Marc Chagall's Double Portrait with a Glass of Wine
Starting in October, Shanghai Exhibition Center will play host to the Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou exhibition during its world tour, the second and last stop of the exhibition after Tokyo. Works created in France between the years 1906 and 1977 will be displayed in chronological order, only one artist's work for each year.
Co-curated by Laurent Le Bon, former director of Centre Pompidou-Metz and current president of Musée National Picasso in Paris, with Claire Garnier, former exhibition production coordinator at the Centre Pompidou and now deputy director of collections and production at Musée National Picasso in Paris, art masters such as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti and Henri Cartier-Bresson will all be represented.
According to Le Bon, the year 1906 was a milestone for the history of art in the 20th century due to the advent of Fauvism in France, one of the main artistic movements of avant-garde that became the beginning of Modern Art. The exhibition will conclude with the year 1977, when the Centre Pompidou opened to the public. The year 1945, which marked the end of World War II, will not be represented by any artwork, however, bringing the total number of showcased pieces down to 71.
Le Bon, who once also served as a curator for Centre Pompidou, said that the exhibition is designed like a game in which "the notion of pleasure is central to the project." Each artwork will be accompanied by documents and presentations in order to shed light upon French art history and artists for a foreign audience.
Aesthetic approaches
Michael Schischke, head of international relations at Centre Pompidou, sees the exhibition as an opportunity to globally showcase the diversity of the museum's modern and contemporary art collection, one of the largest collections in the world.
"The idea (of this exhibition) is really that everybody can come and enjoy these beautiful works of art of many different forms and many different aesthetic approaches. There are masterworks which speak directly to you because they are very beautiful and because everybody can have their own story about them," Schischke told the Global Times.
Centre Georges Pompidou, a massive postmodern structure located in Paris, houses the city's Public Information Library and the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the largest museum for modern art in all of Europe. It was renovated in the year 2000 to accommodate its unexpected popularity, which has seen over 180 million visitors since its opening in the 1970s.
In 2007, the center's president announced plans to open a Shanghai branch of the Pompidou museum in Huaihai Park. However, the plan never materialized due to legal complications.
"It was a great challenge to come to Shanghai to show these jewels from our collection," Schischke said. "Definitely we will be very happy to develop more projects in China and Shanghai in the future."
The Shanghai exhibition is co-organized by Shanghai Tix Media Co Ltd., whose previous projects include solo exhibitions of Picasso, Oscar-Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Tickets are available at Gewara.com. Pre-sale tickets are 80 yuan ($12), or 150 yuan at the door.
