Mosaique Magazine number 4
English Edition
Edito
by Daniele Torcellini
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 3
In a recent book published on Amazon Kindlestore, significantly sold for just over one Euro, Julian Spalding, arts critic and former gallery director in Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow, advises those owning works by Damien Hirst – still worth several million Euros – to sell them as soon as possible for they will imminently be devaluated.
Spalding thinks that Hirst’s works are no works of art and that he is in no manner an artist; the reason being for him that amongst these works none is really elaborated and he claims that when there is nothing genuinely crafted, visible, recognizable, then that cannot be art.
As a curious fact, these positions converge with the events showing that works in mosaics have been considered, until the last few years, stranger to the world of contemporary art exactly for the opposite reasons. In mosaic, there would be an excess of crafting, an excess of work, of manual activity, of materiality; too obvious excesses, which would obstruct ideas, as though ideas could not be embodied in any sensitive form and as though technique had only a craftsmanship connotation.
Spalding’s critics more generally concern the whole conceptual art that is controversially called con art, short for contemporary conceptual art, implying the play on words. An art that cheats, but that is still called art, and which is in the critics’ sights, amongst works by Duchamp, Warhol, Beuys and Koons – a great part of the twentieth century.
Looking into it, the release of Spalding’s book, concomitantly with numerous articles published in specialized and non-specialized magazines, at the occasion of the launching of the retrospective on Hirst in London Tate Modern lets suspect that a game of provocation alike the one criticized is set. Anyhow, that is the way it is.
Spalding’s work, more or less questionable, is well-argued and structured and ends at a time when the last action of the art critic – which tries to enlighten the work of artists such as Hirst – shows signs of recession. The idea is that art in such operations wants to give an artistic value to the price, even better, to the excessive price at which works are sold, that is integral part of the works themselves. Some sales – such as that of the famous skull studded with diamonds – are sometimes paid for thanks to consortiums of buyers, including the artists themselves. Some other times, as for the gadget skulls sold in the Tate shop for 36800 Pounds, the works are not sold.
The price does undoubtedly not fit the intrinsic value of the work. The objection can be put forward that the absence of correspondence defines as artistic an item of which the value seems to be truly linked to what cannot be seen, to its capacity to “reverberate to infinity”; according to Pier Luigi Sacco’s words. However no one knows how that value will be considered in the future, and here Spalding intervenes by defining Hirst’s works as the subprime of the art market, some high risk matters.
In one of my recent interventions I ironically suggested to adopt for mosaic a financial tool such as the credit default swap; an insurance that guarantees investment in a risky proof of debt. That is the risk to which are confronted mosaics buyers, which is not so much that of the price collapse, but rather that of not knowing in which market it evolves: the market of art, that of luxury or an intersection in between both?
It cannot be denied that a mosaic work has an intrinsic value. There is no question of the value of materials, time, work, or the artist’s skills.
How will that value evolve in time? Does its evolution in time have an interest? What will set that value in the works’ definition and quotation? What can give sense or prevent to give sense to the works? Will that represent a new clue for reading art in the future? These are open questions that have to be argued.
ECHOES OF THE CURRENT TOPICS
FRANCE
Translation Estelle Apparu
page 6
Mosaic at the top
The collective Edel'Art gathers artists of the Tarentaise Valley who have each their medium and artistic language and who went into partnership to make live a certain identity at the tops of mountains;far from the currents of big cities,they enjoy the attention of thousands of persons passing across the Massif of Alps.These artists who exhibit together all year round in ski resorts and villages of the valley,were at the Tourist Office of Meribel from the 11th to the 24th of March 2012:the opportunity to see Lorène Herrero's ceramics, Sandrine Orisio's lacquers on aluminum, Barbara Salga's paintings on leaves and Marie-Ange Tricard and Renée Antoine's mosaics.
Sylvie Traverse: Mosaics of Vexin
Recently settled in Vexin, Sylvie Traverse has just opened a workshop of mosaic in Liancourt-Saint-Pierre. She was trained as an architect, she has a passion for mosaics which she teaches in her workshop but also in the Louvre. In January, the multimedia library of Meru welcomed her creations.
Pascal Levaillant goes on spreading his energy across the region of Haute-Normandie and he was present at the Spring Show of Saint-Aubin-Lès-Elbeuf,in Sotteville-sur-Mer,at the Spring Show of Maromme,Fauville-en Caux in Rouen...He presents,among others,his work at the intersection of mosaic and photo,whether it is with his pixelized mosaics or with mosaics inspired by air photographies of his region.His last creation belongs to the series « Tracks,imprints and passages »and pays tribute to the Norman Seine which crosses many chalky high plateau of Vexin,in the region of Caux,from the Roumois to the borders of the Auge Region
In the heart of the Haut-Jura Natural Park, Angelo Nassivera is Frioulan, born in 1944 in Vitro d'Asio, a small village which is one hundred kilometers in the north of Venice. In 1991, Angelo is received in the competition of the « Best Worker in France ». He now lives in Jura where he practices and teaches mosaics.From the 8th of October 2011 till the 11th of March 2012, an exhibition gave the floor to Angelo, mosaist and last local craftsman able to work the brocatelle and yellow Lamartine,the two marble stones of Haut-Jura. As part of the project of the Haut-Jura Regional Park valuating the know-how of marble craftsmen since 2008, this exhibition is now presented in the Know-How Workshop,in the village of Ravilloles,in the heart of the regional natural Park of Haut-Jura.This workshop proposes a new scenography around three spaces: Bistrots, Mix-Materials and Transmission. Designed as tables of bars, the mosaics which are displayed are an invitation for social interaction and friendliness:a way of getting creation closer to living together.
Henry-Noël Aubry participated in SM'Art, the 7th Show of Contemporary Art, which gathered 190 artists in the gardens of the Jourdan Park in Aix-en-Provence, from the 3rd till the 7th of May 2012;this annual meeting was the opportunity to discover the last creations of the artist.
About galleries : Béatrice Serre moved into the Mona Lisa Gallery, on street 32th in Paris,in the 7th district from the 7th till the 18th of February in 2012 with « One somewhere else »,an exhibition which made the spectator travelling,thanks to works which seem to be realized by faraway ethnic groups who would have mixed any sorts of materials such as feathers,foams,silk,coral,turquoise,jasper...in mosaics.
Since the beginning of the year, Nathalie Chaulaic has been exhibiting in the Toulouse Art Gallery, the art gallery of the village of Marques which opened recently in Nailloux,close to Toulouse.You can see there her last sculpture called Taïga. Until the 14th of June, you can also see her creations at the Terson de Paleville Gallery in Sorèze, in Tarn.
Water goes spare
This is the title of the last exhibition of Claire Chefdeville which took place from the 2nd till the 15th of April 2012 in the Room of Aigalier in Martigues.In the course of the exhibition,Claire Chefdeville pulls the spectator along,as if with the stream,so that he wonders.
« In the continuity of my work on themes bound to the relations between industry and nature,I end up quite naturally on the theme of water.Water at the origin of life,water which feeds mankind but water exploited and polluated by mankind.
Which water shall we leave to our children with a more and more frantic exploitation of our planet? Shall all the peoples of the world have one day access to water, source of life, health and development? »
ECHOES OF THE CURRENT TOPICS
INTERNATIONAL
SAMA 2012
by Gwyn Kaitis
page 9
Conference Summary
When a mosaic falls into place the way that the artist envisioned it; the materials, substrate, and tesserae are unified, the andamento skillfully flows, the work is compelling, and it conveys the message the artist was trying to achieve. The mosaic works. The mosaic is something about which the artist can say “it is a success”.
That was the 11th Annual SAMA Conference, the American Mosaic Summit 2012 held in Kentucky, February 29th-March 4th at the Hyatt Regency Lexington. A mosaic of people from across the world; each person, the individual tessera; Lexington, the substrate; presentations and workshops, the materials; interactions amongst people, the andamento. It came together magically and it worked, it was a success.
2012 Conference Social Events Gallery
2012 Mosaic Marathon Gallery
2012 Mosaic Arts International Event Gallery
2012 Conference Presentations & General Meeting Gallery
2012 Mosaic Art Salon Gallery
2012 Conference Workshops Gallery
2012 Vendor Marketplace Gallery
OverlaysSHARETWEETPreviousNext
click on gallery title to open gallery
In many respects this conference was one to treasure. It contained the greatest number of works in the Mosaic Art Salon and achieved the highest percentage sold in the entire history of the Salon. The Mosaic Arts International exhibition saw three sales on the very first evening of the show.
A very beautiful mosaic triptych designed by Christine Brailler was created by dozens of volunteers during the Mosaic Marathon. The stunning work was installed at the Nest Center for Women and Children, a non-profit organization in Lexington that deals with issues such as domestic violence and child abuse.
During the conference, attendees voted for Michael Graham’s “Storm Coming, Vamanos” for Member’s Choice Winner in the Mosaic Arts International Exhibition. Lucky SAMA member Cathy Ambrose Smith won Grand Prize in the raffle: a 5-day workshop with Carol Shelkin at the Hacienda Mosaico in Puerto Vallarta including 6 nights’ accommodations with breakfasts and lunches provided.
Presentations were given that inspired, awed, and enhanced attendees’ collective knowledge. Ilana Shafir, Rachel Sager, Laurie Mika, Jennie Houston Antes, Bonnie Fitzgerald, Ali Mirsky and Antonella Gallenda were the featured presenters this year. A special screening of the documentary “Who Does She Think She Is” with discussion afterwards by Academy Award winner Pamela Tanner Boll brought the audience to tears and to their feet for not one but several standing ovations.
Throughout the conference, inspiration was abundant and pervasive. It came from talking to new and old friends, seeing the presentations, wandering through the MAI exhibition, taking a workshop (or four), and soaking up the materials in the Vendor Marketplace.
Lexington will be a conference to remember fondly for years to come.
EVENT
Marco de Luca – Universal Mosaic
by Renée Malaval
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 12
Though Marco de Luca’s Work is not complete, the extent it has gained through the years and decades, its singular beauty, the richness it has reached give it this obvious aspect that characterizes a perennial eminent work and arouses the viewer’s admiration. Because here, one can talk about Work, in the singular, that includes, in a whole, works that grew away from their context in order to become contemporary to one another, present at the same moment before us.
Marco de Luca’s work belongs to the closed circle of the works that enjoy a unanimous recognition. No one – amongst the public, artists, mosaic artists – denies its strength, originality and authenticity. Such unanimity is staggering.
One has to talk about mosaic in order to describe Marco de Luca’s Work; this does not mean talking about style or means of expression but really about art – in the fullest sense of the word – i.e. a way of being, of understanding the world and seizing its beauty. One does not talk here about a series of techniques and processes but of a means of access to knowledge. What great contemporary artists have done for painting, sculpture or photography, Marco de Luca did it for mosaic: He is for mosaic what have been before him Cezanne for painting, Fellini for cinema, Baudelaire for poetry or Camus for novels.
While not enough time has passed to judge what Marco de Luca has added to mosaic’s evolution, it is obvious that his contribution is essential. One knows about the state of “crisis” in which mosaic was in the early 1970s when Marco de Luca “entered mosaics”: the very word of mosaic was synonymous to painting copy, an art from which nothing was expected anymore, that one could only infringe and spoil as if one wanted to get rid of it instead of reviving it. With Marco de Luca, the art of mosaic has become a full-right art, that managed to survive, and beyond this, to regain its prestige and follow up its adventure with vigor and creativity.
One cannot say that this exceptional rebirth is due only to Marco de Luca; it was the fruit of a generation of which the relief is today ensured. Nonetheless a lot is owed to him: reconciliation of mosaic with modernity. That renewal, oddly enough, did not involve a rebellion against conventional forms but the reconciliation of mosaic with its whole past. Being contemporary means rediscovering all what mosaic has been in the past, and from then, imagining what it could be without being it yet. It is about acknowledging the richness of 5th and 6th centuries Byzantine mosaics – first luminous pictures of the history of art – and it is about understanding the importance of Ravenna’s mosaic master’s works of the 20th century, after the Second World War that granted mosaic territories that were out of reach before.
Marco de Luca accepts this double tradition’s inheritance, near and far, and develops his own mosaic from there, paying attention that this renewal has a part in each of his works. Marco de Luca is thus an heir who has managed to collect, preserve and pass on the discoveries of his predecessors.
But he is also a founding member: by taking possession of the art he inherited, he reformulated its definitions and rules, and gave mosaic another consciousness, he reinvented it. After him, mosaics would never be understood in the same manner.
He is the link between past and contemporary.
Thanks to him, mosaic is relieved: his ambition is not to describe an era, an environment, nor it is to express his intimate life, nor to defend a political idea or an ideology, nor even to tell a story. One does not know anymore whether they are in a dream or reality, present or past, abstract or figurative, construction or freedom, downstrokes or upstrokes, simple or complex, beginning or end. Mosaic, freed from all message and ban, is self-sufficient and gains an intrinsic legitimacy. It is everything at once, means of expression and study topic. The motif is directly obtained from tesserae and their laying. It is mosaic’s victory, its golden age.
Marco de Luca practices mosaic as a meditation over existence, which is connected to the human existence mystery. In a too often disenchanted world, Marco de Luca follows his meditation. His experience cannot be understood only as the expression of a transcendent reality.
When the viewer faces the mosaic, the meditation goes on. Each tesserae has its own existence ad seems to be linked to every other by chance. Each tesserae is laid on the occasion of a transcendence experience. Before our eyes, this heterogeneous matter becomes harmony and fullness the beauty experience is then able to come out of the matter. Marco de Luca’s mosaic’s rhythm is an initiatory path that takes us to meet silence, the essential being.
Marco de Luca’s mosaic is essential.
Marco de Luca walks on a path of a mosaic that, in a still indefinite future, will be universal.
FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER
Natural Histories in Paray-le-Monial
Pascale Beauchamps and CaCO3
page 20
From the 7th of July to the 9th of September 2012 Paray-le-Monial becomes an historical city. Thanks to the association M comme Mosaïque (French for “M as is Mosaic”), this Mecca for contemporary mosaics gives the place of honor to Pascale Beauchamps and CaCO3. With smooth pebbles, Pascale Beauchamps, a French plastic artist, reinvents some geological phenomenon. With thin gold and stone tesserae, CaCO3 (a collective composed by three Ravenna young artists) gives a lecture on natural histories filled with funny animals and plants. These natural histories will be followed in Saint-Nicolas tower, the ramparts tower in the inner courtyard of the cloister and in the Hiéron museum.
The Artifices’ Nature
by Luca Maggio
Translation Cloé Herrero
Even what appears to be the most artificial is part of nature. J.W. Goethe
The X form of the rhetoric figure called chiasm can help understanding the creative process of two artists, Pascale Beauchamps and CaCO3, different but in the same time brought closer by a same discovery made in different times and ways1: to make a contradiction possible, namely the move engraved on the musing stone, thanks to the layout given to the respective interpretations of the matter. Everything in the end complements one another through the light, desire and substance of their works, able to make people “guess how everything moves in the infinite space”2.
Pascale Beauchamps starts from nature in the place where she lives, French Brittany, in order to look for some river stones that she gathers and sorts according their size and three predominant colors: one dark, grey-black, one lighter, rather beige and one white. She must not intervene on these unique elements, on which time has naturally accomplished perfection, but she reinvents these smooth pebbles on cement surfaces that became circular or oblong, just like totems or modern menhirs (word of Breton origin meaning “long stone”), prehistoric accounts with which the region where she works is rich.
From then, the search is ritual and silent: the gathering in open-air, the successive selection of “Mother Earth’s bones” that Deucalion and Pyrrha dropped behind them in order to regenerate humanity, a clue of the powerful influence of the territory over the artist’s mind; vice versa, her creativity has “symbolically domesticated time and space”3, or better, natural matter by linking it to formal roots, i.e. abstract, of the primordial man. It is not by chance that her compositions are spiral-shaped or animated with centripetal or centrifugal rhythms (archetype of any maze), as in the swirls of her maelstroms of rock and glass, or in the sequences that evoke spines, prehistoric animals’ shells, stratified sections of fossil trees and sedimentary rocks; they are the memories of nature, likely to suggest and launch the capacity to imitate of the man who presents them metabolized and reorganized, producing thus that “unusual thing in the form” about which Leroi-Gourhan writes4.
These works refer to the sphere of nature’s sacredness, seen as were things at the origin of humanity; their layout was then hieratic as are accumulations of parallelepipeds set close from one another by the continuum of a curved line made of white pebbles that reinforce the unity and the whole small and large monoliths. Their obvious isolation, set in perfect symbiosis with their natural environment; water, earth, flora, remind that they have been there forever, part and parcel of the territory, even though they are, in the end, some elements conceived and realized by human artifice.
“Indeed in a certain manner the item created by man becomes analog to the one we can define as ‘object created by nature’, i.e. a natural element that spontaneously comes out and assumes for the viewer’s eye the status of ‘object’5”.
In reality “the natural things only are immediate and all in one piece, but man by his spirit parts with it, him whom in the beginning was part of nature but then liberates himself”6. Thus man is part of nature, but he is also able to accomplish his own nature, standing and alone in the universe7.
The analogy with animal world could be drawn, when thinking about the architecture of birds’ nests, the geometry of beehives or that of spider’s webs, but all are functional constructions as opposed to the more or less feasible abstractions of the human mind.
These are the beginnings of CaCO3’s work: the incline in space, Byzantine memory, given in vermiculatum, bedrock of their works, comes from experiences and studio intuitions8, because the original tesserae needed to give form to the idea or the project are made in the studio.
One of the creative routes of these artists consists in making, through the inorganic characteristic of stone, some organic structures, called Organisms, live beings invented but entirely compatible with reality: indeed CaCO3 plays at proving their existence in showing them at first in a few asarotos oikos of antique mosaic; then they are present in drawings from the Renaissance, with the reference to Leonardo da Vinci’s mechanic curiosity or to the classification of the Nature’s Theater by Ulysse Aldrovandi, which is essential. They are also found in pictures, still on paper, worthy of an eighteenth-century naturalist, even in the scumbles10 and rare photographs of the modern era, period of the last observations of these beings who would be then considered dead.
However, everything might not be the fruit of imagination: as reality is mother of all fantasy, recently some letters from Groes Bergsoluji (academician and Linné’s collaborator) have been found and published. In one of the letters he asks for the help of a friend (unfortunately there is no sign of any reply), for he has found live beings that he doesn’t know how to classify, nor name because of their nature’s ambiguity, incredibly alike CaCO3’s Organisms.
He describes them in that manner: “… of diverse shapes, these are aquatic creatures, living in brackish waters and swamps, of the varying size of a human’s fit to two open hands, they seem to be silent and still, as the rock of which their surface seems to be made, but they are dotted with the faculty of movement. They seem to be mineral and animal at the same time, and I do not know whether they are aggressive or not…”11.
These very lime Organisms are today placed by CaCO3 in museum’s reliquaries in order to complete the game of representation: some of them perfectly preserved, others only partly, as for true fossil rests, that the scientific artist has recomposed and probably took samples of tissues to be analyzed12.
These works can be linked with those related to the theme of the curio office, such as the Posidonies, which delighted D’Arcy Thompson13, or the small mosaics evocatively called Efflorescences14.
Consequently, CaCO3’s work is an intellectual product and the starting point of the group is the artificial, as opposed to that of Pascale Beauchamps, whose artifact is the final goal of a path taking its origin in nature, which is in turn the final point for CaCO3. That is a true crossing.
In that mutual crossing, one has to wonder what is natural and what is artificial: it seems that the boundaries between these two fields are vowed to be erased by man’s representation, that of the artist, because he embodies the synthesis of these two fields’ actions, able to achieve what Goethe’s intuition had revealed at once.
Footnotes
FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER
The Marzi's duality
by Luca Maggio
page 26
The Marzi’s duality : a surface unit gave by perception of the whole composition, in particular details with a more incisive cut, net like razor blades, as tiny as his infinitesimal flakes, next to wanted huge tesseraes, since the mosaic in these creations coherently never monochromes, it moves, like water waves, it can’t rest, not only for light reasons, but first of all for design.
FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER
After After
by Daniele Torcellini
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 28
From the 7th to the 28th of April 2012 in the NiArt Gallery took place the second edition of the collective exhibition After After, dedicated to mosaic and to all that has links with Ravenna, with the curators Felice Nittolo, Luca Maggio and Daniele Torcellini.
Last year already, Felice Nittolo’s experience called After, conducted with the students of the Art Institute for Mosaic Gino Severini who graduated between 1991 and 2001, had been taken up again by a selection of students gifted with an asserted artistic expression and younger artists trained to mosaics’ language in Ravenna Beaux-Arts Academy.
The opening of the exhibition showed Matteo Ramon Arevalos in a performance on a piano with mosaic tesserae. The pianist improvised a piece inspired by one of Felice Nittolo’s works, Mediterraneo, while the artist slowly dropped a few tesserae on the piano strings. The exhibition also showed the performance given by Chiara Zenzani. Actor and poet Franco Constantini, specialized in verbal jousting, read a poem by Gregor Ferretti.
The exhibition ended with the video projection of Andrea Sala and Giulia Alecci’s performance. The two of them in an eight-hour meditative session have painted mosaic tesserae on each other’s naked bodies, around a reflection over the “transposition of the fixedness of Ravenna’s musing system’s portrait on the human body”, as they wrote it.
Amongst the works shown appears an enigmatic self-portrait by Silvia Danelutti in which the artist plays at disorienting the viewer by a double reference to the far historical imaginaries of the Renaissance and the Byzantine era. The iconic dimension is emphasized here by a veil profile that reminds Pisanello’s style, made of a network of mosaic integrating metal and fabric elements. Filippo Farneti, in La costruzione del tempo, immerses his bits of memory in the white of a delicate work in pencil and paper on canvas, in which the depicted scenes are juxtaposed, sometimes revealing themselves, sometimes hiding, thoughtfully designed in a haphazard way. Andrea Sala’s work is a reflection over housing forms, an enquiring tool for the relationships that in any place can establish between people. Andrea Sala takes pictures of world’s cities from Google Earth and choses the materials that fit at best the characteristics of each place.
The Iranian artist Naghmeh Farahvash Fashandi looks for natural and salvaged materials in order to compose an abstract work in Arabic writings that conveys possible messages without images. In by raffaella Ceccarossi presents the overstepping of the surfaces limits; a depth spatial dynamic is set by the gauged use of tesserae of various sizes which are spread out from the extremity towards the center of the work, referring to Victor Vasarely’s Op Art. Gregor Ferretti presents a poem in which are mixed evocations of Ravenna, as if in a cylinder from which they come out changed: mosaics, traffic circles, swamps and subsidence.
Sergio Policicchio confronts with the Erma’s classic iconography by reconstructing a personal and abstract vision, in an installation of nanometer dimensions which invites the viewer to get lost in the impracticable spaces made of suspended flexible cotton interlacing. The American artist Samantha Holmes, in Daedalus, assembles salvaged materials, oxidized metals and stones in order to craft a pair of wings that; in a reference to Icarus and his too great boldness; seem to be burnt by the sun, before being collected and placed under glass like a piece of antique splendor.
Simone Gardini presents an ironic and entertaining game of oppositions by modeling a wax mosaic. The substitution of glass – a material resisting to fire and time – with that rather short-lived matter which wax is (such a disadvantage for Icarus and Leonard Da Vinci) finds its logical conclusion in the insertion of a candle wick in the center of structure moving in circles.
The exhibition catalog, including texts by Luca Maggio Più o meno tutto and by Daniele Torcellini AAA? Rischio di Credito? can be downloaded at: http://afterafter02.wordpress.com/
INTO THE MIRROR OF ART
Between Hell and Heaven
Mosaics that celebrate Dante are coming back for a new exhibition
by Rosetta Berardi
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 32
In the 1960s, when art entered into the pop revolution, conceptual art, happenings and when the world profoundly changed, artists from all Italy were summoned to Ravenna in order to find their inspiration close to the Great Poet whose remains are jealously kept by the city of Ravenna. That was a time when technical and style changes occurred quickly, in all likelihood quite a hectic period, but also a period when the return to representation, manual activity and craftsmanship – which had lost all impetus during the conceptual art period- were clearly lauded.
It was exactly on the 27th of May, 1965 that Ravenna celebrated the seventh centenary of Dante Alighieri’s birth in an exhibition entitled “From Hell to Heaven”, gathering twenty-one mosaics in St Vital cloister.
Today’s exhibition is a reminder to that event, a very important one as far as it represents the major step of a group work completed by Ravenna School of Mosaics students.
The story of these twenty-one mosaics that extol both the figure of Dante and the city of Ravenna rightly finds its origin in 1965 when the city of Ravenna wanted to pay homage to the Great Poet by connecting his poems, the language of visual art and the precious technique of mosaics.
A commission of experts gathered around Professor Giuseppe Bovini, Master of Byzantine and Ravenna antiques studies, selected a group of famous 20th century Italian artists to which were added other artists from Ravenna who had been awarded at the occasion of the competition on the theme of Dante.
The mosaic school of Ravenna then transferred the cartoons on mosaics that can be now seen in TAMO Museum (a museum that was created by the foundation RavennaAntica, set in San Nicolo cloister). The architect Paolo Bolzani is the curator of the exhibition.
The exhibition was launched on the 23rd of marc, 2012 and was co-organized by The Art Museum of Ravenna (MAR), and the city of Ravenna.
The musing works and the corresponding cartoons shown there are part of the collection of Ravenna Art Museum and will be set in TAMO Museum thanks to curators Paolo Racagni and Carlo Bertelli for a still undetermined period.
Elsa Signorino, RavennaAntica’s president, claims that this is a prestigious collection, of great historical value give back to the public, and that enables two powerful symbols of Ravenna – Dante and mosaic – to be celebrated.
TAMO, that can be defined as the mosaic citadel, offers the public that new exhibition of great artistic quality, both for the quality technique of execution and for the works’ contents.
There are twenty-one mosaics, very different from one another, of which fifteen have been made after cartoons by painters of national renown who drew their inspiration from Dante’s divine Comedy. Five other mosaics were made for the competition “Homage to Dante” by Ravenna painters. The last mosaic was made after a cartoon offered by sculptor Raoul Vistoli.
The artists of the 21 mosaics are: Pierluigi Borghi (mosaic artist Nedo Del Bene), Domenico Purificato (mosaic artist Santo Spartà), Raul Vistoli (mosaic artist Giuseppe Salietti), Domenico Cantatore (mosaic artist Renato Signorini), Anna Bertoni (mosaic artistGiuseppe Ventura), Giulio Ruffini (mosaic artist Libera Musiani), Laila Lazzaro (mosaic artist Sergio Cicognani), Primo Costa (mosaic artist Carlo Signorini), Franco Gentilini (mosaic artist Romolo Papa), Aligi Sassu (mosaic artist Giuseppe Salietti), Orfeo Tamburi (mosaic artist Santo Spartà), Ferruccio Ferrazzi (mosaic artistRomolo Papa), Carlo Mattioli (mosaic artist Romolo Papa), Giovanni Brancaccio (mosaic artist Sergio Cicognani), Marcello Avenali (mosaic artist Sergio Pezzi), Giuseppe Migneco (mosaic artist Renato Signorini), Virgilio Guzzi (mosaic artist Zelo Molducci), Lino Bianchi Bariviera (mosaic artist Zelo Molducci), Ines Morigi Berti (mosaic artist Antonio Rocchi), Gisberto Ceracchini (mosaic artist Alberto Melano), Bruno Saetti (mosaic artist Sergio Cicognani).
Once again, with that exhibition, mosaic enables to talk, to tell about Dante’s Divine Comedy with its numerous antique themes, nonetheless so much current and so dear to Ravenna’s community, who renews and keeps alive the link with the famous poet of all times in the whole world.
The pictures of the works are from the book “Le retour de la poésie dans la ville de Ravenne”, 1995, ed. Longo Editore, Ravenna.
INTO THE MIRROR OF ART
Bologna Contemporary Art Fair 2012
Mosaics by Non-Mosaic Artists Reflections
by Rosetta Berardi
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 36
Contemporary art, the scene for research, contaminations, relationships between industry and design, offers each year in January the greatest fair in Italy: Bologna Contemporary Art Fair.
Each time I spontaneously wonder why is there never amongst the works shown, aimed above all to the art market and thus to the selling, works by mosaic artists who strictly use the musing technique?
I find no other reason than this one: mosaic, in its usual politic to exhibit itself on its own and to create the “mosaic artists” category, finally achieves at each meeting an operation of self-ghettoization that prevents itself to take part to essential art exhibitions.
No other era has known such fast changes as ours. Every art, during the last century has been subjected to a radical transformation.
Mosaic still remains in a lot of people’s minds as a technique of collective work, to which different actors collaborate: the artist is the one who creates the drawing and the mosaic artist is the one who translates the drawing into mosaic. Today however, many mosaic artists themselves create the drawing or the project that will become mosaic!
Then, what is at the origin of the exclusion of mosaics in contemporary art?
If mosaic artists’ works find no place in the galleries of the Contemporary Art Fair, this means that still nowadays mosaic is considered as a decoration technique of an architectural surface.
The word “musaicus” used in middle-age Latin would come from the Greek “Mousa” that referred to the caves dedicated to the Muses in the Roman gardens.
Yet nowadays mosaic artists create works that are very different from architectural ornaments or plain decorations.
Therefore, what is the reason for this exclusion from the Art Fair? It may be the fact that mosaic artists express themselves only through mosaic techniques without experimenting other techniques. Would not it be the making process that today leads art critics and gallery owners to consider mosaic artists as craftsmen and not as artists?
It is not by chance that we say the artist has an art studio and the mosaic artist has a mosaic studio.
Yet at the Bologna Fair a lot of exposed works could be considered as mosaics. Maybe mosaics should free themselves from their own status and give themselves new rules? i.e. to fly away from the name “mosaic” and replace it by the qualifying adjective?
This requires careful thought.
The works shown there are not described as “mosaics” but they are in a way created with mosaic processes, maybe with a different language, a new harmony and function.
The works reproduced here are by Daniel Gonzalez, Xawery Wolski and David Reimondo.
Daniel Gonzalez is an Argentinian artist born in 1963. He creates canvases embroidered with sequins. He takes part to great scale projects that have been conducted throughout the world, for instance in Italy, Mexico and the USA.
Xawery Wolski, a Mexico-Polish artist of international renown has conquered the world with his art. He was born in Warsow in 1960 and currently lives and works in Mexico City and New York.
David Reimondo, born in Geneva in 1972, lives in Milan. The bread slices he uses in his compositions are burnt or used as they are before being covered with transparent resin that prevents them from being damaged.
GUEST AT SAINT-EMAN CHAPEL COLUMN
Iule Amado-Fischgrund’s paths through the fields
Translation Marion Barthelat
page 38
This new guest at Saint-Eman Chapel is at home in Chartres. The 3R association is indeed behind this new way of creation which has been called « Paths through the Fields ». The 3R (Renovate, Restore, Rehabilitate) director Patrick Macquaire explains that, as a partner of the 3R association, she was in charge of a site for the integration of young people into the world of work in 2002 and they made mosaics in the wood of the Hauts de Chartres area. She thus extended the « Picassiette Path » by creating steles and megaliths which were partially covered in mosaic –pieces of work which added to those made by the 3R. The path leads visitors from the Maison de Picassiette through the Hauts de Chartres area, a place which particularly resounds with Raymond Isidore’s work. Moreover, she has been sitting on committees at the Chartres International Mosaic Festival since 2002.
Iule Amado-Fischgrund is showing us through her exhibition.
« Paths through the fields are unconventional ways, unknown paths, unexpected short cuts, sometimes risky roads, unlikely encounters which have allowed me to explore and keep on discovering Life. Through that choice of matter and movement and color, a secret, surprising, mysterious, disturbing world has gradually developed, and it moves me, makes me dream, comforts me, consoles me for the finiteness to come. There I can widely display my forces, my energies, my imagination, feel, formulate, show, move maybe, give meaning and bond with what surrounds me. I present this path to all those who, through tragedy and poetry of life, pursue as I do this spark of humanity which –at least I believe– lies in the heart of our condition.
After the sensuality of clay and the delight of vitreous materials, I have appropriated the discovery and the pleasure of fragmenting stones and arranging them, by associating traditional materials as well as those collected on my trips or as the fancy took me.
This association of very different materials always raises the problem of final cohesion and I almost always solve it by using color as a link.
Through the various plastic arts techniques that I have had the opportunity to use during my creative experience, it seems to me that one can always recognize two main permanent features : movement and color. What is more, as far as art is concerned, I have always been interested in the « art brut » or « arte povera » movement, in which spontaneity, freedom and imagination in the use of materials create a surprise. And it is often the encounter with unexpected materials, sometimes discovered in a waste collection site or in the country, that prompts me to integrate them or to give them the major role in a composition. In fact, this plastic work is, for me, a question of metaphor of society, that is
Iule Amado-Fishgrund
Born in Geneva, Switzerland
From 1962 to 1966: studied visual arts at the « Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris »
From 1968 to 1977: artistic career in Cuba and in the United States with design projects.
From 1977 to 1979: stayed in Grenada, in Spain, and studied with English ceramist Suzan Hart.
Back in France, she set up her workshop in Paris, dividing her time between teaching, creating and putting on collective and personal exhibitions.
In 1996, she met Giovanna Galli and Verdiano Marzi, mosaic maestros in Ravenna, as well as French mosaist France Hogué.
As a master craftswoman, she gave vocational training classes in ceramics and in mosaic until July 2009.
In 2005-2006, she was asked to design and make the floors of the entrance and of the synagogue at the CJL NITSA Center.
GUEST AT SAINT-EMAN CHAPEL COLUMN
Such a Light Stone: Valeria Ercolani
by Patrick Macquaire
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 40
Valéria is not a stranger in Chartres. Her works have been set for a long time on Fulbert Chapel’s cymas, lightly, without any demand, nor manner, elegantly, simply and softly. I willingly say softly because her works, flowing and light, seem to be carried by the wind. In 1998 already the jury of the International Mosaic Meeting had tempted to tame the mosaics of that strange bird, made for flying. A third prize had set the artist amongst us, for a moment, before she took her flight back to Italy.
I still remember that commission, in Ravenna, where Doctors selected the future candidates for the Concorso Giovanile. In the way they pronounced her name, I felt that all precautions were taken for Valéria not to be forgotten, for her to stay there, nearby, obedient and patient, with the will of a pupil who knows she has to wait; for not to fly away too soon. Mosaic has been waiting for 5000 years.
Another visit, at another moment, it might have been in 2009, at the occasion of the Ravenna Festival. When I paid a visit to Paolo Racagni’s studio I discovered this portrait, in so many shades of gold that Valéria tried to make. Feverish and anxious, Paolo commented:
-Valéria is creating what is impossible for many! We are achieving one of our most difficult projects!
Nothing grows in the shade of the big trees, as the French say. Marco De Luca, the master from whom she took the rhythm, Paolo Racagni, the professor that gave her the rigor, have let her climb up to the highest branches.
Sometimes Valéria goes away, but often she comes back. She bears a long way away the colors of Ravenna. She was in Paray-le-Monial, not that long ago. She will be in Chartres, soon.
GOLD MOSAIC
Gold Mosaic: technical production
by Luca Chiesura
page 44
Luca Chiessura: Has been working in the Orsoni foundry for over 25 years - as the personal assistant to the Venetian artist and great grandson of the founder, Lucio Orsoni and as overall commercial manager.
He is aware of the secrets of the furnace and the extraordinary power of the medium of mosaic - there is little about the production of the unique materials for mosaic that he does not know.
Photo 1 Angelo Orsoni, established in 1888, is the oldest furnace in the world producing mosaic glass called smalti and gold mosaic for the manufacturing of artistic mosaics.
The materials are completely hand made, and they are produced according to ancient traditions which originated in the Byzantine period, and passed on from one generation to another.
The materials are created from fire: the raw materials - sand, fluxes, opacifiers, and colorants (molten glass) are fused together in the furnace, which can support a temperature of over 1.300 degrees.
When the colour and the firing of the glass are at the desired point, the incandescent vitreous paste is pressed and transformed into slabs - this is how the vitreous smalti are created. Through the masterly handling and control of the incandescent vitreous paste it is possible to obtain infinite colour shades and hundreds of colour gradations.
The creation of the colour gradations is a truly magical moment, a stage known by master mosaicists as “tirare al colore” - drawing out the colour. Through the masterly combination of a few mineral oxides it is possible to obtain thousands of colour nuances, which sometimes are almost imperceptible except to the expert eye.
Gold mosaic is also produced starting from molten glass, according to an ancient production technique which dates back to the first centuries AD.
Gold mosaic is manufactured as a sandwich: the gold leaf being enclosed between a thick transparent glass base and a thin, glass plate that protects the surface.
The manufacturing of the gold mosaic is made through many different productive phases.
Photo 2. The first stage is the production of a very thin blown glass approximately 0.2 mm thick in the shape of big bottles (soffioni) that are then hand cut into 10x10 cm squares called the cartellina.
The second stage is the application of the 8x8cm gold leaf (24 carat gold), placed onto the cartellina.
Photo 3. During the third and last phase the molten glass is poured onto the gold leaf, which has been attached to the cartellina, and once again fire will weld together the three elements in a whole element - the gold plate or disc.
The gold mosaic we manufacture is produced exclusively with 24 carat gold and only with lower carats to get different chromatic shades.
It is a very fine gold leaf, of nominated ‘Thickness 20’, where number 20 depicts the grams of pure gold which are necessary to produce 1000 gold leaves of 8x8cm equivalent to about 6 square meters - 1 cubic cm of gold is about 20 grams.
In the world market it is possible to find different kinds of gold mosaic, some of which are produced industrially or by assembling two industrial glasses. These glasses are put together using a low melting flux which is heated in electric furnaces. Generally in this kind of product 24 carats gold is not used, but imitation gold or gold chloride. The gold mosaic produced with this method has a very shiny surface, almost mirror like, and the material gives the idea of a cold material. The gold mosaic that we produce according to the ancient technique does not have a shiny surface and gives a sense of great warmth.
The other essential characteristic of genuine gold mosaic is the cartellina that protects the gold leaf, which must adhere completely to the gold leaf, especially when the material is cut by the mosaic artist. This characteristic is guaranteed by our traditional production method and has been tried and tested for generations.
Photo 4. All our materials smalti and gold mosaic, are completely hand made. The millions and millions of tesserae that are produced in our furnace every year, are patiently hand cut with chopping machines. Each tessera is unique, different from all the others, each awaiting the hand of an artist.
Elaine M Goodwin: Has been working in the medium of mosaic all her professional life. She is both an author and artist of International repute.
She exhibits regularly in galleries throughout Europe. She is currently working on an exhibition entitled ‘Homage to Byzantium’ to be exhibited in Luxembourg, Ravenna and London. “The medium, with its light emitting properties and inherent spiritual power provides a constant challenge for me...”
Mosaic Art
by Elaine M.Goodwin
page 48
Not only did the Byzantines know how to make mosaic gold they were masters of manipulating the material for profound spiritual effects.
This fact, I experienced firsthand about 25 years years ago while looking at the superb 6th.C mosaics of the church of San Vitale, Ravenna in Italy, and it is this knowledge that underpins all my mosaic work.
The Byzantines, worked with a profound understanding of their mosaic materials, above all mosaic gold. They knew that when it was cut and pressed into the mortar of an apse, a wall or a mihrâb its reflective surface, could be angled at varying degrees towards or away from a source of light, to result in a mosaic whose surface shimmered with light and shadow.
Both natural light and candle light could be used to produce a great variety of effects giving a surface of intense meaning. Any viewer or supplicant within the sacred space, a church or a mosque could be transported, by this brilliant use of light, into the presence of Divinity.
With each tessera acting as a unit of light, the rich hues of mosaic gold, couldtransform what could initially be seen as a magnificent decorative mosaic, into a vision of elusive and spiritual power - and it is this latent power within the materials of mosaic which can turn a paradisiacal garden into a paradisiacal experience.
Thus sunlight shining, for example on the façade of the Great Mosque in Damascus or the candlelight shimmering in the interiors of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem or the artificial light shining onto the mosaics of San Clemente in Rome or Haghia Sophia in Istanbul all provide sources of light able to transform the mosaic surface into a frieze of light.
Understanding this, the act of looking can go beyond the first cerebral viewing and can become a transcendental experience. This, in the mind of a believer is a real and
direct relationship with GOD and for a non-believer creates a real sense of awe and wonderment.
I believe, therefore, that the medium of mosaic can conspire to transubstantiate reality and take the viewer into another realm. This is dependent on the perception by us, the viewer.
To be clear: the very materials used in mosaic have the ability to play a crucial and unique role. The mosaic units or tesserae which are made up of glass and gold, are characterized by a reflective surface, which when cut and set individually into mortar, by the hand of an experienced artist, gives colour, definition but above all, LIGHT, and it is this light, which I know, as a mosaic artist, is the key to unlocking a deeper response in our looking.
This LIGHT is, in its various myriad of parts, at once brilliant or in shadow, and has the ability to distract the viewer, away from trying to find any reality in the mosaic, for example, by trying to trace the contour lines of a saint or working out the specific nature of an image. So, any initial sense of awe, experienced when seeing a mosaic within a religious setting, such as the inside of a church or in the precinct of a Mosque or even, I can assure you, within an art gallery, can give way to a greater sense of understanding or consciousness reached only when we look and marvel and allow that which is marvelled upon, to act as a catalyst to a greater consciousness.
Underlying my own work is one great unifying and harmonious Absolute. It is one of Celebration - a combination of wonder, awe and delight in being alive and able to express my beliefs through my Art - most specifically MOSAIC - an art form which, as we have seen, has the extraordinary and unique ability to move our understanding from one level of experience to another, deeper and therefore more profound level.
ART NOW
Mosaic? Post-Mosaic? Neo-Mosaic? Non-Mosaic?
by Daniele Torcellini
Translation Julie Richey
page 50
The objective of this discourse is to propose a reflection dedicated to the mosaic technique from various definitions posed by encyclopedic resources and in relation to an artistic context, growing in diffusion and quality, relating to this technique.
The Italian encyclopedia Treccani calls mosaic, “decorative technique which, through the use of fragments (ordinarily small cubes, called mosaic tesserae) of natural stone, terracotta or glass paste, white, black or colored, applied to a solid surface with a cement or mastic, reproduces a determined design.” The same dictionary defines painting [technique]: “the art of painting [action], portraying something, or expressing other intuitions of fantasy, by means of lines, colors, masses, values and tones on a surface. The processes which permit the affixation of colorants or pigments to a surface (support) according to the will and the project of the artist, have had over the centuries, variations and preferences,” defining the act of painting as “representing artistically or with artistic intention a real or imaginary object using colors.”
This definition doesn’t differ much from that of the Encyclopedia Britannica, even though here mosaic explicitly belongs to a much larger field of art. About mosaic, it says “in art, decoration of a surface with designs made up of closely set, usually variously coloured, small pieces of material such as stone, mineral, glass, tile or shell” and for painting, “the expression of ideas and emotions, with the creation of certain aesthetic qualities, in a two-dimensional visual language. The elements of this language – its shapes, lines, colours, tones, and textures – are used in various ways to produce sensations of volume, space, movement, and light on a flat surface.”
Certain reflections can also be made from these definitions. Mosaic seems like a “decorative technique,” a “decoration of surface,” that reproduces a pre-existing design. Therefore a technique not appropriate to express that which painting is allowed to express: “the intuition of fantasy,” “according to the will and the project of the artist,” and “the expression of ideas and emotions.” In the world of mosaic, these expressive possibilities seem to belong to the design being reproduced.
From this point on the discussion may retrace the steps of a historical discussion analogous to the technique of photography and its rapport with painting. A dialectic in which the photograph, for a long time, was considered a mechanical discipline limited to the reproduction of that which is posed in front of the lens, because of the optical and chemical properties of the photo camera. A technique unable to express the will of the artist, i.e. the photographer, who is apparently and simplistically deprived of every artistic freedom. In analyzing the definitions, something analogous seems to be attributed to the work of the mosaicist: a mechanical, decorative reproduction of a pre-existing design, made with the juxtaposition of little separate elements, according to a procedure strictly decoded rather than on the basis of the expression of an artistic intention.
As it happened with photography that has seen, over the passage of time, recognition of its expressive values in addition to its reproductive ones, we could then admit that someday mosaic too can be considered something else as opposed to an exclusively decorative technique. In this case, the definition that the Encyclopedia Treccani gives to painting [action] could be used in a generic but appropriate way to describe mosaic. Isn’t it also possible, utilizing the mosaic technique, to “represent artistically or with artistic intention an object, real or imaginary, utilizing color?”
But the definition of painting [technique] could be even more adequate: with the technique of mosaic isn’t it possible to portray something or express an intuition or fantasy, “by means of line, colors, masses, values and tones on a surface?” If one responds affirmatively to the previous question, mosaic would appear to be a pictorial discipline.
Now the next question we can pose is the following: does it make sense to talk about the artistic level of a technique? Personally, I think it doesn’t. It is not the technique itself that can be defined more or less artistic, more or less decorative, but the thing that is realized by means of the technique to be an artistic, decorative or design object. An object that expresses the visual culture of a given period.
This question seems to be accompanied or preceded by another one: does it make sense to talk about the modernity of a technique? Photography is a technique of image production more modern than painting, but only and exclusively in reference to the fact that the latter has origins much older than the former. In this sense, digital technologies are even more modern. Perhaps, from this point of view, they are the only truly contemporary techniques. But a visual culture of a defined period develops through the use of a multiplicity of techniques, more or less ancient, recovering at times forgotten ones, developing new ones, abandoning and reevaluating others.
Mosaic, from this point of view, certainly can’t be called modern, just as painting or sculpture, and no less architecture. Yet the fact remains that it’s possible to create contemporary works using these techniques. Therefore, in a way most analogous to the question of the artistry of a technique, the issue of the “contemporariness” of mosaic could be resolved. It is not about contemporary mosaics, but contemporary works realized in mosaic.
Contemporary mosaic doesn’t exist, but contemporary artists that utilize mosaic as their preferred technique or expressive language do. And for a work of art to have value, regardless of the technique chosen to accomplish it, it is necessary that the artist has something to say and knows how to say it. In the world of mosaic, it often happens that we come across those who have something to say but don’t know how to say it, and those who know how to say something but have nothing to say.
Therefore, perhaps it’s better to ask ourselves, as Linda Kniffitz, curator of the International Center for Documentation of Mosaic in Ravenna, brilliantly did when referring to the thoughts of Nelson Goodman: “when is it mosaic?” instead of questions like, “what is mosaic?” or “is mosaic art?” “Is it contemporary?” and “can mosaic be an artistic expression of our times?”
To be honest, I think it’s futile to force a definition of mosaic, and I consider misleading, or at least constricting, the definitions taken into consideration.
At any rate, if we want to restrict the area of possibilities, I believe that today, amongst the most interesting artistic expressions tied to the techniques of mosaics, there are those in which the mosaic is analytic. In other words, those in which the use of this technique is also an analysis of the very same technique. Here one sees the best results and, to respond to the question posed by Linda Kniffitz, this could be a definition: a work is contemporary mosaic when it analyzes mosaic, when it deconstructs and then reconstructs the forms and the rules of composition, when its aesthetic value is based upon them [forms and rules], when it pushes their [forms’ and rules’] limits and the possibilities to the maximum. The analytic mosaic creates works in which the methods of mosaic realization are investigated, going beyond the mosaic itself.
In this way one defines the possibility of creating works-that-are-mosaic even if one doesn’t use the technique of mosaic. It’s also possible to investigate mosaic through materials that aren’t typical of mosaic or by means of other techniques. I believe it is possible to analyze mosaic through an image in jpeg, an assemblage of rubbish or whatever else. In this case one could talk of structurally mosaic works.
On the other hand, it’s also possible to make works-that-are-not-mosaic utilizing the mosaic technique. This is the case with sculptural works covered in mosaic or translations of paintings, cartoons or drawings. In this case one could speak of decorative mosaic-like works.
In one case and the other, it’s possible to conduct artistic, esthetic and conceptual research. In one case and the other it’s possible to express “the intuition of fantasy,” “according to the will and the project of the artist,” “the expression of emotions”, creating mosaic or anything else.
Whether the pieces that are created are works of art or not, will be for critics or future generations to decide, provided the traditional definition of art is still valid.
ARTIST
Career : Jérôme Gulon
by Renée Malaval
translation Cloé Herrero
page 54
Jérôme Gulon establishes bonds between varied art fields such as photography, video, fresco, engraving, ceramics, stencils, sculpture, calligraphy, typography, installation, Street-art or mosaics. The artist wants to “portray this art of accumulation, of assembling, of collage, of fragmentation, of division, of unification, of bursting, of combining, this ancient art that comes from stone and that today comes through our computer screens with its millions of pixels; and conduct it step by step in a crossing of the field of contemporary art”.
Today’s Works
With his series, Jérôme Gulon explores different art fields, of which Street-art may be the one that characterizes his work best. When in the beginning of his career the series followed one another, creating periods, the artists now produces works of different styles, using several mediums in each of them. In all of them, one can find the same signs that can only be understood when one looks into his whole work.
The Baroque Experiment period
After some studies at the University of Paris, he registers in Ricardo Licata’s mosaic studio at Paris Beaux-Arts. He stays there for three weeks. He botches up the first exercise he has to do – a copy of Doves Watering – in order to skip quickly to the exercise of personal creation. Fountain with the Egret, 1987, becomes the first of his series on fountains.
He discovers that he likes mosaics, mosaic without cartoon, without pattern, without any previous sketch. He talks about “the asceticism that goes along with the metallic rhythm of the marteline falling upon the knife. The steady sound of percussion resounds as a metronome accompanying the marble’s cutting. This moment is when I think about nothing i.e. when I think about some thing; when something is being created in the silence of thoughts and the regular rhythm of the gesture, some indescribable thing that forms and deforms like light clouds in the sky”. What should have been a period became a calling.
The Running Fountains and Polished Stones Period
For many years, mosaic is for J. Gulon a collage; he uses all sorts of materials (wood, steel, flint, shards, coal, pebbles, dishes fragments, salvaged items, photographs…) and he experiments numerous techniques: kinetic mosaic, photomosaic….
In the next period, that of polished stone, the water from the running fountains – the plastic element that brought sparkle, move and contrast- is replaced by polishing, which creates the play of light.
The Monochromatic Period
From then, he wonders about the very nature of mosaic, which becomes his own topic. “To attract people’s attention on what mosaic emits, is to avoid distracting gazes to something else”.
He decides to get rid of all what is not mosaic: he takes off one by one the different elements, up to the figurative ones (the squares, for instance), in order to keep only mosaic. He comes to something monochromatic: tesserae shapes, spaces between tesserae, a color, and when he works in low relief, the light that plays on the surface. Drawing, color and volume are there. The last monochrome will be White Mosaic, a white square on a white background, in an allusion to Malevitch.
Numbers and Signs Series
“His series of numbers is truly the first work of conceptual mosaic”, will Ricardo Licata say. Gulon is still in Licata’s studio, a little bit like a squatter!
In 1994-95, Jérôme Gulon feels that he has to go further: the only topic of mosaic being mosaic itself in his monochromes he wonders about what constitutes a mosaic.
The next step brings him to take an interest in tesserae: when it is removed to show its shape, it is not mosaic anymore, but a piece of stone. The constituting element, called tesserae, becomes a mosaic by accumulation. From how many of them can we talk about mosaic? One? Two? Ten? One of Jérôme Gulon’s answers is that it is when one cannot count tesserae anymore, it becomes a mosaic.
The stone becoming tesserae is not raw; by cutting, it has suffered a change inherent to mosaics. Then, how can he emphasize the specific shape of each tessera? Jérôme Gulon goes off in a long work of reduction and refinement. On ancient slates of 23 x 32 cm, he sets the desired number of tesserae without fixing them, cuts their shape out with a metallic point, engraves the slate and embeds the tesserae with mortar.
The series begins with Zero. Then comes One: a stone, a tesserae, white, that one has to look against the black slate. When Jérôme Gulon comes to Three, he has to set rules for the tesserae setting. The series goes up to Forty simply because Jérôme Gulon will be 40 that year, during which he undertakes this monk’s job. There is mathematics combination in that venture, and links between mosaic, plastic art, mathematics and writing. “No tesserae being alike, their combining results in an infinite number of shapes”.
He defines the series of numbers as a concrete abstraction: the numbers’ shape is abstract but some layouts stand out, autonomous shapes, called Numbers. Thirty-one looks like a sarcophagus, Thirty-five a cello, twenty-one represents the pictogram of a child (his son was born a 21 of October)… The number shows the presence of a shape, a sign, and transcends itself in an appearance: that of mosaic.
Limits Series
Beyond tesserae, mosaic is interstices. Jérôme Gulon thus got back to his previous work this time working on the limits. He sets in the center of wooden slates a white rectangular field of opus tesselatumin order to show the graphic network separating tesserae. In order to do so, he lays a thin coat of mortar mixed with iron oxidebefore setting the tesserae; by lightly separating the tesserae, the black background is obvious. This is how he shows the singularity of each interstice: he shows a space separating two tesserae, then three… This combining game of interstices in a simple arithmetic progression creates the series of the limits.
Paradoxically, when he sets the stone, he sees the void: when he sets the limestone on the slate, the black background is obvious, a representation of void, of the Zen idea of non-matter.
An experience leading to another, Jérôme Gulon will take up with calligraphy and reuse the shapes that were drawn with brushes and Indian ink. That is where were born graphic shapes that will slip in his next mosaics; that are found for instance in The Fountain with Green Numbers and The Ying and Yang Fountain.
Engravosaics
A new step leads the artist to reinvest the assets of the Numbers and Limits Series in various fields such as engraving. In order to get the print of the number’s shape by embossing, he uses a wet sheet of paper and creates a figuring. He materializes non-mosaic and shows the gap’s presence by calligraphying the limits.
That series, coming from stone because the graphics are drawn along tesserae’s temperamental outlines, showing solidarity with the matter, linked to nature.
Secession Mosaic
It tells about the story of the numbers, the limits, the emptiness, the fullness; it is a composition of spaces, contrasts and colors. The Secession celebrates the discoveries that marked the journey in the depths of mosaics with color and arabesque.
The Mosaics in Suspension
In the mosaics in suspension, the self-supported tesserae are set on no support. They appeared from the very first research of the artist, and evolved in Musaics, related to music, the tesserae representing notes on a score.
The Series of Routes
Jérôme Gulon is part of the Street-art with an original work he called “Routes”. These are small mosaics scattered along a tour, the whole of which composing a route: the Fridges route, the Belle de Saint-Ouen route, the town-halls route, the Lyon station route, the Paris route…
The concept of route has formed in Gulon’s mind in 1990. His encounter with Ernest Pignon-Ernest was decisive. He aimed at confronting mosaics to the reality of walls, to get it out of the frame, to question its relation to the monumental and architecture, but also to the social and political background. Thus shown in public spaces, mosaics are exposed to all kinds of destinies: removed by a lover or somebody in charge of the cleaning, or spray-painted… that is the reason why he decided to show the pictures of his urban works; the picture here is not a work in itself, but a document.
Boxed text
The Lyon Station Route
Jérôme Gulon went to the Lyon Station in Paris, took a picture of the glass wall that inspired to him a mosaic, and divided it into different elements.
“The mosaic is the whole eight elements. If one wants to see the whole mosaics, they have to go to Paris and Lyon. This works upon a memory. I question fragmentation and space. Here, the interstices between tesserae are not millimeters but a few hundred kilometers. When one looks at a work, one does not see all the elements in a same glance: one’s gaze has to move. Here it is the viewer who has to move by taking a train”.
Everything Is Mosaic
As for Jérôme Gulon, everything is mosaic, and above all the words he creates in order to define his experiments: Thesaic, musaics, engravosaics, combisaic, mottisaic, mechasaic, glassosaic, tagosaic…
This fact and his experience gained during his studies lead him to wonder why mosaic slipped through all avant-gardes and experiments that affected amongst others painting and sculpture.
He wrote an essay entitled Between stone (materiality) and concept, which remains the only essay dedicated on contemporary art of mosaic. It summarizes its art: it conceives before experimenting, experiments before conceiving, and the themes and conceives motives become mosaic elements.
In 2007, he obtains the title of Doctor of Paris University, in Arts and art Sciences, specialized in Plastic Arts, proving if needed that mosaic is a full art.
Let us leave to Jérôme Gulon the word of the end:
“In this great mobility of things, I keep on setting one by one the stones that draw a route that looks like life. They form a mosaic that followed the path of my thoughts, Thoughts that themselves drag after them the mosaic to become”.
“What does mosaic bring to the world inside which I immerse it, and what does that world in return give to mosaic or to the perception that we have of it? It is without a doubt the basic question that motivates my practicing mosaics. It is not mosaic in itself that I am interested in, but its ability to make me understand the world better and to generate a relation to the Other”.
“I am only interested in art by the humanity that can be found in it, by the meaning given to things that we get with joy or sometimes with grief but always with grace”.
ARTIST
To Transform emotions into colour
by Giulio Menossi
Translated from Italian by Dominique Annarelli
Translated into English by Sophie Drouin
page 60
I was born on a well-bordered land and grew up among mulberry trees and fields of herbs, walking the land of my ancestors and breathing in the wind coming from the sea.
I had the good luck to meet a good Teacher, a Master, along the way. He
raised me, shaped me, and prepared me for the colourful road I was about to take. Nothing was easy. The Master, the tears, my stubborn will to go on. I learned the ancient art of finely shaped
tesserae, and fought every day with my desire to go back home to my mulberries.
37 years ago I came back to this land of barbarian invasions, of antique cities, of perfumed wines, and I live here passionately.
Nothing tells the story of an artist better than his own works. For those able to see it, there is the story of a long road. As with all lengthy paths, mine had its share of heroic and tragic
adventures and escapes, meetings, rests, smiles, tears, dreams and nightmares.
My fingers have run through millions of tesserae. I have created harmonious tales from shards of glass, I have robbed snowflakes to use their crystals, handled strange materials, crumbled colourful marble, trying to tell a story.
When for the sake of a commission, I had to replicate famous works, I did not waver in front of the colours. I copied, learning from the Masters, I tried to remove myself fro the process, simply applying technique. And when the right moment came, the colours would flow out by themselves.
Then, like a springtime stream fed by the rains, the forces of colour
toppled everything. It modified ancient ways, creating new sensations, amplifying, stirring new energies.
After many years, I am still working and playing with heart and spirit.
It is the most wonderful gift I could ever dream of.
After vanquishing the fear of colour, of large-scale works, slowly I felt growing in me a consciousness, deliberately affirming its will. My mosaics were not merely copies anymore, but construsts
with very precise foundations, they were spaces where I could feel comfortable and free to improvise.
Today, I am absolutely sure of this one thing: how I must build my new mosaics.
And everything comes to me spontaneously, without drawings, sketching, or preparation, before ; I can simply paint with glass.
To transforme emotions into colours which go where my heart wants to send them, in a completely improvisational manner.
With these dynamic mosaics of mine, discovery awaits every time, even for me.
The first signs come during the creation of the substrate which starts pulling me in a flow of sensations, dreams, and harmonies of shapes.
The sculptural substrate lives in its own aura of light, and would survive well even without the addition of the bright mosaic additions.
I open my windows to light, doors long kept shut, I travel dark dusty corridors opening curtains and screens, I seek to fill every hidden angle, to flood the darkness with brilliant light.
The dynamic mosaics represent for me at the same time a starting point and a finish line, an arrival. An arrival because because after a life spent walking on shards of glass and pricking my fingers, now I can say that I have accomplished one of my dreams. Arrival because I wanted to see movement in mosaic, colour, tesserae, shapes….now everything is in motion, alive !
It is a starting point because I have still so many dreams, like children who must be caught in the act, or flights to be fancied.
Starting point because dynamism is life, space to be filled, momentum, the contrast between light and shadow.
And so the mosaic has become the living thing, and the art becomes one with the person who experiences it. Someone viewing it, and changing the angle of view by even a single step, transforms the art into something new.
He or she becomes ART as well.
My path has led me as far as this ! Where will I go from here, if and how ? I do not know. I only know that this marvellous art form offers a wondrous creative experience, a beautiful
metaphor for life.
March 2012
SOMEWHERELSE
Activities of japanese association " MAAJ"
by Toyoharu Kii
page 62
Mosaic Art Association in Japan (MAAJ) was founded in 1995 to promote mosaic art, support the mosaci artists and raise the public awareness. The Mosaic Symposium of AIMC held in 1994 gave it its impetus.
We transmit information on mosaic art through annual bulletins and newsletters, and at the same time, we plan mosaic exhibitions and training sessions.
As a matter of fact, the history of japanese mosaic art started in an unfortunate way. In 1950's there founded some mosaic producing companies in Japan. These companies could easily received orders of mural mosaics, because at that time there was a great deal of demand for architectual decorations. In order to achieve thier orders, the companies had to employ many young artists but most of them didn't know anything about mosaic art. There was no mosaic school during that period.
In 1960's, a mural art course was initiated in a university of arts, and in another university, a group was led by an artist who had studied in Italy.
Yet the number of them is very low. For this reason, the quality of japanese mosaics remained low and most of them disappeared with the buildings with short lives.
Most of the mosaicists of that period didn't want to make mosaics in private because, for them, mosaics were their job, not an artistic discipline.
The Mosaic Art Association in Japan gave them a impetus to make their own mosaics as an artistic activity.
MAAJ holds a mosaic exhibition every two years. In 2007, the rules of the exhibition changed. A jury has been introduced, and the exhibition is open to every one. The number of participants is not high yet: 58 in 2007, 72 in 2009, 53 in 2011. But their quality is getting better and better.
MAAJ's activity will improve the mosaic art situation in Japan.
TRIP
Trip to Vietam with Charles Nguyen Van Du
Translation Holden Ferry
page 66
In his art studio in Lyon, Charles Nguyen Van Du creates sculptures and paintings where mosaics and ceramics are blended together: mosaics made from ceramic tiles, ceramic sculptures livened up with mosaics. So when he travelled to Vietnam in 2008, he was interested in the temples’ exuberant ceramic mosaic decorations. He was only able to gather a very small amount of information about these decorative elements. It’s a technique that was introduced to Vietnam by the Chinese, for we find temples in China decorated in the same manner. In Vietnam, there are many studios that produce ceramic objects: if the finished product is not satisfactory, then it is broken, and the pieces are gathered up…and used to decorate the palace! These decorations date back to time of the palace’s construction. The craftsmen who restore the sculptures have not found any signatures: the sculptors were craftsmen who did not sign their work. This technique of assembling stones is called “calinga”. Charles Nguyen Van Du sent us the photos from his trip.
Situated in the center of Vietnam, less than 20km from the sea, Huế is spread along the edge of the wide Perfume River. Its citadel is inspired by the Forbidden City and the Chinese imperial palaces: lavish royal tombs are scattered in the surrounding countryside among rice fields and hills. The city of the last emperors, built within a 10-mile radius on orders from Gia Long (founder of the Nguyễn Dynasty) between 1804 and 1833, is the only example of an imperial city in existence in Vietnam today. It suffered bombings during the Vietnam War, and many palaces were destroyed; they are now included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List and have been reconstructed, pavilion by pavilion, with projects specialized in the restoration of mosaics.
Khải Ðịnh’s tomb was the last to have been built, between 1920 and 1931, in the Valley of the Tombs, upstream from Huế. Khải Ðịnh was the second to last ruler of the Nguyễn Dynasty; he was more interested in the construction of his own mausoleum than the economic development of his country, but of all of the imperial tombs that line the Perfume River, his is the one that stands out the most. Most of the materials were imported from other countries: the cement and the slate were from France, and the ceramic and glass pieces came from China and Japan. When you enter the tomb, you are struck by the contrast between the dark and sober exterior, and the colorful walls inside, decorated with porcelain mosaic. Traditional Vietnamese elements blend with art deco elements: the Oriental and European influences come together in this mausoleum, which has become the symbol of ceramic art.
Continuing further south on his trip, Charles Nguyen Van Du discovered even more temples and palaces decorated with mosaics in Hội An and Nha Trang. Hội An, located 135km south of Huế, has a magnificent wooden architecture dating back to the period between the 17th and the 19th centuries, and is also listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s a charming town that was one of the most prosperous Asian ports in the 17th century (back then, the town was called FaiFo). The architecture of the Chinese temples, the pagodas, and the merchants’ houses is remarkable.
Nha Trang lies on the edge of the South China Sea, about 500km from Ho Chi Minh City, and though it is renowned for its magnificent beach, the town also houses magnificently decorated temples and pagodas.
Throughout this trip, ceramics and mosaics proved to be a unique way to experience the richness of Vietnam.
VIRTUAL JOURNEY IN THE
MEDITERRANEEN SEA
Hatay's unique Mosaic Collection is now online
by Ünsal Köslü
page 70
Few countries in the world are as fortunate as Turkey in terms of the extravagance and diversity of cultural heritage, which stretches back to the birth of civilisation. To list few examples one can name Çatalhöyük, the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site in the world; unique tomb-temple complex of the Commagene Kingdom on the Nemrut Mountain; Ephesus, most known of countless ancient cities in Anatolia; the Great Mosque and Hospital of Divrigi, a UNESCO World Heritage site with exuberant decoration; and the Selimiye Mosque, zenith of Ottoman architecture.
Amongst Turkey’s treasures, one can also name the Hagia Sophia, extraordinary marvel of architecture famous also for its impressive Byzantine mosaics; the Gaziantep Museum, currently the largest mosaic museum in the world; and the city of Hatay, ancient Antioch, home to some of the best Roman mosaics in the world.
This important mosaic collection in the city of Hatay is now available online thanks to a volunteer project, the Hatay Virtual Archeology Museum Project, led by IBM Turkey and supported by Governorship of Hatay.
The Virtual Museum consists of 80 mosaics, 18 artifacts and 10 heritage sites. With an aesthetic visual design and user-friendly navigation, this Virtual Museum provides detailed information on each mosaic which are written by experts in the museum. Each mosaic photographed at night time with special lights and color-scale, therefore provide mosaics’ true colors. The Yakto Mosaic which has 7.3 meters width and 8.2 meters height photographed for the first time from front with 90o degree. Visitors can examine any of these mosaics and artifacts in detail via zoomed navigation. This close-up view allows visitors to appreciate eminent craftsmanship of Roman artisans.
Hatay Virtual Archeology Museum contributes to other important steps initiated by the Governorship of Hatay, such as documentation of Hatay’s cultural inventory and construction of a new archeology museum. The new building will allow displaying the biggest mosaic collection in the world and it is expected to open in June 2013. In paralel to this opening, there will be new additions to the virtual collection.
History of Hatay Archeology Museum:
The first excavations in Hatay date back to 1932. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
Excavations by Princeton University in 1932-1939 revealed many mosaics from Harbiye, Narlıca, Güzelburç, Samandağ and other places surrounding Antakya. These excavations now make up the principal wealth of the museum. With these excavations, many important archeological findings were unearthed, representing the vast richness and grandeur of the ancient city. This important mosaic collection is currently dispersed amongst 20 museum and private collections including the Hatay Archeology Museum, Princeton University Art Museum (USA), Worcester Museum (USA), and the Louvre Museum (France).
Following an initiative to gather all excavated artifacts in one place, the Hatay Archeology Museum was completed in 1939 and opened to visitors on 23 July 1948, the 10th anniversary of the Hatay’s integration into the Turkish Republic. In addition to the 8 galleries of the museum, there are also artifacts displayed in the museum’s yard. The museum has 5 storages and a total floor space of 1,140 square meters. Artifacts are displayed over an area of 984 square meters. As of 2011, the total number of artifacts is 35,433.
About Museum’s Mosaic Collection:
The mosaics displayed in the Hatay Archeology Museum were all made between the 2nd Century AC and 6th Century AC. There is a wide variety of themes in the mosaics including mythology and scenes from daily life in addition to their geometric and botanic ornamentation. There are also floor mosaics which serve a decorative purpose. The mosaics excavated in and around Antakya (Hatay’s city center and ancient Antioch) are justifiably famous around the world for their size, production techniques and variety of themes.
Hatay Virtual Archeology Museum can be visited through: http://www.hatayarcheologymuseum.gov.tr
http://www.hatayarkeolojimuzesi.gov.tr
Boats of Psyches Mosaic:
This well-preserved mosaic is framed with a thin strip, wave motif and herbal border. Made on a blue ground, the mosaic depicts Eros on top and Psyche at the bottom.
Mosaic of Oceanus and Tethys:
This 6.5 meter width and 7.4 meter height mosaic composed of two panels and a large part of it is damaged. The bottom panel depicts the figues of Oceanus and Tethys with sea creatures around them. The frame of the mosaic is decorated with geometrical patterns.
Mosaic of Eros and Psyche:
This 6.3 meter height and 1.6 meter width mosaic has geometric patterns except its central panel. In the central panel, Eros sleeps under a tree and Psyche, with a bow in her hand, reaches out for the quiver on the tree. The panel in the middle is framed in a thin strip and braid motif. On the right and left are geometrical panels.
About the city of Hatay:
The Hatay was described by the famous Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who was born in Antakya and lived here from 322 to 400, as “a city which no other city around the world could surpass either in the fertility of its soil or in its commercial wealth,”. In antiquity, the Hatay was referred to as “Orientis Apicem Pulcrum” (Crown of the Orient). The current name “Hatay” was given to the city by Atatürk, the founding president of the Turkish Republic. As the main hub of the Hatay, Antakya is one of the most cosmopolitan places in Turkey today.
The city is located in the southwest of the Plain of Amuq, at the point where three major highways of Asia Minor intersect and head towards the western Mediterranean. In this region, where the footprints of 13 different civilizations are visible. “Antiocheia” (Antakya) was founded by the Seleucid King Seleucus I Nicator (the conqueror, 306-281 BC), a general of Alexander the Great, on 22 Artemisios (May) 300 BC.
During the Roman Period (1st century BC – 6th century AD), Antakya became the center of the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire thanks to its wealth, prosperity, intellectual composition and institutions. Antakya was later conquered by the Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Byzantines and Egyptian Mamluks before falling the hands of Ottoman Turks in 16th Century.
After a short-lived existence as a Republic from September 1938 to June 1939, Hatay joined to Turkey on 23 July, 1939.
The city has hosted different ethnicities and religions for centuries, most notably Sunni and Alevi Turks, Protestant Arabs, Assyrians, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Armenians and Jews. The Hatay has been awarded UNESCO Cities for Peace Prize.
STUDIO SECRETS
by Gilles Antoine
Translation Catherine Despret
page 74
How on earth can you lay your hands on a stock of 19th century smalts? It is now possible for any artist wishing to use them for restoration or creative work. Orsola GUERN, owner of “Championnet Mosaïques”, and Anna SICLARI who works with her in this mosaïcist’s dream world, have provided us with the solution.
The story dates back to the times of Jean GAUDIN, painter and mosaïcist, who in 1932, created the extraordinary mosaics of the Basilica of Lisieux, dedicated to Saint Theresa. Jean was the son of Felix Gaudin, the man who had taken over a stained glass works in 1879 in Clermont Ferrand. It was a family affair, since Jean’s son took over the workshop until 1973.
Like all such companies, the studio kept a significant stock of materials in order to accommodate the demands for both restoration and creative work commissioned by patrons. The Gaudin Studios acquired their glass from suppliers who are now almost impossible to trace or by buying up the stock from other studios that were closing down such as Facchina. So they had glass paste used in Lisieux, as well as the Italian smalts. When Gaudin itself closed down in its turn, the 5 or 6 tons of stock were bought by someone as a gift for his wife whose hobby happened to be mosaics. Inevitably, she used only a fraction of the stock, given that she was an amateur working alone! So the material was more or less abandoned in poor storage conditions. It was also moved several times. Twenty years passed and the owner decided to rid himself of this cumbersome and unwieldy paraphernalia in his garage and so contacted Championnet. The smalts were in open sawdust filled wooden boxes, and covered in thick layers of soot and dust. The Guern family undertook this mammoth task, painstakingly: Anna’s mother washing everything (sometimes through 6 different baths), Anna herself, sorting box after box, tessera by tessera. Little by little, each piece revealed its own particular beauty both in colour and texture. Some boxes were filled with leftovers: in the old days, the artisans threw nothing away, keeping everything against the day it might come in useful; a good archeologist might even succeed in matching the bits to the original masterpieces?!
The quality of the smalts is exceptional, their colours very varied and the texture and grain exquisite; even the tiny holes produced in the paste during the manufacturing process can, on occasion, identify the maker. Some tones can no longer be produced, since they would contain now banned substances, or because the formula was made up for a specific and unique order.
Orsola Guern researched the origins of the smalt and she was soon convinced that most of the original stock came from Orsoni of Venice. There are nuances within each tesserae that show craftsmanship of a particularly high if unpredictable order, resulting in innumerable tones within the same colour and creating brilliant, harmonious, marble effects. Some greenish striped like bacon streaked with red; some tesserae seem to bleed, some have gold in them; even the flaws appear sumptuous.
Cleaning, sorting and inventorying the more than 400 boxes will take years. There is still more than three-quarters of the stock left to clean and sort. It is impossible to know what the catalogue will be in the end, which is both frustrating and exhilarating. The anticipation of the treasures yet to be disinterred and discovered is thrilling. The smalts are put on sale as soon as they have been sorted; a wonderful opportunity to use these “antique” materials for restoration work that requires particular materials and/or colours, and also for use in contemporary pieces.
Enthusiasts can marvel at these previously unreleased tesserae, and the immense possibilities they offer. It’s a real fairy tale!
BLOGOSPHERE
Mosaic Art Now
by Nancie Mills Pipgras
page 76
Ridind the train from Ravenna to Venice after the opening weekend of RavennaMosaico 2012 last October, I had a vision.
During the Festival, I had spent three days totally immersed in the cutting-edge of the art form. I had seen groundbreaking work, met the passionate artists who had make it, and spent hours over birra and vino talking about it with scolars, critics and aficionados. On the train that day, my vision was to recreate Mosaic art Now’s (MAN’s) online presence so that it reflected what I had just experiences as the dynamic state of modern mosaic.
The new goal for mosaicartnow.com would be serve as a « nexus » for the very best in modern mosaic art and thought, present those things in a dynamic manner and, in doing so, help great modern mosaics receive the same recognition that traditional art forms enjoy.
The website would need to be visually stunning, rigorously curated, and easy to navigate. It would have te be incredibly attractive to mosaic lovers and –just as important- credible those who should be interested in the art form – arts influencers, critics, curators, dealers, designers , educators, etc.
After a lengthy research and design process with Zack Darling Creative Associates, the »New MAN » www.mosaicartnow.com was launched in March.
The debut was accompanied by new content from some of modern mosaic’s most accomplished artists and innovative thinkers.
From the Ideas Section :
Mosaic artist and scolar Lillian Sizemore (USA) premiered her video « Lod 2.0 Above and below » in wich she revealed her surprising discoveries about this ancient masterpiece.
Ravenna-based instructor, writer and critic Daniele Torcellini considered the nature of mosaic within the larger art world in « Mosaic ? Neo-Mosaic ? Post-Mosaic » (reprinted here).
From the Why Mosaic ? Section :
Elain M. Goodwin (UK) shared the monograph which will accompany her upcoming three-city exhibit tour.
Iliana Shafir (Israel) Discussed how she finds « constant renewal and endless inspiration » in the making of mosaics.
John Botica (New Zealand) wrote about how his love for the humble pebble and how he is compelled to make art that lasts for millennia.
Artists, Archives, Exhibitions, Mid-Century and Ancient are all avenues for readers to access the over 250 articles showcasing over 125 artists that MAN has generated in the past five years. The new website also includes the complete Exhibition in Print sections from the 2010 and 2011 editions of MAN the magazine.
MAN also « reprints » selected content from artistic and scholarly sources. Readers easely move from MAN to the websites of the contributing artists, authors ; organizations and publications. In April, we reprinted a paper on « The Father of Modern Mosaics », Gino Severini, by Dr. Ilona Jesnick (UK) which had first appeared in Andamento, the journal of the British Association for Modern Mosaic (BAMM). Ravenna-based blogger Luca Maggio (www.lucamaggio.wordpress.com) has also generously shared some of his most intriguing columns. And Lillian Sizemore (LillianSizemore.com) is a regular commentator on mid-century and ancient mosaics.
All content is contributed by the authors. New stories and essays are announced via the website’s homepage, MAN’s Facebook Page (3000+ followers), Twitter, and weekly newsletter, The Best of MAN (BOM). The iPad/iPhone application Flipboard recently added MAM to its Art World Section.
While in Ravenna, I was sincerely touched by comments from mosaic artists who told me how much they value MAN ; inspiring artists was the cornerstone for why MAN was founded by Bill Buckingham and Michael Welch in 2006 ? With the new website, I hope that MAN will also be a force in helping great works of modern mosaic find a home in the finest museums, galleries and collections in the world.
Facebook Page : Mosaic Art Now
Twitter : Mosaicartnow
CONTRIBUTORS
page 79
Luca Barberini
Born in Ravenna in 1981, he graduated from the Institute for Mosaic Art Gino Severini. Founded in 2005 with Ariana Gallo Kokomosaico Workshop where he teaches also his art. A determinedly contemporary work, of a perfect, respectful technique of the tradition ravennate which he knows how to make forget by the boldness of the themes which he approaches and the very original way he treats them. artist of the year by Mosaic Art Now in the U.S.A. Numerous exhibitions: Limoges, Ravenna, Rome, Paray-le-Monial, Athens, Israel, and soon Paris. With a collective of artists and art critics, it created MARTE a cultural association which gives as objective to promote the art. He is Vice President of AIMC.
Luca Barberini and Mosaïque Magazine: artistic advisor of the magazine, his work "Condominium 01" was the cover, most famously, the number 3.
His strokes heart: People: Sir Michael Phillip "Mick" Jagger, Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Nikola Tesla, Oscar Wilde. Movies: A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick), Amarcord (Federico Fellini), Snatch Guy Ritchie). Artists: Caravaggio, Magritte, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Selleck, Faithless, Frank Miller. Book: To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Renée MALAVAL
Native of Montpellier(France), she has a scientific training and it is through the love of geology and stones that she discovered the mosaic twenty years there has. Since then she has continued to practice this art and opened her studio in Pralognan (Savoie - France). She met many artists, frequent museums, galleries, exhibitions and websites and collects books dedicated to this art. This great knowledge of the mosaic, as well as practicing as a spectator has prompted to create a website that has been very successful http://vanoisemosaique.over-blog.fr. Then naturally it is the "adventure Mosaïque Magazine".
She is part of the artists group Edel'Art.
Renée and Mosaïque Magazine : publication director and editor in chief.
Distinguishing feature: other passion, ornithology. We do not know if she possesses more books on birds or on mosaic. In when a book on birds and mosaic?
Her strokes heart: Movies: Almodovar and Woody Allen ; Books: The Peterson (the Bible ornithologists), Milan Kundera
Artist: Nicolas de Staël, Pierre Soulages
Toyoharu Kii
Graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Tokyo, he began the mosaic in 1978. Master of Arts in 1977, he completed his studies in Florence at Instituto Statale d’Arte. Back in Japan in 1982, he opened the mosaic workshop ING and carries out numerous wall mosaics while pursuing his own work; lecturer at universities and Joshibi Murashino Art. Awarded Picassiette of Chartres in 2004 and 2008. Kajima Sculpture Contest at winning, Orsoni Prize, first prize at the Mosaic Biennale 2011 in Japan. President of Mosaic Art Association in Japan, he is a member of TE 21, a group of contemporary artists and the AIMC.
His work, while refinement and color nuances are exposed worldwide.
Toyoharu and Mosaïque Magazine: magazine correspondent from the first issue, he opens a window mosaic Japanese through the eyes of contemporary artist.
His strokes heart: Film: Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier)
Artist: Pergamon Sosos ; Book: The Great Book (Agota Kristof)
Linda Kniffitz
Trained in archeology and Byzantine art history at the University of Bologna, she specializes in cataloging old collections. Since 2002 she is curator of the International Centre for Documentation on Mosaic Art Museum of the City of Ravenna and Archives and is responsible for documenting and preserving and enhancing the Museum's collection of contemporary mosaics.
She organizes conferences, publishes many books and DVDs related to the business of cataloging and dissemination of mosaic art, ancient and modern. With her team she led two European projects, the development of CIDM in 2007 and the management and promotion of Italian museums and Slovenes.
Co-organizer of "Mosaic Code" in Netanya, Israel, in 2011. In the same year, she designed and oversaw the competition - exhibition and catalog-GAEM young mosaic artists, held at the Museum in March
She taught at the University of Bologna, working in scientific journals and wrote occasionally for a few magazines historical and artistic.
Linda and Mosaïque Magazine:
Scientific Advisor of the magazine since the first issue she immediately encouraged and aided by her valuable advice and articles.
Her strokes heart: event: marriage to 22 years with Giorgio. We are united by more than 35 years.
Movie: Rocco and His Brothers Visconti
Artists: Many, but among all Piero della Francesca, Cézanne and Bacon
Personalities: All women courageous, generous and passionate about their work. But also men with the same characteristics!
Books: All essays on art by Roberto Longhi
