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Episode 302 [13:21]
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Back in August I interviewed Jocelyne Montpetit, who just so happens to be performing Avril est le mois le plus cruel at the Agora de la Danse until September 23. We discussed a lot of stuff. In this first of six parts Ms. Montpetit talks about her background and how she got into dance.
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Does anyone know anything about this sculpture in front of 1259 Saint Marc?
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A picture show for your edification. Blame it on the positive feedback on the previous ones I’ve been getting recently.
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I’m not going to write about the Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibit at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. But if you want to see pictures, Michael Ernest Sweet just posted a set up on Flickr, and if you do a search there, you can find over 1,300 more. Definitely cheaper that way.
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When I first read this review in the New York Times last year, I said to myself, “Maybe, just perhaps I should go to London, it sounds like a pretty kick-ass exhibit.” But then life got in the way, I put the idea on the back burner and almost forgot about it.
But everything works, if you let it. And it wasn’t but a couple of months later that I discovered that the exhibit, Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1900-1929 was going to be in Quebec City this summer. Sweet! While it is only a five hour plane ride from Montreal to London, it is only a three hour car ride from Montreal to Quebec City. Or in other words 40% shorter, and there’s room to stretch, and the food is better.
One problem, while I don’t know how to fly, buying a plane ticket isn’t too complicated. But as I also don’t know how to drive, trying to find a sucker someone extremely kind, nice and generous who would drive me and my sorry ass down river so I could see a bunch of ballet costumes that were almost a hundred years old did almost prove to be an insurmountable obstacle.
In the interim this review came out in Le Devoir (unfortunately behind a paywall) where Catherine Lalonde wrote « Demeure donc une impression de rendez-vous manqué. » Or if you prefer, “One gets a sense of missed opportunity.” Which almost put a kibosh on my desires. But thankfully I am pigheaded, persistent, and kinda realize that my cultural connections are much more aligned with the New York Times than they are with Le Devoir. So on August 29, I got chauffeured down the 20, and boy am I glad I got so lucky.
But lets back up here for an instant. First, if you need to know who Sergei Diaghilev is start with this book by Sjeng Scheijen. Don’t come looking for me to explain anything. Second, if you need to know what Les Ballets Russes were get this book by Lynn Garafola.
That’s one of the things I didn’t like about the Le Devoir review, given that a hard copy review has serious space limitations to use more than 30% of the word count explaining the historical background is a decision I’m not quite sure I understand.
Now that we’re all on the same page, what made it across the ocean is a slightly smaller and modified of the exhibit from the Victoria and Albert Museum called Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1900-1929. Basically there was a whack of stuff added from the Bibliolthèque de la danse Vincent Warren and they cut some of the antecedents and maybe (my memory is a tad sketchy on this) some of the stuff that happened after he died. In Quebec there were nine sections in three galleries, in England there were (I think) two more sections, and I don’t know how many more galleries.
To cut to the chase, what got me were the costumes
Now a) I’m used to seeing my ballet from the cheap seats and b) most of the dance performances that I see these days are not ballet. So being able to get this close to them and see them from all sides was surprisingly quite a thrill. The pictures don’t do them justice.
I was also fascinated by this piece of psychedelia, made more than 30 years before the invention of the word psychedelic.
Unfortunately, as I was initially planning on just enjoying the exhibit, and not writing about it, I didn’t take a single note, and as you can see am having to rely on pictures from other sources. However after going through the entire show I did ask a couple of questions of Jean-Pierre Labiau, curator of the exhibition, and he was quite gracious and generous with his time. I was also able to score one of the visitor’s booklets that they gave everyone, so I don’t quite sound so foolish.
They also gave everyone an audio guide, which only contained music. As M. Labiau pointed out there isn’t an awful lot of classical ballet in Quebec City and I guess that they wanted everyone to be able to hear the music that would have accompanied the performances. I was able to avoid the difficulties Ms. Lalonde had, by just saying “thanks, but no thanks,” and walking around the exhibit without headphones.
Also, I’m not sure if I was the one setting up the exhibit, that I would have done it thematically. Given how didactic it was (sorry about my consistent overuse and repetition of the word didactic, but I’m going through a phase. Not in this article specifically, but in life and in general I’m using it way too much).
I think, arranging it chronologically might have helped a bit, but no one thought to ask me. And then another thought that occurred to me on the ride back was that while being able to see the Picasso, Matisse and Braque designed costumes was pretty cool, artists today, or make that contemporary Quebecois artists who paint, don’t do work in textile.
I don’t know if this is a good thing – keeping your artistic output focused always helps in getting recognition – but it was kind of cool. It would be interesting to see someone like Adad Hannah, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Shary Boyle or Isabelle Hayeur design ballet (or theatre) costumes or more generally work with fabric.
And being able to see the sketches by Picasso, Matisse and Braque (and lots of others as well – heck I don’t think I have ever been that close to anything Coco Channel touched ever before (or will be ever again) in my life.
And this too was interesting, virtual reality before they invented computers, or make believe you were Diaghilev in your very own home.
And as this was my first visit to the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, it struck me as being much smaller than I imagined, at some point I’m going to have to try to sucker convince or bribe someone to go back.
And then finally if you want to read someone else who is much more eloquent than I am on the exhibit, you should take a gander at Andrew O’Hagan’s review from the Guardian.
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Slow news day, but I’m hungry…
I know of a couple of other fruit trees in town, and the Jardin botanique de Montréal also has some fruits and vegetables at this time of year. But the people who would be most up to date about where you can eat off the sidewalks would be the fine folk at the Collectif de recherche sur l’aménagement paysager et l’agriculture urbaine durable (who are also responsible for the garden at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
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A short and mostly silent viseo I made on the exhibit at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Déjà, La Grand Déploiement de la Collection was the first time that the permanent collection had been exhibited in all eight galleries of the museum.
Episode 301 [11:30]
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The exhibition ran from May 26 to September 4, 2011 and was curated by Josée Bélisle.
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Someone has a really good color matching program and likes hip hop and bixis.
Did I miss any? Has anyone seen any others?
OK, I made that one up myself. Labelle is part of the Desjardins advertisement campaign on the back of the bixi bicycles that our hip hop fan is mocking. But they also happen to be one of my mostest favorite bands in the entire know universe.
[Edit October 7: More modified Bixis here.]
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One of my favorite Montreal sculptures is Comme si le temps… de la rue by Pierre Granche. Unfortunately, in the most recent set of renovations to what used to be the Hall des Pas perdus of Place des Arts, but that they now call Espace culturel Georges-Émile-Lapalme they have just about killed it.
A little background; back in the early 90’s the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal was planning on moving from Cité du Havre to downtown and getting themselves a brand spanking new building in the process. As the law stipulated, 1% of the project had to be dedicated to creating art. Even if it was a museum they still had to make more art specifically for the place (that’s one of the things I like most in theory about the 1% for art law, is that it ends up creating site specific work).
Anyhows, Pierre Granche [pdf alert] a sculptor and a teacher (he was one of the people responsible for the Universite de Montreal‘s visual arts department – and now that he’s dead, they no longer have one. Make of that what you will…) submitted a proposal and won. (I’m still going to have to try and find out who was one the jury.) And in 1992, what ended up getting built was Comme si le temps… de la rue.
Basically it was a bunch of aluminum cutouts in a semi circle with a waterfall. It was open to the sky and viewable from the esplanade of Place des Arts, which gave a viewer the chance to have a complete overview of the entire piece (which is not a small piece by any stretch of the imagination). And there is a skylight looking down into the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal’s restoration workshops.
[Old pictures here, here, here, and here]
I never gave it much thought, always figuring that at some time in the future I would hunker down and give it the time, energy and thought that it required.
Well that time is now (actually, Sunday night, as I try to write these posts in advance of posting them). Because I was passing by over the weekend and from where I sit the powers that be (in reality Consortium Menkès, Schooner, Dagenais, Le Tourneux/Provencher, Roy Jean-Pierre Le Tourneux, concepteur Claude Bourbeau, chargé de projet) have completely and thoroughly killed, destroyed, ruined and entirely screwed up Comme si le temps… de la rue [pdf alert] by Pierre Granche.
In short, by placing a roof over it and turning off the waterfall, they have stripped the sculpture of all meaning, significance and comprehensibility. it is now no more than the equivalent of a fancy-ass and extremely expensive indoor lawn ornament for the Deschamps bar at Place des Arts.
From the seats at the the Deschamps bar, it is completely and thoroughly impossible to get any perspective on the piece. By being so close to it, you literally can’t see the forest for the trees.
The roof of the bar prevents you from seeing the tops of the sculptures. And by being so close you can no longer gain any perspective on the base. And perspective was what Comme si le temps… de la rue was all about. There are two extremely large and two merely large aluminum sculptures that depending on which way you swing could represent either the ancient Egyptian god Sobek, or the ancient Egyptian god Set. There are also a couple of construction cranes, and seven things, that again (depending on which way you swing) could either be some sort of vaguely sphinx-like objects, or if you squint really heard could be viewed as some kind of deer or reindeer-like domesticated animal.
My quick and dirty translation of the plaque for the blokes in the house
Pierre Granche’s installation offers a mythical vision of Montreal. Inspired from Greek Theatre and Egyptian iconography, it works a representation of the urban fabric between Mount Royal and the St. Lawrence River through the use of a waterfall. Sculptured female figures used as a columns in an Egyptian style with bird’s heads refer to the history of art and architecture in a totem pole fashion. The sphinxes with deer antlers make their presence known on the outskirts of a city in action. And finally, the bird’s eye view of the work was from the esplanade of Place des Arts Preview, reflects the city as the top of Mont Royal.
OK, how many mistakes can you spot? If I were a tourist wandering through Espace culturel Georges-Émile-Lapalme I’d be scratching my head in wonder, trying to figure out what the heck they were talking about. Waterfall? Bird’s eye view? There ain’t none, no more.
And while I’m at it, there isn’t any Greekness (theatre or iconography or anything else) in the piece. When they are writing in French they use the word cariatides or in squarehead speak: caryatid, or in plain English “a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting moldings and bands on her head.” (Thanks Wikipedia!) And they speak of it as the parts that are Greek. One problem though, a column by definition supports something. And these objects don’t support a darn thing. Comme si le temps… de la rue is 100% Egyptian in its influences.
And as long as I am disputing the “official” wall plaque. Those aren’t deer antlers on the sphinxes either. I don’t think that there ever was a 37 point buck that ever lived… anywhere.
However, if you go with the idea that the two extremely large and the two merely large sculptures are representations of the Egyptian god Set, the god of chaos and foreign lands. Then I think we’re getting someplace. The early 1990s in Quebec were a volatile place. Quebec was on the cusp of a referendum to separate, the Bloc Quebecois were founded in 1991. In between 1990 and 1993 there were 46 major buildings built in Montreal. The Montreal Expos were sold in 1991 and subsequently became one of the best teams in major league baseball in the early 1990s. 1992 was also the 375th anniversary of the founding of Montreal. There were a ton of things happening in Montreal at the time and there was most definitely a sense of chaos in the air (if you don’t trust me, ask someone else who lived here then).
Also if you look closely, on each of the Sets, there is a cityscape, with some sort of root structure. I’m not quite certain what to make of the root structures. But if you flip them upside down, they become the deer antlers on the sphinxes. And there are no known instances of deer appearing in ancient Egypt. But maybe, kind of, perhaps it has something to do with some sort of family tree-like structure? I dunno.
But we’re getting off the point here. Comme si le temps… de la rue is all about Montreal. There’s a representation of the mountain on the largest Set, and the waterfall was a direct reference to the river.
And while we’re showing lots of pictures, here are some of it from above.
And then in consideration of the unilingual people in the house, Comme si le temps… de la rue translates as “As if time… from the street.” You can fill in the blank yourself, but by referring back to ancient Egyptian times Granche endows Montreal with a similar sense of history. Despite it being made when Montreal was only 350 years-old, if you squint hard enough (or maybe click your heels three times or go to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe) you can pretend that Montreal has been around for more than 5,000 years, just like Egypt.
Then my last question is, if it was made for the construction of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and is directly on top of their restoration workshops, why does it belong to the Place des Arts collection? Shouldn’t it belong to the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal?
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Episode 300 [8:06]
Chris ‘Zeke’ Hand talking to Montreal artist, photographer and skydiver Paul Litherland about his work and life.