EXHIBITION REVIEWS

Eustache le Sueur; the drawing of Two female figures (no.D3o; GaUerie deU'Accademia, Venice) seems to me to bear no relation to

CorneiUe. The Portrait of a woman and child

(no.D3i; Pushkin Museum, Moscow) is an

interesting trau, but the attribution can hardly be sustained. Coquery has emphasised that CorneiUe's name is mentioned once in con

nection with portraiture but that nothing of his survives in this genre: we should never

theless not ignore the possibiUty of accrediting to him the fine Portrait of Michel le Mask

(Mus?e Carnavalet, Paris), whose attribution

to CorneiUe was suggested to me verbally by Nicolas Sainte Fare Garnot. With regard to

the Munich drawings, a source that has

become extremely tricky, several are rejected

by Coquery as not being by CorneiUe

(nos.DR2?5). It is regrettable that these are

not reproduced in the catalogue because the

juxtaposition would have been interesting and

this reviewer remains totaUy convinced by the

Figure of a seated woman (no.DR3). In regard to CorneiUe's drawings, I should

like to mention three that I discovered on a recent visit to the Museo de BeUas Artes,

Valencia: a Study of a flying angel (Fig. 5 4), the

preparatory sketch for an angel at the top of

the Massacre of the Innocents in the Mus?e des Beaux-Arts, Tours;7 a Study of a sea god similar to

the Neptune (no.D25; BibUoth?que nationale,

Paris) and comparable in spirit to the figures in the Galerie de Psych? in the H?tel Amelot de

Bisseu?;8 and a study of a flying angel seen from the front (Fig. 5 5) in relation to the Visi tation in the Mus?e des Beaux-Arts, Blois

(no.Pn),9 a truncated painting - the engrav

ing after it by Pierre Daret (no.G3) restores the curved upper part in which this angel holding a pennant can be found.

FinaUy, I should like to emphasise the admirable work carried out over the past few

years at the Mus?e des Beaux-Arts, Orl?ans,

where French artists of the seventeenth cen

tury have been researched to great effect. This fine exhibition provides a vital link in the

chain; how fortunate that it was organised in

the birthplace of Michel CorneiUe.

1 Catalogue: Michel CorneiUe (vers 1603?1664), un peintre

du roi au temps de Mazarin. By Emmanuel Coquery. 144

pp. incl. 64 col. pis. + 40 b. & w. ills. (Mus?e des Beaux

Arts, Orl?ans, and Somogy ?ditions d'art, Paris, 2006), 30. ISBN 2-85056-961-5.

2 J. Guiffrey: Inventaire g?n?ral du mobilier de la couronne

sous Louis XIV, Paris 1885-86,1, p.343. 3 See S. Loire: 'Le Salon de 1673', Bulletin de la Sod?t?

de l'Histoire de l'Art fran?ais (1992), pp.31-68. 4 N. Forti Grazzini: Gli arazzi d?lia Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice 2003, p.155, no.25. 5 M. Fenaille: Etat g?n?ral des Tapisseries de la manufac ture des Gobelins, Paris 1923^.361. 6 N. Sainte Fare Garnot: Philippe de Champaigne

(1602-1674), Jean-Baptiste de Champaigne (1631-1681), Nicolas de Plattemontagne (1631?1706), Paris 2000, p. 12,

no.7. 7 A. Espinos Diaz: exh. cat. Dibujos europeos des Museo

de BeUas Artes de Valenda, Colecdon Real Accademia de

Bellas Artes de San Carlos, Valencia (Museo de Bellas

Artes) 2004, no.28 (as by Philippe de Champaigne). 8

Ibid., no.3o (as by Eustache Le Sueur). 9 Ibid., no.31 (as by Eustache Le Sueur).

Zero D?sseldorf and Saint-Etienne

by JOHN-PAUL STONARD

FORMED IN D?SSELDORF ?l I958, the Zero

group comprised at its core three German artists, Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and G?nther

Uecker. Inspired by the monochrome and

kinetic experiments of, respectively, Yves

Klein and Jean Tinguely, they used new materials and processes to create art that sym boUsed renewal for a country emerging from

the decade-long shadow of war. Zero was also

a rebuff to the tepid 'neo-expressionist' strain

of informel painting in Germany, in particular works produced by the D?sseldorf-based

Gruppe 53, in favour of coUective activities and works made in the Constructivist tradi

tion. Although Zero disbanded in 1966, aU three founder members are stui active.

The exhibition ZERO. Internationale

K?nstler-Avantgarde der $oer/6oer Jahre, seen by this reviewer at the Museum Kunst Palast,

D?sseldorf (closed 9th July), and travelling to the Mus?e d'Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne

(15th September to 15th January), shows that this brief history can be gready expanded by comparison with a broad cross-section of

European and Japanese art of the late 1950s

and 1960s.1 In fact what at first appears to be

a local survey of the Zero movement turns

out to be an impromptu convocation of those

international groups often gathered under

the label 'NouveUe Tendance': Nouveau

R?aUsme and GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel) in Paris; the Milan-based coUec tives Azimuth and Gruppe T; Gruppe N from

56. Stelae ensemble (Stelenensemble), by Heinz Mack. 1960-97. Mixed media, including Plexiglas and aluminium, various dimensions. (Collection of the artist; exh. Mus?e d'Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne).

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EXHIBITION REVIEWS

Padua; the Dutch Nul group; Equipo 57 from C?rdoba; and, most interestingly, the Gutai

group, founded in Osaka in 1954 and led by the abstract painter Jiro Yoshihara.

A comparison between Gutai and Zero

reveals acute points of simUarity in the way artists from both countries faced the post-War

moment. Germany and Japan were in very sirmlar situations after 1945, both recovering

from terrible destruction and moral coUapse, both occupied by AUied miUtary govern ments. That the Gutai group was preceded

by another group, Zero-Kai, founded in 1952

by Akira Kanayama, would be uncanny, if it

were not for the fact that the Japanese artists

anticipated and inspired their European con

fr?res in so many other ways. Artists of both

Zero-Kai and Gutai were pioneers in their

use of new techniques ?

Toshio Yashida, for

example, was using fire to burn images into

wood in 1954, anticipating Yves Klein's use of

the technique. Sculptures such as Kanayama's Boru (Bait) of 1956, an inflatable vinyl shape on which multicoloured dots grow Uke

Uchen, appear as if they could have been made

today (which is incidentaUy almost true, as most of the Japanese works on display are

reconstructions of the original pieces, which

were usuaUy destroyed after being exhibited). Mattijs Visser, the curator of the current exhi

bition, highUghts in his catalogue essay that

this is the first time works by the German and

Japanese groups have appeared together since

1965, when Gutai was invited by the Dutch

Nul group to show in a large international

exhibition in Amsterdam.2 Previous emphasis,

largely determined by AUan Kaprow, had framed Gutai in terms of performance, rather

than as a movement concerned with informel

painting and minimal, anti-aesthetic object

making.3 A reassessment in the West of the

57- New York dancer I, by G?nther Uecker. 1965. Nails, canvas, metal and electric motor, 200 by 30

by 30 cm. (Private collection; exh. Mus?e d'Art

Moderne, Saint-Etienne).

pioneering range of works produced in Osaka

in the early 1950s was given impetus by the exhibitions Out of Actions (Museum of

Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1998, tour

ing to various locations) and Gutai (Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1999) and has been fruitfuUy developed by Visser's contextual display of Gutai paintings and

sculptures. Nevertheless, as Atsuo Yamamoto

points out in his catalogue essay, it may have

been that the Gutai artists turned to informel

painting after a visit from Michel Tapie in 1957, ironicaUy a move away from the anti

expressive concerns of the Zero and Nul

groups.4 Yves Klein's concern that a Gutai exhibi

tion in the West would undermine the tabula rasa claims of Western groups, cited by Visser,

was not misplaced. Seeing here works by the

Japanese artists, combined with a magnificent

display of Klein's ultramarine objects, includ

ing Pluie bleue (1961), and with the inclusion of works by Fontana, Manzoni, Haacke and

MoreUet, it is not immediately clear whether

either works by the Rhenish trio of Piene, Mack and Uecker, or the coUective claim to

have wiped the slate clean, w?l stand up to

scrutiny. In the Ught of international precedents, the

ab ovo claim of the Zero group can be taken

with a large pinch of salt: in any case, absolute

originality renders any work of art incompre hensible and uninteresting. Works by the

three Zero founders gain essential qualities when compared with sources and cognate works. EquaUy interesting are the clear differ

ences between their respective approaches, differences that make it difficult to discern any common aesthetic programme, but which

may also explain their lasting appeal as a trio.

Piene is clearly the member most influ

enced by Klein, and the least willing to abandon traditional pictorial means. Many of

his works are stiU largely in the tradition of informal painting, and by no means relinquish expressive claims, even as they progress from

the Klee-like shimmering surfaces of the late

1950s to his Kleinian (perhaps one should say Yashidian) fire paintings of the early 1960s. Bow-tied, Piene comes across as the Frenchi

fied devotee of Klein; in a photograph from 1961 included in the documentary room of

the exhibition he is shown in the latter's stu

dio, sitting cross-legged Uke a good pup?. Mack, by contrast, is closest to an imper

sonal Constructivist tradition (Fig. 5 6). The materials to which he was drawn

? for exam

ple Plexiglas, aluminium, synthetic resin, stainless steel, lacquer and chrome

? enabled

him to create a satellite-dish, space-age aes

thetic that is most evident in the two large

set-piece installations Ad alta potenza (1960/

76), a large aluminium fo?-covered stage in

which bright Ughts and rotating mirrors create a futuristic scenography, and Relief-Wand (1958-61), shown in the Galerie Diogenes in

BerUn in 1961, a waU of Plexiglas and steel

reUefs that looks a Uttle like a display of bath room cabinets. It would be fascinating to have

some historical insight into his use of synthet

58. Ice, polar bear, refrigerator (Ijs, ijsbeer, ijskast), by Henk Peeters. 1961. Mixed media, 115 by 112

by 67 cm. (Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; exh. Museum Kunst Palast, D?sseldorf).

ic and industrial materials, many of which

were and st?l are produced by industrial con

cerns in the Rhineland, and are not without

historical significance. The production of alu minium, of which Germany was world leader

in the 1930s, was decisive for the manufacture

of warplanes. Plexiglas was invented by an

Essen-based company, and the steel that Mack

used would probably have been produced by Krupps, who notoriously used slave labour to

produce armaments for Hider, and got off

very Ughdy after 1945. Can one reaUy start

from zero with materials such as these?

Uecker, whose trademark is the workman's

na?, anticipated the work of artists such as

Joseph Beuys and Georg Herold in revaluing a basic symbol of the rebu?ding of Germany.

His works demonstrate a pre-Pop sense of

self-irony which is lacking in Mack and Piene.

Paintings and reUefs, invariably bristUng with three-inch na?s, combine the tentative

strangeness of Twombly with the rawness of

tribal fetishes. His New York dancer I (Fig. 5 7), a heavy canvas cape studded with na?s, which

spins violendy and dangerously when set-off

by a foot pedal, is medieval in comparison with Mack's glass and steel aesthetic. If

Uecker is less refined than his coUeagues ?

his

Lichtregen (1966) is a heavy northern version

of Klein's deUcate and ethereal original, men

tioned above ?

his idiom is aU the more

authentic for it.

Despite these contrasting temperaments, the Zero artists merged in the production of

moving sculptures producing Ught and shad

ow, such as those made for the installation

Lichtraum (Hommage ? Lucio Fontana). This room is a permanent installation in a different

wing of the D?sseldorf Museum Kunst Palast

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EXHIBITION REVIEWS

(thus not travelling to Saint-Etienne) of what

appears to be moving stage machinery for a

space-age bauet. They creak and rotate like a

Tinguely and cast shimmering, expressionistic

Ught and shadows. Moholy-Nagy's Light-space modulator (1922-30) is an obvious precursor,

yet the effect here is much more theatrical.

Although two of the kinetic sculptures on show are coUaborative works, it is clear which

artist contributed what ? Zero never reaUy moved beyond the idea of art as a form of indi

vidual expression, as perhaps the group hoped. Other works on display provide diverse

points of comparison. Fran?ois MoreUet, chief

representative of the GRAV group, combines

tight-lipped classicism with a deadpan humour, a reUef after the occasionaUy misty

eyed seriousness of Mack and Piene. Henk Peeters, doyen of Nul, is represented by three

paintings that use the smoke-stain technique of which Piene was fond. 'Reconstructed' for

this exhibition, they are displayed opposite his Pop-assemblage Ice, polar bear, refrigerator

(Fig. 5 8), combining an ice-cream display cab

inet and a framed tuft of a polar bear's pelt, an installation that reveals the competing claims

of an old-world expressive pictorial approach and the new world of Pop objects. Both Enri co CasteUani's Spazio ambiente, a white padded room with strange pre-Kapoorian corners,

and the reconstruction of an installation of

four Concetto spaziale sculptures by Fontana,

originaUy conceived by the artist for the Nul 65 exhibition in Amsterdam, have an ambi

tion and subdety that suggest a far more styl ish southern tradition, shortly after to develop

with Arte Povera. Six works by Hans Haacke, who exhibited with the Zero group from 1963-65, attempt to capture natural processes in a way that combines scientific and aesthet

ic interest, producing a quiet, reflective qual

ity difficult to reconc?e with any group aesthetic.

Despite the wealth of works on display, there is no provision for historical context.

Although there are plenty of reconstructed works to be seen, one has to infer the situation

of post-War reconstruction in which they were being made. What we get from such a

display is a compelling feeUng of the original intentions behind these works: they were

made to float as symbols above the broken

post-War world, and capture the spirit of

incipient restoration. What we do not get is

the real historical circumstances and cultural

landscape of their origins. Such information would reinforce the point that nothing reaUy

begins from zero.

1 Catalogue: ZERO. Internationale K?nstler-Avantgarde

der 50er/60er Jahre. By Catherine Millet, Heinz-Norbert

Jocks, Bazon Brock, L?r?nd Hegyi, Heike van den

Valentyn, Tiziana Caianiello, Valerie L. Hillings, Atsuo

Yamamoto and Mattijs Visser. 336 pp. incl. 152 col. pis. + 276 b. & w. ills. (Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildem,

2006), 39.80. ISBN 3-9809060-4-3. 2 M. Visser: 'Von NUL 65 Zur?ck zu ZERO o6\ in

ibid., pp. 100-05. 3 A. Kaprow: Assemblage, environments and happenings,

New York 1966, pp.211-25. 4 A. Yamamoto, in Millet, op. dt. (note 1), pp.86?99.

Adam Elsheimer Frankfurt am Main, Edinburgh and London

by LUUK PIJL

adam elsheimer's brightly coloured land

scapes with deUghtful atmospheric effects, as weU as his highly dramatic night pieces, have

always been admired by feUow artists and

a smaU group of sophisticated coUectors. Both

Rubens and Rembrandt painted works

inspired by Elsheimer's mesmerising Flight into Egypt (cat. no.36; Fig.59), and it is fair to

say that Elsheimer is the ultimate artist's artist

of the seventeenth century. Born in 1578 in

the mercantile town of Frankfurt, he was

taught by the local pictor doctus PhiUpp Uffen bach. Shortly before 1600 he traveUed via

Munich to Venice, where he became an

acquaintance of Johan Rottenhammer, who

transformed the large-scale works of Venetian

masters such as Veronese into refined cabinet

pictures on copper. In Rome Elsheimer

entered into the artistic and inteUectual circle

of Rubens and his brother PhiUpp, Johann Faber and Paul Bril. He died in Rome in 1610, at the age of thirty-two, leaving a smaU

uvre of paintings, drawings and a few prints. Seven masterly engravings by the Utrecht

print-maker and draughtsman Hendrick

Goudt, who Uved with Elsheimer in Rome, were extremely important in the proliferation of his inventions throughout Europe.

The Elsheimer retrospective under review

here was seen by the present writer at the

St?delsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt; it is

currendy on show in a sUghdy modified form at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edin

burgh (to 3rd September; then at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; 20th September to 3rd December).1 It comes four decades

after the pioneering Elsheimer exhibition held at the St?delsches Kumtinstitut in 1966.2 That exhibition comprised almost three hundred entries, including many authentic painting?,

repUcas and works by contemporaries. It was

instrumental in criticaUy reviewing attribu

tions to the artist and provided a strong impe tus for Elsheimer studies, resulting in 1977 in the exceUent, succinct monograph by Keith

Andrews,3 to whose memory the current

exhibition catalogue is dedicated. The show

and pubUcation are strongly focused on the

artist as a painter: his drawings, gouaches and

prints are only included if there is a con

nection with an extant or lost painting. The

single exception in Frankfurt was the pen

drawing of the Denial of St Peter, included ex

catalogue to celebrate its recent acquisition for

the Stadel. AU generaUy accepted paintings by Elsheimer are discussed and reproduced in the

catalogue, often with exceUent details. Only two paintings included in the catalogue were

not on display in Frankfurt: the St Jerome in the wilderness (private coUection; no. 17) was

regrettably not given on loan, even when a

confrontation with the Petworth series

(no.21) would probably have confirmed its

autograph status, wh?e the Burning of Troy (Alte Pinakothek, Munich; no. 10) was con

sidered unfit to travel. The latter's absence is

compensated for by a recendy rediscovered

gouache of this same subject focusing on the

figures of Aeneas and Anchises (no. 12), the

only work on paper that receives a fuU entry in the catalogue.

For the Frankfurt showing the organisers had luck?y resisted the temptation to include too many works by related, contemporary and

later artists: only eighteen related paintings were included (a section which is not shown

in Edinburgh and Dulwich) and, as far as

59- Flight into Egypt, by Adam Elsheimer. c.1609. Copper, 31 by 41 cm. (Alte Pinakothek, Munich; exh. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh).

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