Somewhere, once upon a time, I used to go often to see exhibitions and museums. Somewhere means Bucharest, in Romania, where I have lived for many years. Somewhere means the last century which, fortunately, hasn't left us that long ago.
The series... may induce the idea that this post is part of a group and is a continuation of others on the same topic. Partially true, it's part of a group of posts with the same topic, but it's just the first one I'm writing now.
I have recently visited a museum in Bucharest, a fashionable museum, a new, modern museum which is a private initiative of some Romanian art people, especially art critics.
MARe, which stands for Museum of Recent Art. The English name would probably be this: MReA. In Romanian, Mare means Big!
If anyone wants to learn and see more about the museum, in fact about the place and the building that hosts it, you can read here: MARe
MARe is a foundation that has been interested in contemporary (Romanian) art for the last 50 years and organizes seasonal exhibitions, which last no longer than 6 months.
The most recent exhibition is called The Monster, The Square and the Laughter and runs from June 2024 to January 2025.
The exhibition poster, printed on the entrance door, also reveals the names of the painters who have works on display. All the works are the property of the museum, I think there are 150 of them, and, of course, they do not represent the totality of contemporary art in Romania, on the contrary, in my opinion, and to my knowledge, they represent only a tiny part and not the most important part.
What does MARe say about MARe?
STYLISTIC DIVERSITY WITH LIMITED ROUND
The MARe Collection is a collection with an "owner", in the deepest sense of the word. The collection seeks to reintroduce aesthetic pleasure as a key criterion of recent artistic experience. MARe is about the necessary incomprehensibility and impossibility of art, about artists absorbed by their vocation, and about an audience searching for its face, its history, and its present. Source
In Romania there are, as there probably are in all countries, hundreds of painters who fall into the category of contemporary, that is to say, who are (still) alive or have lived in the last, say, 50 years. I know a dozen or so, and I've even met about ten who are very good... who have no work in this exhibition.
I say this because I didn't find the exhibition representative for contemporary Romanian painting. From the list of those exhibited I have heard of only about twenty, but this is not a criterion, because I am not a specialist and a connoisseur, nor have I studied, I just made a comparison with what I saw in the exhibition and with the works of other painters. What I have seen here is the choice of the curator Dan Popescu, who focussed more on nonfigurative painting, abstract, installations, and collage, which I don't understand well, as not being an initiate in.
Basement and first floor
The exhibition is arranged on several levels of the building and has an itinerary to follow and I didn't understand what the significance is, so I will present it as it was, as I saw it...
It begins in the basement of the building with an installation, which is neither painting, sculpture, or tapestry.
The author is called Victoria Zidaru and together with her husband, Marian Zidaru, they are one of the most interesting and well-known contemporary artists, with an unmistakable personal style.
These works are made of natural materials, i.e. woven linen and hemp canvas filled with dried grass on one side and only dried grass on the opposite side, forming tubes similar to pipes, in which dried flowers are stuffed.
This installation is interactive and visitors are invited to participate in its creation. My wife has been given weathered lavender flowers to add to the grass tubes. She loved doing that.
I have to say, with shame, that I don't think I understand the significance of the work. It seems to be an invitation to return to nature and simplicity.
Obligatory is a reference to the traditions of the Romanian people. I say this because I know that the Zidaru family strongly promotes the ancient traditions of the Romanian peasants, the archaic clothes, and the customs of their lives.
My wife and I know the artists, especially Victoria, who is a bit younger than me and grew up in the same area as me, only about 20 kilometers away. We didn't meet then, in fact, my wife met her at the art gallery where she worked. We haven't seen each other for more than ten years but now we have to look her up and ask her to tell us the significance of her work in this museum.
I left Victoria Zidaru's installation, ah, I forgot to say that everything smelled so beautiful, of dry hay and field flowers that if you closed your eyes you could see yourself in a field on a summer evening.
The first floor looks like a normal exhibition, with paintings on the walls and some wood carvings.
Religious meanings, of course, with a possible reference to the crucifixion...
The following paintings belong to a painter who died in 2017, Marin Gherasim.
White Apsis I
I didn't know what apsis meant, but Google helped me to find out:
a semicircular or polygonal niche enclosing the central nave of a Roman basilica. 2. Semicircular room for the altar in Christian churches.
Untitled
This "title" did nothing for me so I was left to make sense of my powers and, simplistically, I think it is a representation of heaven and earth.
Gherasim was a painter inspired by religion and his faith in God.
Now I understood this route while visiting the exhibition. Victoria Zidaru is also a religiously influenced painter. They were both born in the same province of Romania, Bucovina, a region famous for its beauty and conservatism, where the Orthodox Christian religion is strong.
I understand that this journey among contemporary painters starts with the pious ones and then goes to other areas...
We continued with the first floor, but nothing caught my attention. We tried to understand the intentions of the painters from the titles of the paintings but we didn't have much success...
The staircase to the next floor appeared as a kind of rescue and hope for something more interesting.
I now feel that I have come to the end of the first post in this series on the current exhibition at the MARe Museum in Bucharest. I was not convinced so far that it is a special exhibition and that is also because I compared it with the previous one. However, a comparison cannot be made because the previous one was a Picasso exhibition!
