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JUNE - JULY 2014 The bimonthly electronic journal of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation
EDITORIAL TEAM
Georgia Alevizaki, Paraskevi Gerolymatou, Andreas Georgiadis, Maria Koutsomallis, Alexandra Papakostopoulou, Maria Skamaga, Irene Stratis Designed and edited by
Τ +30 210 - 7252896 www.moca-andros.gr | www.goulandris.gr
CONTENTS
IN PLACE OF A PROLOGUE
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By Kyriakos Koutsomallis, Director of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation
AN EXHIBITION
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S o p h ia V a r i Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Moca - Andros
I N S I D E T H E F O U N D AT I O N ' S P E R M A N E N T C O L L E C T I O N
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Sophia Vari, Le jour des jours
FORMER BEGF SCHOLARS
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Myrto Sarma
I N T E R N AT I O N A L L I S T I N G S / C U LT U R E A list of major art shows around the world
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I N P L A C E O F A P R O LO G U E
In this seventh issue of our online bulletin, we are happy to announce to our readers that the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation will be organizing an exhibit dedicated to the work of renowned artist Sophia Vari, to be held through the summer months at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Andros. Vari, a Greek by birth who has spent the better part of her life away from Greece, has had a multicultural education in art, followed by an international career, throughout which she avoided identifying with any groups, schools or art movements, to create instead a world of images that is as personal as the pictorial references on which it draws. The exhibition aims to showcase the many iconographic transformations ingeniously worked out and performed by the artist's powerful imagination and skill in what is an extraordinary dialectic of form. Alongside sculptures of varying scale and type, the exhibition includes drawings, watercolors, oil paintings, reliefs, and collages, as well as objects of microsculpture. The issue also features an intriguing interview with former BEGF Scholar Myrto Sarma who is currently living and working in the UK. Sarma's original thought as embodied in her set and costume designs for the theater contributes to animating theatrical discourse. As always, you can access us on all social media platforms and share with us your ideas, impressions and comments. Kyriakos Koutsomallis Director
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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
SOPHIA VARI Andros, 29.6-28.9.2014
Sophia Vari, a distinguished artist that is well-versed in the art of many different cultures and recognized the world over, has conjured in her art an entirely personal universe of forms, a world of images that is decidedly her own, while maintaining her independence against established positions and views. Relying on instinct and inspiration and tirelessly applying her intuitive, resourceful artistic genius and idiosyncratic sensibility, her technical accomplishment and skill, she has produced art of a temperate, composed, yet subversive beauty that is marked for its originality. Central to the exhibition organized by the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation at MoCA, Andros, are sculptures of varying scale and type, alongside which viewers will find a selection of drawings, watercolors, oil paintings, reliefs, collages, and examples of microsculpture. The exhibition aims to showcase the many iconographic transformations ingeniously worked out and performed by the artist’s powerful imagination and skill in what is a highly distinctive, in fact extraordinary, dialectic of form.
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ÂŤThe eyes of others are a mirror for our errors.Âť Sophia Vari
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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART Kyriakos Koutsomallis
Sophia Vari: The sensualism of a temperate post-cubist beauty. It seems Vari was destined to take the road of art; (…) Early on she felt a strong desire for art take root inside her; a challenge she took on with perseverance and gusto. She was successful in her pursuits, inventing her own formal language and compositional codes, and giving priority to a personal sense of creative time, all of which would grant her work its distinctive individuality, genuineness, and enduring relevance. […] Attuned to the ebb and flow of a quiet inner rhythm, relying on instinct and inspiration, on technical accomplishment and skill, the artist followed the emotionally taxing, onerous path to the psyche's secret threshold, with the certainty it was the only passageway for all things new, whole, self-existent, genuine, original, for everything art strives after. If her work, in the many forms and categories it encompasses, has been well received and widely accepted the world over, it is because the artist demanded of herself the right to express her personal vision; because she adhered to subjective standards alone and heeded no other counsel but that of her intrinsic emotional prowess, idiosyncratic sensibility, and sense of freedom, and because she did so with such strength as cannot be defeated by circumstantial adversity and ephemeral practice. […] Vari, a Greek who has spent the better part of her life abroad, experiences her Greekness as something indivisible, a need that is complete, unmitigated, imperative as are all needs arising in the psyche. Her Greekness is lodged in her mind and consciousness and emerges as remembrance, train-of-thought, and ageless knowledge. In experiencing
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ÂŤBlack and white fuse with the hardness of bronze to make my sculptures come alive.Âť Sophia Vari
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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART this condition Vari is a busy, ever-alert transmitter and, at once, receiver of the exalted morals that are the legacy of her Greek roots. Being the world citizen that she is, she looks for intimations of the creative in a universe that transcends notions of race and ethnicity. […] As catalytic as the influence of family and social milieu may have been, Vari soon gave up inherited pretenses, the inevitable result of false beliefs and the biases that breed them, and was perceptive, discerning enough to not allow such influence to carry its full weight.[…] Certainly, the first fifteen years of her career, a period she spent exploring two-dimensional representation, do seem somewhat 'confused' and agonizing. But from 1975 onwards, Vari would begin to rethink her creative orientation, formulating her own understanding of texture and space, giving in to the allure of tactility, allowing herself to be intrigued by the robustness of materiality, and steering her research into the direction of three-dimensional form. And although her work would continue to suggest a concern with art history as a whole, she would now come to treat painting as mere 'illusion'. Since then, sculpture has been her main focus; it was thanks to her work in sculpture she came to be recognized, having freed herself from her early dilemmas and doubts.
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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART Sculpture would be the means through which she'd claim her place in a tough arena at a time when a dominant movement had yet to form and the mainstream of European art allowed it the freedom to tap a range of sources, including primitivism and the archaic cultures that flourished outside Europe itself. Primitivism, as approached in her work, was at first suggested through surrealist association and a near-abstract geometric treatment of form, which seems suffused by an arcane as much as life-giving spirit of timelessness. […] Sophia Vari responded to the modernist call for renewal, engaging questions of form in a personal dialectic. (…) Though her sculptures are certainly pleasing to look at and feel, it would not do them justice to consider them as mere spectacle; rather, they should be thought of as a form of crystallized energy, the result of a concern with transforming the fundamental, the primal, casting it into shapes that are compatible with the requirements of her own time and, thus, acceptable. It follows that nothing has been easy for her. Like Camille Claudel–under different circumstances, obviously–she too has had to pay the price of her choices: claiming a woman's right to do a tough job, take formless matter and give it shape. She has done so consistently, overcoming obstacles, creating work that is original and aesthetically immaculate, making good use of the freedom bestowed by the autonomous transformative sculptural gesture. […]
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MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
«Cobalt blue, always there in my work, is a symbol of my sense of nostalgia for my native Greece» Sophia Vari
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Sophia Vari Sophia Vari was born in Vari, Attica, in 1940. She received her primary and secondary education in Switzerland, Greece, and the UK. Her career in art began in 1958 while she was a student at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Following her marriage in 1960 and the birth of her daughter Ileana in 1962, Vari settled in Paris. There she frequented the studios of Edouard Mac Avoy and Jean Soubervie before eventually setting up her own studio in 1970. In 1978 she relocated her studio to Montparnasse, the celebrated artists' quarter, and turned to sculpture. In the same year, Vari met artist Fernando Botero, who has since been her partner. The couple share their time between Paris, Pietrasanta, Monte Carlo, New York, and Colombia. Through the following decade, Vari experimented with different production methods and taught painting classes. In 1988 she created her first pieces of jewelry: works of sculpture in miniature scale. Conversely, she has worked systematically on large scale sculpture since the early 90s. At around the same time (1993) she began travelling to Mexico to study the sculptural tradition of the Mayans and the Olmecs. In 1999 Rizzoli published a Vari monograph that was released in the USA, Italy, France, and Spain. Monumental sculptures by the artist have been installed in Athens (Kotzia Scquare), Florence (Palazzo Vecchio, Piazza della Signoria), Paris (Saint-Germaindes-PrÊs), Rome (Piazza Esedra), Tenerife, Monte Carlo (Jardins des Boulingrins), Beijing (Temple of Confucius), Madrid (Paseo de la Castellana), Colombia (Cartagena de Indias), and Pietrasanta (Piazza del Duomo). Major exhibitions of her work have been presented in New York, Paris, Rome, Athens, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Istanbul, Beijing, Colombia, Kuala Lumpur, and elsewhere.
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INSIDE THE F O U N D AT I O N ' S PERMANENT COLLEC TION
Sophia Vari (b. 1940)
Le jour des jours 2005 Marble, 48 x 38 x 45 cm
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FORMER BEGF SCHOLARS
Myrto Sarma BEGF Scholarship 2012, for studies in Costume Design
You have remarked that you feel yourself to be more a theatrologist involved with set and costume design than a set and costume designer working for the theater. How did you make that particular career choice that took you where you are today? My first degree at the Kapodistrian University of Athens was a profoundly formative experience. Such were the gains that I may now say its contribution to shaping my character and my perceptions of society, people, and art has been decisive. However, being a theatrologist means more than just getting a degree in theater studies, and this is mainly because of the nature of the subject itself. Theatrology is deeply rooted in the human condition. A theatrologist must become familiar with dramatic theory and practice, and the many aspects of the theater, with individual and social psychology, with history, philosophy, even biology, before he can approach his subject. Being a theatrologist implies a constant effort to attain knowledge and experience; and, in time, this effort will nourish a deep appreciation for the art of drama. This sense of respect is precisely the source of my creativity. And wanting to stress it and bring it to the fore is the reason for which I call myself a theatrologist before anything else. Certainly, though, I won't deny that this is also because of a deeper need to keep alert, to not stop being the kind of person who loves looking for answers. Whatever the case, the fact is that set and costume design came afterward. While caught up in the web of theater studies, so to speak, I came to realize that 'building' worlds, and 'dressing up' ideas, stories, and emotions fascinated me.
How would you think might a set/costume designer reveal the 'hidden' treasures of dramatic discourse without downplaying the value and curbing the enthusiasm of a personal reading? Perhaps the answer to this question is that this is precisely what I am trying to figure out. And yet I should think that this is more or less an equal 'battle'. To the extent that a theatrical sign is exposed to the gaze and is consequently filtered through individual frames of reference, that is, the cognitive tools that help us interpret the world of images, a result themselves of the knowledge and experience each viewer has accumulated and of their particular backgrounds, it can take on as many meanings as the number of people in the audience. The act of the theater is a communicative act, a fact I always try to keep in mind. To construct beautiful, aesthetically sound images is not enough: how the audience interprets these images, the degree and manner of their decoding needs to be taken into account. 20
Neither theater nor performance are a single visual art, but rather the combination of many different art forms, even when a synthesis of these has not been attempted. What set and costume designers do is open up channels for the audience's interpretations to flow through. But never can anyone be sure which way these approaches will go, if the channels are not deep enough, though perhaps it is not necessary to know – herein lies the magic of this particular form of communication.
Are you interested in new ideas? Where might one look for them in your field? At this point, following the experience of postgraduate studies made possible by a Goulandris Foundation scholarship, I am concerned with new artistic ideas to the extent that they may serve as a springboard for exploring those uncharted territories within. I consider myself an especially lucky person, for although I was introduced to art through my family from very early on, my eyes are still 'hungry' for it. My uncompromising outlook on things, by and large a corollary of my age, means I experience disappointment and resentment every time someone uses art, in my case the art of the Theater, as a playing field for their personal ambitions and biases. Theater in Greece and abroad is often the victim of a mentality that looks for easy answers or embraces the doctrine of 'being avant-garde just for the sake of it', which, let's be honest, is a dated concept and the time has come for us to look in another direction; in fact, the current state of things is forcing us to do so. Unfortunately, I have been away from Greece for almost two years now and I have lost touch with the local art scene. Still, when I visit, or even when I am here in London, I prefer following 'smaller' troupes that include no star actors in the hope of discovering artistic work that matters. Anyway, in theater as in life, when you have nothing to lose, you give everything you've got.
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To see your work is to see that drawing is vital to you both as expressive medium and working method. In a world saturated by sophisticated digital media and 'quick' solutions, you stick to drawing. Why is that? Because drawing is the 'quickest solution' where I am concerned. My work requires me to visualize as effectively as possible the images I carry in my head. All my drawings are incomplete. They are consummated only if and when they become part of a certain production. I am not opposed to using any different media to describe a possible set or costume to the director, or, in this case, my collaborator in the project, if the circumstances so allow, that is. I am currently working on a performance titled Dancerbation that is to be part of the visual art exhibit Out of Our Heads. My drawing skills do not really permit me to depict to any satisfying degree what turns around in my head so I resort to creating scale models, collages, or toiles. I am impressed by computer systems like CAD and would like to become more involved with them at some point, especially with regard to set design. However, to me drawing is the footing upon which a concept develops, the concept itself meandering, going through a series of experiments and attempts at materialization before it can finally take on a more concrete form on paper.
If theater is a political act, would you say that the 'Weimar:2013' production was an artistic response to the current crisis? Talk to us about that project. Theater is a political act inasmuch as it is a communicative act. Its history is at once a history of the political, economic, and social conditions under which human civilization evolved. It wittily winks in the direction of all apolitical individuals who become involved with it, eventually bringing out in them, in one way or another, their sociopolitical potential. The project in question was a combination of five narratives corresponding to six characters and an equal number of performances. I attempted to visualize concepts such as those of the State, violence, the crisis, fascism, fear, and revolt, and to create a spatial void within which new associations might emerge between these concepts, the
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semantic load they carry, the text, and the costume-performance. I was only allowed to put one of these characters on stage and I chose The Crisis. The costume represented an economic system on the brink of complete meltdown, antagonizing the citizenperformer, wrapping up around him in a suffocating embrace, sucking up the air around him. My aim was to underscore the irony of living in such a sunny place, but, alas, with no air to breathe. I also attempted to visualize a personal experience from the summer of 2013, a long gasp at the sight of an elegantly dressed senior couple boarding a train holding hands and then breaking off from each other to walk in opposite directions, their hands still reaching out as if to their fellow passengers. Despite the difficulty involved in maintaining a level of emotional detachment vis-avis my characters, I still tried to place some distance between us as much as that was possible. My aim was not to portray fascism as a monster, but rather point to that on which it feeds; it was not to show fear huddling in a corner, but rather the effect of it; my aim was to show revolt tearing down walls so it can move forward. Brecht once said that the best way to communicate with a fascist was to hit him on the head with a brick. But he gave no answer as to how one approaches people in the grip of fear and convinces them that they indeed have the power to change their lives. This particular project helped familiarize a not so well-informed public with the current state of things in my country; on the other hand, it helped me find answers to some personal questions. I would say that, in reality, it was a personal act of protest set thousands of miles away from Athens, but with my mind and heart attuned to the rhythm of the city's breathing.
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INTERNATIONAL LISTINGS / CULTURE
LONDON
TATE MODERN KAZIMIR MALEVICH
This is the first major Malevich retrospective to be held in almost 25 years, for the purpose of which a number of museums, foundations, private and public collections around the world have joined forces. Exhibition runs from 16 July to 26 October 2014. www.tate.org.uk
LONDON
NATIONAL GALLERY Making colour
A first in the UK, the exhibition is a journey into the world of colour, exploring materials used to create pigments, from lapis lazuli to cadmium, gold and silver. Exhibition runs from 18 June to 7 September 2014. www.nationalgallery.org.uk
LONDON
TATE MODERN HENRI MATISSE – The Cut-Outs
The exhibit features Matisse's paper cut-outs: as many as 120 works created between 1943 and 1954, many of which have never been shown before. Exhibition runs from 14 April to 7 September 2014. www.tate.org.uk
LONDON
THE COURTAULD GALLERY Bruegel to Freud, prints from the Courtauld Gallery
The exhibition features a selection of thirty masterpieces from the Gallery's drawings collection which includes more the 7,000 works. On show are works by Mantegna, Bruegel, Canaletto, Picasso, Matisse, and Freud. Exhibition runs from 19 June to 21 September 2014. www.courtauld.ac.uk
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LIVERPOOL
TATE LIVERPOOL MONDRIAN and HIS STUDIOS
The exhibition commemorates the 70th anniversary of the artist's death and focuses on Mondrian's relationship with architecture and urbanism. Exhibition runs from 19 June to 21 September 2014. www.tate.org.uk
PA R I S
CENTRE POMPIDOU Man Ray, Picabia et la revue
“Litterature” (1922-1924) The exhibition focuses on a critical period in the history of contemporary art, an interim stage between the demise of Dada and the advent of Surrealism. It features twenty six drawings created by Francis Picabia in the early 20s for the cover of Littérature. Exhibition runs from 2 July to 8 September 2014. www.centrepompidou.fr
PA R I S
MUSEE D’ ORSAY Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
This is the first Carpeaux retrospective since 1975. Carpeaux was a sculptor, painter, and illustrator whose work was for the most part commissioned by the court of emperor Napoleon III. Exhibition runs from 24 June to 28 September 2014. www.musee-orsay.fr
PA R I S
PETIT PALAIS
Paris 1900, The City of Entertainment Visitors to the exhibition are invited to relive the glorious experience of Paris in the early 1900s. More than 600 works including paintings, costumes, posters, photographs, films, furniture, jewelry, and sculptures, will immerse visitors into the atmosphere of Belle Époque Paris. Exhibition runs from 2 April to 17 August 2014. www.petitpalais.paris.fr
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Π Ο Λ Ι Τ Ι Σ Τ Ι Κ Η ΑΤ Ζ Ε Ν ΤΑ
VIENNA
ALBERTINA MUSEUM: Alex Katz
Drawings, Cartoons, Paintings The exhibition explores the work of one of the most influential American artists alive, a central figure in the tradition of American self-reflexive painting that adroitly blends the rational, the sensual, and the abstract. Exhibition runs from 28 May to 28 September 2014. www.albertina.at
AMSTERDAM
RIJKSMUSEUM Art is Therapy
British thinkers and writers Alain de Botton and John Armstrong come to the Rijksmuseum to discuss 'what art can mean to visitors'. Rather than approach their subject from an arthistorical viewpoint, de Botton and Armstrong attempt to investigate art's healing potential, its ability to answer life's big questions, through an examination of almost 150 works that take us as far back as the Middle Ages. Exhibition runs from 25 April to 7 September 2014. www.rijksmuseum.nl
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BASEL
FONDATION BEYELER Gerhard richter: pictures - series
This is the largest Richter exhibit ever to be held in Switzerland. It covers a long period in the artist's career, from as early as 1966, reaching up to the present with recent work that has not as yet been shown.
Exhibition runs from 18 May to 7 September 2014. www.fondationbeyeler.ch
VENICE
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, A PRIVATE COL-
LECTION, FROM MANNERISM TO SURREALISM The exhibition presents a large selection of works from the private collection of Richard and Ulla Dreyfus-Best in Basel. It includes almost 110 works by such artists as Arnold Böcklin, Victor Brauner, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Giorgio de Chirico, Francesco Clemente, Dali, Ernst, Magritte, Man Ray and Andy Warhol, among many others.
Exhibition runs from 24 May to 31 August 2014. www.guggenheim-venice.it
MADRID
MUSEO THYSSEN - BORNEMISZA POP MYTHS. Pop Art Myths aims to trace the
origins of international pop art through the private mythologies of its major exponents: Warhol, Rauschenberg, Wesselmann, Lichtenstein, Hockney, Hamilton, the Recap Team, etc. The exhibition brings together works from 50 museums and private collections around the world.
MADRID
REINA SOFIA MUSEUM RICHARD HAMILTON
The work of Richard Hamilton, pioneer Pop artist, is thoroughly explored in this extensive exhibition that features 250 works created between 1949 and 2010. Exhibition runs from 27 June to 13 October 2014. www.museoreinasofia.es
Exhibition runs from 10 June to 14 September 2014. www.museothyssen.org
NEW YORK
WHITNEY MUSEUM of AMERICAN ART JEFF KOONS
Koons is as popular as he is controversial. The exhibition explores the artist's career through a selection of more than 120 objects created from 1978 to the present. Exhibition runs from 27 June to 19 October 2014. www.whitney.org
PHILADELPHIA
THE BARNES FOUNDATION THE WORLD IS AN APPLE: THE STILL LIFES OF PAUL CEZANNE
The exhibit comprises 21 masterpieces that bring into focus the innovation and wealth of Cezanne's art, and attest his rare intuitive powers and unerring aesthetic sensibility. Exhibition runs from 22 June to 22 September 2014. www.barnesfoundation.org
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