ART-PRESENTATION: Musicircus… from Pompidou Collection

Following the framework of the Beacons journey, Centre Pompidou-Metz presents an exhibition exploring the links between visual arts and music. Highlighting around 40 flagship artworks from the national museum of modern art, Centre Pompidou collection, the exhibition offers the opportunity to reinterpret the history of modern and contemporary art through the prism of music.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Centre Pompidou Metz Archive

The exhibition examines the practice of famous artists, who were amateur musicians or music-lovers and whose works were influenced by music, bringing light to the paramount importance of the notions of rhythm in the birth of Abstraction, as well as the links between musicality and movement at the dawn of Kinetic Art. Among the works presented, the visitors will for instance be able to admire Marc Chagall’s “La Noce”, the reconstitution of Wassily Kandinsky’s murals for the Juryfreie Kunstschau exhibition at the Berlin Glaspalast in 1922, a true symphony laid in space, the light and color variations of “Your concentric welcome” by Olafur Eliasson.  The exhibition is interspersed with rich documentary ensembles (sheet music, archive documents, videos, photographies, correspondences, theory or poetry writings, preliminary drawings, etc.) offering to the visitor a true immersion at the heart of the creative process. On the occasion of the exhibition of the Centre Pompidou’s masterpieces embodying the synesthesia between composers and artists since the birth of Abstraction, Centre Pompidou-Metz revives for the first time in France, and under the direction of Stephen Montague, the collective work by John Cage entitled “Musicircus”, created in 1967, and inviting musicians to play or perform in total freedom within an orchestra open to everyone.

Info: Curators: Emma Lavigne & Anne Horvath, Centre Pompidou-Metz, 1 Parvis des Droits de l’Homme, Metz, Duration: 20/4-17/7/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon: 10:00-18:00, www.centrepompidou-metz.fr