admin9785, Author at Past/Not Past https://pastnotpast.com "The past is never dead. It's not even past (William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun) Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:45:46 +0000 en-US hourly 1 186555760 Germaine Dulac et ses contemporains. Projet d’exposition. https://pastnotpast.com/en/project/germaine-dulac-et-ses-contemporains-projet-dexposition/ https://pastnotpast.com/en/project/germaine-dulac-et-ses-contemporains-projet-dexposition/#respond Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:45:46 +0000 https://pastnotpast.com/?post_type=dt_portfolio&p=16293     Journaliste engagée, photographe, théoricienne du Septième Art, productrice et auteure cinématographique, Germaine Dulac (alias Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider, 1882-1942) est une figure emblématique de l’histoire culturelle française de la première moitié du XXe siècle. Sa contribution à la reconnaissance du cinéma comme langage artistique – combat mené avec Louis Delluc et Ricciotto Canudo,…

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Journaliste engagée, photographe, théoricienne du Septième Art, productrice et auteure cinématographique, Germaine Dulac (alias Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider, 1882-1942) est une figure emblématique de l’histoire culturelle française de la première moitié du XXe siècle. Sa contribution à la reconnaissance du cinéma comme langage artistique – combat mené avec Louis Delluc et Ricciotto Canudo, entre autres – est incontestable.

Née à Amiens dans une famille aisée, elle mènera tout au long de sa vie un double combat à la fois politique et esthétique pour les droits des femmes – de vote, de travail, de « désir » – et pour la reconnaissance du statut d’auteur cinématographique. Lorsque les deux luttes convergent on assiste à des chefs-d’œuvre comme La Souriante Madame Beudet (1923), considéré comme le premier film féministe, mais aussi comme un exemple de création expérimentale de l’époque, en vertu de ses nombreux « effets spéciaux ».

L’expérimentation cinématographique sera le chiffre stylistique de toute sa carrière de cinéaste, y compris dans les productions plus commerciales comme le ciné-roman Gossette (1923).

Aujourd’hui, la notoriété de Germaine Dulac est surtout liée au film La Coquille et le Clergymen (1927), adaptation d’un scénario d’Antonin Artaud, considérée comme le premier film surréaliste. Sans doute contrariés par le peu de participation de l’écrivain à la réalisation du film, à sa sortie au Studio des Ursulines les surréalistes organisèrent une véritable expédition punitive contre la cinéaste, connue sous le nom de « bagarre des Ursulines ».

Comme beaucoup de cinéastes de la première avant-garde, Germaine Dulac abandonnera la création cinématographique avec l’avènement du film sonore. Pour de nombreux théoriciens et réalisateurs du muet, ce qui avait fait l’unicité de l’art cinématographique était l’absence de paroles. Elle continuera tout de même à exploiter ses compétences de réalisatrice en dirigeant les ciné-journaux de Pathé, jusqu’à sa mort en 1942.

Malgré l’intérêt que Germaine Dulac a suscité auprès de la communauté des chercheurs dans le monde entier, on histoire n’est pas très connue. Nous pensons que le moment est venu de faire connaître au grand public cette figure d’exception de l’histoire culturelle française à travers une exposition et au prisme de ses nombreuses collaborations artistiques et professionnelles : Irène Hillel-Erlanger, Eve Francis, Stacia Napierkovska, Louis Delluc, Ricciotto Canudo, Antonin Artaud, entre autres.

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]]> https://pastnotpast.com/en/project/germaine-dulac-et-ses-contemporains-projet-dexposition/feed/ 0 16293 Exhibition project : « Leo Maillet or how to remain an artist against all odds » https://pastnotpast.com/en/project/exhibition-project-leo-maillet-or-how-to-remain-an-artist-against-all-odds/ Tue, 14 Jan 2020 15:44:26 +0000 https://pastnotpast.com/?post_type=dt_portfolio&p=16248 The post Exhibition project : « Leo Maillet or how to remain an artist against all odds » appeared first on Past/Not Past.

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Artistic creation against all odds… or how the painter Leopold Mayer from Frankfurt became the artist Leo Maillet (1902 – 1990)

Leo Maillet – born Leopold Mayer – was a Jewish engraver, painter and draughtsman from Frankfurt. His work can be associated with expressionism, expressive realism and New Objectivity. He was a student of Max Beckmann and had an extremely promising career ahead of him but his life took a dramatic turn after the Nazis seized power in Germany. It’s the beginning of a long and arduous odyssey for Maillet, strewn with obstacles and fatal dangers. Interned in France in 1939, he manages to escape from a deportation train in 1942, lives in hiding in the Cevennes region and can finally cross the border to Switzerland where he settles.

A big part of his oeuvre is lost or destroyed. However, even in the most desperate situations, he continues to create and leaves behind around 700 works in different formats and media.

Every story of spoliation is painful but dispossessing an artist has a particularly strong impact. Beyond a purely material loss, it hits an artist’s very identity by erasing all trace of his work. Loss and destruction of works of art signifies the annihilation of a career and its appreciation/acknowledgement. An entire forgotten generation thus waits to be rediscovered.

After the war, Maillet, although deeply scarred, showed an extraordinary tenacity: he initiated lengthy legal reparation and compensation procedures against the French Ministry of Reconstruction and the Federal Republic of Germany. He finally won all his legal battles, which allowed him in turn to relaunch his artistic career.

For more information on Leo Maillet :

Nagel, S., « Leo Maillet – un long combat pour la justice » in Grynberg, A. et Linsler, J. (eds.), L’Irréparable. Itinéraires d’artistes et d’amateurs d’art juifs, réfugiés du ‘Troisième Reich’ en France. Published by Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg / Comité d’histoire CIVS, 2013

http://www.leo-maillet.de/

 

 

 

 

``One of the five greatest German painters and engravers” of the interwar years

” To the extent that I had not already understood this from the files, I discovered the truly tragic destiny of an artist, and at the same time a hard worker whose creative energy in the service of art has remained unchanged […]. I stress that Leo Maillet’s work holds an extremely important artistic value. […]” (Expertise by professor Paul Ortwin Rave, director of Berlin’s Fine Art Library, 1 April 1961)

His work

A story of exile and resilience

Leo Maillet leaves behind an oeuvre of approximately 700 engravings, lithographs, drawings and oil paintings, in a very personal style that falls between expressive realism and New Objectivity.

Several themes run through his life and work: his formative years as a student of Max Beckmann’s, persecution by the Nazis, exile in Paris and the vibrancy of the Paris art scene, the fate of foreign Jews in France, internment, keeping alive with the help of art, music and theatre, his different techniques from engravings to collages, spoliation and the legal battle for compensation.

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]]> 16248 Online exhibition Lucy Krohg: getting past the notion of muse https://pastnotpast.com/en/project/online-exhibition-lucy-krohg-getting-past-the-notion-of-muse/ Mon, 13 Jan 2020 17:02:47 +0000 https://pastnotpast.com/?post_type=dt_portfolio&p=16235 Lucy Krohg came from a modest family background but managed nevertheless to establish herself in the Parisian art scene and to work as a gallerist for 40 years.

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Lucy Krohg: getting past the notion of muse


Although Lucy Krohg (1891-1977) doesn’t feature prominently in publications about 20th century art history, she was without a doubt a hugely important figure in the cosmopolitan Montparnasse of the “Roaring Twenties” and thereafter.
An artist´s model, then a gallerist in Paris, she inspired, mixed and worked with some of the most important names of the time’s international artistic scene: from the Bulgarian Jules Pascin to the Norwegian Per Krohg or the American sculptor Cecil Howard.

 

Born in 1891 in Issy-les-Moulineaux to a French father and a Swiss-German mother, Cécile Vidil – she changes her name to Lucy Krohg after marriage to the painter Per Krohg – was above all an emancipated, free-minded woman like so many of the oft-forgotten women who played influential roles in the artistic milieus of the time.

Lucy was painter Jules Pascin´s muse and long-time partner and it was she who found him in his studio after he committed suicide, leaving a note saying “Adieu Lucy”. Along with Pascin’s wife, artist Hermine David, she inherited and managed his estate.

In 1932, she opens her own gallery at 10bis place Saint-Augustin, where she sells works by Pascin, his wife Hermine David, whom she will take care of until the end of her life , and by numerous other artists: Marcel Gromaire, Pierre Dubreuil, Oskar Kokoschka, Edouard Goerg, Suzanne Valadon and her students, Carlos Botelho, Zoum Walter, Jacqueline Lamba, … She is at the time one of the few women gallerists in Paris.

Lucy was also an artist herself: in February 1915 in Copenhagen, for instance, she exhibited, alongside paintings of Per Krohg, dolls and hand-painted scarves which received very positive reviews. She later continued to draw and to create batik.

The purpose of this exhibition is to tell/recount the story of this eclectic protagonist of the interwar years’ Tout-Paris.

Through reproductions of works of art, archive documents and photos, Lucy Krohg will lead us into her personal and artistic universe, much richer and more complex than one might guess from the mere mentions of her as Pascin’s muse.

Montparnassienne par excellence

Muse, artist, gallerist

We are very grateful to Lucy’s grandson Tom Krohg and Pascin expert Rosemarie Napolitano for their help.

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