Every now and then, in the vastness of the cultural landscape, there is a place, an exhibition, an artist that marks us forever. All our life we think back to this fleeting and determining moment, to this furtive encounter that shakes us up forever and gives Art all its meaning. This emotion can be felt in front of Jean-Michel Basquiat's masterpieces at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010 or when discovering Mapplethorpe's photographs at the Grand Palais in 2014. I also think of the Matisse paintings in the Pushkin collection, the Water Lilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie, the colors of Niki de Saint Phalle that filled me with wonder and the Quattro Stagioni of Cy Twombly that made me shed a tear.
It is the memory of this emotion that keeps me coming back to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to admire the steel ellipses of Richard Serra. In the immensity of this vaulted room lie the single, double or complex silhouettes of several monumental spirals. "The Matter of Time" offers a dizzying and unforgettable sensation of space in motion. The sculptures seem alive, vibrant, infinite.
But this joyful reunion with Serra was quickly overshadowed by an unexpected encounter with an artist I had vaguely heard of: Alice Neel. The name of this American painter, born in 1900, has rarely traveled to Europe. However, Alice Neel is one of the most radical artists of the 20th century. A feminist icon ignored during her lifetime, a fervent advocate for the disenfranchised, a committed activist for minorities, her work expresses the spirit of an era, the intra-history of a New York seen through the prism of those who suffered the injustices of sexism, racism and capitalism, but also of the activists who fought against them.
All her life, the figurative painter has been committed to freezing on canvas the looks and stories of the oppressed in life. She said that she was a "collector of souls" and that she painted "the neurotic, the insane, the unhappy"... One does not leave this exhibition unscathed, the looks are strong, the colors powerful, the techniques so contemporary. While the figuration makes its great return in the art world, we applaud this phenomenal capacity that the artist has to give life to his subject.
I quote the words of the curator who sums up so well my emotion in front of this moving work: "She apprehends the soul of animate and inanimate beings, but above all ours when we are confronted with her work and her life of constant struggle, with her frank and unapologetic questioning, with insight and naturalness, of all conventions."
Good news, this exhibition will travel to the Centre Pompidou starting October 5, 2022.
