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The enigmatic dealer
Miró, Calder, Giacometti, Braque: Aimé Maeght and his artists
Royal Academy of Arts
4 October 2008 to 2 January 2009
£9 (full price – concessions available)
Reviewed by
Manny Thain
THE EXHIBITION is not so much about the artists as
the Maeght Gallery itself, founded in Paris by Aimé and Marguerite
Maeght at the end of 1945 (just over a year after the city had been
liberated from Nazi occupation). It is artistically interesting. The
four main artists on show (plus walk-on parts for Henri Matisse and
Pierre Bonnard) were influential: Joan Miró, Alfredo Giacometti, Georges
Braque and Alexander Calder.
In 1936, the Maeghts opened a shop in Cannes on the
French Riviera, selling furniture, radios, and pictures by local
artists. Aimé, who had trained as a lithographer, ran a print studio out
of the premises. In 1941, they met Pierre Bonnard. The Maeghts began
selling his paintings, developing a close working and personal
relationship, as they did with many of the artists they worked with.
An intriguing aspect, not explored in this
exhibition, is how it was possible for the Maeghts to operate during the
years of war and occupation. The majority of France was under direct
Nazi occupation, the south-east corner ruled by the Vichy government of
French collaborators. The Maeghts widened their circle to many of the
artists who had fled direct Nazi rule.
Maeght set about recovering Bonnard’s paintings from
his studio in Paris. As Maeght was originally from the north, it was
easier for him to travel there. He would pick up Bonnard’s pictures,
paint landscape scenes over them in gouache, a water-based paint,
signing them as his own work. On his return south, the gouache was
washed away to reveal the originals, unharmed. He provided this service
for other artists, too. Maeght became their go-between and fixer,
acquiring artworks along the way. Of course, this risky endeavour was
not a purely charitable exercise. He made a lot of money out of it.
This knowledge is not essential in evaluating the
art on show in this exhibition. But it raises some important questions.
And isn’t it remiss of an exhibition which aims to deal with the close
relationships between these very influential gallery owners and artists
not to explore it in some detail? It is, after all, key to understanding
how the Maeghts were able to rise to pre-eminence in the contemporary
art scene in the years immediately after the second world war.
Setting up the Maeght Gallery in Paris at the end of
1945 proved to be exceptionally good timing. Paris had been liberated in
August 1944 but war still raged elsewhere in Europe. German cities were
being flattened by British bombers and Soviet tanks. Britain was still
being bombed. There was little competition, therefore, from inside or
outside of France.
Its first exhibition, in December 1945, was of works
by Matisse. The gallery was innovative. Aimé and Marguerite Maeght
experimented with thematic exhibitions. Aimé was particularly interested
in collaborations between artists and writers, using his printing
expertise to produce limited edition books and print series, some fine
examples of which are displayed in this exhibition.
Of the four featured artists, the first two we
encounter are the Spanish Catalan, Joan Miró (1893-1993), and the
American, Alexander Calder (1898-1976). They met in Paris in 1928 and
remained close friends up until Calder’s death.
Calder trained as a mechanical engineer in New
Jersey, USA. Mobiles (suspended) or stabiles (ground-based) that move in
the air were his speciality. Cat Snake (1968) is here behind glass,
static, trapped. In a film loop of Calder working, we see him place the
near-flat metal cat’s head onto the tip of the snakelike body. He spins
it on its point horizontally. This sets the body oscillating vertically.
The creature comes to life. Similarly, in the film, Calder enters his
studio giving one of the mobiles a slap, sending it twirling violently.
He induces movement in another by blowing it. Seeing him do that is to
get what this is about: movement and life.
The film loops are a good idea, affording a glimpse
into the worlds of these artists. Unfortunately, the angle at which the
screens are tilted makes it impossible to get a clear view. To minimise
the image distortion, it is necessary to press right up against the
glass cabinets.
The Maeght Gallery was the venue for the
International Surrealist Exhibition in 1947. It was organised by André
Breton (one of the movement’s founders, marking his return to Europe
from the US) and Marcel Duchamp. But what did surrealism have to say in
the immediate post-war period that marked it out from the post-Russian
revolution period of its birth, or the tumultuous 1930s? On this, the
exhibition offers no information.
Miró’s Superstition (1947), a large serpent-shaped
frieze, was painted for that exhibition and dominates one of the walls.
Lack of space, however, makes it difficult to look at, except by getting
too close. Step back and the display cabinet gets in the way! In the
corner of the room stands his Constellation (1972) a large
half-spherical sculpture on a pole. The rough facing surface is a dull
green circle, cut by a deep clean incision, smooth and brown inside. A
sphere protrudes two-thirds of the way down, the rounded back, smooth
and black.
Next is a room featuring Georges Braque (1882-1963)
and Alberto Giacometti (1901-66). There are a few paintings by Braque
which recall his earlier cubist works – the revolutionary art form he
developed with Pablo Picasso in 1909-10. But these are from the late
1940s and mid 1950s. There are country scenes, too. Thick browns, heavy
greens. A skeletal horse-drawn plough lies in a field alone, white, like
weather-whitened bone.
The most dynamic Braque paintings in this room are
from 1931. Images are formed from cuts into plaster painted black,
revealing thin white lines, crosshatched ‘shading’, some light brown.
Figures emerge from the black background, representing the creation of
the immortals in Theogony by the eighth century Greek poet, Hesiod.
Giacometti’s sculptures stand out. Standing Woman 1
(1960) is nearly nine feet tall (2.7m). Greened bronze, rigid, straight,
thin, frail, distant. He modelled his sculptures in clay, cutting into
the figure, whittling it down, sticking bits back on to create his
trademark rough, hazy and distorted surface. Dog (1957) is emaciated,
head down, plodding on. Giacometti said he imagined himself as a dog,
prowling the streets at night. Walking Man 1 (1960) leans forward, his
legs striding, hands fixed to his hips. Another sculpture is Spoon Woman
(1926), a ‘classically’ cubist/African form, from the time when
Giacometti was a fellow-traveller of the cubists and surrealists – a
totally different era from the other three main sculptures mentioned
above. As with the earlier Braque, no connection is made between earlier
and later works. They just are.
The fourth and final room reveals more of an idea of
what Aimé Maeght was about artistically. Here we see the fruits of the
collaborations between artists and text. This room features the journal,
Derrière Le Miroir (Behind the Mirror), produced to accompany the
exhibitions at the gallery, each with an original lithograph by the
exhibited artist on the cover. From 1946-82, 253 issues appeared, 168 of
them on show here, an arresting display of Braque, Miró, Giacometti,
Calder, Francis Bacon, Marc Chagall, Vasili Kandinsky, André Derain and
many others. Other limited edition illustrated books and publications
are on display.
It is refreshing to move away from the information
overload of the blockbuster exhibitions all too prevalent in major
exhibition spaces today. And there is much of genuine interest in this
exhibition. But it feels like a lost opportunity. The story of how the
owners of a shop in the south of France became leading figures in
contemporary art for a time has to be a fascinating one. This
exhibition, however, does not do it justice, leaving too many questions
unanswered.
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