M O S C O W Interview with Leonid Shishkin - Passport magazine

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The French
Connection
Elena Rubinova
For three months, French modern art will be all the rage in Moscow,
St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Ekaterinburg, and other
Russian cities. The public will be able to see the best works by Bernard
Lavier, Claude Leveque and Annette Messager, the crème de
la crème of French contemporary art.
At the turn of the 20 th century, to think of modern art was
to think Paris, Montparnasse, post-impressionism or the early
days of cubism. It was, some say, French art that defined the art
process for at least half a century before the center of contemporary
art drifted to New York and later to London. Nevertheless,
at the beginning of the 21 st century, French modern art is
strongly felt on the international art scene. Artists selected for
the Moscow exhibitions fully represent this tendency.
From 21 May to 4 July, TSUM Art Foundation ( www.tsum.ru, ul
Petrovka, 2) is mounting an exhibition of Bertrand Lavier’s work.
M Lavier is one of the most respected contemporary French artists
of the older generation (born in 1949). The exhibition presents
13 works of different genres covering the artist’s creative
work from the early 1980s. Painted objects, murals, video-art
outline the whole landscape of Lavier’s works displayed in 2000
square metres of exhibition area.
“It took us a long time to make a decision what would be the
best site for the future exhibition. Lavier came to Moscow several
times to absorb the atmosphere of this city. He selected very
provocative and unusual works for his Moscow show”, says Maria
Kravtsova, curator of the exhibition.
Lavier often works with the signs and symbols of mass culture
transforming them into something unrecognizable. He
reacts to contemporary consumer fashions, but everything he
does has a rare touch of intelligence and wit. Lavier inhabits the
border between art and reality, finding his personal distinction
between fine art and popular art. He is one of the few artists
whom critics define as being both an intellectual and a popular
artist at the same time. Lavier considers that his art brings
together incompatible elements to create hybrids, and says he
was influenced by his educational background in horticulture.
“If you combine an orange with a mandarin, you get a tangerine.
Similarly, when I paint a piano or put a fridge on a safe,
the result seems to float between two separate things. Under
the layers of paint is the real piano, but you can also concentrate
on the paint as paint. One could say that my works are
like tangerines”, said Lavier in an interview.
His famous pieces about Walt Disney, created back in the
1980s or a Lips Sofa, which was produced on the basis of
sketches by Salvador Dali, are considered iconic images of
modern art. During his long and successful carrier, Lavier has
exhibited at numerous international venues, including New
York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery in London, the
Pompidou Centre in Paris, and the Venice Bienniale.
10 June 2010
B.Lavier Walt Disney
Pacific Blue Picasso
2004 Ligne blanche