S H RAZA EXHIBITION IN CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS
Art and sculpture are a part of French living. This is more specific to the Parisian way of living. In Paris, I found sculpture art a part of the building plan and architecture. Many crossings on the boulevards of this city have busts, sculptures or installation art. Parks are places where you see sculptures and installation art. River-fronts and bridges also have some kind of sculpture or installation art. Many apartment blocks have sculpture art in lobbies or forays. Airports, bus stands and railway stations too have sculptures. In some offices or public places, one is surprised to see a Rodin sculpture. Even the cemeteries have sculpture art on tombstones. The graves of prominent writers, philosophers, painters, singers, musicians, sculptors and actors are frequented by their fans. These graves are always full of flowers. People have an amazing sense of history and culture. They take pride in their language. In many kitchens, I found bone-china crockery with painted reproductions of popular works of Van Gogh, Picasso or Monet. Ask a cashier or a worker in a store, he knows Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, Cezanne, Michelangelo, Van Gogh and wars won by Napoleon Bonaparte. Crowds throng to see art exhibitions. People discuss art, culture, tradition and literature in cafes and restaurants. Monet’s residence is visited like a pilgrimage. To consolidate this scattered sense of art and culture, President Georges Pompidou had the idea of a space dedicated to the culture and art of the 20th and 21st centuries, bringing together visual arts, literature, music, cinema and design in one unique multicultural institution. Accordingly, Centre Pompidou, a vision of France's leader (between 1962 and 1968) took practical shape.
Georges Pompidou was a lover of modern art. The Cultural Centre project was born from a declaration made by Georges Pompidou in 1969: “I passionately want Paris to have a cultural centre which will be both a museum and a creative centre“. As its Piazza and large glass façades already suggest, the corridors on each floor and the terraces on levels 5 and 6 make the Centre Pompidou a building that is resolutely open to the urban space. A staggering six floors of modern and contemporary art to admire, not to mention a rooftop terrace to explore – it's no wonder Centre Pompidou is one of the most popular places to visit in Paris.It houses: the National Museum of Modern Art (Musée national d'Art moderne) on the 4th and 5th levels. This is the largest modern art museum in Europe.
We visited Centre Pompidou on 22nd April, 2023. We arrived at the Centre by RAR-D( Nord) train. Deboarding at Chatelet Les Halles train junction, it took us five minutes to walk to Centre Pompidou. The Metro trains,1, 4,7, 11, and 14 and Bus nos 29,38,47 and 75 can also take one to the Centre from different locations in Paris city.
Dedicated to painting and sculpture, Centre Pompidou also known as "Georges Pompidou National Art and Cultural Centre” is spread over six levels and has two exhibition galleries, permanent art museums, nocturnes, gift shops, restaurants and restrooms. Home to Europe's largest collection of modern and contemporary art, Centre Pompidou has amazed visitors ever since it opened (in 1977) with its radical architectural statement. The building's exposed superstructure is constructed from more than 16,000 tonnes of prefabricated steel parts. Some of the structure's prefabricated components are of a scale rarely seen in the construction industry. One particularly unique element is its 10-tonne gerberettes. The highly-flexible container for art was completed in 1977 by British architect Rogers and Italian architect Piano, who were then collaborating at their studio named Rogers + Piano. One feels as if, Centre Pompidou is like a huge spaceship made of glass, steel and coloured tubing that landed unexpectedly in the heart of Paris. One of the largest modern and contemporary art museums in the world, Pompidou Centre in Paris, is to close for five years of renovations from 2025 as its groundbreaking "inside out" structure, which displays pipework on the outside, has suffered serious wear and tear.
On the day of our visit, two exhibitions were in progress: S H Raza ( from 15th February 2023 to 15th May 2023) and Germaine Richier ( 1st March 2023 to 12 June 2023 ). The exhibition of S H Raza was curated by Catherine David and Diane Toubert, both well-known curators from France. Apart from the exhibition, there were panel discussions and symposiums on Raza and his art. Many well-known speakers had also been invited to this unique exhibition. The guest speakers from India included Rahaab Allana ( Alkazi Foundation ), Deepak Ananth ( art historian ), Ashok Vajpeyi ( poet and bureaucrat ), Ashvin Rajagopalan ( Piramal Foundation ) and Roobina Karode, Director, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. Two documentaries were also screened in this exhibition; “Kekee Manzil: House of Art“ by Behroze Gandhi Dilesh Koya and “S H Raza: The Very Essence” by Laurent Bregeat.
The Germaine Richier( 1902-1959 ) exhibition was a unique opportunity to discover the work of a major artist of the 20th century. Born in France in 1902, Richier was one of the first sculptors to focus on animal and plant forms, creating a new vision of the world. This exhibition displayed a selection of her most significant works, ranging from her first figurative works to her most avant-garde abstract sculptures. Merging the animal, vegetal and mineral realms, her work truly reflects the fluidity of life. One could also see how she explored animal forms, incorporating them into deformed and tortured metal structures, creating new and amazing forms. Germaine Richier's sculptures have an almost palpable physical presence, and they are often charged with an intense energy that can be both frightening and captivating. The exhibition also had drawings and sketches showing the artist's creative process and working techniques. The drawings also reveal her sensitivity and passion for nature, as well as her fascination with animal forms.
Towards the end of her relatively short life – she died of breast cancer at the age of 58 at the height of her fame – some of Richier’s human sculptures took on a spindly, Giacometti-like look, and she began to use colour on her works. One of the last pieces in the show is “The Painted Couple” (1959), a bronze sculpture made three years earlier, in which a man and woman stand facing each other closely, their hands touching. It tells a tender story altogether different from that of such frightening earlier pieces as those praying mantises poised to pounce. This exhibition attracted large crowds.
Syed Haider Raza (1922-2016), the celebrated Indian artist was as much a force to reckon with in India as he was in France, a country with which he had a long and memorable association, having lived and worked there from 1950 to 2011. In 1950, Raza won a scholarship for studying art in France. During his training in France where experimented with a variety of Modernist styles through landscape painting—first inspired by Expressionism, and later by geometric abstraction. He studied art at the world-renowned, 'Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris'.
At Pompidou Centre, I interacted with one art curator and came to know that Raza is held in high esteem by the artistic fraternity of France. Raza was also the person who brought Modern Art to the Kashmir valley, Sometime In 1948, Raza visited Kashmir along with K A Abbas and Balraj Sahni on an invitation from Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. In Kashmir, apart from acting as a catalytic agent for the formation of the Progressive Artists Association, he made many Kashmiri artists familiar with Modern Art, especially French Impressionism and Cubism. Before coming to Kashmir, Syed Haider Raza stayed for some months in Benaras. Like artist Ram Kumar, he was also attracted by the spirituality of the Ganga Ghats, the crowds and the River Ganga. He stayed with Sadhus, lived in Dharmshalas and sat on Ghats observing and painting. He was using watercolours those days. In an interview, Raza has said this:-
"India is full of rich icons and symbols that have no parallel elsewhere. I use these icons in my work and I try to understand how they relate to each other. Consider the Purush-Prakriti symbols that are everywhere in our temple sculptures. or the idea of the Kundalini, the source of energy. Or Pancha Tatava - the five elements that constitute 'Nature'. Starting in 1975, I started focusing on the Bindu. And that has been the central focus of my work in the years since. Bindu to me is about the beginning, it is the seed from which the tree grows, it is the egg from which comes the child, it is to painting what Om is to meditation and music."
With nearly one hundred pieces, the exhibition at Centre Pompidou was the first monographic presentation of the work of Raza in France. It followed the formal and conceptual developments of a body of modern work that exemplifies trans-cultural dynamics and their issues in 20th-century art. In the exhibition at Centre Pompidou, apart from paintings, I also saw photographs of his notes, diaries and letters. I also saw his Bindus in fascinating forms apart from the famed Saurashtra-1983,’udho, mun nahee dus –bees’,’ Nagaas ( serpents )’, ‘ Surya Namaskar‘, ‘Punjab-1969’, ‘Maa- 1981’, ‘Haut de Cagnes -1951’, ‘La Terre-1977’ and many more. Surprisingly, a painting done by Raza in 1949 in the Kashmir valley and titled, ‘Bohri Kadal‘ was also on display. A painting titled, “yatra naari poojante, ramanate tatra devta ( where the woman is worshipped, gods dwell there ) done by Raza in the 1960s was also on display. This painting appears to have been influenced by both Nicolas de Staël and Mark Rothko. It’s made up of splashes of thick and contrasting hues, fiery colours that clash and explode. However, I could also feel some imbalance in what was being exhibited. In the latter period, Raza increasingly contended with the geometric abstraction of Western avant-gardes and the symbolism of Hinduism and Buddhism coming together in Tantrism was almost absent.
From his notes, I learnt that Raza was fluent in French. He was equally familiar with Hindi and Sanskrit. The Upanishads and Bhagwat Gita remained his favourites. He had also studied Kabir. I also came to know that Raza had also some familiarity with the Mimamsa Sutra of Rishi Jaimini. In France, he had the company of Akbar Padamsee and Ram Kumar, who would later come to be counted as significant names in Indian contemporary art. It was Paris, the famed European city of love that he met Janine, a fellow artist. What followed was an affair to remember. After Raza’s return to India, the two exchanged as many as 80 letters between 1952-1956 before tying the knot in 1959. I also came to know that all these letters are to be published shortly. When Janine passed away from breast cancer, he returned to India permanently in 2010 and continued to live and paint in Delhi till his death in 2016. He was buried according to his wishes beside his father at the place of his birth in Mandla ( Madhya Pradesh ).
In 2010, his abstract work ( painting) titled Saurashtra was sold for £2,393,250 ( 16 30 crores ) by Christie’s auction house. The government of India awarded him Padma-Shri, Padma- Bhushan and Padma-Vibhushan. He was also awarded the Legion of Honour by the Republic of France in 2015. On July 23, 2016, S H Raza breathed his last after battling for life at a local hospital in New Delhi.
I also saw some permanent exhibits in other galleries that had Henri Matisse, Richard Jackson, Georges Braque, Vassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, Georges Rouault, Fernand Leger, Vilmos Huszar, Ben Vautier, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Le Ricolais, Jackon Pollock, Jean Lurcat, Garry Hume, Jean Arp and many more apart from almost all known names in the genre of abstraction /modern art.
I was surprised to see many visitors relishing ice cream outside the Centre Pompidou. I was told that the famous ‘Bachir Ice Cream ‘ shop is quite close to the Centre Pompidou. And we also tried the unbelievably delicious ice cream from Bachir. Bachir’s is Glace achta, creme de lait ice cream, churned with a touch of orange flower water, scooped into a cone, then rolled in pistachios and crowned with a rosette of whipped cream is perhaps the best ice cream I have ever tasted. The ice cream is special because it’s made with mastic, a resin that gives the ice cream a light pine flavor, and chewier texture than custard-based ice cream. The owners of the shop are from Lebanon.
So long so much on Centre Pompidou and the exhibition of the paintings of S H Raza over there ,
( Avtar Mota )
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