Talha’s Review:

The Jeu de Paume, according to its mission statement, “has gained an international reputation as an art centre that exhibits and promotes all forms of mechanical and electronic imagery from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries…With its high profile exhibitions of established, little-known and emerging artists, this venue ties together different narrative strands, mixing the historic and the contemporary.” With the exhibitions of Eli Lotar, Peter Campus, and Ali Cherri, the Jeu de Paume delivers exactly what it promised, weaving in modern and contemporary works to provide quite the visual experience.

Eli Lotar’s exhibition marked the start of our visit to the Jeu de Paume. His photographs on display highlighted the variety of themes Lotar worked on in the city of Paris. In particular, the first part of his exhibit showcased urban and industrial Paris with some visually stunning pictures of the city streets. A large aerial shot took up its space on one of the walls, revealing city mechanisms graphically through the patterns of cars and people on a busy cross-section. Another shot, this one a close-up of people’s feet on a street displayed both the resemblance to the aerial shot in terms of mechanics and divergence from it in terms of perspective. The remarkable aspect of these images is the amount of cacophony distilled into something digestible for the viewers.

Through the later pieces in Lotar’s exhibit, it is made abundantly clear that he was ahead of his time and unafraid to offer political commentary. In particular, his futuristic vision was on display in the re-imagination of different monuments and areas in Paris with the base and first couple of floors of the Eiffel Tower acting as modern bridges in L’Art vivant, Champs-Élysées dans l’an 2000, and Montmarte classé monument historique an 2000. On the political front, a work that resonated strongly with our group was Aux abattoirs de la Villette, his display of the slaughterhouse, along with images of seemingly random cut legs, both human and animal alike. His later works showed an inclination towards realism and greater focus on documenting impoverished parts of the city.

Peter Campus’s exhibit was an entirely different experience, causing a level of introspection which was very unexpected. A piece in the very first room titled Optical Sockets caught everyone’s attention, with four screens and cameras offering overlapping videos of whoever stepped in the center of the room from different angles. The size and location of the person’s bodies on screens were dependent on the position on the square surface, playing around with concepts of relativity. Anamnesis, a work in room 2, captured the imagination of everyone in our group. By walking in front of the camera and observing ourselves in the screen, we discovered that the work was designed to create a temporal gap, creating two images on the screen: one live, the other with a three second delay. The only way to ensure the unity of the two images was to stay still, otherwise the ‘present’ image would remain detached from the ‘past’. The concepts of time, self, and the two in relation are played around with throughout his exhibit; while a lot of the pieces provided much required comedic relief, they also laid the groundwork for reflection on the self.

Ali Cherri’s work, titled Somniculus, raised interesting questions about the act of looking and seeing in museums, given the fragments of the past, oftentimes violent and destructive, put on display. Cherri plays with these objects, attempting to remove them from their historical narratives and presenting them to us as objects with their own agency. This challenges the way we look at these relics from the past, giving a new, almost fictional, meaning to their being.

We left the Jeu de Paume deeply impressed, with each of the exhibits enriching our understanding of contemporary art and highlighting the versatility of mechanical and electronic imagery. In particular, Peter Campus’s exhibit stood out because of its immediate ability to excite and fascinate visitors while offering a commentary on the self in relation to time. While it may have started as a tennis court, the Jeu de Paume has cemented itself as one of the leading centres in the Parisian art scene, and is a must-visit for all those interested in art.

 

 

Sima’s Review:

Full of intellectually stimulating works of art, the Jeu de Paume immediately immerses visitors into the world of photography, film, and video. The museum’s current display is split into three key exhibits: the Eli Lotar retrospective, Peter Campus’ “Video Ergo Sum”, and Ali Cherri’s “Somniculus”. While the exhibits serve quite different purposes, they bring upon an interesting discussion centered around a core question for the class—what are the criteria for a work of art to be considered contemporary?

The Eli Lotar retrospective provided an interesting starting point to answering this question. For an artist who worked from 1905 to 1969, it was unclear whether we should categorize his work as contemporary. The exhibit carried us through some major themes in his work as an avant-garde photographer and filmmaker in Paris. As part of the “New Vision” movement, Lotar was adept at using everyday landscapes and objects of the industrial world, and capturing them from unique angles. The efficacy of these angles are exemplified by his “Pieds” photographs, which capture the movement of a bustling city from the ground by showing people’s feet at a straight angle.

Alongside his New Vision photography, Lotar was also very concerned with political movements of the time, focusing much of his work on the interwar and post-war periods. His short documentary film, Aubervilliers, is a commentary on the effect of the war on poverty levels in the municipality of Aubervilliers, France. Lotar’s use of photograph and film to provide new physical and political perspectives seem quite similar to the more recent contemporary art we have seen throughout this class. Perhaps, then the contemporaneity of art can be related to the artist’s intention and whether the medium is being used to display a message that could be interpreted in today’s world.

Continuing from the Lotar exhibit, we entered the installation for Peter Campus, an active American contemporary video artist. A series of screens were set up in a manner to invite the audience to immerse themselves in the experience. For most of Campus’ pieces, the viewer could not see the camera and their own image at the same time. A particularly memorable piece, Anamnesis, was placed in the center room: a large screen playing a video of ourselves in real time, layered with the same video with a slight time delay. This screen brought the class much amusement, as we witnessed our two bodies in motion, and played with the delay to interact with our secondary body. As suggested in the Jeu de Paume’s online description, we are invited to think about our bodily identities, and our assignment of the “self” to our physicality. The confusion between my two images was both humorous and unsettling, and I enjoyed watching my identities in two different instances converge back into one.

Down into the basement, a smaller room played the “Somniculus” video, created by upcoming contemporary artist Ali Cherri. Cherri seemed to provide a new perspective upon the museum-going experience, capturing artifacts in the museum at nighttime. He inquires what is lost when we interpret historical narratives from objects that are stripped of their context, according to the piece’s description. Much of his video consisted of prolonged shots of individual artifacts, with no information behind them—leaving the viewer to construct their own understanding of the artifact (and the video itself). While Cherri was positioned in certain shots of the video, I was unsure of what his presence did for the piece. Despite this, Cherri’s critique of the museum that capitalizes upon the narratives of others was clear and effective.

All three exhibits within the Jeu de Paume carried some thought-provoking questions. I left the museum with questions regarding the function of photography and film in politics, the role of the body in our perceived identity, and the rightfulness of displaying someone else’s historical narrative. These questions, while distinct, converged into a larger conversation of what it means to be contemporary art. The contemporary works we have seen have challenged my prior understanding of materials and media. Perhaps the relevance of these challenges in today’s world, along with the work’s age, can inform our classification of its contemporaneity.