Mosaïque magazine n°3 English edition

Mosaïque magazine number 2

English edition

 

 

Edito

by Renée Malaval

Translation Estelle Apparu

Rereading Elaine M. Goodwin

page 3

 

So that the secrets of mosaic lives, it is necessary to continue revealing it to a large public.

In the pages of this third issue, artists reveal their work. According to P.Soulages, the craftsman knows what he is going to make and how he is going to make it, while the artist does not know where he goes.

We met artists and found them concentrating on their particular tasks: working on material, making objects, conceptualizing their thoughts... Through these pages, we almost hear the noise of their movements, the breath of the workshops where ancient movements are reproduced and the buzz of contemporary laboratories. We perceived the quest of aesthetical and ethical values.

In these pages, you are going to travel in France, from Paris to Chartres and from Paray-le Monial to Overran; in Italy to Ravenna where the second edition of the International Festival of Contemporary Mosaic Art took place, and to Spilimbergo as well as in Quebec, Moscow and Japan. Everywhere, artists have chosen the language of mosaic to express themselves, to create architectural works as well as easel works, sculptures, videos, installations...

In October,"the indignants of Art"gathered in front of the MoMa in New York to protest against "the temples of the elitist culture controled by 1% of the population". Maybe we should launch the movement of the"indignants of mosaic"so that this Art is difinitively referenced as a major contemporary art. Again and again, we have to go on revealing the secrets of mosaic to a large public.

 

 

ECHOES OF THE CURRENT TOPICS

European Mosaic Art from the Middle Ages to 1900

Municipal Art Gallery Überlingen

page 7

Standing under the patronage of the German Minister of Education, Dr. Annette Schavan, about 100 religious and secular mosaics, mosaic fragments and mosaic designs can be seen from 16.7. to 9.10.2011 in the Municipal Art Gallery of Ueberlingen: Covering a time span of 1500 years, the exhibits give insights in the art-historical and historico-cultural development of the mosaic from early Christianity to the beginnings of Modernism. At the same time they show different techniques – the classical mosaic consisting of small rectangular pieces which is usual since antiquity, the micromosaic of small cut glass fibres which was developed in Rome in the late 18th century as well as the special form of Florentine mosaic of exactly cut natural stones which fit together perfectly.

From Rome, 24 mosaics will come to Lake Constance, covering the period from early Christianity to the 19th century; lenders are St Peter’s Basilica and its treasury as well as the Vatican Museums, the National Gallery Villa Borghese and the Museo Napoleonico. Outstanding exhibits are an early Christian mosaic of St Peter (about 440/450) and further medieval mosaics, some of which are presented to the global public for the first time, as well as jewellery of the decades around 1800, decorated with micromosaics, among them Antonio Aguatti’s jewellery set of the Queen of Naples, Caroline Bonaparte.

14 works from the 16th to the 18th century, produced in pietra dura technique ("Florentine mosaic"), some of which formerly belonged to the Medici, will be seen. They will come from Florentine museums. Amongst them are famous works like the portrait of the Tuscan Grand Duke Cosimo I, which was created by Francesco Ferrucci around 1598, as well as the chess board, created after a draft of Jacopo Ligozzi in 1619.

The Victoria & Albert Museum of London is represented with 14 prominent and partly monumental loans, St Paul’s Cathedral with 10, including the large-sized mosaic designs that were created for the quire of the London cathedral. Cologne Cathedral lends Ueberlingen 6 designs of the church’s mosaic decor from the 19th century. Further loans come from Berlin, amongst others.

The exhibition takes place in cooperation with the Studio del Mosaico of the Fabbrica di San Pietro, Rome (Vatican) and the Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure (Florence). As guest curator Ottobrina Voccoli could be won, who gained her doctorate on the European history of mosaics.

The classical technique of the Renaissance mosaics is for example represented by the “Portrait of Pietro Bembo” from 1542. Valerio Zuccato, one of the most prominent mosaic artists at the San Marco Basilica in Venice, created the exceptionally pictorial portrait of the Venetian cardinal and scholar Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), after a design of Titian.

Amongst the “Florentine mosaics” the famous "Chess board" is on show, which Giovan Battista Sassi has mosaicked after a draft by Jacopo Ligozzi in 1619. A further highlight in this section is the precious portrait of the Tuscan Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, which was created by the lapidary Francesco Ferrucci about 1598. Being produced in pietra dura technique, this mosaic was designed for a privileged place in the Medicean “Chapel of the Princes” of the church of San Lorenzo, one of the most magnificent chapels of Florence.

With his pictorial mosaics and his technical mastery, Marcello Provenzale, who worked in Rome at the beginning of the 17th century, gave direction to the mosaic arts of the modern times. He is present in the exhibition with his famous mosaic “Owl and Other Birds” from 1615, which was a gift from the influential connoisseur Cardinal Scipione Borghese to the Tuscan Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici.

In the late 18th century, Giacomo Raffaelli and Antonio Aguatti developed the so-called “micromosaics” whose small stones are obtained from cut glass fibres. They decorated especially small objects like (snuff) boxes and jewellery, desired by cultural tourists in Rome and by upper-class ladies. One of the outstanding objects of the exhibition is the “Parure”, a jewelry set which was created by Aguatti for Caroline Bonaparte, Queen of Naples, sister of Napoleon I and wife of Joachim Murat. This set consists of a necklace, a brooch and eardrops, which are precisely mosaicked with scenes of the public life.

In the 19th century, outstanding religious and secular buildings all over the world were decorated with monumental mosaics. Here, both the application of historical styles as well as the use of actual styles can be found. The exhibition presents the diversity of the possibilities amongst others exemplarily by mosaic-designs for Cologne Cathedral and for St Paul’s Cathedral in London. William Blake Richmond, whose mosaics, which are influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau, decorate the quire of St Paul’s, is represented by the large-sized mosaic-design of the prophet David, for example.

 

 

ECHOES OF THE CURRENT TOPICS

page 10

Iliya lliev, a bulgarian artist, created a diptych entitled Japan my Love, 2011, dedicated to the Japanese disaster of Fukushima. Thanks to her artistic language and her favourite materials, the artist sends a punchy message.

 

 

The german association DOMO, Deutsche Organization für mosaikkunst, opened to all its members an exhibition called "Mahlzeit" that presents about forty mosaics, all of the same size – 40cm by 40cm, nonetheless all very different from one another. This is a travelling exhibition in Bavaria that started in the town of Schwabhausen and went on in the neighbouring towns.

Britta Kuth, correspondent in Germany

 

 

Exhibition about the international year of the forest in Exeter, Devon, UK.

After the year of the Earth, that of astronomy and that of Art Nouveau, Opus Mosaic chose the theme of the forest for 2011 and presented its mosaic exhibition from the 2^nd of May to the 25^th of June. A number of participants coming from England, France, Germany, Holland and Bulgaria illustrated the international year of the forest. The first price was given to Chris Crepet for his "Birds tree", the second to Sylvie Foisel for "Amazing Nature" and the third one to Pascal Levaillant for "Mosaic Pixel of the French Brittany Forest". The first participants, Jody Gieser, Marlène Touka and Isabel Le Flem were also rewarded with a special price.

 

MARTE is a cultural association born in 2011, composed of artists and curators eager to exploit art. The artists have all chosen mosaics for their artistic expression: Luca Barberini, Giuseppe Donnaloia, Aniko Ferreira da Silva, Arianna Gallo, Takako Hirai and Pavlos Mavromatidis. Flavia Pelosi is an art history teacher ; Luca Maggio is a curator and an art critic. Daniele Torcellini is a Professor in the art field.

 

 

Presented from the 15^th to the 18^th of October, it emphasized the multiple facets that the art of mosaics can reveal: Mosaic studios for children (directed by the artist Lina Levin), university meetings and ancient mosaic exhibitions. Mosaics found its place in both the architectural scene and museums.

"A Mosaic of Interpretations" gathered different views on ancient mosaics. Lina Levin's personal exhibition, "A Mother and Her Son's Travel" enabled the public to contemplate mosaic and glass pieces in the Gallery of Lesley University. With "Mosaic Foliage" eight different artistic patterns were fitted into the leaves of Herzl walk's garden.

The artist Roslan Sergeev, who creates monumental sculptures in parks and gardens, made a work of mosaic tiles on the beach front's walk.

"Mosaic Code", a contemporary art international exhibition organized with the cooperation of the art museum of Ravenna (MAR) presented a selection of mosaic creations of the museum.

A sculpture, "Abbraccio Mediterraneo", the Mediterranean embrace, created by Francesca Fabbri was set in front of the al Hatzouk Gallery, next to the shore.

At last, in order to illustrate the fact dear to Felice Nittolo that a mosaic can be made with tesserae of different kinds, the artists Anat and ehoud Shamai made the biggest mosaic sock in the world: they thus created a unique odd and discarded socks mosaic, of more than 250 square meters.

 

Israel: a ground of cultures meeting, that today establish its people eclecticism. A people connected to its land but also attracted by migrations towards the Mediterranean sea, historical crossroad for culture and exchanges.

The place: facing the sea, the wind and the sky, close to the fields and in a windy atmosphere.

The work: a polished steel pillar that fits in the landscape, an aerial presence that hugs the landsacpe's features, and personifies both the opening and emanation of the nation. A precise architecture that evokes stability. Mosaic, like a veil coming from the sea, blown by the wind, came down to drape that aerial pillar, it represents the ability to welcome and other cultures and the availability and eclecticism of the exchanges between different people and cultures. The mosaic pattern is a reference to the Byzantine iconography of the sea: it is made of colored lines intercalated with a gold line that punctuates the whole work. That work, a discreet presence, simply evokes the communion between our nations in an aerial embrace, a gesture both determined and strong.

 

 

Mosaic Code

Chiara pausini

Art Museum of the City of Ravenna

International Center for Research on Mosaics

Ravenna Contemporanea is the title of the section dedicated to Ravenna's contemporary mosaic in the heart of Mosaic Code's exhibition set in Netanya in Israel. Seven works made by artists from different origins but all trained in Ravenna were chosen amongst the huge collection of contemporary mosaics from Ravenna's museum MAR to represent Ravenna at the Netanya in Mosaic event.

Ersti Drori, the exhibition's curator chose Ravenna in order to show contemporary mosaic's excellence. The city, rich with musive decorations from the Byzantine era, also showed its own creativity by training young artists inspired by the past masters. Ersti Drori discovered the artists participating to the exhibition by looking into the multimedia data bank and the Cidm website: a gallery of images and catalogs that describe the rich contemporary mosaics collection of the museum. Linda Kniffitz, curator of the Cdim was involved in the project as well as into the organization of the Ravenna section of the exhibition. It was her task to chose the seven works to be exhibited in Israel. For the first time, a selection of original musive works from a public collection, that were neither copies or interpretations, was claimed for an international exhibition. For many decades mosaic has been perceived as an auxiliary to the other artistic techniques, unable to express by itself a genuine concept, a misunderstanding that prevented mosaics from a full access to the contemporary art scene.

In Netanya, thanks to the Cidm's commitment, mosaic was presented as an autonomous artistic language.

The chosen works, created between 2003 and 2010, were "Della memoria" by Marco De Luca, "Movimento n°14" by CaCO3, "Folla" by Luca Barberini, "lens" by Arianna Gallo, "Fruscio" by Takako Hirai, "Blu oltremare" by Lino Linossi and "Windstill" by Almuth Schöps.

All the featuring works are characterized by a musive language that sets off the materials' rendering and their setting. An indisputable technical skill comes out of these works that rightfully translate the contemporary artistic movements.

Next to Mosaic Code exhibition, in Al Hatzuck Gallery, the town of Netanya ordered and payed for another important project by a renowned Ravenna artist: a permanent musive monument, set out of the gallery, in front of the sea. The work "Abbraccio mediterraneo", by Francesca Fabbri from Akomena studio aroused a great enthusiasm and a striking emotion amongst the Israeli public.

 

 

 

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011

Ravenna Revives Traditions by Betting on Contemporary Mosaics

by Rosetta Berardi

Translation Cloé Herrero

page 13

 

When the AIMC – The International Assoiation of Contemporary Mosaists – was born thirty years ago in Ravenna, the newspapers ran as a headline: "Mosaic is in trouble – It is 2000 years old and everything proves it"; today, one can on the contrary claim that mosaic is 2000 years old and that it continues to fascinate everyone to begin with the youngest generations of artists whom nowadays use that millenary technique for their creations like it has never been done before.

 

Last October 8^th, the city of Ravenna celebrated with pride one of Ravenna's heritage: mosaic. That technique doesn't represent the image of a faraway past anymore, but it lives in modernity by becoming works of a suggestive and harmonious beauty. One could thus contemplate those works in a number of prestigious places of the city centre until the 2àth of November 2011.

After the success in 2009 of the first edition of the International Festival of Contemporary Mosaics, the city of Ravenna in collaboration with the AIMC offered a new edition of RavennaMosaico, in the context of the Gold Night. Ravenna, which renown is linked to early Christian and Byzantine ancient mosaics, listed on the Unesco World Heritage list, promotes in that way contemporaneousness by pushing its artists forward and confronting them to those from other countries. Ravenna's Gold Night becomes international thanks to the launching of the Festival's events. The city fills up with people, everywhere: in the streets, places, museums, cloisters, libraries, and there are so many exhibitions that they opened from 6 p.m. up to later than midnight.

 

That second edition attracted national and international Medias' attention. Indeed an interesting report on the festival, written by Roderick Cornway Morris was issued on the 27^th of October 2011 and published on the online edition of the New York Times and on the paper edition of the International Herald Tribune.

The Gold Night offered sixty events in forty days: in addition to many exhibitions, one could attend to theatre, poetry, music and dance shows, as well as meetings and lectures.

Ravenna, within the context of its application as European capital of culture for 2019, set out upon a virtuous path by bringing what characterizes it and makes it famous throughout the world into light.

The Festival, biennial, opened 18 exhibitions spread in the most suggestive sites of the city making use of all the cultural Institutions: the Art Museum, the National Museum, the Beaux-Arts Academy, the libraries and many private places of the city's historical center.

Ravenna's collaboration with the AIMC enabled artists from many countries to join Ravenna. Thanks to that collaboration, the four main exhibitions of the AIMC artists materialized in the rich program of the Festival, which has offered an extraordinary international panorama of works: a great opportunity to open one's mind and reflect over nowadays musing technique.

 

The exhibition "Works of the World" showed the works of 32 international artists in San Domenico Church.

 

The musing installations were set in the Franciscan cloister.

 

The third exhibition entitled Architecture and Mosaic was set in the cloister of the Orianis Library where one could see 10 topographical works representing huge mosaic creations in their architectural context. A unique way to show visitors some big mosaic works made on various places or inside public and private buildings in the world. That photographic data emphasizes the fact that mosaic art can serve architecture and vice versa – a close relationship dating back to antiquity that one can still admire in Ravenna's basilicas.

The pictures showed the works by the Beaux-Arts academy (Italy/Ravenna), Pascale Beauchamps (France),  Dusciana Bravura (Italy/Ravenna), Salam Eid Abdel (Egypt), Toyoharu Kii (Japan), Sergeev Ruslan (Israel) and Elisa Simoni (Italy/Ravenna).

 

Ilana shafir's personal exhibition put an end to the AIMC's exhibitions path.

 

At last, let's emphasize the future importance of mosaics in architecture, the AIMC in collaboration with the CIDM (International Center of Documentation on Mosaic) organized on the 9^th of October 2011in the city's Art Museum a round table entitled "Mosaic and Architecture: Mosaists meet architects". Amongst the participants: Manfred Hoehn, AIMC chairman, Marcello Landi, Chairman of the G. Severini for mosaic, Maria Rita Bentini, Beaux-Arts Academy coordinator, and the mosaists Giovanni Travisanutto, Marco Santi and Edda Mally.

After the Festival, artists and art lovers parted and set a new meeting for October 2013.

 

 

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011
World Works

by Rosetta Berardi

Translation Cloé Herrero

page 14

 

In San Domenico Church, at the heart of the city, the exhibition called OPERE DAL MONDO showed the most recent works of 32 artists coming from every continents; experts artists in the musing technique who stood out by the novelty and quality of their works. This particularly interesting presentation emphasized the different processes and materials that characterize the works of artists from different continents: heterogeneous materials used in the aim of bringing the magic that all work contains in an intrinsic manner- burnt wood tesserae, shell tesserae, mirror tesserae, ceramic tesserae, for the most uncommon ones.

The exhibition presented the works of: Safaa Ahmed Abd El Salam (Egypt), Noël Henry Aubry (France), Harriet Backer (Norway), Caterina Baldassarri (Italy/Ravenna), Pascale Beauchamps (france),  Giovanna Bezzi (Italy/Ravenna), René Bodycomb and Helen Schaefer (Australia), Jo Braun (USA), Silvia Danelutti (Italy/Ravenna), Valeria Ercolani (Italy/Ravenna), Naghmeh Farahvash Fashandi (Iran), CaCO3 (Italy/Ravenna), Giovanna Galli (France), Arianna Gallo (Italy/Ravenna), Elaine M. Goodwin (England), Takako Hirai (Japan), Samantha Holmes (USA), Toyoharu Kii (Japan), Antigone Kourakou (Greece), Sonya Marisa Louro Do Rego (South Africa), Mona Magdi Kenawy (Egypt), Carlotta Marvasi (Italy), Davide Medri (Italy), Julian Modica (France), Luciana Notturni (Italy/Ravenna), Julie Richey (USA), Ruth Minola Scheibler (Germany), Almuth Schops (Germany), Enzo Scianna (Italy/Ravenna), Ilana Shafir (Israel), Matylda Tracewska (Poland), Kim Wozniak (USA).

 

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011

Musing Installations

By Rosetta Berardi

Translation Cloé Herrero

page 17

 

The journey goes on as far as the Franciscan cloister, where the musing installations by 14 artists are set. There it is easy to forget mosaics considered in a traditional manner as a simple, though precious, covering. Mosaic, with freedom of expression, takes shape and volume and looks for surfaces to cover. Works are outlined in space and interact with the magic architecture of the place they are set in. The works of the following artists are shown here:

Luca Barberini (Italy/Ravenna), Kina Bogdanova (Bulgaria), Marianna Brambilla (Italy), Moema Branquinho (Brazil), Lucia Caroli (Italy/Ravenna), Marijan erste (Italy), Rosanna Fattorini (Italy/Ravenna), Francesca Gazzotti (Italy/Ravenna), Despina Georgiadi Thessaloikeos (Greece), Roberta Grasso (Italy/Ravenna), Kate Jessup (USA), Catherine Mandron (France), Nikos Tolis (Greece), Enzo Tinarelli (Italy).

 

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011

Ilana Shafir's Exhibition

By Rosetta Berardi

Translation Cloé Herrero

page 20

 

The exhibition path of AIMC ends with a personal exhibition, a particular homage to one of the funding members of the association: Ilana shafir (an exhibition of which the curator is Laura Gavioli) in Classence library's cloister. The Israeli artist, born in 1924, brought to Ravenna 8 big works made between 2006 and 2011.

Internationally renowned and a long-standing Ravenna's musing heritage enthusiast, she was there for the opening and talked about her original method of working which she qualifies as spontaneous mosaics. She claims to have learnt how to think in mosaics, letting herself be carried by materials that suggest solutions to her, each time always in a narrow relationship with the technique. Materials guide her hand and her mind. She underlines the fact that it is the only way she succeeds in obtaining the message's freshness and technique's expressive strength. She carries on her work directly starting from a basic idea, with no preliminary drawing, even for her wall creations. The idea develops as it goes along, and while the work is in progress, new form combine together from different materials. The works springs up and develops as if by magic; the work's evolution even surprises its maker.

Spontaneous mosaics – according to the artist – is a creative and dynamic dialog between two irrepressible processes, one carefully composed and calculated: contemplation, and the other, spontaneous and intuitive expression. That dialog is a fascinating and rewarding creative experience.

 

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011

When is it Mosaic ?

by Linda Kniffitz

page 22

 

Discussion of contemporary art increasingly involves the whole human dimension: the artist, with his work, sets the bases for a dialogue that will inevitably be improvised by the spectator.

Is it still possible to speak of the art of mosaic in that  heterogeneous plurality of experiences that characterise the current artistic horizon? After a millenary development that has traversed the history of art and the great monotheist religions, can mosaic today alter its identity and seek a new autonomy, open to experimentation and hybridisation? Or better, the right question might be the one posed by Nelson Goodman in a celebrated essay: when is it art? * (and not “ what is art?”).To redefine the notion of art Goodman creates a shift from subtance to function, binding the legibility of the work to a precise time, to ahistorical interval.

With the advent of conceptual art we witnessed the dismembering of the methods proper to artistic production: an inert object, an object of everyday use, a stone found along the way, a bust-up machine, were they distinguished as artistic phenomena because they were exhibited in a gallery or because the artist said so? Which objects are permanently works of art?

It’s hard to give wholly satisfactory answers, and the consequent fragmentation of research has become the cipher of various contemporary experiences. We may however declare that if an item, an object or an event comes to function as a work of art, albeit throught different modes of reference, this may really contribute to the vision and construction of a world.

Ravenna represents a fine paradigm of the evolution of the concept of mosaic art: the mosaics in its ancient 5^th and 6^TH century monuments are a splendid example of the original celebrative function of early Christian wall decoration, an art which, due to the richness of the materials and the extreme specialisation of the workforce, called for a wealthy and powerful patron who wanted to make a heavy symbolic investment for political and doctrinaire purposes.

When the city’s political importance declined, the Catholic canon was wholly established in the West and mosaic was no longer the genre-guide of painting. Ravenna fell into oblivion fon centuries. But in the early years of the 20^th century it was precisely here that doing mosaics was reborn, thanks to a climate of renewed interest in the marvellous artixtic production of the 5^th and 6^th centuries. Restoration intensified, making it necessary to train a local workforce. In 1924 the Fine Arts Academy set up a four year course in Mosaic and a specialised workforce was formed: the Masters Mosaicists, as Gino Severini called them, a tribute to the high qualitative level of their works and their fidelity to the ancient Byzantine technique, learnt on the retoration scaffolding.

It may be seen today that in our schools and workshops, active for almost a century, an actual Ravenna School has come into being, with wholly recognisable stylistic and technical features, that has gained prestige worldwide. The development of this School has also been celebrated in the Permanent Collection of Contemporary Mosaic at the City Art Museum – unique among collections in Italy and abroad – which documents some of the foremost artistic experiences of the past fifty years centred on mosaic language and technique.

Setting out from these considerations, the City Museum’s International Center of Mosaic Documentation (CIDM) decided to hold the first International Prize ‘Young Artists and Mosaic” to give visibility to young artists using the medium, both in its expressions linked to historical tradition and in more innovative and experimental forms.

The sponsors, Orsoni Smalti of Venice and the Banca Popolare of Ravenna, offer two prizes: the Orsoni prize for a work created with traditional mosaic technique and the Banca Popolare prize for an innovative work, created in full technical freedom, in which the poetic and formal aspects of mosaic are solely a reference.

The sixty works presented came from artists who are profoundly different in terms of origin, training and language. Ten were selected, to be exhibited in a collective show documented by this catalogue. The two prizes were awarded by the Jury on 18^th November 2011, prior to the closure of the Exhibition.

The two artists awarded are :

The aim of this project is to stimulate young artists to give new indications for the interpretation of mosaic: both the classically materic kind, which unites the structure of colour and the consistency of stone, and the kind pervaded with conceptual energy, hybridised with other languages.

We actually know increasingly less about when it is mosaic; perhaps we don’t even know very well what it was for those who preceded us, for the early Christians who were amazed by dematerialised light and explosion of colours. All the more reason for subjecting mosaic language to incessant questioning.

 

*N. Goodman, Vedere e costruire il mondo, Rome-Bari, 2008.

 

 

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011

FRAMMENTAMENTI

Three young contemporary mosaists

by Renée Malaval

Translation Catherine Despret

page 26 

 

 

Raffaella Ceccarossi

 

“Split up as much as possible, the material, time, space, image, it is the creed ".

Graduated in Decoration - Academy of Fine Arts of Ravenna in 2009, she then follows a two year specialization in mosaics.

She pursues her personal artistic search and participates in many exhibitions.

She presents an innovative piece of work, entitled  “Tapis” in which tesseraes are laid on the floor, with no grout between them. The mosaic, reassembled at every new exhibition becomes ephemeral. With this work, the artist questions the long-lasting character of the mosaic.

 

Samantha Holmes

 

The physical act of fragmenting is the heart of mosaic: our tools help us to control it and cracks allow us to make it more evident. There is a connection between this process of destruction/creation and the fundamental phase of putting the materials together again to achieve the work. It is this link which attracts me towards the technique of the mosaic. As an artist, I’m interested in this capacity we have to reconstruct and re-evaluate ; I try to give a new value to scrap materials and little considered elements."

Samantha Holmes is an artist and a designer; she lives between New York and Ravenna in Italy. Prize-winner in 2006 of the University of Harvard in visual and environmental Studies, she spends her time in the Academy of Arts of Ravenna since 2010, and dedicates her personal search to a reinterpretation of the mosaic. (Prize-winner GAEM see page 25).

 

Andrea Sala

 

The mysterious relationship between the infinitely small and the infinitely big, between unity and multiplicity is what fascinates me most in mosaïcs.
Experimenting mosaics gives me the opportunity to reflect on how I feel the current era, while constantly relating it to the past.

I use this archaic technique in my work, to create split up images and a new symbolism

My mosaic work expresses itself through poetic and creative aspects, alongside more rational and cold elements, such as shape, sign or color, in a continuous search of matter. "

Andréa SALA graduated from the New Academy of Fine Arts "NABA" in Milan mention "Graphic Design and Art Director."

Competent in digital graphic art, communication and advertising, he chose nevertheless to follow the mosaic course of the Academy of Arts in Ravenna: since, he investigates the world of mosaic and art with an innovative and different glance.

 

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011

page 26

Giuliano Babini's Metamorphosis

by Renée Malaval

Translation Cloé Herrero

 

Giuliano Babini's exhibition opens a series of exhibitions about "Contemporary mosaics in an antique context", which will show musive works and installations by contemporary artists into Rasponi Crypt and the Pensili gardens of the province of Ravenna's palace.

The visit brings us to meet a "disturbing bestiary, a fascinating metaphor for our fluid and enigmatic world". Giuliano Babini's creatures are trophies, beings coming out of mythology, memory, all of them tinged with "a disarming musing grace".

 

Translation Gilles Antoine

It is a big musive work, realized for the garden of a residence of Ravenna, the company of Saint Georges. The dragon fought by Saint Georges inspired the pupils of the Academy of Fine arts of Ravenna: they realized a column decorated with dragons to seal once more the links between urban architecture and mosaic. An example to be followed, of cooperation between state and private which participates in the revival of the contemporary mosaic. It is Federica di Criscenzio's drawing, representing two dragons, the one red, the other green which was chosen as the decoration of this column of a height of more than 5 meters, realized according to the technique of Ravenna with smaltes in the lively colors. Roberta Grasso, Francesca Gazzotti, Elena Minascurta, Luca Tarozzi as well as Serena Cappelli,

Bartosz Keska, Kamal Makar, Marisa Marchi, Silvia Naddeo, Elena Saraceni participated in this piloted project, of the conception in the realization, by their professor Enzo Tinarelli.

 

The niArt gallery of Felice Nittolo continues to become known  mosaic masters

of the XXth century which participated in the revival of the art of the mosaic in Ravenna, by presenting the exhibition " Giuseppe Salietti, passion and rigor "; it is accompanied with a book which completes the  collection dedicates

to these mosaists.

 

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011

Bibliomosaico 2, published by Girasole in Ravenna

Mosaics Books Amogst paper Books

By Rosetta Berardi

Translation Cloé Herrero

page 28

 

Bibliomosaico's ambition is to merge mosaics art with the idea of a book, to present an artists books review, conceived for the second Ravenna Mosaico international festival of contemporary mosaics.

After the first festival's success in October 2009, the exhibition Bibliomosaico comes back with even more works of art. From Oct. 8^th to Nov. 20^th 2011, one could admire fifteen small mosaic masterpieces, in the shape of books, shown amongst real paper books, published by Girasole, 45 Via Pasolini in Ravenna.

The "book idea", used as the starting point for the creation of a work of art, has always stimulated the artists' imagination. The practice of an "artist's book" has gone through every art trend since the second half of last century. The "artist's book" is not only a book and because it is a real art object, its gets away from any classification.

This is an object/book that libraries seldom possess.

While nowadays we live at a time when everything is computerized, the "artist's book" regains a particular charm in which the technical, cultural and aesthetical values of the artist's work are fully revealed.

This is a creativity exercise that this time involved younger and older artists, with each one of them having a solid artistic experience, and who embarked on the making of a work especially created for the space in which they are working.

Mosaic is fascinating and delighting, and the book theme reinforces these aspects. Visitors are invited – beyond the interpretation of the work's message – to discover the work of art inserted amongst the paper books; an ideal context for the small works exhibited. Scenography, conceived in that manner since the origins, gives a precious elegance to the space which talks and ideally interacts with the work of art.

Fifteen artists have been invited to craft a work of art for the 2011 edition.

 

Raniero Bittante was born in Ravenna. His book/video entitled Bubble Gum Italia commemorates the 150^th anniversary of Italy's unity (1861-2011). The artist, thinking about the idea of unity as the source of social cohesion, and mosaics as the fragmentation of that unity, filmed people from different nationalities chewing a gum. He invites them to make a mosaic stamp using the gum as mortar pressed on the cover of the Italian Constitution book, on which are inserted tesserae of the color of the Italian flag that the artist has prepared. That is an invitation to the peoples' unity.

 

The French Cécile Bouvarel, with the pleasure of using materials of all kinds which characterizes her, makes a book entitled Délivrée (relieved or set free) in which she tells a poetic story. The tale and dream are jealously kept and closed by a window covered with wire mesh.

 

Giuseppe Donnaloia, born in 1976, lives and works in Ravenna. He is part of the CaCO3 group. In his attempt to find a link between book, writing and mosaics, with Senza Titolo, the artist reduces the thickness and makes a page, sealed in Plexiglas, with physical elements of different natures: electromagnetic force, generated by magnetic tesserae, attracts on the other side of the plate a small quantity of iron oxide that sets in a written form as a kind of ancient writing.

 

Rosanna Fatterini lives and works in Ravenna. Her work is called Il Vulcano. A volcano of precious musing making serves as the support for a small conversation manual in French and Italian. That work seems to imply that the words' strength is similar to that of a volcano.

 

Roberta Grasso was born in Torino in 1986. She lives and works in Ravenna. Her works are characterized by suppleness: supple mosaics. Hr book entitled Tessere (di) un mosaico underlines the feminine aspect of mosaics. A supple book that one can open, with an ink bottle and a fountain pen in case the visitor would like to leave a message to the young artist.

 

Stephanie Jurs was born in the United States and has been living in Ravenna since 1998. In her small book there is a big message: Stop the wars. How to End war: A True story is the title of the work made of paper and mosaic tesserae in which the artist questions herself while telling a story.

 

Toyoharu Kii was born and lives in Japan. He realizes a monochromatic book with an original and precious musing technique. In Short stories, the artist delivers a work of a refined elegance in which his technical skills shine out.

 

Kazumi Kurihara was born in Tokyo and lives in Milan. He makes his work Il libro legge i libri on an aluminum sheet, with metal strings, papier-mâché and nail polish. The beads that compose the work are the book's words. The work's surface shows a great number of words fragments, in a spherical shape as an atom, material's fundamental unity. That book reads the other ones that surround it through its own openings.

 

Mélaine Lanoë was born in Mars (France) in 1976. The work shown entitled Impronte is a "non mosaic" page in which mosaic auto-evokes itself and appears through the marks left by tesserae. Signs, marks, imprints that remind us of cuneiform writing.

 

Verdiano Marzi was born in San Marin. He has been living and working in Paris since 1973. In his work Pinocchi, the artist tells us a post-collodienne story through marble and tesserae, getting away from the traditional schemes of mosaics technique. He tells us that there are pinocchios quite everywhere, in all latitudes and of all colors. Despite his usual impetuosity, the artist never neglects the preciousness of the work.

 

Silvia Naddeo was born in Rome in 1984. She lives and works in Ravenna. Her poetry is turned towards food and simple elements. She lightly refers to Pop Art. Her works are heavy with references in which mosaics enrich and move. In this Storia di una zucchini, the story of a zucchini – turned precious by mosaic tesserae – is told through its slices/pages. This is the tale, in the shape of a haiku, of its growth.

 

Felice Nittolo lives and works in Ravenna. The reference to a valuable casket is obvious in his book entitled Evocare: a book that contains mosaics and the history of mosaics. The object, even closed, has the intrinsic property to evoke, through the marks on his cover, what it might contain: a story of memories made of musing tesserae.

 

Teresa Pollidori lives and works in Rome. This artist's usual artistic language is sculpture, space and architecture, and in her open book Equilibri in righe she underlines the rules that govern volumes and colors. The artist stages spaces in a minimalistic and repeated manner.

 

Salvatore Sebaste lives and works in Bernalda (Matera, Italy). In his book Volo d'insetto made of pebbles and cardboard, the artist doesn't forget his pictorial gesture and his informal research. In his work nature remains the source of inspiration as the materials it is composed of reminds us of it – as a reference to the title.

 

Atsuo Suzumura was born in Japan in 1981. The work he conceived for Bibliomosaico is called 9 Libri. This an extremely elegant representation of nine books crafted with very fine tesserae that intertwine in a magical and harmonious dance, in the personal style he gives us to see in each of his works.

 

EVENT RAVENNAMOSAICO 2011

Tracce, Felice Nittolo

Interview with Renée Malaval

translation Cloé Herrero

page 32

Felice Nittolo's personal exhibition, "TRACCE", organized by the cultural association Srativari, was held in Ninapi-nesting art gallery in Ravenna from the 7^th to the 31^st Oct; 2011.

Interview with Felice Nittolo

 

The exhibition "TRACCE" was born on this space: space belongs to the project, to the "TRACCE" concept.

In order to explain this exhibition, one has to go back to the 1980s, when I presented the Aritmism Manifesto. In that manifesto I explained in 1984 my will of beaking the mosaic rules. My belief is that mosaic does not have to remain a technique because art goes beyond the idea of technique.

Mosaic's relation to art has indeed always been a relation of subjection, that of serving art. Mosaic was something that covered something else, in the service of painting or sculpture. It was common for artists from all countries to use mosaic and mosaicists in order to realize their own works; an artist, a painter called a mosaic artist and used them as one uses reverse angle shot in cinema. Then there is no mosaicist anymore. On remembers for instance Chagall or Léger. There are beautiful interpretations, perfect on a technical point of view, interesting, wonderful, but I don't think they are works of art.

Mathieu, for his part, never accepted that. He came in 1957 and wanted to work directly on the mortar. He had to find body movements adapted to materials he probably used for the first time. Thus there was no intermediary between the creator and the performer, between the artist and the mosaicist.

Classic mosaic implied the passage from somebody's mind to somebody else's hand. For my part I think that it has to be the mind and hand of the same person that must intervene in the making of a work of art: my mind controls my hand. It is I, my mind, who decides whether I cut the tesserae this or that way, in a triangular or rectangular shape.

I used to work in a classical manner, as a performer until the 1970s and then I realized that it was a matter of technique and not of art.

For mosaic to become a major art, contemporary visual art, it had to be the mind and hand of the same body, the same artist, to make the work. For mosaic to be art, it has to be realized directly on the mortar, without the drawing of any other artist. If one interprets another artist's drawing, it then is decoration.

In the manifesto, I said that the space between tesserae, the interstice, can be more or like wide, depending on the artist, the bigger the space, the smaller the tesserae, anyway it is not an empty space but a space full of light, matter that forms a surface and composes a mosaic aesthetic.

Getting back to my career path, the TRACCE exhibition was born from my will to emphasize memory mosaic rather than matter mosaic; both the presence and absence of mosaic. Conceptual mosaic, mosaic that becomes action, in the same manner as an artist, a video director, a contemporary artist, would use current and contemporary expression modes instead of traditional mediums. Consequently today, contemporary art is rather made of actions, in order to surprise, than of the work's aesthetic beauty.

TRACCE was born in that will. I thought that when there were elements truly at the root of mosaic, they can also be abandoned, left aside in order to search for new actions, new "tesserae".

For instance, in the first room, one immediately sees laid down taillants; tridimensional taillants remind of tesserae in their trapezoid shapes. In the mean time, one is confronted with the wish of eliminating them, putting them aside, making them live only as memory; precisely because thay are laid down, they become something else, they are not used for cutting tesserae anymore, but to evoke what they have been. Those taillants, extremely ancient, are a memory. Watching them, one's memory goes towards mosaic, one thinks about mosaic; it is a memory, but it is indeed not mosaic.

However, when one glances up there are two mosaics facing the room and the lying elements; they become sculptures, like two dolmens, two very important elements, which are linked to what lies on the ground.

There are also these lights, on the ground: they slightly want to be imprints, rebirth, death; the lamentation of what is not used anymore. (I do not mean the death of mosaic, as people talked about the death of art at the Biennale of Venice). It is a provocation, a mental action.

When one learns mosaics technique, with a little sensibility, a little gold, a few mirrors… one makes easily some really beautiful mosaics.

It is harder to pass the obstacle and go beyond technique than to make nice works. It is not easy to go beyond the technique of thousands years of practice. Neither do I claim to have achieved it, for that matter!

I called this room "Apocalypse".

The first thing that is quite obvious when one enters the second room is that it is red. Red is strong, it seems to me that it is closer to my will of breaking completely the rules of mosaics. I began to work on my "TRACCES" about ten years go: I presented an exhibition entitled "Vestiges" (remains), and another "Trames" (frames). They both belong to the same path. In the beginning, traces were white, I was probably more naïve. 

Once more it is a provocation, almost a debasement of these textures that could be ancient textures, which remind of ancient mosaics. When one comes closer, one realizes that these are not tesserae. These are imprints, frames, remains of the past. One is beholding a work but it is not there. Presence, absence; there is and there is not. There is, because one thinks about it; it is conceptual. The mind goes toward a memory. A mosaic was made but now we do not know anymore. Mosaic or not, it is not important. What is important is the action I want to perform: I want to recall mosaic, and not to make it. I want that everybody who watches thinks of mosaic. It is mental action, a conceptual and philosophic one. One thinks about mosaic but there is no mosaic; one thinks about it because one sees these surfaces, one recognizes the frames, the andamento, the tesserae's shapes. I deeply believe that mosaic's creativity goes through that conceptualization, that way of seeing and feeling. Emptiness becomes full and fullness becomes empty.

In that room, the far end wall is plunged into almost darkness; when one looks closely, the subject of these works are gold birds: there are set in darkness just like those from Galla Placidia mausoleum. This is a reference to what former artists have taught us. There again memory intervenes and creates a link between what occurred many centuries ago and what we do nowadays. As it happens, I want to defy what has been the past but without ever forgetting it and in knowing it always, which is fundamental. There is continuity.

The third room is that of noises, a room with headphones. One can hear different noises: that of water, of a hammer striking stone or my words.

So, wat is mosaic?

At this moment, I make a mosaic: a mosaic of words.

If one imagines the words that compose the text I am writing, those words are abstract, one can neither see them nor touch them but they belong to a conceptual mosaic, a mosaic existing in our imagination because my words form a discourse.

Everybody makes mosaic. This is how I feel and it is extremely stimulating for my work. Everything is mosaic. Each noise, water drop, sound, can become a tesserae composing a mosaic.

When going to the Biennale of Venice one can see works that are not called mosaics but are mosaics even though the artist who made it did not think of mosaic. César who piles up cars uses very big "tesserae": This can be mosaic.

The last room is that of water. It is real water in a huge basin, with a video that shows an installation of my works, mosaic spheres, laid on a floor covered with water (an installation presented in St François Crypt at the occasion of the first RavennaMosaico festival). The water theme is recurrent in my works. It is the purification room; when one absorbs silence, it leads to a privacy that becomes the beginning of something, in order to begin a new life, to begin a new mosaic. That brings to us a new means for making mosaics.

 

"Bianco su bianco" is an interactive performance between the artist and the public, for the occasion of the Gold night.

On the exhibition's opening day, during the Gold night, visitors made a mosaic in disposing tesserae as they liked and during three hours a camera shot this performance. I entitled this action "Bianco su bianco". The mosaic will be destructed: what I am interested in is the action of making the mosaic and not the result, it is the way in which people made the mosaic; and for that matter they enjoyed themselves! This is an action that amongst traces was a come back to the classic with tesserae, lime…Contemporary art lives on actions and feelings. That philosophy is to be related to the creation of a mandala: Tibet

an monks spend several days to trace it with colored sands and when they are finished, the sands are mixed and scattered in water.

 

My path began with classic mosaics to continue on today with TRACCES; I cannot tell whether this is an evolution or an involution, I do not know where I arrive, but it is interesting. I wanted to do something really strong, very bold, because it is important to try, to experiment something different. I do not know what will happen next; this is an attempt to do something unusual, that is not standardized, that is conceptual.

I do not make a mosaic in only one day, one day I can be happy, another I can be sad and another fair to middling. The mood is not easily represented in mosaics. It must be a path, an aesthetic. It is not the artist's expression. Art lies in body movements, emotion, and emotionalism.

Some artists always work on the same mode; for me it is very stimulating to search for something new. I have done so all along my path, with the coat of tesserae, that gave lightness to mosaics, with the Fiat, with the spheres… My passion for this art field leads me to do new creations. Mosaic is part of me.

Poetry, music, painting… are art. Then why mosaics should be decorative arts? Mosaics can be an autonomous art if your project is to make mosaics.

In one's imagination mosaicists have to use marbles, natural elements and smalti. I very often do not feel like a mosaicist but rather like an artist. An artist can express themselves thanks to all kinds of means.

In order to make contemporary art, one has to use the means of contemporary art: we do not live at the time of Greeks, Romans and Byzantines anymore; one has to use modern means.

 

This exhibition is a message of interior strength. Mosaic's message cannot be only centered on decoration that remains a section of mosaic. Mosaic must be an autonomous art. This is also a message for the city I live in. Our society needs to turn towards a culture that conveys strong values, to rediscover a different poetry, musicality and energy, which be a little more sensitive. Mosaic can be what society waits for. Today one can go beyond, one can dream of something that does not exist.

We are in the third millennium and we are waiting for something new, not only in materials but also in thoughts.

 

 

FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER

Gérard Brand

« Looking Back 2 »

by Renée Malaval et Gilles Antoine

Translation Clément Francfort

page 34

 

The fifth Biennial of the Obernai Mosaic took place in the Athic space from August 13^th to September 4^th, 2011.

This exposition, entirely devoted to the work of Gérard Brand, retraced the amazing career of this mosaicist, from the first Biennial of 2003, untitled « Looking Back 1 » up to his last creation-inventions which had been specially composed until the very last moment for this event.

 

More than a mere retrospective,  we were given to see, in the different rooms of this beautiful complex dedicated to culture, evolution and evolutions the techniques, the materials, the aesthetics the light, the colors, the transparency, the gaps and forms of this prolific artist.

The climax was the « Moving Mosaic » space into which Gérard Brand gave us the privilege to see his latest creations, mosaic-toys, « a different mosaic » according to him.

 

« That's quite weird that a 70 year-old guy like me begin to be interested in toys. When I was a child I didn't have the chance to learn how to play, Mom was too busy by her chores and I hated playing cards or board games. It was an emptiness in my childhood I wanted to fill up because one has to know how to play in order to stay an adult. With bits of string, pieces of clothes and what they can pick up, the young Africans make their toys themselves, whether they be young or older. There is a hierarchy in the skill of those children who made up their toys between 5 and 15 and thanks to that become happy children. »

 

Gérard Brand knows quite well Africa, where he drew a part of his inspiration, but it's in Obernai, where he was born an still lives, on Rue de l'Industrie that he exercises his art – the city probably named this street after the arrival of this highly energetic couple-. The courtyard of his house-workshop is filled with materials, machines and the most diverse devices, spare parts, materials that could be called salvaged materials. But Gérard did not follow this trend, on the opposite, it was him who exposed as soon as 1965, using the title « Recup'Art » , polished iron and Venice enamels.

Gérard re-uses, re-transfer, and we can safely bet that every bolt, every rock, every piece of pipe can be found here because it was chosen, and that it will be of use one day, tomorrow or later, and that Gérard already know how it will be used and how it will get in his creations.

 

« I have 60 old bikes at home, that I salvage, deform. I discovered the tiny mechanisms of a wheel or a spoke, and the small screw that is inside is amazing : it can become tiny toys to play with. 

We need to come back to simple values because we're all stifling in a world of computers and other devices. Today we want to plan, to program, to correct everything, but what is broken or bended is beautiful ! »

 

From all this mess, both useful and necessary objects, Gérard Brand tells us that he makes out

toys. But much more than mere toys, Gérard Brand creates pieces of art, his art. All that is handled by him becomes a work of art. Apart from the techniques that he masters perfectly,

each of his creations, from the most humble to the most grand certifies that we have here a creator, and artist, and a genius mosaicist.

 

“The art of mosaic has always been my life. In fact, I did not realize, but all my life has been about games, and I didn't know that one day I'll represent those games in mosaic.

I let myself go. Creation is all about that. One cannot want everything, draw everything, feel everything beforehand. The sculpture or the piece of art you have created feed back the strength you put into it. It's a mystery. The artist is not responsible of what he is doing, because he is a tool, and will remain a tool. But the artist, if he's honest to himself and with his work, then his work will answer back, his work will be like a mirror.”

 

In this exposition, remarkably staged, we could follow Gerard Brand through the path of his creations over the last ten years, and appreciate the invention, the creativity, the innovation of this amazing child-like artist that is Gerard Brand. We were overwhelmed both by the numerous approaches of the creations he proposes, and by his different and unique style: this was the career of a great artist.

 

2004 : Devices and mechanization of sculptures              

2005/2006 : Serie of sculptures made from bone, a material which fascinated him

2008 : Works on Inox, a very hard material to handle – But is this even relevant to this artist ? -

2009 : “Plasma” works. Intertwined with mosaic.

2009/2010 : the embedded tiles of Paul Charnoz (2009/2010)

2010/2011 : Mosaic in movement :  a testimony of objects : the African toy.

 

 

Boxed text:

 

Thanks to this exhibition, M Bernard Fischer, who is the mayor of Obernai, announced the launching of the project of the Obernai Mosaic Museum.

It will be a perennial space, a true home of the mosaic art, where one can see mosaic in all its forms so that this 3500-year-old art will be shown in a very important landmark for mosaic.  The site is not yet finished, but it would lay at the heart of the city. Obernai would thus see its first museum open, on the Mosaic Obernai Museum would be the first Mosaic museum in France, and one of the very first in Europe.  

Gérard Brand, who might be the artist who did the more work in the world to convince the art critiques and the public that the mosaic is an art in its own right, will obviously be a part in the development and the rise of this beautiful project.

 

Boxed text:

 

What is certain is that among the dream of Gerard Brand, there somehow one to sum up them all !

A dream that he finds especially important since beyond his own work as a creator, it involves all of the mosaicists.

It is the dream to share with them a mosaic in movement, and to see this movement mingle with a new rise of the mosaic itself, which would contribute to reinforce further its status of independent art.

 

 

FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER

Mosaic in the 21th century,

Exhibition of Giovanna Galli, Henry Noël Aubry and Jérôme Clochard.

by Jérôme Clochard

translation Sophie de Laage

page 38

 

The generic term of mosaic is frivolously used today in all sort of meanings expressing the idea of multitude: small size tiling, diversity, numeric picture, IT pixeletion.

But thankfully, this magnificent word has kept it’s original sense: a piece of work dedicated  to Art godesses, the Muses, which is now evolving into contemporary mosaic, and this without denying it’s past history.

 

Take your time and go all over the exhibition « mosaic in the 21th century » (inviting Giovanna Galli, Henry-Noël Aubry and Jérôme Clochard) with a bit of curiosity.

This exhibition is finely designed by Saint Maur city (indre), and you will discover or re-assess the fabulous inner richness and strength of this art.

 

As a visitor you are  immediately overcome and impressed by the matter, its presence, the way it is tamed, mastered and well-orchestred with elegance and subtlety. You physically feel the incredible demand for accuracy to bring this subtle art to light,  the passion and patience needed also.

Within each of these masterpieces, the inner life brings a breath: tessera, textures, rhythms, reliefs, colours and contrasts drive and facinate one’s eye.

 

You will distinguish very easily each artist own style, all of them nevertheless match eachother very smoothly in this contemporary space.

While admiring one masterpiece after another, individual characters will come into light, common influences, master to student relations, but all the most, a common evidence will overcome you: aesthetic research,  a nerverending quest for harmony, where each piece of stone or glass has it’s chosen position.

 

You will perceive in this exhibition, the gist of  21th century mosaic, hinging on the knowledge and comprehension of this « tessera music », and the ability of traducing and expressing it with grace a sensitivity.

 

FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER

Mosaic Exhibition at Villa Bagatelle, Quebec City

by Sophie Drouin, Lynne Chinn and Jo Braun

page 40

 

The Villa Bagatelle

Situated in picturesque, historic Quebec City, Villa Bagatelle is a rare and charming specimen of neo-gothic architecture characteristic of the nineteenth century. The cottage is surrounded by an immaculate English-style garden featuring nearly 200 exotic and indigenous plants. The City of Quebec purchased the property in 1982, and the Arrondissement de Sainte-Foy–Sillery–Cap-Rouge manages it as a visual arts venue.  The Arrondissement has cultivated a reputation for staging high quality exhibitions, and generally enriching social and cultural life in Quebec.

 

From 6 September to 18 December 2011, Villa Bagatelle is home to a contemporary mosaic exhibition featuring 40 artworks by Sophie Drouin, Lynne Chinn, and Jo Braun. Eric Dumas, head manager of cultural spaces for the city of Quebec, originally approached Sophie with the idea for the show. After consulting with her and reviewing a number of artists’ websites, Mr. Dumas invited Lynne and Jo to contribute artworks exhibiting a complementary style, technique, and content to fill the walls of Villa Bagatelle. Asked why he wished to feature this particular exhibition in one of Quebec’s municipal museums, Mr. Dumas answered: « It was of interest to Quebeckers to discover mosaic art as a traditional expertise, transmitted through apprenticeship and imitation, but also as an art with an identity, capable of expressing ideas that are contemporary and unique. »

 

The exhibition, entitled En avant la mosaïque, is an exciting break into museum territory for the medium, which until now has been widely classified as a secondary art used mainly in architectural applications. Regardless of whether this classification possesses any validity, it has never applied to works produced by artists whose inspiration happens to manifest itself in tesserae, whose vision cannot express itself any other way.

 

All three artists were impressed with the level of support and professionalism that the organizers and support staff offered: the museum covered all shipping costs, including brokerage fees at the US-Canadian border. The team superbly executed the graphic design, printing, and mailing of marketing materials, generating excitement about the show in advance. Most notably, Mr. Dumas sought out Danièle Lessard, a professional exhibition designer and visual artist in her own right, to hang the exhibition. Thanks to her impeccable sense of visual harmony, the exhibition combines works by each artist in almost every room, emphasizing their compatibility and subtle contrasts, making the very arrangement of the show an artwork in itself.

 

The Artists

Sophie Drouin’s body of work fuses sculpture and mosaic in a way that defies common assumptions about the physical universe, for example, that stone is solid; that sculpture obeys the laws of gravity; that tesserae remain glued in place. Many of her artworks evoke ephemeral phenomena—a gaseous nebula, cardboard burned to ashes, a river of lava—which might seem ironic given the ostensible permanence of the mosaic medium. Other works incorporate ethereal veils of woven or knitted copper wire to challenge the notion that visual art is meant to be seen; thus the act of seeing is intensified as the viewer is forced to look more closely. Her work is also driven by a desire literally to open up stones and minerals to release their unique essences, perhaps accentuating them with complementary or contrasting materials.

 

With a background in design and fashion illustration, Lynne Chinn’s current body of work grows out of her fascination with making glass and stone mosaic artworks that appear light and airy, as though they were draped fabric softly billowing in the wind. One of her works, Outcropping, features a grouping of small vessels flocked together. Their ethereal, organic forms evoke sea creatures anchored to a reef, yet softly undulating in the water. A unifying feature of her work is the serene sense of effortlessness of creation they evoke. From a technical standpoint, she accomplishes this result by the cuts, placement, fit and ease of the pieces as they touch and transition from one to the other to create movement and flow. Additionally, by employing primarily monochromatic color schemes, deliberately harmonizing hues, shades, and tints, she is able to produce a tranquil effect. Thus, the dramatic characteristics of her work remain concentrated in the works’ surface texture.

 

Jo Braun’s artworks are wall-mounted sculptural panels primarily composed of salvaged building materials.  Her use of cast off materials is purposeful, since her body of work is a meditation on the impermanence of human-made material forms relative to nature’s overriding agenda.  For this reason, much of her work explores attrition, decay, and obsolescence.  Her compositions are abstract, and tend to be driven by processual rules, including the basic “grammar” of classical mosaic, which she applies whether the tesserae are irregularly broken cubes of glazed ceramic tile, threaded hardware, or absent altogether.  By abandoning traditional mosaic materials and rationally generated cartoons, her work seeks to manifest an ordered intelligence that supercedes the artist’s insignificant intentions.

 

To date, public reaction to the exhibition has been overwhelmingly positive.  Museum goers have responded to the mosaic medium in general, and these works in particular, as a surprising new discovery made all the more compelling by its roots in ancient history.  To round out the exhibition, the Villa Bagatelle has scheduled two public presentations: JeanAnn Dabb, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA, will present a lecture entitled “Beyond Byzantium: Contemporary Mosaic.” She will discuss the three artists’ work, as well as the relationship of contemporary mosaic to the present-day art world.  Her lecture will be held on Tuesday, 15 November at 8:00 pm.  Then on Wednesday, 16 November at 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm artist Sophie Drouin will present demonstrations of mosaic techniques.

 

The Villa Bagatelle is located at 1563, chemin Saint-Louis, Ville de Quebec, and is open to the public Wednesday – Saturday from 1:00-5:00 pm.  More information about the artists can be found online at www.sophiemosaics.com, www.lcmosaics.com, and www.jo-braun.com.

 

FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER

Bi-annual exhibition of Moscow

Translation Anne Giral

Rereading Corinne Mitchell

page 44

 

From September 14 to October 30, for the Fourth bi-annual exhibition of Moscow's contemporary art, on the theme of "The Rewriting of Worlds", the Galerie Musivium showed an exhibition organised by Ismaël Akmetov and Solomosaico called "The Reliquary".

 

Yuri Avvakumov, the guardian, presented the exhibition "Reliquary" : nine projetcs each of which was made by two architects and a mosaicist who answered following question : how to keep the most precious and sacral thing in modern culture ? The artists have imagined reliquary for the next generations where modern cultur's relics are kept.

 

Architects : Alyona Kirtsova, Yuri Avvakumov, Yuri Grigorian, Totan Kutzembaev, Ilia Outkine, SergueïTchoban, Slava Mizin, Dmitri Bush et Sergueï Chuklov.

 

Mosaicists : Olga Solgatova, Dusciana Bravura, Matylda Tracewka, Toyoharu Kii, Marco de Luca, Marco Bravura, Verdiano Marzi, Pelagia Angelopoulou et Giulio Candussio.

 

 

 

FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER

Mosaic by Cécile Bouvarel

Translation Marion Bouyer

page 46

 

You draw a picture (here, a mosaic) as you write to a loved one, except your beloved is all mankind.

This noble thought of Gregory Mazurovsky, I wish to make it mine and embrace with it those who dawdle over my little mosaic worlds. Not that I pretend to have such inspiration but the idea seems so obvious whenever I put on my apron. The ego comes back into place and I get into a dance of dialogs: with what surrounds me, with matter, with the observer.

 

Everything starts with the pleasure of materials: that is my source of energy, my raw material, my true gold mine !

Since childhood I have been taking delight in collecting them from all points of the compass with both care and emotion, then I juggle with these ingredients of all sorts, most of the time ordinary things, directly extracted from nature or manufactured: minerals, molten glass, wood, metal, spare parts left as they are or reshaped, etc. 

 

In order to create a world of my own, I have to look kindly upon them as well as confront them, instill into them my own energy so as to give them a second life, to free them from their silence, and re-enchant them if I can. I then feel carried along by this encounter which develops my imagination, inspires my compositions in a direct, instinctive confrontation, which often causes a spate of unexpected combinations : I try my hand at all possibilities, I spot the pieces which make sparks fly, and I only set them into the mortar when everything sounds and resounds as I want to hear it.

 

Alternately quiet and excited, both determined and hesitant, I swing to and fro between our darknesses and our lights. No message, no verbiage, no concept: words are handed over to a spiritualized, musical, internalized matter and to a poetical, tender, dreamy language which invites one to active meditation.

There is « nothing » to understand, only to take, I mean –to gather.

Above all, do not reason, just resound…

 

 

FROM ONE EXHIBITION TO THE OTHER

INVADER

page 48

 

 

ARTISTS

Valérie Colombel – Jacob's Ladder

by Renée Malaval

Translation Cloé Herrero

page 52

 

Jacob's Ladder is 8 meters high and 45 centimeters large; a mirror laid on the ground below reflects the ladder downwards. Nylon thread comes through 2.3 x 2.3 cm pierced glass tesserae, which are inclined in order to reflect light.

The glass is opalescent white; so as it is bluish in the dark and it looks orangey in the light. The ladder then changes colors according to light.

Jacob's Ladder was created for the place where it had been exhibited during summer 2011: a place enclosed by the Sacred Heart basilica and the basilica's cloister in Paray-le-Monial – a place that should not exist. When it was suggested to the artist, she immediately looked towards the sky as to escape from that place that she qualifies as "an imprisoning no man's land". Facing that feeling of body imprisonment, there had to be a way out. That is how the idea of a ladder was born, which already existed in the artist's mind, even though she had not found a place where to make it yet. The ladder was then meant to talk about the place, and to exploit it. When one looks up at the sky from that very place, it is deep blue, all the more because of the orangey stone, blue's complementary color.

The artist wanted to work with the blue in the sky: the ladder is there to show it off. It is rather the blue of the sky than the ladder that is to be watched. The ladder involves the viewer to glance up.

As to the mirror, it is there to remind that one reaches the sky through an interior movement. The sky is the self, the opening towards something larger, the absence of the self. The mirror provokes a downwards movement, it signs the interiorization which is at the origin of the blossoming that takes us upwards, towards the sky.

The ladder acts as a vector, the medium between sky and earth. It is there to name something that one feels on the level of the invisible.

The ladder is a symbol, an archetype that is recurrent in all cultures. Jacob's Ladder is a reference to patriarch Jacob's dream. That episode, depicted in the Genesis, is known under the title of "Jacob's Dream"; Jacob sees a ladder in the desert: "This is where I will build my church". Jacob's ladder is interpreted as the Temple of Jerusalem, the bridge between sky and earth.

Jacob's Ladder then left the place for which it had been created and joined the Hiéron museum in Pary-le-Monial, showing in that manner that is part of the continuity of Valérie Colombel's work. The artist works on "the passage" and on the "in-between" themes: passage from birth to death with "Imago", passage from death to resurrection with "Resurrection" and passage from sky to earth with "Jacob's Ladder", a work created for a place stuck in between two sites, a church and a cloister.

Jacob's Ladder, next to the two others, finds a particular place in that museum of sacred art as it also symbolizes the Christ, the one who is the link between sky and earth.

Let us wish that Valérie Colombel's work finds a permanent exhibition place that stay in tune with the technical skill, aesthetic and spiritual message that the artist gives us.

 

Biography:

-Holder of a diploma from the National Beaux-Arts College of Paris

-Teaches art at the University of Beauvais

-Lives and works in the Somme

 

 

SAINT-EMAN CHAPEL GUEST

What is MOSAÏZM collective ?

by Mosaïzm

page 54

 

Mosaïzm is a gathering of European mosaic artists who graduated from  the Italian mosaic school of Frioul, between 2001 and 2006.

Mosaïzm –which was set up by a group of friends who shared the same ideas and dreams to see mosaic become the centre of professional careers– refers to a lifestyle dominated by mosaic in all its forms, be it craft or art.

Mosaïzm first came into being in Marseille in 2006, while some artists were working on the restoration of the mosaics of Notre-Dame de la Garde under the supervision of Michel Patrizio. Their first exhibition of contemporary mosaic that same year was to become the starting point of this collective venture.

The fact that members of the collective come from various countries – Germany, France, Italy, Croatia and the Netherlands– is an asset in the way that it allows a variety of creative viewpoints and approaches on this particular support.

The artistic development of each individual is as important as the desire and need to consult and help each other with technical issues. Whenever they have the opportunity, members of the group gather together to work on collective projects from the restoration of historic buildings to the creation of contemporary mosaics and their application in architecture.

It is not obvious in today’s world where high-speed, immediacy and fleetingness prevail, to choose a craft that requires slowness, meticulous preparation, the use of traditional tools that involve no mechanization and durable materials, with the ideal intend of leaving an eternal trace. Yet it is Mosaïzm’s will to put into focus the beauty of that timeless craftsmanship that originated thousands of years ago, both through traditional applications and more innovative creations.

Mosaïzm wishes to see mosaic travel the world, evolve and be recognized as both an art in itself and a constituting part of architecture and modern design.

 

ARTISTS

Sergio Cicognani, memory of an artist

by Renée Malaval and Gilles Antoine

translation Sylvia Verschuren

Rereading Elaine M. Goodwin

page 58

 

Sergio Cicognani was born in Ravenna in 1927. At 17 years old, after having worked as an assistant-decorator, he studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Ravenna where he followed painting courses with Teodoro Orselli, sculpture with Antonio Piazzoli, and engraving and mosaics with Renato Signorini. In 1948, he joined a group of mosaic artists at the Fine Arts Academy. The Group, of which he was a founder member, took part in the cycles of restoration for the basilicas of Ravenna and the Dome of Salerno. Still with the Group, he took part in great exhibitions and carried out copies of ancient and modern mosaics.

For 24 years he was a mosaic teacher at the State Institute of Mosaic Art Gino Severini and at the School of Mosaic Restoration in Ravenna. 

Today, he continues his creative activity in a studio in Ravenna. His last exhibition took place at the gallery NiArt in Ravenna, in May and June 2011.

 

It was at the time of Ravenna Mosaico that we met Sergio Cicognani: his passion for mosaics led him to all the places in this event. He then invited us to visit his studio and we followed him on our bikes. His studio, which occupies the ground floor of his house, is a little out of the centre of Ravenna.

A meeting with this man is a moment of pure happiness! With an enthusiasm tinted with humour, he told us anecdotes that plunged us back to the time of the Group. Warm and with great kindness, he told us about his journey and his art designs with simplicity and humility; his artistic choices are justified by a large knowledge, and his experience in the world of art is extensive, reinforced by his meetings with many artists and his technical control is absolute.

 

His career started with the restoration and the realization of copies. To promote the mosaics of Ravenna, the director of the Academy, Orselli, decided to make an exhibition of these copies: it was at this time that the world started to know about Ravenna and its mosaics. 

He then carried out mosaics starting from paperboards of contemporary artists: such was the fate of mosaic at that time, reduced to the execution of a work designed by another artist, mosaic was only an interpretation and did not have the statute of an original work of art. The town of Ravenna promoted this activity and saw a way of drawing attention to itself because many famous artists came to Ravenna and thus the museum MAR was able to begin its collection of mosaics. Sergio Cicognani now had the chance to make known the works of George Mathieu, Gino Severini, Renato Guttuso, Bruno Saetti, Nahum Gutman, or Oskar Kokoschka. “I appreciated in particular working with Saetti: he intervened in the mosaic work to propose solutions. In was the same with Gutman, who had confided to me a paperboard of 140m2,on which we worked in unison ".

His way of carrying out a mosaic, starting from a paperboard, was already that of an artist: more than finding exact formal fidelity in the model, he sought to find “the spirit of work”; it is his artistic vision that came out of this work and not that of a simple performer: it preceded the current mode of the mosaic artist who must at one and the same time imagine and carry out the work.

 

Sergio Cicognani is a complete artist who controls all the pictorial techniques: drawing, painting, sculpture, fresco, mosaic and this is essential to his whole career as a mosaic artist as well as a painter. He carried out numerous paintings: “I worked all week on mosaics, initially with the Group, then with the school, and on Sundays, I devoted myself to my pictorial research- painting”. In the art of painting, he nourished the influence of Paul Cézanne, and all the pictorial currents from Impressionism to Cubism. For him, “painting was at the same time color, line and form”.

Today, he expresses his artistic sensibility with works in which he blends mosaic and painting with fresco.

This communion between the techniques appears in his use of the colours for which he uses pure pigments, such as are employed in fresco. Sergio Cicognani is a large colourist.

His pallet, which is very personal, is all in harmony, mixing refined and subtle pinks, purplish(ed) blues, greens, and oranges; it is highlightened by the simpler colours of the marbles and especially of the smalts which he chooses with very particular care so that they are not too brilliant; his preference goes to the opaque tiles, saturated with colour like antique tiles, that have a patina which gives them at both an internal and an external light. “The colours, I learnt from the Byzantines”. To obtain the colour he wants, he applies several layers of pigment; “To find the colour which one seeks, it is necessary to play with the layers of pigments, but it is delicate and it is necessary to know when to stop, with the risk of seeing nothing anymore as all darkens”. The colours in the works of Cicognani are always very luminous. Without any doubt, the Byzantines taught him the light!

 

Nourished with the experiences of a painter and a mosaic artist, his technique has become very personal: he lays out his tiles on a bed of mortar; this bed of mortar is not ut on a rigid support, but on a jute cloth which still shows through when the work is finished.

The materials mix stone, molten glass, pure colours of pigments, fillers, and fabrics, to which are added sometimes original techniques, for example glued paper, applied with an iron which gives a  smooth aspect to the all the filler in relief. The textures of the materials set up a dialogue with the colours.

 

Thus, on canvas, surfaces of mosaics and fresco painting are mixed, compiling a work which most of the time maintains a figurative character or has figurative elements, within an abstract composition. We recognize grandmothers spindle, an object with an emotional resonance but so transformed that it gives the spectator an aesthetic emotion. Art is there to cause an emotion to those who look at it. The subject is only a pretext and is important only to the artist. What is essential, is the emotion which the spectator feels; an emotion produced by the marble, gold, glass, forms, colours and light.

For Sergio Cicognani, the framework belongs to and is part of the artwork: it is painted, scratched, gashed, even covered with paper or mosaical incrustations; a very simple rod surrounds the whole, and painted in harmony.

 

Sergio Cicognani while continuing his patient mosaic work and fresco has a cultural curiosity which goes well beyond his innate interest for art: he has a true passion for philosophy and has also followed an education in art criticism.

His concern always is to know what the place of mosaic is in art, which figuration or what format, is appropriate to him best, or how to integrate it into architecture. These questions are those of a master mosaic artist who is part of a line of great contemporary mosaic artists, true artists.

 

 

Box story

George Mathieu

 

 “I dealt with George Mathieu when he came to make the mosaic which is currently in the MAR Museum; with friends we accompanied him in Venice to choose materials; he took all he found in glass making; glass scrap, sheets of glass, remainders of melting pots, smalts, golds…; when we arrived at the workshop, he did not want to mix the mortar gradually like we usually do- to divide the working sessions. Instead we mixed all the mortar together at once! And then he laid out what he had brought back from Venice, like that; instantly: the mosaic was carried out in the course of the day! Result: it was most beautiful! "

 

A recent book is devoted to Sergio Cicognani; it is written and published by Felice Nittolo, who patiently builds a pioneering work devoted to the principal mosaic artists of the XXe century.

See bibliography

 

 

Felice Nittolo

Byzantium Faventia Venetiae

Un sogno di mosaico

page 62

 

 

Magic in stone

Fragments of glass branches

Soar and vibrate

Echo and sing.

 

 

A scent of history, a taste of life

Chronicles in glass, sounds of crystal

Magic,emotions, vibrations

Gesture,instinct, mystery.

 

 

Blue spaces

Empty and silent

They seem as skies to us

Shimmering stars.

 

 

Surfaces selected, investigated, surveyed

Becoming music scores

Light becomes sound

Sound becomes light.

 

 

Imprisoned Light

Fingers weave the lignt

The mind spraks to the hand

Body and soul.

 

 

 

COLLECTION

Mosaics from Antique Syria

The Louvre's Collections Restored in Saint-Romain-en-Gal

By Cécile Giroire and Evelyne Chantriaux

Translation Cloé Herrero

page 64

 

In the heart of the new museum projects, the mosaics collection coming from Syria's Ancient province which has been preserved since its discovery in the Louvre museum, was the subject of a fundamental restoration campaign lead by Saint-Romain-en-Gal's restoration studio, in close collaboration with the department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities who is in charge of it.

Undertook in 1994 with the full ornamental tiling of Saint Christopher Church in Qabr Hiram (present-day Lebanon) of which restoration was conducted during nearly two years, that unprecedented campaign went on from 2008 to this year, with a considerable collection of ornamental tiling fragment excavated from the affluent neighborhood of Antioch (present-day Turkey), capital of Syria's Roman province. These mosaics presented many preservation troubles when they arrived in Saint-Romain-en-Gal, and are now settled on a modern support. They have besides gained back some brightness and legibility.

The mosaics come from two excavation campaigns, one conducted in the 1930s, and the other previously conducted by Ernest Renan in 1860.

In 1920, with the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres, the northern part of the Near East goes under French mandate. That new geopolitical configuration ensures some security to the area where archeological excavations can then be carried out. An agreement with Syria's High Commission allows excavations in Antioch and its vicinity from January 1931. They are carried out under the supervision of the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and its Vicinity which includes representatives from Princeton University, the national French museums, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Worcester Museum of Art, joined in 1936 by their colleagues from Harvard's Fogg Art Museum and the Dumbarton Oaks Foundation.

A few public buildings are located (baths, theatres, hippodrome…) but most of the discoveries is constituted of numerous private structures and along with them, surprisingly, mosaic ornamental tiling, dating back from the second to the sixth centuries. The site of Antioch supplies then one of the most important collections of ancient Near-Oriental mosaics, and essential landmarks in the technique's history. Suddenly stopped by war, these excavations seem today exemplary both by the writings and pictures they have produced and by the publication concerns that accompanied them.

 

Antioch Mosaics Restoration

Removing ancient supports gives us information on the techniques used for the making of mosaics: cleaning the reverse side of the phoenix mosaic revealed preparatory lines, drawn in order to guide the mosaicists' work.

The details on the reverse side of the tesserae carpet of the Phoenix mosaic shows lines drawn with lampblack (got by plant combustion) in order to mark off the rose buds rows, and traces of red paint made of ochre (clay colored with iron oxides) marking off the place for each rose bud.

 

Ernest Renan (philosopher and philologist writer, was entrusted in 1860 by Napoleon III an exploration mission into ancient Phoenicia (Oct. 1860 – Oct. 1861). Helped by soldiers and local people, Ernest Renan explores many sites including Amrit, Saïda (Sidon), Sour (Tyre) with the intention of writing the story of the ancient people mentioned in the Bible. Disenchanted by the sites' plundering, he sends to France a number of his discoveries which makes up one of the cores of the future Department of Oriental Antiquities created in 1881 in the Louvre. Near Tyre (present-day Lebanon), in the locality of Qabr Hiram (Hiram's tomb), he brings to light a church mosaic ornamental tiling and responds to the Emperor's will by having it shipped to Paris. Back in France, Ernest Renan works on the publication of the mission of Phoenicia from 1864 to 1874.

 

Mosaic Ornamental Tiling of Saint Christopher Church in Qabr Hiram

Of the building brought to light in 1861, only the ornamental tiling and the walls remained. Nonetheless they enabled to understand that the church was of basilica type: it had three naves separated by columns and ending to the East in a semicircular apse.

The mosaic ornamental tiling's decoration is divided into four parts that correspond to four architectural areas: the central naves present agricultural activities and hunting scenes in medallions drawn with vine foliage springing out from four vases set in the carpet corners. That realistic representation of human familiar activities of the faithful who went to saint Christopher Church is coupled with a Christian symbolic dimension made explicit by contemporary texts, catechetic or sermons that celebrate God, by analogy, through his creations. Animal couples, winds, months and seasons personifications are set in couples in medallions along the lateral naves. This is a sensible world that is represented here: man, in activity, in his environment regulated by the cycle of time. It is also a reference to God's creations which decorates the floor.

 

The Restoration of Qabr Hiram's Mosaic

This ornamental tiling, notable for its dimensions, the quality of its decorations and its good state of preservation, covered a surface of more than 100 square meters. Cut into 80 panels and shipped to the Louvre in 1862, it was reassembled on cement slabs. The mosaic has never been presented in its whole; it has been set in disorder in one of the Louvre's galleries for a long time, and then it was partly assembled for a temporary exhibition in the 1970s. Then the panels were set in a storeroom and only a few elements were exhibited. On Catherine Metzer – curator at the Louvre – 's initiative, the resumption of the treatment was scheduled in order to exhibit the whole work: restoration began in 1994 and was completed in 2004, with the idea in mind of the tiling's exhibition in the same layout as it had in Saint Christopher Church.

While the former support was removed in 1996, each lateral nave gave a glass tube holding a parchment sealed in the cement in 1891 by Saint-Denis' studio saying: "That large mosaic found in Saint Christopher Church in Kabr Hiram (Phoenicia) was restored and set in the Louvre Museum by Mr. Guilbert-Martin's studio, mosaicist in Saint-Denis", with the mention: "Boccaci Mosaicist, Pittana, Italia".

 

Reassembling on a New Support and Treating the Gaps:

After removing the cement slabs, the 80 elements of the mosaic have been reassembled on cellular panels. The gaps corresponding to the former cuttings were filled in with tesserae. The areas to be filled in were the framing fillets, the parts linking the figurative decorations, and the zones formerly restored. The former restoration campaigns had widely reconstructed the ornamental frame, but they had spared the figurative representations which were destroyed on different levels. The sketchy subjects remained in the state they were in when they were discovered: the studio replaced the cement fillings that had been set in the gaps by lime fillers.

Conceived by the Louvre and Saint-Romain-en-Gal museums, that exhibition shows, in preview at Saint-Romain-en-Gal, those restored mosaics before their permanent exhibition in new rooms of the Parisian palace.

 

Boxed text – Antioch

Founded in 300 B.C. by Seleucos I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, the city of Antioch (present-day Turkey) – thus named in homage to his father (Antiochos) – is established on the left bank of the Orontes River, 25 km far from the sea by the river valley, at the foot of Mount Cilpius.

The city soon occupies a pre-eminent place and becomes the Seleudices' capital during the Hellenistic era. It remains Syria's Roman Province's capital and then adds to that function, from the end of the third century, these of capital of the oriental diocese and imperial's residence.

In 526, an earthquake destroys the whole city and Emperor Justinian begins the reconstruction, but the city is taken by Sassanid Persians. The Arab conquest in 637 marks the end of the antique city.

 

SOMEWHERELSE

Murals in Japan

by Toyoharu Kii

page 68

 

As regards the mural mosaic in Japan, you must know that the Japanese traditional architecture is made of woods.  In order to have a robust wall for murals we must wait until to be introduced European style architecture made of stone and bricks.  And we also needed marbles, colored ceramic tiles and smalti to make mosaic.   That is to say in Japan there was nothing at all to make mosaic.  All the things must be imported from foreign country.

It was prohibited to import things and technologies in Japan for more than 300 years.  There was some exception, but formally until 1868 Japanese people didn’t have foreign things.  After the opening of country to the world we imported technologies and began to construct buildings in European style.  It is easy to imagine that also mosaic was imported in Japan at that time to decorate buildings.  But because of earthquakes and war, very few examples of this period were remained.  Among them one of the oldest example is a building dedicated to Japanese Emperor in occasion of the marriage of 1908.  The design is a simple geometrical pattern.  The material is ceramic tile.  A mosaicist has invited from France to direct this work and Japanese plasterers helped him.  I occasionally had chance to help the restoration of this mosaic more than 30 years ago when I was a student.  The mortar is consisted of lime, powder of marble and brick, it is a traditional composition.  In the thick laid mortar, 10 cm, had been inserted ceramic tesserae of 20mm x20mm.  The restoration has been done several times.  In every restoration used marble tesserae instead of ceramic.  And instead of the lime mortar used cement mortar.  Restored parts were hard but fragile.  Now the major part of original mosaic is disappeared. 

 

We can find in Tokyo, one of the oldest mosaic made by Japanese artists in 1932, on the ceiling of a highly evaluated building of a famous Architect “Togo Murano”.  Designed by a young Japanese designer and realized in mosaic by a German mosaic company.  The materials are smalti.  Well conserved mosaic.  The design reminds us a decorative pattern of Kimono, Japanese traditional dress.

 

In 1934 another important mural mosaic is made in the wall of a beer hall at the centre of Tokyo.  The design and the mosaic were executed by the architect of the building.  The material is smalti made in Japan.  At the beginning of the work the architect wanted to import smalti to use but the german company has refused the order because the company wasn’t a smalt maker, but a mosaic maker.  The mosaic is made by indirect method and united in concrete panel with iron flame.  So it is very solid.  Surely now we can see it in fond of the beer hall.

In the 1950’s the movement around the mosaic art was getting active.  An artist-vice president of a largest japanese marble trading company opened a mosaic studio and began to make mural mosaics in 1952.  He also began to have a temporary mosaic workshop in an art school.  Almost the same period, in 1957 a glass maker began to produce tessera for mosaic and also open a studio to make mosaic.  And tile mosaic studio followed them in the same year.  Now all three materials, marble, glass and ceramic tile for mural mosaic were ready to use. 

The economical progress of Japan of this period gave good condition for mural mosaic.  Besides the architectural trend was fair wind.  Many architects and owners wanted to have mural decoration in the building.  As soon as the mosaic studios are opened they began to make mural mosaics furiously.  The largest glass mosaic studio made almost 4000 murals until the close of studio in 2004.  And artist’s studios followed them.  More than 10 studios were opened near Tokyo. 

But there was a fundamental problem.  In Japan there were only two places to study the technique of mosaic.  The one was a mosaic course held in an art school which I have done.  And the other was a group in another art school directed by an artist who studied in Italy.  He was teaching the technique of mosaic privately to the students of the school.   And other artists ought to begin directly to make mosaics without study or training about mosaic.  So as you can easily imagine, most of mural mosaics made in this period couldn’t have enough level worth to appreciate.  It was an unhappy situation.  If we could have this mosaic boom slowly togather with the increase of the mosaic school, Japanese mosaic could have better fruits.  However we could have some beautiful examples.  I hope I can have a chance to introduce you one day.

The mosaic boom has suddenly finished in the middle of 1990’s because of the business recession.  Actually the order of mural mosaic is almost dead.  But it will not be distinguished.  Japanese artist had happy period of work for 50 years and now there came a season of study.  Japanese mosaicists were making mosaics as a job but now we must make it as an art.  I hope next generation can restart to make mural mosaics in good condition. 

 

 

 

SCHOOL OF MOSAIC

Friuli School of Mosaic

by Danila Venuto

page 72

 

HISTORY

 

It was Lodovico Zanini, Friuli delegate of the “Società Umanitaria” in Milan who suggested the idea of a school for mosaic artists and Ezio Cantarutti, Major of Spilimbergo, who carried out the work.

 

Thus, in 1922, the Friuli School of Mosaic in Spilimbergo was born.  The reason for Spilimbergo and not elsewhere was because of the deep-rooted tradition of mosaic and terrazzo present in the district.

 

In fact, during the 500s, 600s, 700s, and 800s there was strong seasonal emigration to Venice by locals, the artistic meeting point between East and West, Rome and Bisanzio and therefore the natural heir to Roman and Byzantine mosaic tradition, was magnificently founded here. 

 

The “Serenissima” offered workers from Friuli a job but also gave them a brilliant idea: use stones from their own rivers. With these stones, artisans from Sequals, Colle, Solimbergo, Arba, Fanna, Cavasso Nuovo and Spilimbergo – after having collected and selected them from the Meduna and Tagliamento riverbeds- left for Venice.

 

From the first half of the 800s mosaic artists started to move beyond Venice: from France to the United States, from Canada to Venezuela and from Argentina to Australia.....

 

A lot of them made large fortunes. Among these were Odorico, the Ciani, the Del Turco, the Tramontin and especially Gian Domenico Facchina who was born in Sequals in 1826 and initially worked in Venice where he established a factory for producing “Venetian Smalti” (tesserae that were used to make a mosaic). He then moved to Paris where he created esteemed works of art that went on to adorn town halls, churches, mosques, palaces in Bucharest, Aia, Smirne, Lourdes Buenos Aires and Tokyo as well as the Opera Theatre in Paris.

 

Right from the start, the Friuli School of Mosaic achieved its first important recognition: the allocation of the diploma of honour at the First International Exhibition of Decorative Art in Monza for a fountain created on cartoon by the Arch. Raimondo D’Aronco.

 

Study periods were structured into three years and the curriculum included both subjects of a general cultural nature and the development of drawings, sketches and cartoons.  All indispensable subjects for mosaic creation, supported by practical mosaic and terrazzo exercises in the laboratory.   

 

The School was then asked to carry out the complete mosaic series for the Foro Italico in Rome.  Nearly 10,000 sq accomplished on cartoons belonging to Angelo Canevari, Giulio Rosso, Gino Severini and Achielle Capizzano.

 

More recently, the mosaics in the Saint Irene Monastery near Athens were considered an important piece of work (more than 1,000 sq), the Kawakyu Hotel in Japan (1,600 sq) and the restoration work on the mosaics in the Foro Italico in Rome. All works accomplished in collaboration with mosaic laboratories managed by ex students from the Spilimbergo School.

 

The mosaic cladding of the Saint Sepulchre cupola in Jerusalem (about 345sq) was a piece of work that was done entirely inside the School.

 

TODAY

 

 

The School’s objective is to unite tradition with innovation.  Therefore it aims towards experimentation and research in order to seek new solutions, especially in the field of urban and internal furnishings. For this reason, apart from traditional subjects such as mosaic, terrazzo and design, computer graphics, mosaic design and colour theory are also studied.

 

Over the last few years, the School has opened up in all fields.  It operates with ever-increasing conviction, competence and success in various sectors: from architecture to design; from contemporary art to restoration.

 

There have been numerous works completed together with architects and designers both Italian and foreign), that adorn restaurants, churches, villas and other places all over the world.  Among these the huge mosaic “Saetta irridescente- Iridescent Lightning” for the new underground station Temporary World Trade Centre (Ground Zero) in New York, the mosaic furnishings for two restaurants again in New York, the mosaic sculpture in the entrance of Centro Ricerche FIAT, Orbessano, Turin, the mosaic pavement in the Piazza della Transalpina between Gorizia and New Gorica and a wall mural and tiled flooring for a restaurant in Tokyo and the wall decoration for the Cultural Center “Chicasaw” in Oklaohoma (USA), the mosaic for Industrialist Union of Pordenone. 

 

Also worthy of comment is the work carried out on sketches by important artists like Zigaina, Dorazio, Ciussi, Celiberti, Licata, Cascella, Della Torre, Finzi, Gianquinto, Basaglia, Nespolo, Pittino, Pizzinato, Pozzati, Soffiantino, Lojze Spacal, Strazza, Tadini, Titonel, Treccani, Turchiaro, Voltolina, Zavagno, De Luigi, Anzil, Mitri, to name but a few.

 

Important work has also been carried out in the field of mosaic restoration (pieces of work going back to the end of the 800s and all of the 900s). The prestigious mosaics in the Sanctuary at Lourdes in France, the mosaic work at the Venice r

ailway station and the “Maison Simons” cupola in Quebec, Canada.

 

In addition, over the last few years, the School has participated and organised exhibitions such as “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” in Angers (1997); “Aime....comme mosaique” in Paris (1998); “Mosaico è” at Villa Manin in Passariano (2000); “the new mosaic: selections from friuli” in Toronto (2003); “La Mosaique dans tous ses éclats” in Marseille (2005); “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” in Obernaì (2005); “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” in Roma (2006); “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” in Veszprèm (2006); “Mosaic: selections from friuli” in Melbourne (2006); “Mosaic Now: works from Italy and Australia” in Wangaratta – Geelong – Sydney (2007); “Un, deux, trois .... cailloux. Exposition de la <<Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli>> Mosaique d’hier et d’aujourd’hui” in Arles (2007); “Solo Mosaico” a Mosca (2008); “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” a Randers (2009); “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” a Trieste (2009); “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” a Udine (2009); “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” alla Biennale del Design di Gwaingju – Corea del Sud (2010), “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” a Basilea (2010), “La Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli” a Bratislava in Slovacchia (2011) .   

 

Contributors

Translation Gilles Antoine

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Rosetta Berardi

 

Italian contemporary artist, she realized numerous exhibitions in Italy and all over the world: Tokyo, London, Paris, New York... After using multiple mediums, the photography became one of its favourite way of expression. Born near Catane in Sicily, she lives and works in Ravenna.

Graduate of a painting diploma of Ravenna  Arts Academy and the Bologna University of History of contemporary art.

She is general Secretary of the AIMC, Administrator of the Museum of the city of Ravenna (MAR), and curator for exhibitions and events, in particular RavennaMosaico.

Her particular bond with the book and the EditionsGirasole, brought her to work on artist's book and to create Bibliomosaico.

Mosaic Magazine and Rosetta: cultural advisor since the creation of the magazine, she drafts feature articles  illustrated with her photos, for the column which she created " In the mirror of the art ".

Distinguishing feature: her smile and her human heat perceive themselves even through its emails.

 

 

Lorène Herrero

 

She was born to Albertville in 1981. She lives in Champagny-en-Vanoise, in the Alps. She is graduate of the School of Fine Arts of Annecy and of the Villa Arson of Nice. Lorène shares her activity between journalism, graphics and its creations of ceramic of art.( www.loreneh.com )

She organizes exhibitions of contemporary art with the collective of alpine artists Edel' Art.

Mosaic magazine and Lorène: she conceived the graphics standards of the magazine  and assures its computer graphics since its creation.

Distinguishing feature: she keeps cool, her smile and her creative sense, after the ceaseless changes which are asked her until the last minute.

 

 

Verdiano Marzi

 

Saint-Marinaise nationality, Verdiano Marzi was born in Ravenna in 1949; since the age of 11 years, he received an art education at the Institute Gino Severini (Institute of Art of the State for the mosaic) of Ravenna, where he was lucky to meet most great masters mosaïstes the 60s; at the conclusion of his studies to the Academy of Arts, he became master mosaïste of Ravenna. He arrived in France in 1973 and entered the School of Fine Arts of Paris in Riccardo Licata's workshop, with whom he stays profoundly bound. He exposes his creations all over the world.

An important component of its work of artist: the indefatigable transmission of its art and its conception of the mosaic, in the Louvre in particular, and everywhere in France, to Paray-le-Monial, in Corsica,

To Pralognan, to Russia and in the United States. He dedicates himself in  handing down his art to the largest number.

Verdiano and Mosaic magazine: Verdiano is the art director of the magazine.

Distinguishing feature: thorough artist, he is still a warm man who works day and night for his pupils and his art.

 

 

Daniele Torcellini

 

Daniele Torcellini (Fano, Italy, on 1978), doctorate in History of Contemporary art at the University of Siena. Since 2009, he teaches the visual research to the Academy of Arts of Ravenna and within the framework of his collaboration with Cidm of the museum MAR, he works on the antique and contemporary mosaic. He leads research on the visual perception and the colors, in the context of the history, the preservation and the reproduction of art.

He is member of the italiano ( www.gruppodelcolore.it ) Gruppo del Colore, the AIC, International

Colour Association ( www.aic-colour.org ) and of CREATE, Colour Research for European Advanced

Technology Employment ( www.create.uwe.ac.uk ).

He is also President of the cultural association Marte. He puts a lot into the development of the contemporary art, by being curator of exhibitions, such O ( Ax) = doh ( Am ) Equazione Impossibile and by writing articles as Felice Nittolo, orbits intorno mosaico al.

Mosaic magazine and Daniele: beyond an art critic, because he photographs himself his subjects, he writes articles on the artists and the art of the mosaic.

Distinguishing feature: as he is completely busy by his numerous activities, he works for Mosaic magazine…. at night.