Centre Pompidou takes a fresh look at André Derain’s work
The Centre Pompidou in Paris is presenting ‘André Derain 1904 1914. La décennie radicale’ (The Radical Decade), which takes a fresh look at the work of this major 20th century artist, tracing the various stages of his career before the First World War, when he was involved in the most radical avant-garde movements. Some remarkable groups of work have been brought together for the exhibition: His 1905 summer pieces painted in Collioure; a series of London scenes, and his very large dance and bather compositions, artdaily.com reported.
The art of André Derain has not been the focus of any major monographic exhibitions since the 1994 retrospective at the Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris – in other words, for over twenty years.
This French painter played a crucial intellectual role in the emergence of two major avantgarde movements in the early 20th century: Fauvism and Cubism. Early on, he made a solitary return to realism, foreshadowing all the figurative movements of magic realism from the Ingrism of Picasso to the metaphysical painting of De Chirico and the New Objectivity of Germany. Derain’s daring, highly inventive prewar work is fascinating.
Derain, who was close to Maurice de Vlaminck and Henri Matisse, and then Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, engaged forcefully with Fauvism and Cubism, developing a powerful body of work up to the First World War. He experimented visually in many ways, tackling painting, drawing, xylography, sculpture, ceramics and film, and practiced photography throughout his life, alongside his painting.
The exhibition focuses on an exploration of Derain’s hitherto uninhibited archives – his photographs, collections of prints and artwork reproductions, writings and correspondence – and for the first time sheds considerable light on some of his most iconic works through strong visual counterpoints: The photographs he took and his atypical artistic references, including Epinal’s engravings, the Maori objects he copied at the British Museum in 1906, and the African sculptures in his collection. The exhibition presents around seventy paintings, a large number of works on paper (watercolors, drawings, sketchbooks and engravings), sculptures and some 50 photographs, as well as Maori and African sculptures and ceramics.
André Derain was a complex personality, who very early on evinced a certain doubt towards the modern approach while contributing actively to the explorations of the first avant-gardes of the 20th century. Gertrude Stein said of him, somewhat perfidiously, “Derain is an inventor, a discoverer; one of those ever-curious spirits who never put their own inventions to good use (…) he is an artistic adventurer, the Christopher Columbus of modern art – but it is others who profit from the new continents.” (Citations from Jean Leymarie’s “André Derain ou le retour à l’ontologie”, Paris, Skira, 1949)
The Guinea-bissau Writers Association gathers dozens of people from different backgrounds who share the same goal: To improve the literature of a small West African country with one of the world’s lowest literacy rates.
The authors and poets trickle in one by one, to the meeting of minds taking place at a plain-looking educational building, citizentv.co.ke wrote.
Despite their differences, they are all here for the Guinea-bissau Writers Association’s poetry gathering. At these regular meetings, the nearly 40 members come to share their thoughts and help one another hone their craft. Many hope this will, in turn, help develop their country.
But with only a 55 percent literacy rate, it is hard for authors to reach a large audience, say association members.
“The reading community is not that big, so we cannot expect to make money writing books, at least not for a living,” said Abdulai Sila, an author and the association’s president.
Sila said that despite the challenges, the writers’ shared vision of improving their country and forging a national identity through literature keeps them going.
“For someone to be able to fight for something, first of all he needs to be able to imagine it,” he said. “One of the tasks of the writers association and the writer is to draw that image that then can be shared by the rest of the citizens. If you are able to imagine something, you can be able to fight for it.”
The former Portuguese colony has been plagued by military coups and instability since its independence in 1974. Today it is ranked among the bottom 10 countries on the UN Human Development Index. Currently, the country’s president and ruling party are locked in a political battle that has left parliament out of session for more than two years and caused stagnation. Of the 40 members of the group, at least half are poets — a style that meshes well with the region’s rich history of oral storytelling. The genre also provides a practical platform for shorter works for those authors who are busy with day jobs.
One of those poets is Manuel da Costa, a major in Guinea-bissau’s army.
Da Costa began writing during the country’s fight for independence, and more recently he has also written about drug trafficking in the country. The military officer said the genre allows him to be subjective and leave things open to interpretation. When asked whether he thought that writing about trafficking conflicted with his day job as a member of the military — a branch often implicated in the country’s drug underbelly — he said he did not worry about getting into trouble because of poetry’s nature.
“Poetry language is subjective. When are you writing, it’s only you who knows what you are writing. Anyone who is reading it can have their own interpretation,” he said.
Da Costa, as most other poets in the group have done, chose to write in the country’s Portuguese-based Kriol language.
Association member and author Antonio Afonso Te has just published a book focused on how to write in Kriol. He said learning how to write in Kriol and integrating that into the national education program can help develop the country — and its literary scene.
“Kriol should be introduced for education in Guinea-bissau, because most people speak Kriol. And another thing that is important is the teachers,” Te said, adding that they have more mastery of Kriol than the other languages that they use for teaching.
Whether it’s poetry or novels, in Kriol or Portuguese, the writers of this country say they hope they can use their craft to help Guinea-bissau turn a new page toward improved development.