Gogottes: unfolding time by Daniel Eskenazi

Gogottes: unfolding time

ESKENAZI

Illustrated as cover and on pages 4 and 30 - 33

8 Gogotte Fontainebleau, France Height: 70cm Width: 85cm Depth: 38cm

ESKENAZI

ISBN: 978 1 873609 48 4

ESKENAZI

Gogottes: unfolding time

8 June - 8 July 2022

10 Clifford Street London W1S 2LJ Telephone: 020 7493 5464 Fax: 020 7499 3136 e-mail: gallery@eskenazi.co.uk web: www.eskenazi.co.uk

Foreword

We are delighted to hold our second exhibition dedicated to gogottes which we hope will continue to amaze and inspire the viewer as they did in our first exhibition in 2018. We are also pleased to see that the gogotte, given in honour of Sir David Attenborough’s 90th birthday, continues to stop visitors in their tracks as they enter the Lasting Impressions Gallery at the Natural History Museum. The Curator of Petrology at the Natural History Museum, Epi Vacarro, has showed that these formations are composed of very fine uniform sand particles that have been encased in silica. How or when this encasing took place, within the fine sand dunes of Fontainebleau, still remains unclear. Looking for further answers I came across a blog by the British geologist Michael Welland (1946-2017), who won the John Burroughs Medal for his book Sand: a journey through science and the imagination. A true arenophile (expert on sand) he wrote an essay specifically on the sand dunes of Fontainebleau which I hope you will enjoy overleaf. We have reproduced this essay with the kind permission of Carol Welland, Michael’s wife, and the help of Lonny van Ryswyck, cofounder of Atelier NL, who put the two of us in touch. One draw for the viewer is that gogottes appear to be contemporary sculpture yet are natural formations. Pareidolia, seeing visual patterns or meaning in random visual information, seems to be almost unavoidable here. We have chosen not to title any of the gogottes and would rather leave you free to make your own associations.

Daniel Eskenazi

Chemin des Sables à Fontainebleau, by Jules Laurens and bequeathed to the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, by Alfred Bruyas in 1876. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Details of Fontainebleau sand given to Michael Welland.

Two museums and the Fontainebleau glass sand by Michael Welland A few weeks ago, the art museum in Montpellier provided a welcome refuge from torrential rain (of course, I was planning on visiting anyway, but the weather drove me there). On the whole, I have to admit that the museum’s collections were dominated by the kinds of genres and schools that I find difficult to get excited by, but there were some gems. Along one long hallway hung a series of landscapes, and, among them, I found the painting illustrated opposite. It’s by the nineteenth century French artist Jules Laurens, not well-known outside his own country, and best-known there for his orientalist works. This one, however, I found interesting. Painted in 1869, the title is Chemin des Sables à Fontainebleau - ‘The sand path at Fontainebleau.’ Storm clouds gather as a windblown figure is followed by his dog through what would seem to be a beach surrounded by massive craggy boulders and cliffs. It is, in a way, a beach, but one from 35 million years ago being recycled today by weathering and erosion, and it’s a long way from the coast - the forest of Fontainebleau lies not far southeast of Paris. The crags and boulders (which today provide a highly-regarded destination for rock-climbers) are made of the Fontainebleau glass sand, one of the highest quality and most renowned sources of silica sand in the world. I wrote about this in the section on glass in the book, Sand: The Never-Ending Story: A visitor to Fontainebleau (where Napoleon abdicated—twice) might be drawn there by the magnificence of its château, but other treasures lie in its forest. Around thirty-five million years ago, a warm sea inundated much of northwestern Europe, and this sea retreated and returned over and over again. To the southeast, the Alps were still forming, rising from the forces of Africa crushing into old Europe. As from time immemorial, while the mountains rose, the elements chastised them for doing so, eating into the newly exposed rocks, eroding and destroying them. ..... debris from the Alps was carried northwestward by rivers to the encroaching sea, along the way grinding and sorting the sand that would be disgorged into the sea at the river’s end. This sand was then caught up in the dynamic coastal processes we saw in chapter 5, all the time being cleaned and winnowed. As the sea made its final retreat, these sands were left stranded, and they are preserved today as the Fontainebleau sandstone. The rivers and the sea had done a fine job of cleaning the sand, but water later percolating through it leached out even more of the impurities, leaving huge tracts of sand that can be over 30 meters (100 ft) thick, fine, white, clean, and all of roughly the same-sized grains—in other words, ideal for making glass. Fontainebleau has long been one of the premier glass sands in the world and today is a focus of major international glassmaking companies. Indeed, Corning Opthalmic Glass operate a major research and production facility there, on the site where, in 1752, the Bagneaux glassworks were founded by Royal Decree. Common glass, even the colourless kind, still retains a greenish tint, particularly if looked at edge-on; this results from remaining trace quantities of iron. Fontainebleau sand starts off with a very low iron content, and so is an excellent raw material for manufacturing high-quality, specialist, glass products. A few years ago, elsewhere in France, I visited a glass-blower’s workshop and asked him what the source of his sand was. ‘Fontainebleau, of course’ was the reply; I told him of my interest in his raw material and he very kindly provided me with a substantial bag of the sand, and a glass globule made from it. Look down the microscope and you can see the purity of it (and some rounded, frosted, grains - evidence of coastal winds 35 million years ago): The famed Murano glass-makers of Venice long ago abandoned their own traditional supplies that cascaded out of their side of the Alps and today use Fontainebleau sand.

And, when I.M. Pei was laying down the law for the specifications of his glass pyramid design for the Louvre, those criteria (together with the traditional French insistence on things French) led inevitably to using Fontainebleau sand. The story of how the sheets of glass could only be made using long-abandoned technology (and, even then, had to be finished in the U.K.) is an interesting one and the whole project has been the subject of a brutally frank - and therefore highly entertaining - Harvard Design School case study. So, two museums, one with a painting of the raw material, the other with a spectacular example of the product.

About the author Michael Welland (1946 - 2017) Michael Welland was a geologist who worked around the world in the energy industry. He was a fellow of the Geological Societies of America and London and the Royal Society for the Arts and Commerce. His publications include Sand: A Journey through Science and the Imagination (2009) and The Desert: Land of Lost Borders (2014).

Glass bottle in a furnace for making glass during demonstration at a Murano glass factory in Venezia. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Venini & co., Murano, Fulvio Bianconi, circa 1950. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Louvre Museum pyramid illuminated at night. Photo by Shubhagata Sengupta. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Catalogue

Gogottes: unfolding time

1 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 38cm, width: 35cm, depth: 20cm

2 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 49cm, width: 43cm, depth: 16cm

3 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 111cm, width: 68cm, depth: 30cm

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4 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 35cm, width: 44cm, depth: 23cm

5 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 91cm, width: 146cm, depth: 32cm

6 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 47cm, width: 60cm, depth: 27cm

7 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 44cm, width: 54cm, depth: 23cm

8 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 70cm, width: 85cm, depth: 38cm

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9 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 72cm, width: 79cm, depth: 20cm

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10 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 63cm, width: 59cm, depth: 29cm

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11 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 53cm, width: 85cm, depth: 40cm

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12 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 111cm, width: 63cm, depth: 36cm

Works of art purchased from Eskenazi Ltd. London, are now in the following museum collections:

Ackland Art Museum, North Carolina Arita Porcelain Park Museum, Saga Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Asia House, Mr and Mrs John D Rockefeller 3rd Collection, New York Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama British Museum, London Brooklyn Museum, New York Chang Foundation, Taibei Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum, Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, Korea Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus Corning Museum of Glass, Corning Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Dayton Art Institute, Dayton Denver Art Museum, Denver Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Flagstaff House Museum of Teaware, Hong Kong Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Hagi Uragami Museum, Hagi Hakone Museum of Art, Hakone Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts Hetjens Museum, Düsseldorf Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis Israel Museum, Jerusalem Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, Rome Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth Kuboso Memorial Museum of Arts, Izumi, Osaka Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles Louvre Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi M Woods Museum, Beijing Matsuoka Museum of Art, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Miho Museum, Shigaraki Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis MOA Museum of Art, Atami Musée Ariana, Geneva Musée des arts asiatiques, Nice Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet, Paris

Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg Museum für Lackkunst, Münster Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Museum of Islamic Art, Doha Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka Museum Rietberg, Zurich National Gallery of Australia, Canberra National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne National Museum of Singapore, Singapore Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City Nezu Museum, Tokyo Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Speed Art Museum, Louisville State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Beijing Toguri Museum of Art, Tokyo Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo Tsui Museum of Art, Hong Kongi Tsz Shan Monastery Buddhist Art Museum, Hong Kong Victoria and Albert Museum, London Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond Worcester Art Museum, Worcester Zhiguan Museum of Fine Art, Beijing

Previous Exhibitions

March 1972 Inaugural exhibition Early Chinese ceramics and works of art. June 1972 Georges Rouault, an exhibition arranged by Richard Nathanson. June 1973 Ancient Chinese bronze vessels, gilt bronzes and early ceramics. November 1973 Chinese ceramics from the Cottle collection. December 1973 Japanese netsuke formerly in the collection of Dr Robert L Greene. June 1974 Early Chinese ceramics and works of art. November 1974 Japanese inro- from the collection of E A Wrangham. May 1975 Japanese netsuke and inro- from private collections. June 1975 Ancient Chinese bronzes from the Stoclet and Wessén collections. June 1976 Chinese jades from a private collection. June 1976 Michael Birch netsuke and sculpture. June 1976 Japanese netsuke and inro- from private collections. June 1977 Ancient Chinese bronze vessels, gilt bronzes and sculptures; two private collections, one formerly part of the Minkenhof collection. June 1978 Ancient Chinese sculpture. June 1978 Michael Webb netsuke. June 1978 Eighteenth to twentieth century netsuke. June 1979 Japanese netsuke from private collections. June 1980 Japanese netsuke from private collections and Michael Webb netsuke. July 1980 Ancient Chinese bronzes and gilt bronzes from the Wessén and other collections. December 1980 Chinese works of art from the collection of J M A J Dawson. October 1981 Japanese netsuke and inro- from the collection of Professor and Mrs John Hull Grundy and other private collections. December 1981 Ancient Chinese sculpture. October 1982 Japanese inro- from private collections. November 1983 Michael Webb, an English carver of netsuke. October 1984 Japanese netsuke, ojime, inro- and lacquer-ware. June 1985 Ancient Chinese bronze vessels, gilt bronzes, inlaid bronzes, silver, jades, ceramics – Twenty five years. December 1986 Japanese netsuke, ojime, inro- and lacquer-ware. June 1987 Tang. June 1989 Chinese and Korean art from the collections of Dr Franco Vannotti, Hans Popper and others. November 1989 Japanese lacquer-ware from the Verbrugge collection. December 1989 Chinese art from the Reach family collection. May 1990 Japanese netsuke from the Lazarnick collection. June 1990 Ancient Chinese sculpture from the Alsdorf collection and others. November 1990 The Charles A Greenfield collection of Japanese lacquer. June 1991 Inlaid bronze and related material from pre-Tang China. November 1992 Japanese lacquer-ware – recent acquisitions. December 1992 Chinese lacquer from the Jean-Pierre Dubosc collection and others. June 1993 Early Chinese art from tombs and temples. June 1993 Japanese netsuke from the Carré collection. June 1994 Yuan and early Ming blue and white porcelain. June 1995 Early Chinese art: 8th century BC – 9th century AD. October 1995 Adornment for Eternity, loan exhibition from the Denver Art Museum. June 1996 Sculpture and ornament in early Chinese art. November 1996 Japanese inro- and lacquer-ware from a private Swedish collection. March 1997 Ceramic sculpture from Han and Tang China. June 1997 Chinese Buddhist sculpture. June 1997 Japanese netsuke, ojime and inro- from the Dawson collection. November 1997 Japanese netsuke – recent acquisitions. March 1998 Animals and animal designs in Chinese art.

June 1998 November 1998 March 1999 November 1999 March 2000 November 2000 March 2001 November 2001 March 2002 November 2002 March 2003 November 2003 March 2004 November 2004 March 2005 November 2005 March 2006 June 2006 November 2006 March 2007 November 2007 March 2008 October 2008 October 2009 March 2010 November 2010 March 2011 November 2011 November 2011 November 2012 October 2013 October 2013 October 2014 October 2014 May 2015 October 2015 October 2016 November 2016 November 2017 May 2018 May 2018 November 2018 November 2019 October 2021

Japanese netsuke, ojime and inro- from a private European collection. Chinese works of art and furniture. Ancient Chinese bronzes and ceramics. Ancient Chinese bronzes from an English private collection. Masterpieces from ancient China. Chinese furniture of the 17th and 18th centuries. Tang ceramic sculpture. Chinese ceramic vessels 500 – 1000 AD. Chinese Buddhist sculpture from Northern Wei to Ming. Two rare Chinese porcelain fish jars of the 14th and 16th centuries. Chinese works of art from the Stoclet collection. Song: Chinese ceramics, 10th to 13th century. Chinese Buddhist figures. A selection of Ming and Qing porcelain. Ancient Chinese bronzes and sculpture. Song ceramics from the Hans Popper collection. A selection of early Chinese bronzes. Recent paintings by Arnold Chang. Chinese porcelain from the 15th to the 18th century. Song: Chinese ceramics, 10th to 13th century (part 3). Mountain landscapes by Li Huayi. Chinese sculpture and works of art. Chinese ceramics and stone sculpture. Seven classical Chinese paintings. Trees, rocks, mist and mountains by Li Huayi. Fiftieth anniversary exhibition: twelve Chinese masterworks. Early Chinese metalwork in gold and silver; works of art of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Chinese huanghuali furniture from a private collection. The twelve animals of the zodiac by Li Huayi. Qing porcelain from a private collection. Junyao. Bo Ju Gui: an important Chinese archaic bronze. Waterfalls, rocks and bamboo by Li Huayi. Chinese sculpture c. 500 - 1500. Principal wares of the Song period from a private collection. Transfigured echoes: recent paintings by Liu Dan. Recent paintings by Zeng Xiaojun. Early Chinese art from private collections. Six Dynasties art from the Norman A. Kurland collection, Part one. Song: Chinese ceramics, 10th to 13th century (part 5). Gogottes: a rift in time. Six Dynasties art from the Norman A. Kurland collection, Part two. Room for study: fifty scholars’ objects. Tang: ceramics, metalwork and sculpture.

(detail) 3 Gogotte, Fontainebleau, France, height: 111cm, width: 68cm, depth: 30cm

ESKENAZI Oriental Art 10 Clifford Street London W1S 2LJ Telephone: 020 7493 5464 Fax: 020 7499 3136 e-mail: gallery@eskenazi.co.uk web: www.eskenazi.co.uk