharpen our perception of things.

Thomas Bayrle, Ajax, 1966, MMK

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

IV. SENSE AND SENSUALITY It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Rather than a critical dissection of reality, some artists prefer intimate sensorial intercourse to embrace its matter. At their hands, that matter gains strength and is elevated to the rank of teacher for the soul filling oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s personal mythology with substance. Reality becomes an object of affection and interacts with our emotional and spiritual states. The activity of our minds and imaginations breathes life and energy into the oeuvre: now a body of resonance that can either speak of exaltation, of lack or fears as well as express a societal point of view.

Louise Bourgeois, Avenza, 1978, Tate

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

V. ALTERED PERCEPTIONS He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Visual perception of the world is a tricky business. We are only able to discern what we already know of what we can easily relate to past experiences. Some artworks give us pause upsetting our certainties, suddenly clouding our memory, our feelings and our judgment. Art challenges the reliability of our perception demonstrating its limits, confronting it with its own flawed findings. There is no such thing as an ‘innocent’ eye: indeed perception is always a hypothesis, a subjective act of interpretation.

Carlos Cruz-Diez, Physichromie n° 506,1970, Mnam

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

VI. SPACE – TIME In all the rush and fervor, Montag had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel. "Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine." Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 Giving oneself over to a work of art can modify one’s perception of time and space. Art allows us to experience another form of temporality the value of which is subject to how each one of us experiences the present. To the flow of instants art adds another dimension: remembrance, the intimate conviction of having experienced. Works of art have the amazing capacity of taking us on a journey into the consciousness of another and leading us into the unknown. Doing away with traditions and conventions, artists crack time and space open allowing us to truly experience simultaneity and the materiality of time… or they might have us step into fiction.

Chris Marker, La Jetée, 1962, Mnam

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

VII. ENIGMA The emergence of art is both timely and of its time, but it becomes an oeuvre insofar as it is timeless. André Malraux, The Metamorphosis of the Gods

Difficult to define in words alone, a work of art is an unlimited surface upon which to project, it draws its strength from the inexpressible, from silence and surrendering to imagination. Art can be discussed; indeed one can describe a work yet fail to grasp its secret. Is it its novelty, the shock of surprise that moves us, the perfect expression of a state of mind, of an overwhelming truth that until then had eluded us? An oeuvre has as many interpretations as it has viewers. Already for Leonardo da Vinci art was a “mental thing”. It is a gateway to endless dreams and thoughts. The work of art remains an enigma.

Walter De Maria, High Energy Bar, 1966, MMK

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

VIII. MEMORIZATION STUDIO And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say: We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

The Imaginary Museum, as described by André Malraux in a famous 1947 essay, is not simply “a collection of each person’s preferences but a museum the works of which seem to have chosen us”. They live and cohabitate in our memories. They each speak to us of their theoretical and historical roots creating novel connections and meanings for every one of us. Which artworks –from this exhibition or another- remained engraved in the visitors’ memory? Which form do they take and how do we recall them to perpetuate their existence? Like the “book-men” of Ray Bradbury, at the end of the exhibition, visitors are invited to use the power of their memory and write their memories and interpretations of one or several artworks on cards the museum makes available to them. Drawings, stories, emotions, sensations or poems: everything is possible. The Greeks, for whom the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne was the mother of the nine muses, invented a memorization technique around 500 before J.C, which consisted in associating each idea one wanted to remember with a mental image located in an architectural space. Memory would then become a building that one could mentally visit. The cards on which visitors write their memories can be used afterwards to build architectural shapes like temples of memory.

CLOSING EVENT A LIVING MUSEUM After the end of the exhibition when the works have been removed, the gallery will reopen its doors for a special event on Saturday 8th April 2017. During that day, the missing artworks will be conjured up and embodied by visitors’ memories of them and performances; thus transforming the empty gallery into a vast living-museum. Return to see an exhibition metamorphosed and put your memories to work, or take part in this final day by choosing one or several artworks from the exhibition that affected you particularly and that you wish to pass on to visitors in your own manner.

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

3. ARTISTS.. Magdalena ABAKANOWICZ

Barbara KRUGER

ABSALON

Lee LOZANO

Josef ALBERS

Robert MALAVAL

Paul ALMÁSY

Piero MANZONI

Pawel ALTHAMER

Chris MARKER

Thomas BAYRLE

Allan MCCOLLUM

Louise BOURGEOIS

Mathieu MERCIER

Marcel BROODTHAERS

Mario MERZ

Mark BRUSSE

Giorgio MORANDI

Reg (Reginald Cotterell) BUTLER

François MORELLET

Patrick CORILLON

Claes OLDENBURG

Joseph CORNELL

Roman OPALKA

Marc COUTURIER

Martin PARR

Carlos CRUZ-DIEZ

Philippe PARRENO

Walter DE MARIA

Michelangelo PISTOLETTO

Marcelline DELBECQ

Sigmar POLKE

Erik DIETMAN

Walid RAAD

Julien DISCRIT

Albert Georg RIETHAUSEN

Marcel DUCHAMP

Bridget RILEY

Jimmie DURHAM

Dieter ROTH

Peter FISCHLI et David WEISS

Claude RUTAULT

Dan FLAVIN

Paul Jeffrey SHARITS

Lucio FONTANA

Cindy SHERMAN

Dora GARCÍA

Andreas SLOMINSKI

Isa GENZKEN

Ettore SPALLETTI

Jochen GERNER

SPOERRI

Agnès GEOFFRAY

Frank STELLA

Felix GONZALEZ-TORRES

Elaine STURTEVANT

Daniel « Dan » GRAHAM

Hiroshi SUGIMOTO

Victor GRIPPO

Alina SZAPOCZNIKOW

Hans HAACKE

Tatiana TROUVÉ

Thierry HESSE

Jeffrey « Jeff » WALL

Hélène HUMBERT

Andy WARHOL

Birgit JÜRGENSSEN

Lawrence WEINER

On KAWARA

Rachel WHITERED

Martin KIPPENBERGER

Hannah WILKE

Joseph KOSUTH

Akram ZAATARI

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

4. EXHIBITION JOURNAL THE MNEMOSYNE REVOLUTION BY DORA GARCĂ?A

The Mnemosyne Revolution is a work created by artist Dora Garcia to dialogue with the exhibition An imagined museum. Presented like a futuristic journal, it responds to the fictional disaster scenario of the exhibition: what would society look like without artistic expression? What would we lose if art were to disappear? The story the artist imagined in this futuristic and provoking journal is a call to action. It follows the path of the exhibition to explore the reasons why we should become aware of the vital nature of art and the absolute necessity to keep its memory alive. Freely handed over to visitors, The Mnemosyne Revolution journal is like a guide of the exhibition.

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

5. PARTNERS Centre Pompidou-Metz is the first offshoot of a major French cultural institution, Centre Pompidou, in partnership with regional authorities. An independent body, Centre Pompidou-Metz benefits from the experience, expertise and international reputation of Centre Pompidou. It shares with its older sibling values of innovation and generosity, and the same determination to engage a wide public through multi-disciplinary programming. Centre Pompidou-Metz produces temporary exhibitions which draw on loans from the holdings of Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne. With more than 100,000 works, it is the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe and the second largest in the world. Centre Pompidou-Metz also develops partnerships with museums around the world. A programme of dance, music, films, lectures and children's workshops further explore themes raised in the exhibitions. Financial support is provided by Wendel, its founding sponsor.

Mécène fondateur

The exhibition An Imagined Museum is co-organized by by Tate Liverpool, MKK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main and the Centre Pompidou-Metz.

In a media partnership with

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

Wendel, Founder Patron of Centre Pompidou-Metz Wendel has been commited since 2010 alongside Centre Pompidou-Metz. Since the opening of the Centre in 2010, Wendel wanted to support a flagship institution whose cultural influence reaches the most people. Thanks to its commitment for many years in favor of Culture, Wendel received the title of Grand Patron of Culture in 2012. Wendel is one of the leading quoted investment companies in Europe, acting as an investor and professional shareholder, promoting the long-term development of companies which are global leaders in their sectors: Bureau Veritas, Saint-Gobain, IHS, Materis Paints, Stahl, Mecatherm or CSP Technologies. Founded in 1704 in Lorraine, Wendel Group was committed during 270 years to the development of various activities, especially of the steel industry, before beginning a longterm investor in the late 1970s. The Group is supported by its reference family shareholder, made up of more than one thousand Wendel family shareholders, who are united in the family company Wendel-Participations, which owns 35% of Wendel. Press Relations: Christine Anglade-Pirzadehâ&#x20AC;&#x2030;: + 33 (0) 1 42 85 63 24 c.angladepirzadeh@wendelgroup.com Caroline Decaux + 33 (0) 1 42 85 91 27 c.decaux@wendelgroup.com

www.wendelgroup.com

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

6. PRESS VISUALS The pictures are availables online, at the adress below: centrepompidou-metz.fr/phototheque Login: presse Password: Pomp1d57

Joseph Cornell, Museum, 1942

Mark Brusse, Double relief in 18 colors, New York, 1966 - 1967

Paul Sharits, Frozen Film Frame: N:O:T:H:I:N:G, 1968

Bois, verre, papier, divers éléments, 5,5 × 21,5 × 17,7 cm

Bois, métal, marqueur, peinture, vernis, 86 × 145,5 × 13 cm

Paris, Centre Pompidou –

Paris, Centre Pompidou – Musée national d'art moderne

Permission by The Paul Sharits Estate

Musée national d'art moderne

Memorial Foundation / Adagp, Paris 2016

/ Philippe Migeat

MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main

Robert Malaval, Grand aliment blanc, 1962

Daniel Spoerri, La douche (Détrompe-l'oeil), 1961

Papier mâché encollé, meuble en bois, verre, métal, divers

Huile sur toile,

objets, moteur et ampoules

robinetterie, tuyau, pomme de douche

électriques,

sur bois,

251 × 150 × 76 cm

70,2 × 96,8 × 18,5 cm

Paris, Centre Pompidou –

Paris, Centre Pompidou

Musée national d'art moderne

– Musée national d'art moderne

MNAM-CCI,

Dist. RMN-Grand Palais

/ Georges Meguerditchian

/ Philippe Migeat

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

Andy Warhol, 100 Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962

Thomas Bayrle, Ajax, 1966

Martin Kippenberger, The Modern House of Believing or Not, 1985

MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst

Frankfurt am Main

Photo: Axel Schneider

Louise Bourgeois, Avenza, 1968-9

Carlos Cruz-Diez, Physichromie n° 506, 1970

Tate. Présenté par l'artiste 2001

Peinture acrylique sur lamelles de PVC collé sur

contreplaqué, lamelles de Plexiglas, cadre en aluminium, 180 × 180 cm Paris, Centre Pompidou – Musée national d'art moderne © ADAGP, Paris 2016 Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Philippe Migeat

Frank Stella, Rabat, 1964 MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main © ADAGP, Paris 2016 Photo: Axel Schneider Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Philippe Migeat

AN IMAGINED MUSEUM WHAT IF ART WERE TO DISAPPEAR?

François Morellet, Superposition et transparence Carré derrière 0°-90°, carré devant 20°-110°, 1980 Peinture acrylique sur deux toiles superposées, 256,5 × 363 cm

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spazial, 1949-1950

Paris, Centre Pompidou – Musée national d'art moderne

Tate. Achat grâce au soutien des Amis de la Tate Gallery, 1985

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Orange Drive-In, Orange, 1993

Chris Marker, La Jetée, 1962

Épreuve gélatino-argentique, 50,8 × 61 cm

Film cinématographique 35 mm noir et blanc, sonore

Paris, Centre Pompidou - Musée national d'art moderne

Paris, Centre Pompidou – Musée national d'art moderne

Photo courtesy l'artiste

Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Widow, 1920/1964 Tate. Achat avec le soutien de la National Lottery via le Heritage Lottery Fund,

Isa Genzken, OIL XV ; OIL XVI 2007 2, 2007

1997

MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main

/ Adagp, Paris 2016

Press Contact Centre Pompidou-Metz Anne-Laure Miller Communications Officer Department of Communications and Development +33 (0)3 87 15 39 73 anne-laure.miller@centrepompidou-metz.fr

Claudine Colin Communication Diane Junqua Communications and Press Relations Officer +33 (0)1 42 72 60 01 diane@claudinecolin.com

#Unmuséeimaginé

Isa Genzken, OIL XV et OIL XVI, 2007. MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main © Adagp, Paris 2016 / Photo Axel Schneider

Marie-Christine Haas Multimedia Communications Officer Department of Communications and Development+33 (0)3 87 15 39 62 marie-christine.haas@centrepompidou-metz.fr