Bertrand Lavier

23 September 2016 – 22 January 2017

KUNSTMUSEUM LIECHTENSTEIN Bertrand Lavier, born in Châtillon-sur-Seine, France, 1949, is one of the outstanding French artists of our time. Since taking part in documenta 7, Kassel, 1982 his work has been known to an international audience. Numerous participations in major exhibitions on current international art testify to his importance in the develop- ment of contemporary art and his influence on later gen- erations of artists. Lavier lives and works in Aignay-le- Duc in Burgundy and Paris. The extensive survey exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein is the first major museum presentation in the German-speaking world.

Cover: Bertrand Lavier, Vénus d’Amiens, 2015 (detail) Bertrand Lavier

How is our living environment shaped? When are we conscious of this shaping? Where are the boundaries between art and design? What is an original? What makes it an original? What roles do forms of presentation play? Can these questions be resolved in an elegant, playful way?

Bertrand Lavier’s works offer answers. The French artist has been investigating our perception of art and design and their interactions for more than forty years. He works with items of practical, mass produced items, prefabricated components or legendary designer objects. He transposes the objects into the context of art, either unmodified or reassembled, reworks them with traditional artistic methods or places them in unex- pected locations.

Lavier studied horticulture. As such, he is familiar with the botanical methods of grafting and deploys these same methods in his art. He plays through different variations, unmasking the efforts of manufacturers of everyday objects to harness the prestige of art for their products. The artist mixes up classifications and frees his works from conventional attributions. Lavier plays with language and meaning, he crosses genre boundaries, challenges established concepts and patterns of interpretation, and enacts paradoxes. The artist calls his groups of works ‘building sites’ (chantiers), as they remain part of an open-ended method of working.

The exhibition, curated by Friedemann Malsch, was developed in close collaboration with Bertrand Lavier. It features examples from all of the artist’s distinct bodies of work, beginning with typical works from the 1970s and extending to works produced especially for the current exhibition. The exhibition thus covers the entire spectrum of his oeuvre.

The show is accompanied by a comprehensive publica- tion.

1 Room 1 Pictorial grounds

Painting is the better the nearer it approaches to relief, and relief is worse in proportion as it inclines to painting. Sculpture is the lamp of painting, the difference between them might be likened to the difference between the sun and moon. Michelangelo Buonarroti, letter to Benedetto Varchi, 1549

Which is superior? Sculpture or painting? The dispute about the supremacy of one genre over the other is one of the most fascinating stories in art history. Bertrand Lavier resolves it with a few brushstrokes: he covers everyday objects with a thick, impasto layer of acrylic paint. The selected objects become the supports of the image, retaining their spatial presence while remain- ing industrial products. At the same time, they become the motivation for an artistic process and the material foundation for painting. They are object, painting and sculpture in equal measure. Lavier does not simply give the products a cursory new coat of paint, but rather treats their surface with the ‘Touche van Gogh’. Touche derives from toucher, meaning to touch: Lavier touches the surfaces. The glossy black paint of the grand piano, the blue and gold of the chest of drawers, and the col- ours of the table are the motif of his painting. [6, 11, 13].

It is hardly a coincidence that the trained horticultural- ist chose a plant for one of his first works and his first overpainting. Premiers travaux de peintures, 1969 [1] presents a row of Ampelopsis vine leaves painted white. The artistic gesture becomes an ordering intervention, appropriating the found object without removing it from its original context. This duality is also characteristic of Lavier’s later overpaintings: the objects always remain functional and thus do not serve the purpose of rep- resentation alone. Moreover, the colour of the paint is identical to the original colour, in Camondo, 2015 [11] even the metal fittings are overpainted. The difference lies in the distinction made in French and English between couleur or colour and peinture or paint: colour as a hue and colour as material. The Touche van Gogh works celebrate colour as matter and the artistic gesture. Mandarine Duco et Ripolin, 1994 [9] and Bleu Azur par Tollens et Ducolac, 1988 [8], in contrast, focus on the diversity of hues, their designations and industrial usage. In both diptychs Lavier employs a hue from two different manufacturers, demonstrating the arbitrary nature of denotations and the great difference in the

2 perception of colour. There is mandarin and there is mandarin.

Sombernon, 2015 [14] and Composition No. 1, 1986 [15] belong to the Touche van Gogh series with two- dimensional base objects. Both are road signs, one an information sign for tourists, the other to indicate a cul- de-sac. The original signs are overpainted with a van Gogh-like gesture. Lavier thus shows himself liberated from the problem of finding themes and composition, but nevertheless creates paintings. What is more, he demonstrates his freedom in terms of choice of themes, as the signs are taken from a large array of possibilities.

This procedure also works for non-objective artworks: Melker 7, 2005 [12] is an overpainted standard com- mercial cushion fabric and a humorous reinterpretation of Concrete art. While the latter does not require a sub- ject, it is nevertheless composed – just as the fabric is designed.

Landscape Painting and Beyond No. 3, 1980 [4] can be seen as a little lesson of the artist: How do I get from the original material to the artwork? In an analytical, but equally didactic approach, Lavier transforms a photograph into a painting in three steps. At the same time, the piece is an ingenious comment on the relationship between contemporary artistic photography and painting: it may be read in both directions, with neither genre having the upper hand.

3 Room 1 Pictorial Grounds

1 Premiers travaux de peintures, 1969 Acrylic on Ampelopsis leaves (photograph) 56 × 72 cm Courtesy of the artist

2 French Painting, 1984 Acrylic on book, metal stand and base 108 × 31 × 31 cm Collection Billarant, Paris

3 Zenit, 1983 Acrylic on camera 14 × 10 × 8.5 cm Courtesy Galleria Massimo Minini and the artist

4 Landscape Painting and Beyond No. 3, 1980 Photograph partially overpainted with acrylic 160 × 250 cm Private Collection, Paris

5 Augusta 2016, 2015 Acrylic on Perspex mirror 180 × 300 × 3 cm Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

6 Steinberg, 2016 Acrylic on grand piano 100 × 150 × 160 cm Courtesy of the artist / Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

7 Smeg, 1997 Acrylic on refrigerator 146 × 60 × 60 cm Mumok, Vienna

8 Bleu Azur par Tollens et Ducolac, 1988 Oil on acrylic 200 × 300 cm Collection Billarant, Paris

4 9 Mandarine Duco et Ripolin, 1994 Oil on canvas 220 × 220 cm Courtesy of the artist

10 Lavier/Morellet, 1975–1995 Oil on canvas 200 × 200 cm Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris

11 Camondo, 2015 Acrylic on chest of drawers 83 × 119 × 49.5 cm Private Collection

12 Melker 7, 2005 Acrylic on upholstery fabric 143 × 350 cm Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

13 Formica red, 1983 Acrylic on table 70 × 120 × 60 cm Courtesy of the artist

14 Sombernon, 2015 Acrylic on road sign 140 × 240 cm Courtesy of the artist

15 Composition No. 1, 1986 Acrylic on traffic sign 80 × 80 cm Le Consortium, Dijon

16 Composition No. 105, 1989 Acrylic on traffic sign 90 × 90 cm Courtesy of the artist

5 Room 2 2D – 3D

The oscillation between sculpture and image and between industrial object and artwork cumulates in Picasso outremer, 2009 [24]. The French car brand Citroën offers a ‘Picasso’ model in various series. Pablo Picasso’s signature is eye-catchingly displayed in stamped chromium steel on the vehicle’s wing – the car company bought the rights from the artist’s estate. Lavier unmasks this fetishisation of the signature: ‘The “Picasso” model isn’t particularly interesting, even if it sells well. The name only works because it adorns a mediocre car. If they’d put “Picasso” on a Ferrari or a Rolls Royce, this attempt at bribery would have failed.’ Lavier transposes the Picasso wing back into the context of art in several different ways. He paints it in the style of the ‘Touche van Gogh’, using Yves Klein blue. Yves Klein claimed to have signed the sky in 1946. In 1960, he patented his ultramarine blue as ‘International Klein Blue’, covering everyday objects and plaster casts of famous sculptures with this colour. Lavier, in turn, now appropriates this gesture of appropriation. He paints the blue wing blue again. As a result, this work is a meeting of Picasso, Klein, Lavier and Vincent van Gogh.

Clareo, 2014 [27] is a meeting of Kazimir Malevich and minimal art. The square is as much an icon of art as the use of industrially manufactured lamps in minimal art. Lavier does not quote the two models literally, but rather responds to them with his characteristic vocabulary of form informed by modern design. Again and again he explores the potential of these forms for art: Relief- Peinture No. 1, 1987 [18] is a prefabricated façade element and investigates the image quality of industrial products. Relief-Peinture No. 2, 1991 [19] is a photograph of a façade element and furnishes the proof: the picture of the façade stands as an equal alongside the façade itself. The artistic act consists in selecting the fragment, its presentation and denotation. Lavier evades conventional classifications such as painting, relief, object, readymade or photography, once again self- confidently freeing himself from the artistic obligation to develop a composition.

Photo-Relief No. 2, 1989 [20] is based on a photograph of a detail of the Eiffel Tower. Lavier has translated the photo of the steel construction back into a three-dimensional structure. In this form limited by a rectangle, displayed in front of a white wall, it has a

6 graphic quality akin to the superimposed nets of Tennis/ Volleyball, 1988 [23]. The overlaid grid begins to shim- mer before the eye, the black lines forming a separate two-layer drawing – a minor intervention develops a major optical and spatial effect. With the addition of two base objects, this sculpture may already be seen as one of the Superpositions. By means of this ‘superposition- ing’, Lavier combines two objects in each work. Formal parallels and contrasts, functional contrasts and wit unite in this distinct body of works in ever new ways. The decorative design of the commode in Husqvarna/ Art déco, 2012 [22] and the placement next to the wall tempt us to view it as a relief. The uncompromis- ing, practical design of the leaf blower placed on top contrasts with the surface effect of the art déco design. Moreover, Lavier subverts the agreeable appreciation of art with undertones: one is involuntarily reminded of the din of leaf blowing.

7 Room 2 2D – 3D

17 Socle de peinture rouge, 1986 Block of acrylic paint 115 × 31 × 29 cm Courtesy of the artist

18 Relief-Peinture No. 1, 1987 Fragment of a prefabricated façade element 250 × 500 × 5 cm Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Etienne

19 Relief-Peinture No. 2, 1991 Cibachrome on aluminium 230 × 230 × 10 cm Mumok, Vienna

20 Photo-Relief No. 2, 1989 Steel structures 140 × 260 × 35 cm Courtesy of the artist

21 Peinture noire No. 2, 1986 Acrylic on steel girders 30 × 15 × 12 cm 20 × 130 × 10 cm 20 × 200 × 10 cm Courtesy of the artist

22 Husqvarna/Art déco, 2012 Leaf blower, art déco commode 132 × 124 × 45 cm Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

23 Tennis/Volleyball, 1988 Tennis net and volleyball net 300 × 108 cm Le Consortium, Dijon

8 24 Picasso outremer, 2009 Pigment and bronze varnish on car wing 90 × 135 × 14 cm Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, Brussels

25 Atomium, détail No. 14, 2007 Acrylic on aluminium 210 × 167 × 12 cm Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

26 Intervoile, 1989 Acrylic on sail 210 × 352 cm Collection Colette and Michel Poitevin

27 Clareo, 2014 Four electric rails, twelve lamps 200 × 200 × 15 cm Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

9 Room 3 Object Sculpture

A sofa on a freezer, a refrigerator on a safe, a chair on a drawing cabinet – the Superpositions always consist of an addition. One item of everyday use or furnishing carries another. The focus is not so much on a hier- archy in the sense of plinth and sculpture, but rather on joining two equal elements. The additions serve no purpose, but instead suggest possibilities and encour- age processes of thought: what do the ploughshare and refrigerator in H/FAR, 1988 [28] have in common? What effect do colour, volume and form have in com- bination? Are there links to conventional sculptures in terms of form or content? How does one Superposition relate to others in the room? For example, the refrigerator and safe in Miele/Fichet-Bauche, 1984 [30] have a strong formal similarity. The freezer and sofa in La Bocca/Bosch, 2005 [29], on the other hand, are of a similar size but nevertheless contrast starkly in terms of their colour, form, material and sensuous qualities. By contrast, the title displays a striking similarity between the two names. In Sans titre, 2012 [34], Lavier dis- penses with naming the objects in the title, although the Superposition suggests that this is a sculpture by Alexander Calder on a Calder brand radiator. Or is it? Is the top Calder a Lavier?

Most of the objects with which Lavier works are taken from contemporary production. 5/9, 1985 [31] is very different in this respect: despite the great similarity of their form, further augmented by the colouring, the oil drum and the fragment of an antique pillar date from very different times.

In Ferrari/Curtiss, 1992 [32] it is not only the objects that lie atop each other, but also Lavier’s chantiers. The wing of a car damaged in an accident is placed on a refrigerator: an unintentionally buckled piece of bodywork on a self-contained geometric body. In another group of works, Lavier (a lover of fast cars) used entire cars involved in accidents, for example Mobymatic, 1993 [33] – a sky-blue moped with its rear wheel bent almost at right angles. The artist draws attention to the sculptural qualities of this deformation. He is never concerned with the drama of the accident, but rather with the shape of the object, always using only vehicles involved in accidents with no injured drivers. And yet each work in this group is possessed of an emotional component: they are vehicles that have achieved cult status, that are associated with desires or memories.

10 Emotional charge is also characteristic of the works displayed on metal presentation bars: Nikki, 2015 [37], Aria pro II, 1995 [38], and California pro, 1995 [39]. Talking about Nikki, Lavier said: ‘If I place a teddy bear on a plinth, I am working on the basis of a sculpture and I am also using a specific object – in this case an emotionally charged object. I am always thinking about these two aspects, as it were.’ The same applies to the electric guitar and the skateboard. They are objects with cult status and, unlike the Superpositions, display signs of wear: they were desired, loved, used. But still Lavier creates a distance – he fits them on mounts com- monly used to allow 360° viewing of three-dimensional objects so as to emphasise their quality. Lavier sets mass-produced articles apart from the rest by this form of presentation, but at the same time emphasising their anonymity as commodities. Black & Decker, 2008 [36] is also exhibited in this manner, oscillating between mass produced and unique object.

11 Room 3 Object sculpture

28 H/FAR, 1988 Ploughshare on refrigerator 165 × 55 × 90 cm Courtesy of the artist

29 La Bocca/Bosch, 2005 Sofa on refrigerator 86 × 212 × 87 cm Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

30 Miele/Fichet-Bauche, 1984 Refrigerator on safe 247 × 76 × 83 cm Mumok, Vienna

31 5/9, 1985 Oil drum on plaster column 194 × 81 × 81 cm Carré d’Art, Nimes

32 Ferrari/Curtiss, 1992 Car bodywork on refrigerator 187 × 55 × 60 cm Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

33 Mobymatic, 1993 Moped damaged in an accident 125 × 85 × 60 cm Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli- Torino – Gift Associazione Artissima

34 Sans titre, 2012 Sculpture on radiator 165.5 × 69 × 32 cm Collection Sébastien de Ganay

35 Paulin/Kind, 1992 Pierre Paulin chair on plan chest 133.5 × 136 × 98 cm Courtesy of the artist

12 36 Black & Decker, 2008 Hedge trimmer 135 × 47 × 25 cm Collection Giuliana and Tommaso Setari

37 Nikki, 2015 Teddy bear 62 × 37 × 20 cm Private Collection Belgium

38 Aria pro II, 1995 Electric guitar 97 × 33 × 42 cm FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Angoulême

39 California pro, 1995 Skateboard 66 × 80 × 26 cm Private Collection

13 Room 4 Transposition

I am inspired by the supermarket and the museum in equal measure. Bertrand Lavier

‘Traits très abstraits’, Le Journal de Mickey, no. 1279, 2 January 1977, p. 4

The Walt Disney comic artists were well informed from the outset. Not only did they and do they know their audience, but they are also familiar with current art movements. And they were capable of translating the formal vocabulary of art into the visual idiom of comics, not copying existing art, but rather adapting it. From a synthesis of colour field painting, abstract expressionism, and the sculptures of Henry Moore and Hans Arp, they created new artworks of their own that existed solely in the form of reproductions: they form the backdrop for a Mickey Mouse adventure published in comic book format. Lavier takes this productive appropriation and transformation one step further in his Transpositions, translating them into art. Treated as if they were reproductions of real works in real spaces, the flat-colour drawings in Walt Disney Productions [44– 50] are not only translated into the ‘originals’ that never existed, but further they are exhibited in a specially designed side-room in the museum. It differs distinctly from the rest of the exhibition situation, but nevertheless appears self-contained: the fictitious adventure world, exaggerated to the point of parody, constructs a functioning, three-dimensional image. Lavier’s experi- ment demonstrates the two-way interchange: art can be developed from the comic; the comic benefits from the formal vocabulary of modern art.

Art, too, provides material for art. Lavier reveals these links in several respects. The nickel-plated bronze statuettes Boli, 2008, Dayak, 2014, Ibo, 2008 and Toko,

14 2008 [40–43] allude to African wooden statuettes of the kind discovered as inspirations by modern artists at the beginning of the twentieth century. The artists of that period were fascinated by the unspoilt, primal expres- sion of African art, leading them to ‘Africanise’ their own works. Lavier directly translates the forms of the African statues into bronze, i.e. into a Western art technique, coating them with a decorative nickel plating. The result is a symbiosis of a traditional material perceived to be of high quality and the appeal of the exotic, usually found in ethnographic museums. The Vénus d’Amiens, 2015 [51] also undergoes a transformation, with Lavier ‘trans- posing’ the palm-sized prehistoric Venus into a life-size figure. Still fragmented, but shiny white, it now resem- bles the marble statues of ancient gods, more appropri- ate for adoration by lovers of the noble and beautiful than a small artwork from the dawn of history.

Frank Stella, Black Adder, 1968

In addition to that which is conspicuous, Lavier’s artworks always offer an alternative. As such, they contrast with the works of Frank Stella, who demanded in his work ‘that you can see the whole idea without any confusion. What you see is what you see’. With Black Adder II, 2005 [54] Lavier reconstructs one of the American painter’s polygonal lithographs with different coloured neon tubes mounted on wood. Unlike the original strips of colour, the neon tubes are placed not on the basis of an autonomous decision, but rather mimic the inspiration. While Lavier subverts Stella’s ambition of achieving autonomy, it fulfils the idea of achieving objectivity in painting. The painting is now a light object. As such, Lavier forges a link to Dan Flavin, the minimal artist who almost exclusively used fluorescent tubes. The light of his works, and also of Lavier’s work, radiates beyond the source of light, thus taking up more space than the actual volume of the object. As in the Walt Disney Productions, Lavier takes the original idea for the image literally, playing with questions of authorship. The same goes for Le Château des papes, 1991 [52], for which Lavier translates the painting technique of

15 Paul Signac into a mosaic, reinterpreting the piece with his own devices; from a distance it still has the appear- ance of a pointillist painting.

For his exhibition at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Bertrand Lavier had five works from the Museum’s own collection filmed: Maurice de Vlaminck, Winterlandschaft mit Haus, n. d., Alexej Jawlensky, Stillleben, 1913, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Bergbach mit Steg im Wald, 1921, Man Ray, Portrait imaginaire d’Arcimboldo, 1953, and Willem de Kooning, Untitled XVII, 1976, [55]. They are shown as original-size projections of paintings. Lavier’s oeuvre features two works – TV Painting, 1986 and Four Darks in Red, 2004 – that are similar in their artistic conception to Accrochage (1986–2016), of which he created several versions. TV Painting consists of television sets the same size as the paintings which they display. Four Darks in Red is a piece by Mark Rothko, projected in a cinema-style room. Our perception of painting in terms of materiality or temporality is chal- lenged by these transpositions, making way for a play- fully aesthetic moment that allows alternative possibilities of seeing.

16 Bertrand Lavier, TV Painting, 1986

Bertrand Lavier, Four Darks in Red, 2004

17 Room 4 Transposition

40 Dayak, 2014 Nickel-plated bronze 69 × 16 × 12 cm Ed. 1/8 Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

41 Ibo, 2008 Nickel-plated bronze 96 × 25 × 16 cm Ed. 1/4 Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

42 Boli, 2008 Nickel-plated bronze 32.5 × 4.5 × 7.5 cm Ed. 2/4 Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech Gallery

43 Toko, 2008 Nickel-plated bronze 66 × 7 × 55 cm Ed. 2/4 Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech Gallery

44 Walt Disney Productions 1947–2015 No. 7, 2015 Acrylic on inkjet print on canvas 153.7 × 210.5 × 3.2 cm Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

45 Walt Disney Productions 1947–1985, 1985 Cibachrome 124 × 114 cm Le Consortium, Dijon

46 Walt Disney Productions 1947–2013 N°2, 2011 Synthetic resin cast, wooden base 163 × 86 × 50 cm Ed. 2/3 Courtesy of the artist

18 47 Walt Disney Productions 1947–2015 No. 6, 2015 Acrylic on inkjet print on canvas 169 × 136 × 3 cm Panoptes Collection

48 Walt Disney Productions 1947–1995 No. 1, 1995 Synthetic resin cast, wooden base 163 × 86 × 50 cm Ed. 2/3 Generali Foundation, Vienna

49 Ohne Titel, 1997 Print, vintage photogravure and lithography on Zerkall mould-made paper 42 × 59 cm Ed. 10/30 Published by Generali Foundation, Vienna, 1997

50 Walt Disney Productions 1947–2013 N°12, 2013 Acrylic on inkjet print on canvas 220 × 220 × 4 cm Private Collection Belgium

51 Vénus d’Amiens, 2015 Plaster 180 × 105 × 105 cm Courtesy of the artist

52 Le Château des papes, 1991 Mosaic 72 × 92 cm Courtesy of the artist

53 Or not to be, 1979 Bronze and acrylic paint blocks Each 42 × 28 × 29 cm FRAC Nord–Pas de Calais, Dunkirk

54 Black Adder II, 2005 Neon tubes on lacquered wood 195 × 452 × 9 cm Kewenig Galerie, Berlin

19 55 Accrochage No. 3, 2016 Five 16mm original-size projections, f.l.t.r.: – Maurice de Vlaminck, Winterlandschaft mit Haus, n. d. – Alexej Jawlensky, Stillleben, 1913 – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Bergbach mit Steg im Wald, 1921 – Willem de Kooning, Untitled XVII, 1976 – Man Ray, Portrait imaginaire d’Arcimboldo, 1953 Courtesy of the artist

Opening Thursday, 22 September 2016, 6pm

Public guided tours Thursday, 20 October 2016, 6pm Thursday, 24 November 2016, 6pm Thursday, 19 January 2017, 6pm

Take Away (short, guided tour) Thursday, 24 November 2016, 12.30pm Side programme

Sunday, 2 October 2016, 11am One Hour Bertrand Lavier with Friedemann Malsch

Sunday, 13 November 2016, 2–5pm Kunstmuseum Special/Family A Sunday excursion into the world of art

Thursday, 17 November 2016, 6pm Lecture Bertrand Lavier und seine „Touche van Gogh“ by Bice Curiger In cooperation with the Liechtensteinische Kunstgesellschaft

Thursday, 1 December 2016, 6pm Lecture Die feinen Unterschiede in den Werken von Bertrand Lavier by Thorsten Schneider In cooperation with the Liechtensteinische Kunstgesellschaft Text Kristin Schmidt

Editing Fabian Flückiger

Translation Übersetzungsbüro Watts

Copyediting David Gray

Graphic design Sylvia Fröhlich

Printed by Gutenberg AG, Schaan

Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein With Hilti Art Foundation Städtle 32, P.O. Box 370 FL – 9490 Vaduz Tel +423 235 03 00 Fax +423 235 03 29 [email protected] kunstmuseum.li hiltiartfoundation.li