“L’Art en Guerre”… at the Musée d’Art Moderne…
“L’Art… en Guerre“…
Two… powerful components…
That… have been…
Inexplicably… bonded…
“L’ombre… de l’histoire“…
The shadows of history… In the dark gloomy entrance… of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris… was a flashback to the September 1938 Munich Agreement… which did nothing whatsoever to hinder or stop Hitler’s warped desire to dominate and take over Europe…
A madness of one man… that never ceases to amaze…
World War II… unsurprisingly… breaks out in early September 1939 lasting until May 8 1945. Tragically it took the Germans just six weeks… to defeat France…
A fact that never stops to shock… horrify… repulse…
Squinting in the darkened room… we come across an awesome huge black and white photograph… a reproduction of Denise Bellon’s 1938 photo… “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme“… which made us feel queezy in the cold damp atmosphere of the exhibition space… where the ceiling was made-up of sacks of sand used during the war which caused us to… shiver slightly.
Moving deeper into the belly of the “musée“… we became acutely aware of the… gruesome drama being portrayed… through the unparalleled unsurpassable power of Art…
Each… canvas…
Spoke… volumes…
Of the atrocities committed… of the horror of war…
The exhibition… “L’Art en guerre… France 1938-1947… De Picasso à Dubuffet“… highlights for the first time the art created in France… in defiance of the official instructions of the stifling and oppressive authorities in power… the Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime… the “new order”…
Around 400 works of more than 100 artists are presented in a series of themed sequences…
Georges Braque… Jean Dubuffet… Nicolas de Staël… Max Ernst… Vasily Kandinsky… Paul Klee… Francis Picabia… Pablo Picasso… Bernard Buffet… Alberto Giacometti… André Masson… Joseph Steib… Marc Chagall… Miro… are only some of the names of the artists exhibited… portraying the devastating horrors of war and penury… in defiance of the censorship and repression of expression… many of whom the “new order” of power considered… “degenerate”..
Around the corner we came into a niche… circular in dimensions… where the word “Libération“… was hung “en haut“… hung up high on the wall…
Elation… Libération…
After four years of unthinkable suffering and pain… Libération… was not only a moment of extreme joy and celebration but also of the undoubted reality of the acts of unimaginable courage… compromises… as well as the resistance of a few…
The French Communist Party… legitimised by its action against the occupying forces and the Vichy regime… carried out a purge of the French cultural scene from autumn 1944…
In the art world the Liberation became a reality in the first “Salon d’Automne“… Autumn Salon… which paid tribute to Abstraction… modern art… and especially to Pablo Picasso… who was seen as a hero…
During the war… Picasso… excluded from the “official” artistic scene in Paris and “cloistered in his studio… who embodies “decadence” most of all… he made the most of this internal exile by painting endless masterpieces which have become… the best history lesson for those dark times“…
The opening of the “Musée National d’Art Moderne”… at the height of the occupation in August 1942 matched the political environment… purged of foreign artists Surrealists and abstractionists… it reflected “the cultural activity of an occupied Paris subjected to censorship and self-censorship“.
Appalled by Hitler’s occupation of their beloved “French Republic”… as the horror of the “wave of darkness”… felt by prisoners in the camps as well as the number of artists who were considered “degenerate”… and were exiled or fled to the South… the revival of the “dismal art scene” that existed at that time… some galleries especially the one owned by Jeanne Bucher… showed great courage by continuing to discreetly show artists considered undesirable in Germany…
This was not only a brave act… but also an illumination of art during war…
The ensuing… “Décompressions“… the art works produced against the backdrop of France’s reconstruction… are the direct result of those people… those artists…
Oppressed… abused…
Maltreated…
Their works… depict the…
Intolerable… sinister…
Unbearable…
Of what had been allowed… to happen in the annals of history…
Along with the jubilation of the…
Liberation… of France…
Freedom… of France…
“Enfin“…
The deliverance… from the “cauchemar“…
The nightmare… of dictators…
“Voila“…
“Vive“…
“L’Art… en Guerre“…
“Vive la France“…
a.