Mosaïque Magazine est le magazine en langue française entièrement dédié à l'Art de la mosaïque contemporaine.
Mosaïque magazine number 2
English edition
EDITORIAL
Mosaics Are Magic
by Gilles Antoine
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 3
Mosaïque Magazine was born from a simple observation: there is no magazine devoted to mosaics in Western Europe; and from a wild idea: what if we invented it ?
Fairies bent over its cradle, giving it numerous blessings. There was a warm welcome, and magic did the rest.
Distribution took place in the best conditions : Mosaïque Magazine has readers not only all over France (including the country's overseas territories), but also in the USA, Canada, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Brazil, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Great Britain, Japan… However long it took to offer an English version.
Nonetheless the editorial association is still weak and we shall wait until the third or fourth issue – now assured to be edited – to reach financial balance, but the first results are encouraging, beyond what was reasonable to trust. All that was possible thanks to a network of mosaics lovers: studios, artists, clubs, exhibitions organizers, amateur and professional mosaic artists, writers and photographers, translators, dynamic and reckless sponsors, and to a network of friends, sometimes foreign, who encouraged this fascinating project.
It is in childhood that we grow the most: the second issue is in your hands. The run has grown by 70%. The number of pages has reached 84. Contributors' circle enlarged, as new specialists, art critics, correspondents and writers joined us. We took into account most of the improvement suggestions we received, without questioning our original choices, mainly that of offering the largest vision of mosaics. Mosaïque Magazine will always propose another look upon the world, that of artists, recognized or beginners, from yesterday or today, a disturbing or optimistic look, universal or singular, sometimes unconventional, sometimes in current affairs: that is how we turned towards Japan and Libya in that issue.
Multiple contacts generated by this lovely venture allowed us to deal with a background evolution: mosaics meet a worldwide development, studios are created everyday, everywhere, passionate people make it their craft, artists are revealed, works become more and more original – you will notice some of those while reading us – and in the same process, the run gets bigger, the number of exhibits increase and works tend to be exposed in galleries. Numerous players have been taking part in this expansion for a long time: In France, the 3R in Chartres, M as in Mosaics in Paray-le-Monial and Obernai, in Italy Ravenna and Spilimbergo, the SAMA and Mosaic Art Now in the USA, Solo Mosaico in Russia, BAMM in Great Britain, DOMO in Germany and many others.
From its unpretentious situation, and with your support, Mosaïque Magazine has the ambition to contribute to that movement. Passionate people have contributed to this magazine, and passionate people read it.
Why do mosaics systematically bring about passion? Passion for those who create it and for those who admire it, passion throughout the world, passion for the most modest works as well as for the most sophisticated ones, by artists who are at the top of their art.
And all that is done with just a stone, a golden tesserae, a shell, a scrap of earthenware, glass or metal. Mosaic artists are magicians.
EVENT
Mosaics City Paray-le-Monial 2011
Riccardo Licata, the man who awakens talents
Homage to Riccardo Licata
by Henri-Noël Aubry
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 14
The mosaic artists who trained in Licata's studio between 1962 and 1995 pay homage to their master in exposing works for the occasion. Together they propose a contemporary image of mosaics.
Each time I went through the doors of the Beaux-Arts in Paris and stepped into the main courtyard, on the Rue Bonaparte side, I had this exquisite sensation of entering a world where the codes were different. The same feeling we get when we cross a border, my traveler's soul was fulfilled.
Situated on the main courtyard, the mosaic studio occupied a special place: it opened on both the college and the world…
What makes the characteristic of a mosaic studio is above all the noise, or rather I should say the sound because there is not really any noise pollution. It is more likely a question of music, rhythm, cadence, legitimate cacophony, or sometimes fleetingly of organized tempo. Then at night when the college became "silence", the chant of hammers resounded even more. It stays engraved today in our memories. It was a very pleasant time to come to work there, many students can testify to it.
The beating heart of that studio was of course Riccardo Licata who taught at the college between 1962 and 1995. He knew how to create a unique place, buzzing with life and artistic creation, favorable to the blooming of rich individuals, multiple and contrasted cultures. "We lived in the studio from morning to night, sometimes even over the week-end, with the difficulties of learning a technical craft (manipulation of heavy materials, the tesserae's extremely long size, the impatience before the work is finished and also the failed pieces). We shared large meals in the midst of concrete, the feverishness of the preparations for exhibitions at the Grand Palais, the stress of presenting diplomas and so many other things". For many years the studio has been a crossroad where current students met former ones, visitors and tourists, artists or just interested people. It gave birth to many interesting works as well as great personalities.
Of course all that is not due to a simple act of chance but rather to the personality of the man who Riccardo Licata is. If I can trust all the inklings gathered amongst his students, there are recurring words, such as respect, tolerance, freedom, humanism – values that in nowadays' context resonate even more strongly in our ears today.
He knew how to guide without imposing, to amend without hurting, he knew how to make us take risks and to pass generously on to us his creative energy. He pushed us towards the path of creation with strictness and demand, but paradoxically with a lot of liberty and serenity.
Riccardo Licata was always ready to take in new followers, when he felt the desire and will to "do" – which has been my case because mosaics did not belong to my career path. He knew how to facilitate access to the studio and give us all the freedom we needed to organize ourselves. That is what made the place lively at all times.
I would like to quote this sentence by Licata that I like much and summarizes well, on its own, the spirit of a mosaic studio, both on the technical and spiritual sides: "mosaic artists almost work like masons for the preparation of their mortar, and like convicts when they cut stones with their hammers, but then, when they set down the tesserae, form, color, art and poetry change the material and the creation becomes light".
That period, rich in memories for all of us, remains as a special moment in our students' lives. We can regret and lament today that because of a cultural will and ministerial instructions, mosaics are gradually disappearing from the Beaux-Arts' classes. If Licata ever still had doubts about his former disciple's affection, he would just have to prick up his ears to listen to their voices in chorus saying "Thank you Riccardo".
page 16
Moema Branquinho
"Paysage" belongs to a series of three mosaics. Moema Branquinho's work - a Brazilian artist who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro - is focused on nature. Opacity, transparency and translucency of materials meet and talk with light. She likes to work on their contrasts, the aspect of lithic material as opposed to glazed material, their sensuality, in order to understand the movement of the earth, erosion, the sky, clouds, the stones' veins.
Jérôme Gulon
To pay homage to Riccardo Licata, Jérôme Gulon imagined a course marked off with small mosaics : inserted into the ground or the buildings, they evoke Riccardo Licata's alphabet. It was a wonderful idea to enable Riccardo Licata to escape from Saint Nicolas Tower.
Cécile Bouvarel
In Cécile Bouvarel's mosaics, tesserae escaped from the lines to mix with all the materials that the artist gleans : pebbles, nets, glass, metal scraps… and piece together mosaics tinged with poetry and finesse, which tell us stories.
Gérard Brand "Words of Reconstructed Items – Homage to Paul Charnoz"
by Renée Malaval
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 17
Gérard brand incessantly reinvents a "mosaic otherwise" that makes its way towards transparency.
This year he pays a honest homage to Paul Charnoz. Ceramist and engineer, Paul Charnoz created and produced the inlaid stoneware tiles that bear his name. Two of his works, exposed permanently in Paul Charnoz museum in Paray-Le-Monial, won a gold medal at the World Fairs in 1889 and 1900.
As homage, Gérard Brand explores a path he is fond of, "Words of items", and through his work he gives speech and a new life to the old ceramic tiles of Paray-le-Monial's Paul Charnoz Museum.
The artist both inspired and sensitive, endowed with a prodigious capacity to create, has been making 180 pieces of work in two years, which he presents to the public in Paul Charnoz Museum and in St Roch Chapel. 180 new pieces of work, using no other material than stoneware tiles, which integrate and play with the technique of "network" used in the making of the tiles. This thrusts us into the artist's fabulous, baroque and fantastic universe. Funny, disconcerting and inventive mosaics and sculptures; but always sensitive and vibrant. This is an expression of friendship to Paul Charnoz Museum, cradle of the M comme Mosaïque association and of the summer meetings between contemporary mosaics and its public in Paray-Le-Monial.
In St Roch Chapel you will discover the apotheosis of the exhibition, a monumental sculpture of 255 meters high that Gérard Brand has specially made, which title is "The return of Paul Charnoz". That his the homage from a creator to another one.
Gerard Brand’s Biography
Works and lives in Alsace
Teaches his art in Obernai and Paray-Le-Monial
His works are shown and collected throughout the world
Creator and organizer of the Biennal of Mosaics in Obernai
Passages Valérie Colombel
by Yves Decompoix
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 20
From the 19th of March to the 30th of December 2011, The Hiéron Museum in Paray-Le-Monial presents the exhibition "Passages", with the works "Imago" and "Resurrection", suspended mosaics by Valérie Colombel, mosaist and sculptor.
Working the material is very important in Valérie Colombel's work: It takes part to a profound research aiming at penetrating, beyond its formal aspect, the material's energetic nature.
Using resources peculiar to mosaics – fragmentation and recomposition – her work plays on density variations. In her sculptures, material can loose some of its consistency to give the illusion of light particles, as it is the case in the installation "Imago" in which the molten glass tesserae become a light reflector.
Wondering about material mutations, Valérie Colombel draws a parallel between them and physic development. She went from chtonic works to much more ethereal ones, showing in this manner the various stages of a being's transformation.
More than an analogy, there is a passage where the change of material states expressed in her works gives rise to consciousness development; it is about a phenomenon of alchemy leading gradually to the deployment of consciousness.
This symbolic shift material to being takes shape in the following shift stages: the remains, the coil, the tomb and the appearance, all of them as image playing on the disappearance / birth ambivalence. That paradigm evokes to our surprised eyes the play of life and death, the cycle of life and its eternal return.
Valérie Colombel
by Renée Malaval
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 21
Valérie Colombel teaches arts in the Beaux-Arts College in Beauvais. A long series of sculptures has marked her carrer since the end of her studies in the Beaux Arts of Paris, in Riccardo Licata's studio. She presents two of them at the Hieron Museum – two sculptures of the same technique : hundreds of threads, thousands of tesserae and a subtle and vibrant game of variations in the tessserae's density, a twinkling in the light. Tesserae composing a sculpture, and a mosaic appears. Immaterial and aerial interstice. Sculpture in movement, deconstructed or recomposed. Assembling of matter and space of which the limit draws suggestive appearances, figures.
Valérie Colombel created this artistic language in order to evoke the passage. Passage from larva to fully-grown, the imago of the living world, of the animal world. Resurrection, passage again from death to life in the religious world. As in the Byzantine era, the mosaic that became sculpture revives the sacred; but it divested itself of ritual illustrations and tesserae freed themselves from their weight and mortar sheath. They float in space, like energy particles, as weightless. That is a new way for mosaics.
Valérie Colombel's biography
Holder of a diploma from the National Beaux-Arts College of Paris.
Her career is divided between private orders and exhibitions in France and abroad.
Teaches arts at the University of Beauvais
Lives and works in the Somme
FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER
After After
by Daniele Torcellini
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 30
From the 19th of March to the 16th of april 2011, the NiArt Gallery hosted the exhibition After After, organized by Felice Nittolo, Luca maggio and Daniele Torcellini.
The project After developed by Felice Nittolo between 1991 and 2001 was aimed at bringing together a selection of graduate students of the Institute of Arts of Mosaics “Gino Séverini” to enable them to put what they had learnt during their studies into practice, to go past it and even further.
Ten years later, After After opens the gallery to the dialogue between a few of those former students – who have now become confirmed artists – and some young artists trained to the mosaics language in Ravenna. The exposed artists position themselves through two poles: the first one consists in lingering over already developed experiences and reflecting about them, and the second one is about opening some new experience paths. The orientations that come through the selection of the exposed works are extremely varied.
The research, which is narrowly linked to mosaics’ language in its classical style, comes in a variety of forms and choices that offer various and uncommon levels of light, in quest for realism and abstraction through precious or differently treated surfaces in a close relationship between content and form. Arianna Gallo proposes a diptych in which the formal tradition of Ravenna and the juxtaposition of the use of numerous lead strips melt together into the imaginary of a surrealistic print. The pictorial values in matilda Tracewska’s research translates into a work of art in which the utmost stylistic element – the subject – modulates the light into a chiaroscuro of sophisticated sensibility. Gianluca Constantini offers the translation of a comic strip into mosaics, realized in collaboration with Koko Mosaico studio. The picture is enriched with the expressive capacity of sculpture with the superimposition of several levels organized in bas-relief. Valeria Ercolani proposes a delicate abstract surface, in a pastel blue. The research on tesserae and on the color/form/alignment connection goes along with subtle modulations within the limits of perception. Takako Hirai’s poetic, in suspension and evanescent imaginative universe is represented in the exhibition by a work in which the observer’s eyes scrutinize with difficulty the connections between the featuring looks, through the presence/absnce and the supernatural presence (picture p. 50 Istinto). Atsuo Suzumura (picture p.22 “Atakombo”) links together some surfaces in a circular movement that determine some interaction and a switch of readings between abstraction and representation.
The works in which mosaic becomes coating, in terms of definition, negation or oxymoron, but always in connection with the covered item, show a conceptual consciousness as well as a technical strictness. The pop imaginative world, magnified in the style of Claes Oldenburg, finds in Silvia Naddeo some new expressive possibilities, with articulating treated surfaces according to the specificities of Ravenna’s language of mosaics. A double game of references in anachronistic amalgam emphasizes a breakfast biscuit with chocolate drops. Roberta Grasso creates some visible oxymoron. Ravenna's musing technique with the disposition of tesserae that makes the surfaces aggressive to touch because of the cut of the glass, marble or stone fragments is used on a soft medium in order to create a cushion with tesserae assembled with silicone glue. In Dusciana Bravura's work, the surface's preciosity that characterizes the artist's research is translated into a modular structure, potentially infinite, in which the echo to the stylish carpet's decorations stiffens to evoke the covering of the shockproof cushions in a psychotic patient's isolation room.
While in some artistic expressions mosaics is rather a conceptual fact, a memory or a remote reference, in some others they become an analytic research item on their own realisation modes. Giorgia Severi's artistic research aims at the artificiality of an in vitro development nature and the relationship between scientific experimentations and culture. All that is shown into a work that refers to Pietro Gilardi's natural carpets and in which the elements that compose a hypothetical natural mosaic are plants and stones. In Mattia Batistini's works the musing aspect survives like a memory, through the surface's square pattern and irregular frame, devoid of all relation with a painted figure with a strong expressionist characteristic. Filippo Tazzari makes mosaics become virtual. Playing on a concept of pixelized tesserae, the artist creates a visibly illusionist but unachievable mosaic in a three-dimensional graphic mode, because it would be impossible to cut real material like that. There are two works from CaCO3. Aniko Ferreira da Silva Giuseppe Donnaloia and Pavlos Mavromatidis lead a narrow formal research on tesserae's incline and alignment – crucial stylistic element in Byzantine and Ravenna's musing techniques – to solutions that take mosaic away from itself. Tesserae define dynamic structures by lifting themselves gradually from a horizontal to a vertical position. Luca Barberini's research conducted on tesserae as a significant element and in the negation of the specificity of andamenti's musing language, results into surfaces formed by stylized pictures. In the exposed work the specifically cut tesserae give birth to upper class workers of which only one tesserae represents their collar, another their tie and barely more for their face.
MEETING
Alicia Bauer
Interview with Linda Kniffitz
translation Cloé Herrero
page 38
I met Alicia Bauer at the 11th congress of the International Association of Contemporary Mosaists, in Gaziantep, Turkey in 2008.
She touched me at once with the passion with which she described her work as an artist and with a particularity : Alicia makes the molten glass she uses for her mosaics herself. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where she works. After studying painting, ceramic and restoration she grew a passion for biblical exegesis, from Byzantine iconography to Christian art.
She learnt the musive technique in Ravenna following CISIM's course, and immediately after she dedicated herself to the study of glass from a chemical point of view, measuring herself with its production too in a specialized glassworks. She went deeper into the chemical formulas of colors and the techniques of smalti and molten glass fusions, of Roman and Byzantine styles. Among her work there are numerous sculptures, a few paintings and since 2006 the project of restoring "Nuestra Senora del Carmen la Mayor del Gordon" Church in Montevideo, Uruguay.
I asked Alicia a few questions :
-L : You were already an artist, you had already been exposing paintings and sculptures, what made you want to learn mosaics techniques and what did that bring to your poetry?
-A : The main source of inspiration in my whole work is the beauty of creation. Mosaic is a powerful technique which involves our senses, and which when used in religious edifices, allows expressing God's power through light. St Jean Damascene, the great apologist of hristian art said "images' beauty and color stimulate my prayer to glorify God".
-L : What about mosaics materials
-A : I wanted to look for natural materials for my work – marble and granite, in all the country's quarries. I learnt how to distinguish the veins, the luminosity and the possibility to use them. For smalti and molten glass, I decided to construct a small oven with the help of a master glazier. Manipulating glass was a challenge: I transformed a few materials at first with the action of high temperature fire. I learnt how to blow glass, and then I tried my hand at smalti and molten glass mixed with gold leaves. While trying various combinations of molten glass with gold leaf thickness, I succeeded in reproducing a gold and molten glass cake, similar to antique materials.
-L : Tell me about your work in Nuestra Senora in Montevideo
-A : Nuestra Senora parish has been part of Uruguay's history since 1805. The present church was built in 1924, on the former one's ruins. The frontage and edifice are of Roman Italian style. Inside there is a Latin cross, three naves separated by pillars with a dome. The main altar's altarpiece is decorated with marbles, glass colored smalti and gold mosaics in comatesque style, of Italian origin. After the second Vatican Council, the presbytery was built at the front. A new altar was elevated under the dome. Those changes lead to a new decorative order: there was a will of integrating the new altar with the old presbytery, creating a new iconographical project. In the apse's main part a virgin is depicted with four angels converging towards her. I planned and I am now working on the fourth one. They are hieratic figures, the clothing's folds are stylized in order to accentuate spirituality and incorporality, according to Byzantine tradition. Only a small rotation creates an impression of movement, and light, radiated by the musive materials, animates the obvious stillness.
Alicia Bauer works and lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Murals by Sandrine Farget
by Emile Doueur
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 44
Sandrine Farget presents her last visual art creations inspired by modern city, its nights, its lights, its life. This is a view of today's interior design in a scenography by Gerard Batalla – architect and visual artist.
Chartres' delightful chapel dedicated to saint Eman, hermit and martyr during the 5th century, turned in 2003 into a pre-eminent lighthouse of today's art and mosaics. On the tympanum that overhangs its entrance, Marco de Luca's vibrant creation displays at once the deliberately modern foothold combined with a deep heritage consciousness. Inside, Sandrine Farget shows her "Murals". In falls 2006, she obtained the first price at Chartres for the 6th International Meetings of Mosaics. Since then she never stopped asserting the same professional commitment, clearly dedicated to contemporary architecture.
Historically mosaics are an art associated to sumptuous buildings (palaces, thermal baths, patrician villas, places of worship…). The first pavements made of small river pebbles emerged in ancient Greece. Then the invention of parallelepipedic tesserae cut into stone would give more pictorial preciseness to the floor decorations. The Romans widely spread these tesserae pavements around the Mediterranean Basin. Then the Byzantine adorned their churches' walls with colored enamels and gold; intensely reflecting light. The aesthetic foundation of mosaics is thus engraved in buildings from its very origin. As time went by, it deviated slightly to make room for the concept of removable mosaics. On the contrary, Sandrine Farget militates in favor of the renewal of a tradition adapted to contemporary tastes. Determined, she qualifies her artistic work of "architectural mosaics" – a relevant pleonasm.
The attention she turns to urban planning – to the point of turning it into her main source of inspiration – is therefore not a coincidence. Everything in modern megalopolis – American into the bargain- fascinates her: cartography, skyscrapers, technique (concrete, steel, glass…), polychromy, lightings, and night vivacity. Photographic accounts that result from it are integral part of her artistic language, identifiable and resolutely atypical. Slate, assembled in sheets, produces the background music of her work. Diverse materials, wisely organized in singular islets, come here and there to punctuate the slate's muffled sensuality. They awaken contrasts that give rhythm and movement to the composition. All that results in balances between lyricism and materialism, asceticism and vigor, serenity and howling. Bas-reliefs in which light, restituted, reflected and absorbed, summons the fourth dimension. Plastic effects that, ceaselessly repeated, ardently mobilize the observant's faculties, including tactile ones.
Sandrine Farget reveals in Chartres her last mural art creations, unique pieces that all implicitly underlie an architectural intention. Her calling is indeed to conceive made to measure interiors after meeting building professionals, private or public space prescribers. In that spirit, architect Gerard Battala signs the fluid and innovative scenography of her exhibition in Chartres. It is a work into another one.
Boxed text
Her writing, made of slate flat plates, is phrased by vivid touches of marble or enamel, analogy of musical notes on a score. Texture, at first sight simple and regular, becomes sometimes conversely animated and sculpted. All these rhythm alternations delight the eye, all the more so since light works in it too: it illuminates slate and accentuates its veins.
Sandrine Farget’s biography
- Communication studies
- Won the first price at the 6th International Meetings of Mosaics
- Was trained by French and Italian mosaics masters
- Makes mural art works that she integrates into interior design
- Lives and work in the Marne, France.
ARTISTS
CaCO3 or the Andamento Hyperbole
by Daniele Torcellini
Translation Cloé Herrero
Daniele Torcelini is an instructor in visual research for Ravenna’s Academy of fine arts
CaCO3 is a collective of artists that gathers together Aniko Ferreira da Silva, Giuseppe Donnaloia and Pavlos Mavromatidis. After following different paths, they met in the studio of Ravenna’s “School for Mosaics Restoration”. There they conducted a formative experience that soon became the keystone of their artistic research. Expressive strictness combined with analytical approach using mosaics’ language and techniques would lead to the birth of the collective in 2006. Its name, CaCO3 clearly marks the reference to one of the materials that characterizes best mosaics and the collective's research – calcium carbonate – limestone's main component.
The result of the analytical process lead by the collective is a crumbling of the mosaics' surface through the hyperbole of its two most specific characteristics. On the one hand, the tesserae's incline in relation with the fitting surface – process refined during the byzantine era in order to meet the requirements of the interaction of the incident light and to enrich the surface by increasing glows and glistenings. On the other hand, the andamento – tesserae's incline- gestaltic characteristic of mosaics' language that sees the disposition of the separated elements – tesserae – turning towards the dynamic realization of directions: lines.
The mosaic translation of a picture by Berenice Abbott – that was not chosen at random – that of the forces lines generated by a magnetic field according to which iron filings lay themselves naturally – opens the way towards a narrow and final research on the expressive possibilities derived from the tesserae's incline.
In order to imitate the iron filings laying, cut tesserae disposed in roman opus vermiculatum, with reduced dimensions and long and narrow shapes, are rhythmically disposed according to progressively growing inclines, hauling up to verticality. Movimento n.1, in 2007 is both the result and poetical manifesto of the group.
A number of works, fruit of a series of carefully though out studio scientific experiments on the numerous possibilities of modulating the different spheres of activity; incline, andamenti, materials, shapes follow from there. Movimento n.4, Movimento n.7, the imposing Ottagono, Movimento n.12 and Movimento n.14 are a few of the best expressive results of the group.
CaCO3 changes mosaics, pushing it beyond its limits.
The collective conducts a work that one could qualify of surgical. Mosaics technique is dissected into constituent elements, analyzed and recomposed in final solutions of a new expressive value. The results obtained can naturally be linked to those of Minimal Art and particularly Optical Art.
By establishing a network of expressive proximity, the collective's work could ideally be connected to the pre-minimalist experiences of texture research by Robert Ryman or Francesco Lo Savio, and to Piero manzoni's Achromes, Enrico Castellani's surfaces, or Julio Le Parc, Giani Colombo and Dadamaino's optical dynamics and modulations.
Tesserae's incline and line up become stylistic elements of paramount importance in the definition of force lines and internal dynamics of monochromatic surfaces, mainly composed of lime tesserae.
The restricted variety of grey shades form movements – link between pattern and background, order or disorder, disorder becoming order, modulated structures, through a clever use and controlled articulation of tesserae's incline and line up.
Connection to light is decisive; it sets most exposed tesserae's surface, lets fall their shadow on adjoining tesserae and accentuates the chink's depth between the tesserae where light cannot reach out.
In a number of works, composition meets requirements of strict geometry that are simplified, balanced and ruled by the gold number, always with an internal dynamic. Nonetheless, it is an organic, naturalist and biologic imaginary that is used as a reference. In birds' flights, microorganisms, insect colonies, fish gills, there is no requirement of realistic representation, but rather that of seizing abstract expressive values, in order to crystallize them into an inorganic matter, by conserving movement like snapshot.
MOSAICS AND SCULPTURE
Giovanna Galli’s Steles
by Renée Malaval
Translation Cloé Herrero
page 54
Born in Ravenna, Giovanna Galli naturally became a mosaist. She revealed a first challenge, that of entering Renato Signorini’s studio, for if after five years studying in Ravenna’s school, the custom is for the best students to join that famous studio, women are not admitted into it. Giovanna Galli’s unwavering will and her friends (Marco de luca, Verdiano Marzi, Paolo Racagni)’s plea enabled her to become a member of that studio. In 1973 she met André Lanskoy, a Russian painter, and went to France. She then decided to settle in Paris, where Riccardo Licata opened the Ecole des Beaux-Arts – and his own – studio’s door for her. At 22 years old, she freed herself from the huge weight of work to initiate a work of creation.
Creation will be the choice of her life. Mosaics are her expressive language; mosaics that bear Ravenna’s print, strongly expressed in the laying of tesserae and their adamenti – the line-ups – a distinctive mark that impregnates Ravenna’s mosaists’ works, sometimes even without them knowing it.
In 2003, with the “Icare” exhibition, her mosaics find a form of autonomy, and by remaining permanently parietal, free themselves from the support: they become steles. In that way, Giovanna Galli’s mosaics can conquer some natural spaces and gardens, they can return to the watersides, amidst vegetation: steles come back to what was Giovanna Galli’s source of inspiration – the very nature. Mosaics line courses, mark symbolic places, or settle in chapels. Those erected monoliths, bearing signs written with marble, glass or gold tesserae, express vibrant messages; they are the translation of Giovanna Galli’s states of mind and feelings over nature. Their rich chromaticism evokes byzantine refinement sublimated by her extreme sensitivity. That is how abstract landscapes – which Giovanna Galli alls “landscapes of the soul” – are depicted.
« The way Giovanna Galli makes colors dance on the music of absence, her invitations to a rediscovered and continuously reinvented elsewhere, the way she evokes but never talks about the shy meetings between visible and invisible – that she lets us catch a glimpse of, suggest that the only way to be contemporary is probably not to be modern”. Vanni Mulinaris, “Icare” exhibition catalogue, Paray-Le-Monial 2003.
Giovanna Galli’s biography
-Born in Ravenna
-Master mosaist of Ravenna’s Arts School
-France’s Grand Prix of Arts
-Holder of a Bologne’s Arts School diploma
-Private and public orders in France and abroad
-Wrote books about mosaics
-Teaches in Paris and Toulon
Charles Nguyen Van Du, a Walker on the Beach
by Charles Nguyen Van Du
Translation Cloé Herrero
I discovered mosaics when I attended the teaching of Riccardo Licata in the Beaux-Arts School of Paris, in the late 1980s. I was totally seduced by this rare and demanding practice, of which I rapidly sensed the contemporary evolution capacities, and which could offer a highly personal expressive mode to me. Meanwhile, without a break, I carried on with a work of material painting, widely integrating the use of matter in my canvases.
The fact I practice sculpture is a logical result of that double work on painting and mosaics; a development of my research in volume. Bas-relief elements integrated into my paintings (at fist driftwood, heaps of melted glass, schist sheets or stone cuts, and then ceramic pieces) ended to get out of the support, and progressively escaped from the bi-dimensional frame. Logical result then, but made possible by the discovery of ceramic, tackled at first as a contribution to my paintings, then as a creation in its own right.
Modeling earth offers a kind of freedom and spontaneity that is similar to the immediacy of painting, but which does not exist in mosaics, a laborious and patient technique.
When I paint, by discharges and runoffs, I model the color, an aerial, light and fluid matter. When I knead earth, I wring, I smooth, I print y marks in a fleshy mass, a heavy and alive matter. As to the work on mosaics, it begins with the painful fragmentation, the breaking-up of solid matters into elementary tesserae, of which the slow assembling will step by step contribute to make an ensemble composition resound.
At the same time, ceramic allows me, with enameling, to extend my painter's research beyond the flat surface of the canvas: on the transparency and thickness of colors, on the crackles, the runoffs, and the relation between bright and matt.
Today, my artistic practice wholly fits the three fields into each other: my canvases' surface is made irregular by the addition under the paint of thin layers of matter; my mosaics are enriched with ceramic forms, and my sculptures are weaved with marble tesserae lines and glass strips.
In those combined pieces, enameled surfaces form zones of silence, spaces of peace and suspended time, like paint flats. Marble and granite mosaics tesserae stand out with their raw matt aspect, with clear-cut forms. The stone lines channel and give structure to the work, guide the public's lecture, amplify the composition's rhythm and underline its momentum. Light is caught then reflected by gold, silver and molten glass, slides on enameled surfaces, is absorbed by raw earth zones or relief folds.
I often explain that my works suggest both abstract and figurative landscapes.
As a matter of fact, design and forms are abstract; they attempt to provoke emotion with a poetic and allusive writing, which gives great freedom to interpretation and to the public's personal history. My zoophyte sculptures "gorgonian" and "corals" evoke underwater worlds. My canvases evoke beaches, volcanoes and deserts.
On the other hand my technique uses nature in an extremely figurative way: I insert in my works hard rocks and sometimes shell tests, I evoke water with glass and enamel, an arid soil with crackled surfaces, the capacity of earth to congeal the lightness of a wave, as we sometimes find the delicate ripples fossilized, drawn by the wind or water on the surface of a beach or a sand dune several millions years ago.
My works invite to calm contemplation, to meditation, undoubtedly to a kind of return over oneself: I suggest to the public to walk amongst my landscapes, as a walker on the beach goes back to their roots while watching the sea and sand, and thinks with a smile about the origin of the world.
Charles Nguyen Van Du’s biography:
Born in Saigon, grew up in Marseilles
Trained at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris
Contemporary Art Prize, Salon de Printemps in Lyons' Beaux-Arts Society, Lons, 2007
First prize of the Public "MAC 2000", Paris 2001
Gold medal at the "Salon des Artistes Français", Paris 1993
Individual exhibitions in France, Bulgaria, China, Korea and Lebanon
Works and lives in Lyons
COLLECTION IN FRANCE
Saint-Romain-en-Gal's Gallo-Roman museum : a Showcase for Mosaics
by M'hammed Behel
Scientific department of Saint-Romain-en-Gal's museum
translation Cloé Herrero
page 62
Thirty kilometers South of Lyons, on the right bank of the river Rhone, Saint-Romain-en-Gal's archeological site offers the vestiges of the Roman city of Vienna, covering more than three hectares. During the antiquity, Vienna, Capital of a vast territory including the Dauphiné and the Savoy region, extended on both sides of the Rhone.
The Museum
The extraordinary interest of the discoveries rapidly gave birth to the idea of creating a museum on site that would accompany the archeological vestiges; of which preservation and development were soon decided. In 1980, the Rhone department launched the project of the museum.
Excavations conducted in the same time as the architecture contest allowed to choose two parcels of land by the South-West side of the site, along the Rhone: one was partly devoid of vestiges, the other revealed a huge 2500 square meters house – the lion's house – and archeological sediments rising in tiers on nearly four meters thick, hence the constraint of building this area on piles. The project that was accepted in 1988 is that of architects Philippe Chaix and Jean-Paul Morel. It covers 1200 square meters, and thus occupies both of the building parcels.
A monumental stairway rising from the riverbank leads up to the first building that houses the museum's conservation department, the storages, the mosaics restoration studio and the archeological research center.
A transparent footbridge leads to the second building, dedicated to the continuous exhibition. Founded in the Roman walls, twenty-four steal piles support the structure – a platform glazed on its four sides – that opens widely on the site, the Rhone and the town of Vienna. A gentle slope ends on the Roman way's granite paving stones, and gives access to the archeological site.
Its riverbank situation, at the corner of the town's main bridge, gives a remarkable visibility to the building, in particular from Vienna's banks used by a heavy traffic. On the other side, inside the museum, glazed walls offer the clearest and most complete vision of the town of which the extremely dense urban history is compressed between the hills.
The architects have conceived their work as link between the two banks, reminding the antique urban unity of the town.
Collections and Museography:
Saint-Romain-en-Gal's collections were put together from a remarkable gathering of mosaics and wall paintings stemming from the site's excavations, such as the lion's mosaic, the panting with the wrestlers from the thermal baths, or the emblematic mosaic of the Ocean Gods… The important collection of black and white mosaics of geometric frame, of the characteristic style of an original Vienna "School" equally has to be cited.
Entrusted works granted by the town of Vienna to the Rhone's Conseil Général has come to enrich that collection in completing it with prestigious pieces such as the mosaic wit the winning athletes, the mosaic of Lycurgue's punishment or the painting with the wading bird.
Everyday items – ceramic crockery, glass, bone tablets, lead pipes, and metal implements – testify to the material life and activities of the area's inhabitants in the Roman era.
Museography organizes itself around four great themes: the history of antique Vienna, traditional and commercial life, mosaics and painted coatings, and finally the Roman home and environment.
The exhibition is enriched with ten scale models that show reconstitutions of the city, warehouses or great Roman villas. Through the glazed walls, the direct view of the site and the modern town enable the visitor to situate and perceive the links between current urbanism, antique city and the vestiges that came from there towards them.
Mosaics (opus musivum) is a technique that allows to cover a floor, a wall or ceiling by an assembling of small tesserae (small cubes cut in stone, baked clay or molten glass), fixed with mortar.
The production of Vienna's mosaists ranks amongst the most important ones in the Roman world. More than 260 ornamental tiling have been discovered on both banks of the Rhone. Their number testifies not only to the richness of Vienna's residences, but also to the mastering of a particular technique and expertise.
Vienna's mosaics studios have been attributed the creation of a specific regional style, that specialists named the Rhodanian School. It is particularly characterized by a taste for geometric frames, and by the richness and diversity of stylized plant-like patterns: leaves, flowers or rosaces are widely used in varied decorative compositions. More than 150 examples of these patterns are known in Vienna. They are not systematic reproductions of existing samples, but variations, composed of a basic plant-like repertory, and adapted to the particular environment of each ornamental tiling.
The studios generally use Italic patterns. "Cartoons", sorts of patterns copied from originals that are handed round amongst mosaics artists. They adapt their creation to the taste and possibilities of the silent partner, or to the available materials.
The technique for realizing each tiling is complex. First of all it demands an extremely steady course, hard to obtain on large surfaces. Then it consists in placing tesserae – small stone cubes- side by side. Combining them requires each of their individual size, in order to closely approach the beforehand drawn on the ground pattern. The creation's fineness depends on the tesserae's size.
Vienna's studios' production period is rather restricted in time. It established itself from the mid-first century and it does not seem to have survived the desertion of great urban villas during the third century of our era.
MEDITERRANEAN TRAVELS
A Journey in Libya: Zliten's Mosaics
by Agnès Vinas
Translation Cloé Herrero
Libya might not spontaneously be associated to its cultural patrimony, but the country has five UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the antique cities of Sabratha, Leptis Magna and Cyrene, the rupestral site of Akakus and Ghadames "the Desert Pearl".
Amongst her numerous archeological treasures, there is in Libya a significant Greco-Roman musing patrimony, represented in particular by the wonderful villas of Zliten and Silin, in the area of Tripoli (1st-3rd centuries) and also, during the Byzantine era, by the church of Sabratha and most of all the Ottoman fort of Qasr Libya in the area of Cyrene. The fort houses a museum where fifty or so mosaics from a church in Theodorias are shown, which constitute the finest collection of Byzantine style founding Libya.
Agnès Vinas takes us to the discovery of the mosaics of Zliten's Dâr Bûk'Ammêrah's Roman villa (1st-3rd centuries), preserved in the museum of Tripoli, and suggests to us a journey into the Roman world by detailing one of those mosaics for us.
Dâr Bûk'Ammêrah's Villa
Zliten is a small Libyan town located 36 kilometers far from the East of Leptis Magna, 120 kilometers far from Tripoli (the antique Oea). During the antiquity, the Roman villa currently known as Dâr Bûk'Ammêrah was located next to the mouth of the river Cinyps. It was thus situated close to the great coastal road connecting Leptis Magna in Tripolitania to the Pentapole in Cyrenaica. Its ornament's magnificence gives every indication that it belonged to a rich landowner, a man of money and taste, who ordered exceptional mosaics both in their quality and the information they reveal on life in one of Roman Empire's most thriving provinces. Amongst the mosaics that make the renown of that villa in Zliten, that from the amphitheatre is indisputably the best known.
The Amphitheatre Mosaic
It measures 5.73m x 3.97m and is composed of 3 parts.
Boxed Text
Damnatio ad Bestias Scenes
Condemned people executions could be associated, as is the case here, to the venatio scenes of the morning: the death blow was delivered with the participation of wild beasts, and was called damnatio ad bestias – sentence of being exposed to the beasts. It could also happen that the execution be the subject of mythological reconstitutions during complex shows representing legendary heroes who have suffered violent deaths (Hercules on the pyre, Orpheus devoured by bears, etc…). Around midday, pairs of fighters barely armed were pit against each other with the mission of simply kill each other, while the people was bored and asked for blood in order to amuse themselves.
To the left of the oriental frieze, two condemned men – that the Italian archeologist Salvatore Aurigemma identified as Garamentes (a people from the South of Libya; Tuaregs' ancestors) – are exposed to the attack of an African panther, and tied to small carts. Of the two gladiators bustling about making sure the sentence happens properly, the one in the back waves a whip and a rag in order to get the panther excited.
Farther, in the middle of the frieze, a brown bear and a bull confront each other: each of them is tied to the other using a rope and a chain, which enrages the two animals. A condemned man, totally naked, is commissioned to separate the two animals by untying the ring that links the two bows. The position of the man, who risks incurring the beasts' furry down on himself, suggests his apprehension. To the right, a gladiator armed with a whip pushes another terrified convict towards a huge and aggressive lion. On top of the beast, a gap in the mosaic implies the corpse of another poor soul.
Such death sentence representations are not rare in North Africa's mosaics; for some historians, if the owner seemed to lend importance to them, this might be because he would have been the munerarius – the organizer – of the event.
Munus Scenes (Gladiators fights)
The left hand of the North frieze depicts a protective Hermes who directs the games, the bust resting on a pyramid-shaped pillar against which rests a shield. Next to him, an orchestra accompanies the movements of the fighters: there stand a tuba player and then a woman playing the hydraulic organ, and two cornu players sit.
Some of the fights oppose identical pairs of gladiators. It is the case in the equites fight that follows: equites are horse riders who begin to confront on horse back and always end up on the ground. They are recognizable from the fact that they are the only ones to wear the tunic. They also wear the same helmet, topped by two small feathers and the same manica (armband) on the right arm.
The defeated eques lies on the ground while the armed hand of the winner is stopped in its momentum by the umpire. The gladiator, as a matter of fact, has no right on the life and death of his rival, the decision belongs to the editor of the games.
It is the same calling gesture to the editor that is performed by the hurt retiarius (on the left), who tries to escape from the threatening advance of the secutor he is confronted to. The retiarius, lightly armed, let his trident fall, and his leg injury deprives him of the only advantage he usually has over rivals more heavily armed than him: speed and mobility.
Next to that scene, a duel opposes a Thrace to a mirmillon : the thrace is equipped with a curved sword – characteristic of his class of gladiators – the sica, or falx supine, and a small rectangular shield, the parma (which he holds too low to efficiently protect himself from his enemy's attack). The Thrace is recognizable from the fact he always wears two big ocreae (leg protections).
Even farther, a duel between a hoplomaque and a mirmillon is ending. The hoplomaque is waiting, standing firm on his legs for the editor's decision: his opponent, hurt in the face, is bleeding heavily. It can be alleged that several lance hits in the helmet would have split open the arc of his eyebrows and that the running blood blinds him. Waiting for the decision, the summa rudis (the umpire, on the right), separates the two gladiators using his stick.
A duel between provocatores concludes the North frieze to the right: the gladiator hits his opponent from top to bottom, provoking a hemorrhage. The right-hand gladiator might leave the arena in the litter set in the corner – the torus libitinae on which the dead gladiators were carried to the spolarium – whether he dies from his injury or the editor decides that he should be finished off.
Let us leave the last word to Salvatore Aurigemma: "Him who drew this [mosaic's] cartoon had a totally exquisite artist's nature: a master of form and contours, a strong and delicate painter, maybe he was a Greek man, in any case a very great artist, who had naturally chosen collaborators of the same quality, or who might have himself laid the mosaic. Anyway, he breathed life and soul that should not have perished into those characters, ready to die with great pomp, to the sound of music and of the clamor of the people. Such a life (at least to that degree of nobility and power, would not exist in any other similar representation of gladiators fights – in painting and most of all in sculpture – that came to us from the antiquity.
ART AND SOCIETY
Mosaic and handicap : the experiment of the Medico-Professional Institute “ The Edelweiss” in Le Raincy – France
by Renée Malaval
Translation Catherine Despret
page 70
The EDELWEISS was created in 1971 in Seine Saint Denis, next to Paris, by the AIPEI, a parents association now presided by M Bigogne. It accomodates up to 40 children, aged 14 to 20, facing mental disabilities, some light, others severe and some of them autistic. The institution’s project has educative, pedagogic and therapeutic aims and insists on socialization. It helps the youngsters learn about professionalism while giving them a strong cultural sensibility.
The MOSAIC program
The inception of the MOSAIC program is due to Marie Christine SGAMBATI, a special education teacher, who has kept developing it through more than 15 years. At the beginning, Mosaic was a mere manual activity amongst other artistic disciplines. But the discovery of Art helped the youngsters see the world with new eyes and thus, break their isolation. At one time, the preparation of a trip to Rome led them to the Mosaic workshop of the LOUVRE, where they met Sylvie TRAVERSE. The contact was decisive
From then on, Sylvie started visitng the EDELWEISS for regular Mosaic sessions. Newcomers and veterans gathered each week, forging a new team spirit, helping each other and mastering new technical skills.The following year, they met in a Café, in a “Philosophy Café” style.
At that stage, Marie-Christine SGAMBATI started wondering about the future. Since they had become autonomous, maybe they could start transmitting their new knowledge? And along the following seven years, they reached out and partnered with a Parisian elementary school. Each teenager became tutor for 5 pupils, thus becoming “the technical reference”. They taught them how to make a mural mosaic, choosing a new theme every year : the Palace of the Music in Barcelona, aboriginal paintings, Matisse... in the whole 35 mosaics were delivered. The program has now entered a new phase, the ambition being to be accepted at the exhibition of the “Chartres International Encounters”. They have already been selected twice, thus gaining new recognition of their talent.
The mentally handicapped youngsters benefited from the Mosaic program ; they found answers to their problems. The social worker and the Mosaist created a group dynamics, strengthened the existing bonds and gave them a strong sense of belonging to this new group : the community of mosaists.
The workshop offered an opportunity to discover the working world and its rules. Working under the impulse of a professionnal, they realized the value of their productionand were proud of it. They also learnt about authority, constraints and time schedules. Accepting them, they made a new step towards integration into the society and the job market.
Finding their way back to school was another challenge, most of them having been excluded in the past. They had had bitter experiences of failure and suffering. And they were back as teachers! They had come to transmit their new skills and to share their knowledge. A good opportunity to find success and a proof of integration.
Mosaic made them experience the joy of creative expression. They realized that although they were handicapped, they could freely express their creativity. There were no more barriers and they could grow on that.They have now experienced Art and Beauty in art. Have a look at their works, there is beauty in them.
Let’s greet this initiative and all the team which made it possible
Jean Luc Despujols, head of the Establishment - Serge Sabinus, Psychiatrist – Mrs Marcilloux MZArcotte, head of the elementary school - Martine Lechapelain, school teacher – Sylvie Traverse, mosaist – Marie Christine Sgambati, special education teacher.
Let’s hear what they have to say:
“Nobody leaves a mosaic unfinished once he’s started it”
STUDIO SECRETS
Within the Albertini Family from 1925 to the Present Days
"Fom Sand Grain to Glass Tesserae"
by Chrystèle Albertini
Translation Cloé Herrero
The Albertini family has been perpetuating the art of glass for four generations. Jules Albertini, glassworker in Murano flees from Italian fascism and founds the glassworks in Montigny-lès-Cormeilles in 1925. He begins to craft enamels and glass slabs dedicated to the making of mosaics and stained-glass windows.
Fortune smiles on him and his meeting with the Gaudin studios, mosaic masters of Lisieux Basilica – then under construction- will enable him to construct his first ovens. Almost 30 tons of glass and several years of labor will be necessary for realizing millions of square meters of mosaics.
While silica is the basis in the crafting of molten glass, up to ten elements go into its composition. That mixture of more than 300 kg requires knowledge of formulas, handed round from one generation to the other on secret notebooks, and proportions preciseness.
That complex art is a mix of alchemy and family knowledge.
According to the shades wanted, more than 1500 listed colors and 500 in store, colorings are cleverly measured out and mixed from the basic composition within about a gram.
For oranges and reds, the process becomes more complex.
That mixture requires a 19 hours non-stop firing at a temperature superior to 1500°C. and generates an average consumption of more than 500 liters of fuel oil per day !
Loading and watching the oven at night requires a real vocation and the glassworker's faith that animates Gérard Albertini, son of Jules Alvertini.
Moten glass will be pressed or molded:
-Pressed for enamels
-Molded for slabs and ornament items.
300kg of glass of a same color will be taken out of the oven, ladle after ladle (more or less 1000 a day), for the crafting of enamels.
After pouring or pressing, enamels will have to stay 5 days into the annealing oven in which temperature decreases from 450°C to the ambient temperature. That stage is essential to give to the glass all its sturdiness.
Taken out of the oven, the slabs are trimmed and cut into 8 by 8cm squares by Marguerite.
That painful work allows to collect, remelt and thus recycle edges and scraps to make new colors; this is the virtuous cycle of glass.
In order to make slabs and ornamental items, glass will be directly poured into moulds of the shape and size wanted.
No industry or machine can craft such a rich and precious material.
From the raw materials choice (sand, soda, lime…), to the making of finished products, this craft studio maintains an impeccable quality. Its colors sample group can be extended to the demand, in order to satisfy particular orders. Today, art items, plates, goblets, candle-holders, soap-holders, etc… are crafted. Chrystèle and Frédéric's youth and energy maintain the business' continuity: they keep on innovating in order to satisfy every order and taste.
That molten glass factory, unique in France, where everything is crafted by hand is a real live treasure. The Albertini company has been listed since 2009 as "Business of the Live Patrimony".
A Few Words of Advice to Properly Cut Molten Glass
Necessary tools
Cutting enamel slabs:
Particular Cut:
A zag-zag glass mosaic pliers enables realizing reflexes or waves.
Draw a line in the middle, using the glass cutter.
Cut the slab into two, using the running pliers.
Repeat the process until obtaining the size you want.
Erode gradually and cut to adjust the pieces using the Japanese cutters.
Hammer and tungsten scrapper for cutting molten glass slabs and cakes.
Draw a line in the middle of the slab
Bang on the scrapper
Repeat the process
Cut using the hammer by hitting sharply and clearly
Repeat the process
You will obtain tesserae of the size you want.
Info: www.ravennamosaico.it
/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.over-blog.com%2Ft%2Fcedistic%2Fcamera.png)
/idata%2F4018329%2Farticles%2F1er-festival-de-mosaique-contemporaine-bis_WEB.jpg)
/idata%2F4018329%2Farticles%2FniArt-Gerard-Brand-INVITO-1.jpg)