Paris Kiki Smith Exhibition, Encore. . .

Shall we visit Paris again today? It’s a few weeks now since our second visit to that exhibition of America artist Kiki Smith’s work in the beautiful 18th-century Monnaie de Paris — which houses a mint, a museum of coins, a Guy Savoy restaurant, and a stylish café-bar, and has also been hosting some brilliant exhibitions. I visited one such in winter 2018 and posted about it here and here.  And then, as you know, I visited it again for the Kiki Smith exposition this past December and wrote about that here and here. As well, I posted some photos on Instagram of the room above,which held the group of bronze sculptures titled Sleeping, Wandering, Slumber,
Looking About, Rest Upon,2009-2019 — And the photo I posted on Instagram of the room with her tapestries  now has more “likes” — 370 — than anything I’ve ever posted there.

Reviewing the photos I haven’t shown you yet, I’m disappointed to find that I have only a few of her works on paper — and none of the prints, of which there was a good sampling on display. My bad. . . .

Reviewing them, I’ve also been viewing videos and interviews with Smith related to this particular exhibition of her work, and I find myself interested in the way this research and retrospective scrolling through my photos both refreshes and changes my experience of what I saw. . . of what I’m seeing now.

I’ve been thinking about Time (in general). . .  and about times — specific times, or instances perhaps, moments.  I’ve been remembering the context of that December visit, the way I got to La Monnaie an hour too early, by mistake, and so walked across the Seine to wander around L’Ile de la Cité, to visit Hotel de Ville. The limitations of the time (and energy) left to me when I got back to La Monnaie, clock ticking toward lunch . . . I spent about ninety minutes there, but would have loved to return once more. . .

In some ways, through the photos and the on-line materials available, I have been there again, and I’ve enriched that original visit tenfold since. Oddly though, I’ve struggled a bit over posting about it three or four months later. Perhaps readers will find it “old news,” I wonder.  We’re generally so focussed on the new — new TV series, movies, books, clothing styles, home decor. . . and travel. I think of something Diana Athill said in one of the books she wrote in her last decade, her tenth. She wrote of being what one might think of as “stuck” in an assisted-living home, her mobility restricted by physical frailty . . . and of the pleasure she was able to draw by visiting, through memory, places she had visited throughout her life. She wrote of that travel as a rich and ongoing resource that allowed her surprising freedoms and pleasures. Confined to sitting in a chair, she thus escaped the potential chafing boredom. . .

I’m not confined to any chairs yet. But Covid-19 has imposed its own restrictions. If not for the virus’s threat, I’d have been preparing, these last few weeks, to leave for Sicily (via Paris) in a few days, and my posts would have been about that trip,  the experiences I had in Paris and Rome last December packed away. . . I won’t pretend that boredom or restlessness hasn’t chafed at a few points over the last two months. But in place of that Sicily trip, I’ve spent time revisiting Paris. This exposition in particular, which I strolled through for an hour and a half  four months ago, I now have spent many, many hours reading about and looking at photos of and listening to interviews with the artist and writing about . . .

Which, with no further ado, I will do for just a bit longer. . . .

The photos above are of Pyre Woman Kneeling (Bronze, silicon bronze, wood). . . As the exposition curator tells us, Kiki Smith conceived this sculpture as an entry for a competition held by a town in Germany for a public work. She was struck at the time by the complete absence of any monument commemorating the thousands of women murdered in Europe over the centuries as a result of witch-hunting trials. Even though her entry was not accepted, she produced three versions of this work in their memory. Smith draws a parallel between the pose of the naked woman, shown kneeling and looking upward with her arms outstretched as though in prayer, with that of “Jesus on the cross uttering his last words, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?”

The sculptures above might strike you, as they did me, as representative of evergreen trees.  But their titles indicate otherwise. Of these works, Sungrazer VII, VIII, IX (2019, Bronze), the accompanying interpretive plaque explains that Kiki Smith recently extended her field of exploration to include the cosmic landscape. From the fragmented body to the universe, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, we find the same constant striving for reconciliation and unity. The astronomical objects added to her repertoire dislodge the human figure from its central position. The living being is now no more than part of a vast whole.  (You’re probably more knowledgeable about astronomy than I, but I’ll tell you anyway that a sungrazer comet is a special class of comet is one that gets very close to the sun — if by very close, we recognize 850,000 miles. . . . although apparently some come within just a few thousand miles.)

Blue Girl (1998) below, the curator tells us, draws from traditional iconography of the Virgin Mary (hands open, at hip-level, slightly outstretched, head bowed) with the stars in the expansive background behind cast from starfish, linking the elements and the expanses. . . .

I quite like this photo, the moment it records, me in that room in that beautiful building, wanting a photo of that quotation (which comes from an interview Kiki Smith had with Chuck Close in 1994) — “The whole history of the world is in your body.” My particular body reflected in that mirror in that moment, carrying the whole history of the world?. . . . And barely glimpsed through those windows on the left, the trees alongside the Seine. . . .

I do apologize about the quality of these photos — you can search out better if I’ve been able to interest you in Kiki Smith’s work. . .

In this room, several works in which the artist responds to stories of women and wolves — specifically, Little Red Riding Hood and Saint Geneviève (patron saint of Paris). . . Read more about Smith’s exploration of this narrative/visual motifin this article.  Above: Lying with the Wolf

And below, the bronze sculpture Rapture. . . .

Below: Saint Genevieve, ink on paper, 1999

And again, Rapture. . . .

And that’s all the photos I have. . . three posts worth, as it turned out. Time to leave, down this staircase

If you’re interested, though, you might like to take a tour, via video, with Kiki Smith through the same exhibition — just over nine minutes and repays every second! Or see more of the exhibition in the first four minutes ofthis video(en français) from France 24 orthis longer interview, also in French, with clever questions from an interviewer who often makes Kiki Smith laugh spontaneously.

Later this week, I’ll post a photo of a wearable memento I bought in the gift shop. I’m quite sure I can see Kiki Smith wearing the same piece in one of the interviews. . . . I’m also going to share my travel journal jottings from that day.

And not only will we be travelling back in time here at Materfamilias Writes this week, but I also have a treat for you that will take us forward into the future: one of the regular readers and commenters here has a bold, adventurous retirement plan (leaving California, moving to Portugal!) that was interrupted mid-execution by Covid-19. She and I had prepared an interview via email much earlier this year, but the week I’d planned to publish the post, we all got sent to our rooms and the topic seemed inappropriate. Now, though, we think that perhaps you’d like a diversion. . . .And you shall have it! Watch this space!

As always, all comments and questions welcome. (Especially welcome this week when announcements from various apps are popping up on my phone to remind me about the AF Flight from YVR to CDG. . . .Event Deleted!!)

Happy Monday,

xo,

f