Implosion/Explosion/Tornado

Francis Alÿs currently at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), Toronto:

Stills from Alÿs's film Tornado:

Gibraltar

Exploring (e/im)migration, Francis Alÿs's Gibraltar project currently at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), Toronto:

Afghanistan

Paintings from Francis Alÿs's Afghan projects currently at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), Toronto:

1943

Francis Alÿs's poem 1943 currently at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), Toronto:

I think about Morandi painting on top of a hill surrounded by fascism,

I think about Picabia finding inspiration in soft-porn magazines on the Cöte d'Azur,

I think about Marinetti returning sick from the Russian Front,

I think about Duchamp playing chess in his New York apartment,

I think about Ronald Searle POW in the Kwai jungle,

I think about Ensor playing the harmonium during the bombardment of Ostend,

I think about Otto Dix watching his works being destroyed by the Nazis,

I think about Beckmann under siege in Amsterdam,

I think about Dali, Ernst and Breton reunited in their New York exile,

I think about Magritte painting Fantômas stepping over Paris,

I think about Mondrian painting Broadway Boogie Woogie,

I think about Derain much courted by the Nazis in Paris,

I think about Tatlin observing bird flight from his garden in Moscow,

I think about Beuys flying his Stuka dive-bomber over Crimea,

I think about de Chirico copying his paintings in a corner of his studio,

I think about Matisse "painting with scissors" on the French Riviera,

I think about Soutine dying from an ulcer in Paris while escaping the Gestapo,

I think about Grosz repudiating his past from his new home in Long Island,

I think about Lee Miller photographing English women driving tractors,

I think about Kandinsky in the suburbs of Paris ceasing to write,

I think about Paul Nash once again a war artist for the British Army,

I think about Leni Riefenstahl filming Tiefland with extras from concentration camps,

I think about Schlemmer forbidden to paint and dying in a hospital in Baden-Baden,

I think about Picasso making a sculpture out of a bicycle in occupied Paris,

I think about Hanna Höch painting the Totentanz triptych in Nazi Germany,

I think about Camille Claudel dying forgotten in the asylum of Montdevergues,

I think about Siqueiros publishing In War, Art of War from his Cuban exile,

I think about Emil Nolde painting "unpainted pictures" in Seebüll,

I think about Schwitters learning from Norway that his Merzbau had been destroyed,

I think about Cartier-Bresson escaping from a German labor camp,

I think about Blinky Palermo born in the rubble of Leipzig.

Fabiola

Francis Alÿs' unusual installation for Schaulager I saw last summer was staged in Basel's historic Haus zum Kirschgarten.  There, hundreds of collected images of Saint Fabiola infested the architecture of the old town house like a Trojan Horse.  These portraits all looked similar at first glance.  Yet a closer scrutiny revealed a degree of variation between them.  The identity of Saint Fabiola was blurred in the flood of images.

Francis Alÿs at Haus zum Kirschgarten, Basel 2011:

Quaytman's book spine

Just arrived at Duesseldorf today.  But let me just finish off my Basel chapter.

Although my days in Basel have mostly been filled with sights of architecture, I did manage to see some impressive art there.  Francis Alÿs' Fabiola at Schaulager's offsite location Haus zum Kirschgarten, Henrik Olesen's solo at Museum für Gegenwartskunst and R.H. Quaytman's Spine, Chapter 20 at Kunsthalle Basel were all very powerful shows.  I like Quaytman's show the most.

Quaytman's exhibition is a reinterpreted retrospective of her paintings since 2001. With her paintings hung in long lines, viewers read the coherently displayed paintings like words on a page of a book.  I love the way she manipulated and reinvented images in an abstract way.  The modified architectural space intensified the effect of the visual display.  It's a pity that I did not have enough time to meditate on the depth of her thoughts.

Quaytman at Kunsthalle Basel, 2011: