Beyeler Collection Nature + Abstraction

ROOM GUIDE Beyeler Collection Nature + Abstraction FONDATION BEYELER BEYELER COLLECTION INTRODUCTION NATURE + ABSTRACTION 20 May–12 August 2018 Nature and abstraction have long been a couple in art. With Works by Brice Marden from the Daros Collection This year’s second collection presentation shows how differently artists explore this twosome. From Claude Monet to Roni Horn, from Piet Mondrian to Barnett Tino Sehgal Newman, or from Gerhard Richter to Tacita Dean—for all 4 June–15 July 2018 of them, investigating nature and its varied perception On view on the Fondation Beyeler grounds is a work by plays a major role. While moving from one room to the Tino Sehgal from the Beyeler Collection. next, we notice that Nature and Abstraction might just as well be called Clouds and Surface or Colour and Light. On the lower level of the museum, the presentation is supplemented with paintings and an installation by Lucas Arruda, as well as a group of works by Ellsworth Kelly and Alexander Calder. Works by Jenny Holzer, Tino Sehgal, and Ernesto Neto are featured in the garden of the Fondation Beyeler. 1–21 Where this symbol appears on the exhibit labels, you will The exhibition was curated by Theodora Vischer, Senior find the work discussed in detail under the corresponding Curator Fondation Beyeler. number in the guide. In conjunction with the Public Art Project by Ernesto Neto, which the Fondation Beyeler is presenting at the Cover: Brice Marden, Second Window Painting, 1983, Zurich Main Station from 30 June to 29 July 2018, the oil on linen (5 panels), 61 x 229 cm, Daros Collection (detail) © 2018, Daros Collection, Switzerland artist has installed a room at the museum with earlier © 2018, ProLitteris, Zurich works. ROOM 1 ROOM 1 1 2 Piet Mondrian Wassily Kandinsky Eucalyptus, 1912 Improvisation 10, 1910 The Fondation Beyeler owns a group of works by Dutch Improvisation 10 marks the transition from figurative painter Piet Mondrian that reveals key stages in the landscape to abstraction in the oeuvre of Russian development of his pictorial language from the rendering painter Wassily Kandinsky. At first glance, it seems to of nature to abstraction. Mondrian’s Cubist phase, too, be a nonrepresentational colour composition. Upon was an important step on his path to abstraction. In closer inspection, however, we notice on the right a tree Eucalyptus, a broad network of branches and leaves ex- or bush with curved black branches and, at the upper tends across the canvas, encouraging our gaze to linger left, a colourful rainbow that arches over a red-domed on the play of forms on the surface rather than slipping building. The black lines set the rhythm and lend into pictorial depth. the scene a framework allowing the landscape motif to In contrast to Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, fall into perspective. Characteristic of the painting whose Cubist paintings generally maintain a distinction are black-edged, ‘glowing’ blocks of colour: in intense between object and background, Mondrian—starting red, yellow, blue, green, and white. The abstract from the real object—aimed at achieving a consistently rendering illustrates Kandinsky’s understanding of art. rhythmized and abstracted picture surface. For him, the outside world was no longer to be depicted naturalistically; instead, it was inner experience that was to be given expression. ROOM 2 ROOM 2 3 4 Max Ernst Joan Miró Fleurs de neige, 1929 Paysage (Paysage au coq), 1927 Max Ernst painted Fleurs de neige while living in Paris, In 1919 the Catalan painter, graphic artist, and sculptor during which time he played a major role in shaping Joan Miró first arrived in Paris, where he developed Surrealism. The picture surface is divided into three a style largely defined by figurative pictographs. There geometric areas in black-green, black, and blue, which he also became a member of the group of Surrealists. can also be read as elements of a simple landscape with Miró’s works are often playful and quirky, as is Paysage two hills and a night-time sky. Employing unusual artistic (Paysage au coq). In the barren landscape an extremely techniques—grattage, frottage, and a painter’s comb— delicately drawn, perspectively tapering, ladder extends Ernst brought wondrous flowers, appearing like crystal- both upward and into the depth of the pictorial space. line phenomena in an imagined cosmos, to life on the It mediates between a desert-like ground zone and the dark hills. Two other motifs complete the composition: blue sky, through which a cloud sails—or is it attached one, in the lower right, is the small picture of a bird to the upper picture edge by nails? family, which Ernst used as a personal emblem and a The landscape depicted here is linked with Miró’s means to identify himself as part of this distant floral memories of Catalonia, and in particular of rural Mont- world; the other is a small blue ball, a solitary element roig del Camp, where he grew up. Notice how sparsely floating in a field of blue—the earth? populated the picture is: a lonesome rooster crows, and a few stones direct the gaze from the foreground towards the back—first to the sharply drawn horizon, then to the hub of the wagon wheel, and finally up to the top of the ladder and to the cloud. ROOM 2 ROOM 3 5 6 Louise Bourgeois Claude Monet Untitled, 1954 Le bassin aux nymphéas, ca. 1917–20 In this untitled work, two wonderous stalks grow directly In the last years of his life, French painter Claude Monet out of the ground. They are assembled from individually dedicated himself, with obsessive passion, to the water painted pieces of plaster and a few out of wood, stacked lily pond in his garden in Giverny—becoming his preferred upon a metal rod. The plaster elements appear like motif from 1899. A gardener arranged the water lilies small stones—also recalling fingers. Or are they petrified daily at a calculated distance from one another. This plants? Between 1945 and 1955, Louise Bourgeois arrangement is reflected in the painting, yet the sight is produced an entire group of such sculptures, which she vexing: do we see only the plants or also their reflections titled Personnages. The French artist had emigrated in the water? Fleeting brushstrokes give shape to water from Paris to New York in 1938, and the sculptures lilies, algae, reeds, and leaves. There is no horizon were a way for her to address the people she had left and no separation between earth and sky. The selected behind and dearly missed. Bourgeois thus attempted to, view, in which bordering vegetation is only suggested as she put it, ‘envision’ these individuals, to ‘recreate by individual, overhanging branches, invites viewers to their presence’. Even if the artist never wanted to join complete the scenery in their imagination. the Surrealists, subconscious and surreal associations The water lily picture in the Beyeler Collection is related nevertheless play an important role in this work. to the multipartite, panorama-like Grandes décorations that Monet painted for the Orangerie in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. In the second half of the twentieth century, this painting cycle influenced numerous artists, including Ellsworth Kelly and the painters of Abstract Expressionism. ROOM 3 ROOM 4 7 8 Olafur Eliasson Roni Horn Polar fall fade (orange, turquoise, grey), 2013 Opposites of White, 2006–07 Polar fall fade (light green, yellow, pink), 2013 Polar fall fade (light green, light blue, light red), 2013 Roni Horn’s (b. 1955) work centres on the transfor- mability of people, places, and things whose form and The three glass works by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson natural state are subject to constant change. In her art, (b. 1967) consist of hand-blown panes of differently the American artist aims at making such transformations coloured glass, in roughly the middle of which oval sensorially perceptible. openings have been cut. The colours correspond to the A good example is the two-part sculpture Opposites of spectrum of the basic colours named in the titles. White. The cylindrical elements are cast in glass, each In each piece, three glass sheets are layered one behind weighing around two tons. The outer surfaces of the another, whereby the openings overlap rather imprecisely. sculptures are opaque and reveal variously heavy traces The basic concept draws on watercolour studies in which of the production process. The sculpture’s top circular Eliasson investigated the translucency of the medium. surfaces, however, are completely blemish-free and Transferred into three-dimensional space, the three transparent: like a surface of water on a clear, windless works, associatively titled Polar fall fade, function in a day. Daylight, which determines the colour effect of the similar fashion: due to the transparency and layering glass, transforms the works into a natural phenomenon, of the panes, the scale of the colour combinations and so to speak. The reduced and straightforward form of tones shifts as the light and the beholder’s standpoint the glass sculptures might recall objects of Minimal Art. change. The conditions and manifestations of different In the process of being perceived, however, any sort colour perceptions are central and recurring themes in of objectivity or clarity is lost. What one sees is not Eliasson’s oeuvre. palpable, but evades the deciphering gaze again and again. Is it solid or fluid, bright or dark, insubstantial or heavy, light or material? There is no conclusive answer. ROOM 4 9 Tacita Dean Cúmulo, 2016 During a visit to Los Angeles, British artist Tacita Dean With her art, Dean repeatedly aims at capturing the (b. 1965) developed a particular fascination with observing fleeting quality of things and phenomena in nature, and the sky: ‘What surprised me most about Los Angeles of movement and light.

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