Sous la dictée de l’image

'Je me trouve sous la dictée de l’image' [I find myself under the dictation of the image], said the writer and artist Pierre Klossowski. This new journey through the images of the Berardo Collection aims to carry out a thorough examination of this notion. The first room is devoted to establishing an inventory of modern art’s affinity with the image by reproducing some of diagrams about which the pioneers of modern art were passionate. The most widely known and discussed of these is the diagram published in 1936 by Alfred H. Barr for the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, at the MoMA in New York. This genealogy in image form is set in opposition to another diagram, published in France in 1955, and Ad Reinhardt’s ironic critique, published in 1946, who would precisely work on extending the limits of abstract art. This introduction, illustrated by some of the essential works in the collection, leads to the representation of surrealism, in this case displayed in a sort of cabinet of curiosities which recalls the installation in André Breton’s apartment on the Rue Fontaine in Paris. The surrealist revolution did not allow objects to be represented unless new relationships were established. It exalted primordial art, which was then called “primitive”: and if one painted, one would paint with the unconscious. The Berardo Collection’s abundant stocks of African art have been used here.

Next, the exhibition explores the photographic experiments carried out by Constantin Brancusi (a photographic work that transcends the 'reproduction' of sculpture) and takes in Francesca Woodman and two Portuguese artists: Fernando Lemos (whose 1949-1952 work was rediscovered in the 2000s) and Vítor Palla. Also on display are three works by Pierre Klossowski that belong to the Berardo Collection (two large-scale drawings and a sculpture). Klossowski’s works are opposite works by Paula Rego (The Barn, 1994) and Francis Bacon (Oedipus and the Sphinx After Ingres, 1983), as well as two pictures by Julião Sarmento, from 2008, which cite Klossowski’s writings. Both of the works by Julião Sarmento belong to private collections.

Finally, Laurent Grasso’s video 1619, projected in loop, which refers to the date on which Galileo used the term 'aurora borealis' for the first time, is being shown: the video artificially reproduces the colourful vibrations of this phenomenon in an atmosphere in the centre of which a geodesic dome can be seen.