New Exhibitions - June 15 to September 4, 2017 - The summer 2017 will be astonishing and fabulous at the MNBAQ, with two new must be seen exhibitions ! Français
QUÉBEC CITY, June 14, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ -
Philippe Halsman. Astonish Me!
QUÉBEC CITY, June 14, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ -
Philippe Halsman. Astonish Me!
After Paris, Lausanne, Rotterdam, Barcelona and Madrid... Québec City From June 15 to September 4, 2017, the Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec (MNBAQ) is pleased to host the North American premiere of the exhibition Philippe Halsman: Astonish Me! mounted by the Musée de l'Elysée from Halsman family archives in New York. The retrospective showcases for the first time the celebrated American photographer's entire career, from his beginnings in Paris in the 1930s to the immense success of his New York studio between 1940 and 1970.
From Paris to New York
Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) arrived in Paris with the support of French government minister Paul Painlevé and stayed there for 10 years, until 1940. During the decade, he collaborated with Vogue, Vu and Voilà magazines and produced portraits of numerous celebrities such as Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier and André Malraux. He exhibited his work several times at the avant-gardist Galerie de la Pléiade along with photographers such as Laure Albin Guillot, whose work was exhibited in 2013 at the Musée de l'Elysée. In 1940, the German invasion forced him to flee to New York with his family. There, he worked for many American magazines, including Life, for which he produced 101 covers, and met the century's celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Duke Ellington, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Richard Nixon and Albert Einstein, to name but a few.
A passion for exploration
Philippe Halsman was far from being exclusively a celebrity photographer. In fact, he experimented his whole life long, pushing back the boundaries of his chosen medium. He is noteworthy for the scope of his field of activity: portraits, fashion, news reporting, advertising, personal projects, and private and institutional commissions. For more than 30 years he worked, in particular, with Salvador Dalí and invented "jumpology," which consisted in photographing his models jumping, thereby developing a genuine psychological approach to the portrait.
An exhibition in four stages
The exhibition comprises four sections. The introduction is devoted to the artist's Parisian period since his early work already portends the interests and trends that Halsman developed throughout his career. The three other sections focus on his American period. Each one presents a characteristic theme of Halsman's work: his success in the realm of the portraits of key figures, especially Marilyn Monroe; his interest in staging, including collaborations with artists, and his personal projects such as "jumpology." Lastly, the fourth section presents the important catalogue of "Photography Ideas" that he designed with Salvador Dalí for over 30 years, including the book Dalí's Mustache.
More than 230 works await visitors, along with numerous previously unreleased items (plates and contact prints, preliminary prints, original photomontages and mock-ups) that reveal the photographer's creative process and confirm his conception of and approach to photography: a means of expression to be explored. His career is, indeed, astonishing.
The Fabulous Destiny of the Paintings of the Abbés Desjardins
The Musée national des Beaux-Arts du Québec is proud to celebrate the bicentennial of the arrival of nearly 200 paintings produced during the 17th and 18th centuries and confiscated during the French Revolution. It is presenting the Canada's premiere in Québec City of the exhibition entitled The Fabulous Destiny of the Paintings of the Abbés Desjardins from June 15 to September 4, 2017. Organized in partnership with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes in France, the exhibition retraces the remarkable epic of the works created by the foremost French painters, some of whom worked for royalty. It is the Abbé Philippe-Jean-Louis Desjardins who acquired the paintings in Paris and sent them to Québec City in 1817 and in 1820. His brother, Louis-Joseph, chaplain to the Augustinians proceeds to the operation of redistribution of the works in the rapidly growing parishes.
These religious paintings are little known in France. Recent scientific studies have led to new attributions and a better understanding of the context in which the paintings were produced. Two major periods mark the paintings' history: their use in France and their use and impact in the 19th century in Québec. They include works by Claude Vignon, Simon Vouet, Brother Luc, Charles-Michel-Ange Challe, Jean-Baptiste Corneille, Daniel Hallé, Pierre Puget, Michel Dorigny, Louis Boulogne the Younger, Pierre Dulin, Samuel Massé, Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, François-Guillaume Ménageot and Matthias Stomer.
The beginning of art history in Québec
The paintings had an immediate impact on Lower Canada painters, including Jean-Baptiste Roy-Audy, Joseph Légaré, Antoine Plamondon and Théophile Hamel, who trained themselves by restoring French works then copying them at the request of sponsors, thereby offsetting the shortage of painters in the British colony. This period saw the birth of Canadian painting and, in point of fact, the creation of the first art collections in Québec and the establishment of the first private museum.
Major masterpieces
This unique exhibition features nearly 70 monumental works, including 32 from a dozen of Québec churches and chapels. Some 15 lenders, including the chapelle des Ursulines de Québec, located in the heart of Old Québec, at 12, rue Donnacona, have contributed to this outstanding exhibition, which affords visitors an opportunity to view seven other remarkable paintings that are part of the Fonds Desjardins. Among the key works in the exhibition, mention should be made of Simon Vouet's Saint Francis of Paola Resuscitating a Child and The Apparition of the Virgin and Child Jesus to Saint Anthony. The former is unquestionably a masterpiece from the artist's late career and the latter a magnificent composition from the beginning of his career, which a very recent restoration has revealed after 200 years. Mention should also be made of the magnificent Christ Preaching by Philippe de Champaigne, one of the foremost 17th century French painters. Two paintings by Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, a French painter in the second half of the 18th century, are especially remarkable. Among copies of the Desjardins paintings by painters from Lower Canada, Yves Tessier's The Entombment of Christ is noteworthy especially for its glorious palette of colours.
Unique testimonials to the relations between France and Québec, vibrant testimonials to the art history of France and Québec, or when art history also relates great history, a selection of paintings will return to France after 200 years and re-cross the Atlantic to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, which will host the exhibition from October 14, 2017 to January 28, 2018. The paintings of the Abbés Desjardins have indeed achieved a fabulous destiny.
Philippe Halsman. Astonish Me!
The Fabulous Destiny of the Paintings of the Abbés Desjardins
Pierre Lassonde Pavilion of the MNBAQ
June 15 to September 4, 2017
INFORMATIONS : 418-643-2150 or 1-866-220-2150 /mnbaq.org
SOURCE Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
Linda Tremblay, Head of Media Relations, MNBAQ, 418-644-6460, ext. 5532, [email protected]
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