Burano: The Lace Museum – A Lace for Venice – Competition

 

Burano - The Lace Museum

A Lace for Venice – Competition – Prize-Giving

At the Lace Museum on the colorful island of Burano in the Venetian lagoon, the prize-giving ceremony was held for the VI edition of the A Lace for Venice competition, dedicated to the theme The Sky. The initiative seizes the opportunity to continue the protection, conservation and enhancement of the centuries-old artisanal tradition of lace making which today is at risk, the art which is inextricably linked to the history and customs of Venice, and in particular to the island of Burano.  During the ceremony an award was given, in memory of Emma Vidal, the dean of Burano's lace makers, who disappeared in 2019 and who would have turned 104 this February. The event also included the screening of the trailer of the video created by Arte-Mide, entitled A life for lace. Emma Vidal. The full video will be screened in June, during the third the Lace Bienniale.

https://museomerletto.visitmuve.it/

https://www.fondazioneandrianamarcello.org/merletti/

The VI Edition of the national competition - A Lace for Venice - was promoted by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Fondazione Andriana Marcello. The two categories of the awards, ancient and modern styles of Needle and Fuselli Lace were presented by Mariacristina Gribaudi, President of Muve, Linda Damiano, President of Venice City Council, Count Umberto Marcello del Majno, President of the Fondazione Andriana Marcello and by Chiara Squarcina, Manager of Muve and director of the Museo del Merletto Burano.

Mariacristina Gribaudi, Umberto Marcello del Majno, Linda Damiano and Chiara Squarcina

Rossano Duzioni

Winner – Emma Vidal – Prize - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia

The male lace maker was awarded the prize in memory of Emma Vidal, the dean of Burano's lace makers who died last year at 103. 

Giuseppe Borsato – 1771-1849 – Portrait of the painter’s wife

first quarter 19^th century – oil on canvas

Rossano Duzioni – Lo Sguardo di Dio  

The Gaze of God

Prize – Emma Vidal - Antique Style Needle Lace   

Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia 

 

Tiziana Rossi Colaneri - L’amore Che Move il Sole e Altre Stelle

The Love that Moves the Sun and Other Stars

Prize – Modern Style Fuselli Lace – Fondazione Andriana Marcello

 

A life for lace. Emma Vidal

The event also included the screening of the trailer for the video created by Arte-Mide, entitled A life for lace. Emma Vidal. The full video will be screened in June, during the third the Lace Bienniale.

MIUR Regione Veneto il Merletto’s, Claudia Cottica, video editor, Daniele Lorenzon, director Chiarastella Seravalle and archive researcher Francesca Seravalle

 

 Claudio Bonomi and Paola Scarrone – Madrigale per un Satellite  

Madrigal for a Satellite - Modern Style lace

 The Colorful Island of Burano

Venice: Peggy Guggenheim Collection – Migrating Objects

“I found myself the proud possessor of 12 fantastic artifacts, consisting of masks and sculptures from New Guinea, the Belgian Congo, the French Sudan, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and New Ireland”
Peggy Guggenheim

Out of this Century

Migrating Objects

Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Peggy Guggenheim challenged boundaries as a patron and collector and is celebrated for her groundbreaking European and American modern art collection. At Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, until June 14, Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection focuses on a lesser-known, but crucial episode in Guggenheim’s collecting: her turn in the 1950s and ’60s to works created by artists in Africa, Oceania, and the indigenous Americas. The exhibition represents a remarkable occasion to view 35 rarely seen non-Western artworks Guggenheim collected, shown at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection as a cohesive whole for the first time. This exhibition presents Guggenheim’s African, Oceanic, and indigenous Americas objects in groupings privileging their original contexts or, alternately, in dialogue with European works from her collection by avant-garde artists who appropriated ideas from cultures beyond Europe’s borders. These opposing modes of display enable an exploration of the flawed narratives that Western culture imposed on objects of this kind.

Soul Canoe – wuramon – Mid-20th century – detail

Unrecorded Asmat artists – Papua – Western New Guinea – Indonesia

http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/inglese/exhibitions/migrating-objects/index.html

The Curators

Migrating Objects, was conceived by Peggy Guggenheim Collection Director Karole P.B. Vail together with the project’s Curatorial Advisory Committee—comprising Christa Clarke, R. Tripp Evans, Ellen McBreen, and Fanny Wonu Vey with Vivien Greene.

Ellen McBreen, Karole P.B.Vail, Fanny Wonu Vey and Vivien Greene

 

Louis Marcoussis – L’Habitue – The Regular – 1920

Headress - Ago Egungun – probably first half of 20^th century

workshop of Oniyide Adugbologe – ca. 1875-1949; Yoruba artist Abeokuta - Nigeria

Photo Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Gift, Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia, 2005 – courtesy Peggy Guggenheim Collection

“I could not afford to buy anything that I wanted, so I turned to another field…I began buying pre-Columbian and primitive art. In the next few weeks I found myself the proud possessor of 12 fantastic artifacts, consisting of masks and sculptures from New Guinea, the Belgian Congo, the French Sudan, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and New Ireland. It reminded me, in reverse, of the days when Max [Ernst] had left our home…and removed his treasures one by one from the walls. Now they all seemed to be returning.”

Guggenheim, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict.

New York: Andre Deutsch, 1979

In 1959, Peggy Guggenheim purchased a group of non-Western objects from the New York dealer Julius Carlebach, with works ranging from a Baga D’mba headdress from Guinea to a malangan maramarua funerary carving from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea.  Guggenheim had already shown interest in such works thanks in particular to her brief marriage to the artist Max Ernst, who in the 1940s obsessively collected pre-Columbian, Oceanic, and especially Native American art. Ernst’s collection was installed alongside works made by the couple’s artist friends in the house they shared in New York. Later she also bought examples in Italy from Franco Monti and Paolo Barozzi. Her dealers must have guided Guggenheim’s selections to some extent. But she followed her own vision when installing these objects in her Venetian palazzo, alongside paintings by Pablo Picasso and Ernst, among others. 

Venice - Peggy Guggenheim - The barchessa - Palazzo Venier dei Leoni late 1960s

Headdress - Ago Egungun - probably first half of 20th century, workshop of Oniyide Adugbologe - ca. 1875–1949 - Yoruba artist Abeokuta, Nigeria 

Mythologizing the Dogon

Seated male figure – probably first half 20^th century

Unrecorded Dogon artist – N’duleri region – Mali

Lidded container - probably first half 20^th century

Unrecorded Dogon artist– Mali

Vessel – aduno koro – possibly16th-early 20^th century

Unrecorded Dogon artist – Mali

Fanny Wonu Veys 

curator - Oceania, National Museum of World Cultures - The Netherlands

D’mba headdress and Pablo Picasso

Peggy Guggenheim began collecting African art in 1959, just prior to the “Year of Africa” —when seventeen African nations declared their independence. But most collectors’ preferences were unrelated to the works’ contemporary African contexts. By selecting this Baga D’mba headdress from Guinea and the Kota reliquary guardian figure from Gabon, Guggenheim followed tastes that the artistic avant-garde had established in the early 1900s. These two African traditions were closely associated with Pablo Picasso’s art and likely played a role in her selection. In Half-Length Portrait of a Man in a Striped Jersey, Picasso embedded two sharp pyramids into the oval normally used to represent a head. Once he self-servingly insisted that the African sculptures in his studio were “more witnesses than models,” but their formal and conceptual impact on his work is undeniable.

D’mba headdress - probably first half 20^th century

Unrecorded Baga artist – Guinea

Pablo Picasso - Half-Length Portrait of a Man in a Striped Jersey 1939

Ellen McBreen
associate professor - History of Art - Wheaton College - Mass.

 

“Primitive Art is a mine of information . . . but to understand and appreciate it, it is more important to look at it than to learn the history of primitive peoples, their religions and social customs.”

Henry Moore

Sepik Carving and the Sculpture of Henry Moore

When, in the 1930s, Henry Moore began to utilize a Surrealist language in his representations of the human body, he borrowed from the extraordinary forms of Sepik works and other Oceanic sculpture he saw at London’s British Museum and in publications. He wrote that “Primitive Art is a mine of information . . . but to understand and appreciate it, it is more important to look at it than to learn the history of primitive peoples, their religions and social customs.” Moore’s response was typical of many artists who thought that ignoring the objects’ original meanings allowed for a deeper understanding of their purely visual complexities.

Flute figure – late 19^th- early 20^th century

unrecorded Chambri artist – East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea

Male figure – Kadibon or Kandimbog – early 20^th century

Unrecorded artist – Murik Lake – East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea

Suspension hook – early 20^th century

Unrecorded Western latmul artist - East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea

Henry Moore – Three Standing Figures – 1953

Bark mask – first half 20^th century

Undrecorded Cubeo artist – Rio Uaupes region – Northern Amazon

Chimu poncho and Tancredi Parmeggiani

More than half a millennium, and sharply differing goals, separate Italian artist Tancredi Parmeggiani’s Transparencies of the Elements - 1957 from the Chimu feather poncho Guggenheim collected in 1959. One could easily imagine that Guggenheim’s first encounter with the poncho summoned the equally vibrant, feather-like strokes of Tancredi’s painting style, inspiring her to hang them together. Both compositions, moreover, reveal or suggest the intersecting warp and weft of a woven textile. Despite the stark contrast in the pieces’ techniques—the painstaking construction of the feather poncho versus the joyful spontaneity of crayon and gouache—it is this very juxtaposition that likely appealed to Guggenheim.

Poncho with camelids – 900-1470 CE

Unrecorded Chimu artists – Kingdom of Chimor – Northern Peru

Tancredi Parmiggiani - Transparencies of the Elements – 1957

 

Tatanua mask – malangan – early 20^th century

Unrecorded Madak artist – Northern New Ireland – Papua New Guinea

 

Mask – angbai or nyanbai – probably first half 20^th century

Unredorded Toma or Loma artist – Guinea

Female Ci Wara headdress – probably first half 20^th century unrecorded Bamana artist – Segou region – Mali

Male Ci Wara headdress – probably first half 20^th century 

unrecorded Bamana artist – Segou region – Mali

“This exhibition represents an exceptional opportunity for the UNHCR to expand and ameliorate the general public’s perception of refugees. They are not only desperate people seeking protection, but above all individuals forced to flee their homelands bringing with them a rich combination of culture, talent, and dreams to be shared with the countries that welcome them. As these objects of art from apparently distant places dialogue with Western works, they remind us that ideas migrate with people and through them foster exchanges of equal dignity and value. There is a third alternative to rejection and assimilation, and it is the most enlightened one: that of a society in which, every day, cultures and languages are multiple and hybrid. Even now, our ways of living are mutually influential, provoking an invaluable wealth of viewpoints."

Carlotta Sami

Senior Public Information Officer - UNHCR

UNHCR’s Carlotta Sami and Barbara Molinario

Migrating Objects: Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, has received the patronage of the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

 

Equestrian figure – probably first half of the 20^th century

unrecorded Senufo artist – Cote d’Ivoire

 

Figure of a horse – syon – probably mid-20th century

unrecorded Senufo artist – Cote d’Ivoire

Senufo Two-Faced Helmet Mask – wanyugo and Alberto Giacometti

Only in the mid-twentieth century were Senufo helmet masks taken from the Cote d’Ivoire and sold on the European market. Thus, this specific sculpture type would not have been familiar to Alberto Giacometti when he created Woman with her Throat Cut in 1932. However, the wanyugo exemplifies the fantastical themes that he and other Surrealists coopted for their own artistic purposes. Peggy Guggenheim likely echoed such associations when she later combined these two sculptures in her own, often ahistorical, installations.

Two-faced helmet mask – wanyugo – probably mid-20^th century

Unrecorded Senufo artist – cote d’Ivoire

Alberto Giacometti – Woman with her Throat Cut – Donna Sgozzata 1932 – cast 1940

Luciano Pensabene and Grazina Subelyte

 

Three-panel mummy mask – 900-1470 CE

Unrecorded Chimu artist – Kingdom of Chimor – Northern Peru

Nayarit Marriage Pair with Infant and Henry Moore - Family Group

The kinship between Henry Moore’s Family Group - ca. 1944 - and this ancient West Mexican marriage pair with infant extends well beyond the works’ shared subjects. Beginning in the 1920s, Moore developed what would become a lifelong fascination with ancient Mexican sculpture. The tubular torsos, burnished surface, and conjoined bodies of the Nayarit couple display the very hallmarks that influenced Moore’s work.

Marriage pair with infant – 300BCE-400CE

Unrecorded Nayarit artist – Ixtlan del Rio culture – ancient West Mexico

Hnery Moore – Family Group – 1944 – cast 1956

 

Imagining the Pacific

Oceanic cultures fascinated the Surrealists, who were drawn to their art with its dreamlike subjects and processes of transformation. Max Ernst, for example, appropriated selected Oceanic - as well as Native American - themes in his work. Peggy Guggenheim was introduced to some of these ideas while married to Ernst and living with his collection in their New York home. In 1942 Ernst gave Guggenheim his painting, The Antipope - 1941-42 - as thanks for her years of support and help in escaping Europe during World War II. She called the painting Mystic Marriage, since it dramatized their complicated relationship in a disquieting pictorial fable. She is likely evoked by the hybrid horse-headed warrior in red. In pursuit of imagery untethered from reality, the Surrealists were profoundly influenced by these objects because of their resistance to fixed states. They believed that mechanized Western society had tragically distanced itself from the imaginative ethos present in Oceanic work. By mining the cultures of the Pacific islands, the Surrealists sought to reconnect with longed for, nonvisible realms of experience.

Ancestor figure – miamba maira – mid 20^th century

Unrecorded Wosera artist – Southern Abelam Bibmagum or Bogmuken – village – East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea

Element of ceremonial house – mid-20^th century

Unrecorded Abelam or Boiken artist – Maprik – East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea

Ancestor figure – 1900-1960

Unrecorded Sawos artist – Yamok Village - East Sepik Province – Papua New Guinea

In 1942 Ernst gave Guggenheim his painting, The Antipope - 1941-42 - as thanks for her years of support and help in escaping Europe during World War II. She called the painting Mystic Marriage, since it dramatized their complicated relationship in a disquieting pictorial fable. She is likely evoked by the hybrid horse-headed warrior in red.

Max Ernst – The Antipope – December 1941 – March 1942