Eva Jospin Transforms the Ground Floor of Palazzo Fortuny in Venice into a Fairy-tale Forest

Selva by Eva Jospin - Photo: Cat Bauer

(Venice, Italy) I arrived at Palazzo Fortuny just a few minutes before the press conference for Selva started. I was eager to see  it. The invitation to the exhibition on the ground floor, or portego, of Palazzo Fortuny by the French artist, Eva Jospin, had caught my attention. ("Selva" translates to "woods.") 

I wanted to get a taste of the exhibit before heading upstairs to the press conference on the top floor of the palace. So first I dashed through a magical fairy-tale forest created from intricately carved cardboard and wood, framed with silk embroidery. The vast Fortuny portego had become more intimate with the addition of the fanciful forest.

Then I climbed up the rickety steps to the top floor of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, otherwise known as Palazzo Fortuny.

Silk panels by Mariano Fortuny - Photo: Cat Bauer

If you've ever been to Palazzo Fortuny, you know the stairs are wooden, steep, and creaky. What is called the first floor in Italy, would be the second floor in the States. And it takes two flights of stairs to reach the next floor. So, by the time I got to the second floor, I stopped to catch my breath.

At the top of the stairs were three silk panels that I had never really noticed before.

"Are those part of the exhibition?" I asked one of the attendants.

"No," she smiled. "Those are by Fortuny."

"Oh!" The logic of the exhibition tumbled into place. "Eva Jospin seems right at home."

I grasped in a flash why the press release had stressed the dialogue between Fortuny and Jospin, two foreigners bewitched by the 15th century late Gothic Renaissance architecture of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei.

Silk embroidery by Eva Jospin - Photo: Cat Bauer

Just a quick glimpse of the tangible tapestries explained the rather wordy press release:

“The works at the the Fortuny Museum in Venice... dialogue not only with the historical and environmental context that hosts them, Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, but... the artistic production of Mariano Fortuny.

A dialogue that allows unexpected aesthetic and operational affinities to emerge between the poetics of the two interpreters: a continuous comparison and reference between Jospin and Fortuny on Nature, on creative and experimental processes, which find their maximum expression both in the conception and research on fabric, as well as in the study of artifice and scenic fiction, always inherent to the theatrical universe, constantly reflecting on the themes of perspective, proportions and the visual and emotional relationship between artistic creation and spectator.”

Silk embroidery by Eva Jospin (detail)

Or, as they say, "one silk panel is worth a thousand words."

I had a terrific conversation with Eva Jospin about her creative process, and how she progressed from painting -- "I was not a good painter" -- to sculpting magical lands out of cardboard, which slowly grew bigger and more elaborate until now an entire whimsical new world fills the portego of Palazzo Fortuny.

Jospin's work is utterly distinct. I really liked her, and enjoyed wandering through the wondrous world she has created. I found out that we shared the same birthday, July 27, and are lionesses.

Later, at a cocktail party on the other side of town, I was chatting with a French gallerist, who told me that Eva's father was Lionel Jospin, the former Prime Minister of France. To me, that wise inheritance explained the knowledge woven into the works. “But Eva Jospin is a talent in her own right."

Indeed she is.

Mariacristina Gribaudi, President of Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia & artist Eva Jospin
Photo: Cat Bauer

The mystical Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei casts its spell on many foreigners, as well as Venetians. There is magic woven into the ceilings, the floors, and the walls. You can feel the spirit of Mariano Fortuny so strongly that you almost expect to find him sitting behind his desk. Selva adds another element of enchantment.

Curated by Chiara Squarcina and Pier Paolo Pancotto, you can wander through Selva and Palazzo Fortuny until November 24, 2024. Go to Palazzo Fortuny for more information.

Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

Berlin's Berggruen Museum Takes Us on a Treasure Hunt Through Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia & Across the Canal to Casa dei Tre Oci

The Yellow Sweater (Le chandail jaune) by Pablo Picasso (1939)
Photo: Cat Bauer

(Venice, Italy) You are in for a surprise when you enter Sala I of the Gallerie dell'Accademia. The first thing you see is not the usual room full of artworks from the 14th century. You see The Yellow Sweater by Pablo Picasso, a 1939 oil on canvas he painted of his lover and muse, Dora Maar, on loan from the Berggruen Museum in Berlin. The modern masterpiece opens a stimulating dialogue with the pre-19th-century works of art that are safeguarded in the Accademia museum gallery.

What a clever idea! The Berggruen Museum is presently closed for major renovations. So, this was a chance for 43 modern masterpieces by Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Giacometti, and Cézanne to come to Venice to sojourn with Venetian classics like Giorgione, Bosch, Tiepolo, Ricci, Longhi, and Canova in an exhibition that is laid out like a treasure hunt.

There are 17 modern works sprinkled throughout imposing halls of the Gallerie dell'Accademia, with the rest over at Casa dei Tre Oci on the island of Giudecca, the new headquarters of the Berggruen Institute Europe.

The exhibition is titled Affinità Elettive or Elective Affinities, a term originally used to refer to certain chemical processes. Then the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe got his hands on the concept and turned it into his famous 1809 novel that examines attractions and connections between certain individuals. In the novel, two guests arrive in the mansion of an aristocratic couple and flip their world on its head. 

Dora Maar aux ongles verts by Picasso (1936) in dialogue with La Vecchia by Giorgione (c.1506)

Likewise, the new arrivals from Berlin are livening up the venerable Old Masters in Venice. The modern works are hung next to Venetian classics, so it seems like the artworks are having a dialogue through space and time.

When you see Picasso's 1936 portrait of Dora Maar with Green Fingernails next to Giorgione's 1506 portrait of The Old Woman — created more than 400 years apart — you can just imagine the conversation the two women are having about how intense it felt to sit for those two demanding artists!

There is no set itinerary. The works of art are spread throughout the vast spaces of the Accademia, so pay attention as you wander through the halls. Here's a clue: there are four visitors from Berlin in the same room with with Jheronimus Bosch's Visions of the Hereafter.

Femme de Venise IV by Alberto Giacometti (1956) in dialogue with
Madam Letizia Bonaparte & Bust of Napoleon by Antonio Canova (1803-1806)
Photo by Massimo Pistrore courtesy of Gallerie dell'Accademia & Museum Breggruen

Museum Berggruen - Neue Nationalgalerie

Heinz Berggruen was born in Berlin on January 6, 1914. He immigrated to the United States in 1936 when things got too dicey to be Jewish in Germany. He moved back to Europe after WWII, eventually landing in Paris, where he met Picasso and other prominent artists of the era. He became an artists' representative and collector. 

Berggruen returned to Berlin in 1996 after six decades in exile. By then, he had assembled a precious collection of modern art with Picasso at its core. He lent, then sold, his collection to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), the German federal body that oversees museums and cultural organizations around Berlin. In 2000, 165 works were transferred from Berggruen to the SPK.

The Berggruen Collection has since morphed into the Museum Berggruen - Neue Nationalgalerie, set to reopen in 2026. Starting with almost nothing, by the time of his death at age 93 in 2007, Heinz Berggruen was considered one of the world's greatest art collectors. His family and heirs continue to support the museum and continue his legacy.

Billionaire philanthropist and investor, Nicolas Berggruen, is the oldest of two sons that Heinz Berggruen had with his second wife, German actress Bettina Moissi. He is the founder of the Berggruen Institute. His younger brother, Olivier, is an art historian and curator. His older half-brother, John, owns the Berggruen Galley in San Francisco. His older half-sister, Helen, is a San Francisco-based artist.

Michele Tavola, Gabriel Montua, Lorenzo Marsili, Veronika Rudorfer
in the new conference room at Casa dei Tre Oci

Casa dei Tre Oci - Headquarters of the Berggruen Institute Europe

The Berggruen Institute is a non-partisan, not-for-profit global network of thinkers whose goal is to create a better world. It is funded by the Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust. After creating sites in the East in China, and in the West in the US, the Berggruen Institute decided it also needed to have a thought center at the crossroads of civilization. 

Venice has long been a crossroads between the East and West, so the Institute established its center of European activity at the Casa dei Tre Oci, an architectural gem on the Giudecca Canal. Lorenzo Marsili is the Director of the Berggruen Institute Europe.

After closing for restoration, Casa dei Tre Oci reopened to the public with the Elective Affinities exhibition. On display are four works on paper from the graphic collection of the Accademia, and 26 from the Berggruen Museum, including works on paper by Klee, Picasso, Cézanne and Matisse.

Elective Affinities is curated by Giulio Manieri Elia (who was in New York receiving the Foundation for Italian Art & Culture [FIAC] Excellency Award) and Michele Tavola, Director and Curator of the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, and Gabriel Montua and Veronika Rudorfer, Head of and Curator of Museum Berggruen in Berlin. 

You can visit the exhibition and go on an Affinità Elettive treasure hunt until June 23, 2024. Go to the Gallerie dell'Accademia for more information.

And you can also travel behind the scenes to the Elective Affinities press preview with photojournalist Nally Bellati. Visit the Contessanally visual online diary to see dynamic images of people, art, and nibbles served by Harry’s Bar at the opening.

What is weird is that I just noticed that I happened to be wearing a yellow sweater similar to the one Dora Maar wore in Picasso’s painting…

Seen at Casa dei Tre Oci 
Cat Bauer and Fabio Marzari
Photo: Nally Bellati

Ciao from Venezia,

Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

The Marvelous Mind of Marcel Duchamp - The Lure of the Copy at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Le Roi et la reine entourés de nus vites (The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes), May 1912

Oil on canvas - 114.6 × 128.9 cm

Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950

© Association Marcel Duchamp, by SIAE 2023

(Venice, Italy) Before you enter into Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, take a few minutes to watch the short film playing on a loop outside the main exhibition.

"A Conversation with Marcel Duchamp" took place between Duchamp and James Johnson Sweeney, the Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in 1956 when Duchamp was in his late 60s. They chat about his career, surrounded by Duchamp's artwork at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

After his early explosion onto the art scene in 1912, Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887 - October 2, 1968) said to himself, "No more painting. You get a job." He became a librarian in Paris so he would have enough time to paint for himself and not have to worry about pleasing other people. He did not want to have to depend on selling his artwork to earn a living. 

Duchamp: ...You are either a professional painter, or you are not. There are two kinds of artists -- the artist that deals with society, that is integrated in society, and the other artist, a completely freelance artist ...that has no bonds.

Sweeney: The man in society has to make certain compromises to please them and to live. Is that why you took the job?

Duchamp: Exactly. Exactly. I didn't want to depend on my painting for a living...

Sweeney: ...Marcel, when you speak of your disregard for the broad public and say you're painting for yourself, wouldn't you accept that as painting for the ideal public, for a public which should appreciate you if they would only make the effort to?

Duchamp: Yes, indeed. It's only a way of putting myself in the right position for that ideal public. The danger is to please an immediate public, the immediate public that comes around you, and takes you in, and accepts you, and gives you success and everything. Instead of that, if you wait for your public that should come 50 years, 100 years after your death, that's the right public.

Marcel Duchamp died peacefully on October 2, 1968 at age 81 at his home in Neuilly, France after having dinner with his dear friend, Man Ray, and the art critic, Robert Lebel.

It's now been 55 years after the death of Marcel Duchamp. You have until March 18, 2024 to go over to the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal, the home of another long-time Duchamp friend, Peggy Guggenheim, and see if you are part of his right, ideal public.

Box in a Valise by Marcel Duchamp (1935-41)
Photo: Cat Bauer

Marcel Duchamp - The Lure of the Copy, curated by Paul B. Franklin, art historian and Duchamp expert, is the first exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection dedicated exclusively to Marcel Duchamp. Go to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection for more information.

Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

Culture of Dust at Palazzo Fortuny - Catalan Photographer Joan Fontcuberta Transforms the Decaying Images of Italian Prince Francesco Chigi into a Cosmic Trip

Photographers photographing the photographer Joan Foncuberta at Palazzo Fortuny
Inspired by the photographer Prince Francesco Chigi Albani della Rovere
Photo: Cat Bauer

(Venice, Italy) "What is the most decayed photographic material you have?" asked Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955) after he was invited to be an artist in residency at the Central Institute for Cataloging and Documentation (ICCD) in Rome. ("Joan" is the male name "John" in the Catalan language.)

Since the late 19th century, the ICCD institute has been the National Photographic Cabinet that protects and catalogues the cultural heritage of Italy -- the ICCD is part of the Italian Minister of Culture.

So, as preservationists, it created a bit of embarrassment for the ICCD to confess that it did, indeed, have photographic materials that were in poor condition. But they had a good reason.

Trauma by Joan Fontcuberta - photo of image: Cat Bauer

What the ICCD had were extremely damaged glass negatives from the Fondo Chigi taken by Prince Francesco Chigi Albani della Rovere (1881, Rome - 1953, Rome), a member of one of the most powerful Italian families in history. The illustrious Chigi Family from Sienna, ennobled in 1377,  is rich with prominent members, from bankers to cardinals -- Fabio Chigi became Pope Alexander VII in 1655.

Even though Prince Francesco Chigi came from a wealthy family whose tradition was banking, he was a high school dropout. The youngest of five siblings, he was passionate about nature and the wildlife that populated his Roman villa, birds in particular. 

Francesco was also passionate about the new medium of photography. How could he capture nature?  How could he freeze the vibrant reality he saw twirling around him into photos?

He had the resources to invest in the costly equipment he needed to experiment. He documented his family life and residences, his countryside, his gardens, and his forests, as well as his travels.

Trauma by Joan Fontcuberta - photo of image: Cat Bauer

Years after Franceso’s death, in 1970, his son, Mario Chigi, donated his father’s photographic heritage to the National Photographic Cabinet. The collection contained about 6,000 units, mostly negatives on glass, of landscapes and panoramas, family portraits, mountains and lakes, villas and travels.

And birds. Lots of birds.

After being neglected and stored in unsuitable locations, much of the aging collection was damaged.

By the time Joan Fontcuberta came on the scene, many of the negatives were almost unrecognizable. This suited him perfectly. "This work is about infection," said Fontcuberta. Damaged by bacteria and other elements over the decades, the photographs were aging and returning to dust. Like humans.

Fontcuberta transformed 12 of the "suffering photographs" into new works of art, all entitled "Trauma." Displayed in light boxes inside the dark, vast ground floor of Palazzo Fortuny are riveting images, part Chigi, part Fontcuberta, that seem to come from the cosmos.

Joan Fontcuberta. Cultura di polvere at Palazzo Fortuny - Photo: Cat Bauer

In the catalogue, David Campany explains:

The promise of photography, born at the onset of a rapidly changing modern world, was immortality in the form of the frozen image that would last forever and lend itself to the mastery of history and of progress.

But it was a promise that could not be kept.

It is a cruel if poetic irony that photography, a medium tasked so often with the fixing of appearances and the preservation of history, should turn out to be so materially susceptible.

And, it is perhaps more ironic still that this medium which finds the visual effects of time -- decay, deterioration, mold, putrescence, entropy -- to be so photogenic, should inevitably itself succumb to these effects.

If photographs preserve anything of what they represent, it is only for a short time, and only if the photographs themselves are preserved.

Photography seemed at first impervious and absolute, but it turned out to be human after all: bold, vivacious and unmarked for a while, but eventually frail, decrepit and headed for the grave.

Prince Francesco Chigi original slide - Photo: Cat Bauer

Joan Fontcuberta has taken Francesco Chigi's outcast and unrecoupable photographs and resurrected them from the dust, thrusting them back into the cosmos. He has transformed them into new life forms. It's like he has saved their souls.

Be sure to wander into the back room to read the catalogue and gaze at some of the original slides that have been eaten by time.

Joan Fontcuberta. Cultura di polvere

https://fortuny.visitmuve.it/it/mostre/mostre-in-corso/joan-fontcuberta-cultura-di-polvere/2024/01/19414/mostra-joan-fontcuberta-cultura-di-polvere/

ontcuberta. Cultura di polvere Exhibition Exhibition Joan Fontcuberta. Cultura di polvere

https://fortuny.visitmuve.it/en/mostre-en/mostre-in-corso-en/exhibition-joan-fontcuberta-cultura-di-polvere/2024/01/19430/exhibition-joan-fontcuberta-cultura-di-polvere/

Joan Fontcuberta. Cultura di polvere

https://fortuny.visitmuve.it/en/mostre-en/mostre-in-corso-en/exhibition-joan-fontcuberta-cultura-di-polvere/2024/01/19430/exhibition-joan-fontcuberta-cultura-di-polvere

Joan Fontcuberta. Cultura di polvere, curated by Francesca Fabiani, has been extended until March 25, Venice's birthday, so you have more time to see the other-worldly images for yourself. Go to Palazzo Fortuny for more information. 

Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog

Comfort & Joy from the Powerful Lion of Venice - Here’s to a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year - 2024

Winged Lion of Venice in Piazza San Marco - Photo: Cat Bauer

(Venice, Italy) The mysterious winged Lion of Venice on the top of the column next to Palazzo Ducale in Piazza San Marco is a symbol of Venice's patron saint, Mark the Evangelist. It a testament to the strength of Venice's ability to adapt and survive.

The Lion of Venice came to the Venetian Republic from the world of Byzantium in the 12th century. But the core of the ancient bronze sculpture is much older, dating back to around 300 BC, before Christianity even existed. 

In the 1980s, restorers decided most of its body is about 2,300 years old. Its origins are cloaked in mystery.

It is believed by some that the Lion of Venice started life as a mythical griffin, a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, combining the king of the beasts and the king of the birds into one powerful image. 

It was probably a monument to the god Santa(s), or Sandon, worshiped in the city of Tarsus, which was in the province of Cilicia, in what is now Turkey. It’s where Mark Antony and Cleopatra first met, and where Saint Paul was born. The god Sandon was so powerful that he was worshiped from the 18th century BC to the first century AD.

During the Roman Empire, Tarsus was a "luxurious port city of great wealth and opulence" which became part of the Byzantine Empire until it fell. Luckily, someone snatched the lion and brought it to Venice sometime in the 12th century, saving it from the clutches of the Ottoman Empire -- the precise history is as foggy as the caigo on a Venetian winter’s day.

Then Napoleon came along and grabbed the Lion of Venice, using it to decorate the top of the Fontaine des Invalides in Paris. 

When the Austrians gained dominion over Venice, they and some influential Venetians brought the lion back home to the lagoon. 

The lion was smashed and damaged both on its way to Paris, and on its way back to Venice. After being repaired by Barolomeo Ferrari, it was perched back on its column on April 13, 1816.

The Lion of St Mark on top of a column in the Piazzetta in Venice, seen from the Doges Palace
Author: Peter J.StB.Green

I finally found a scholar who sums up perfectly the feeling I am trying to capture about the Lion of Venice. Thank you Garry Wills! Wills says it started life not as a griffin, but as a winged lion with horns. Here is an excerpt:

"The Lions of Venice"
GARRY WILLS

The American Scholar, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Spring 1999), pp. 45-49 (5 pages)

...Seen up close, its face looks partly simian, partly devilish, partly
human - an effect created in part by the placement of its ears on the sides
of its head, not on top. Was it intended by its creators to be a lion?

Restorers at work on it in the 1980s concluded that it was. Studying many
Near Eastern parallels, they found the closest to be the winged and horned
lions that carry a standing statue of Sandon, the tutelary god of Tarsus in
Cilicia.

When that region became Christian, the lion was shorn of its horns
and wings, which removed its pagan onus. It must, even in this early period,
have acquired some sacred meaning, since ancient bronze statues of this size
were almost always melted down for the reuse of their metal....

...The lion has suffered through all the city's vicissitudes over eight centuries of fame and shame, of downfall and recovery. Its silhouette, at dawn or dusk, in mist or glare, gives Venice comfort. Its eerie grin hides a thousand secrets, carried here from its bizarre beginnings and kept faithfully above the city whose identity it guards.

No matter what challenges the New Year will bring, and it appears there are many looming on the horizon, Venice remains under the powerful protection of the mysterious ancient Lion of Venice.

Happy New Year from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog