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A terrible beauty is born…- Biennale de Lyon 2011

by Ann Cremin

When I first saw the posters I was intrigued – what had W.B.Yeats got to do with Lyon ? In fact, it is the generic name give to this year’s Biennale de Lyon. The photograph, cut in two for the poster, represented Samuel Beckett while the lower part of the face belonged to another writer. In the press release were many references to Joyce, as well as other Irish writers and thinkers.

The Biennale de Lyon is now in its twentieth year – a dangerous moment – especially as the chief curator is still Thierry Raspail – he invites one or several guest curators each time to help him make the selection. The last issue was rather disappointing, with no central theme holding the many exhibitions together. The problem is compounded by the fact that the shows are scattered throughout the city, in the MAC (Museum of Contemporary Art), the Musée des Beaux Arts and most importantly in La Sucrière. This last is the most emblematic site : on the docks of the river Saone, it was a sugar warehouse, alongside many other such buildings where the customs and excises could examine the merchandise travelling all over Europe. The area called La Confluence – where the Rhone and the Saone meet up to enfold the city - is in the throes of a huge development scheme, with a museum due to open shortly – a sort of French answer to Bilbao, with its Guggenheim…
In the past few years, public transport has made access to La Sucrière easier, and several excellent restaurants have been installed along the river banks. During the Biennale, there is also water transport from there to the MAC. It was in La Sucrière that the Biennale was officially opened – the huge space was filled with installations of every sort, some gigantic – covering two floors – like the abandoned library where one has to climb up another floor in order to peer down onto the work : an enormous room, filled with over-spilling bookshelves, a desk, scattered papers and the remnants of a life suddenly cut short…

I asked Victoria Noorthoorn, the guest curator, what made her choose such « Irish » icons ? In fact, she herself lives in Buenos Aires and is knowledgeable about Latin American and international artists. She explained: « When Thierry Raspail approached me two years ago, he gave me carte blanche. I wanted to examine the newer generation of artists throughout the world and set off to seek them out. When I had more or less made my choice, my problem was to find a linking theme. My husband is a writer and particularly interested in Anglo-Irish literature – so when he talked about Yeats and his poem about the Easter Uprising, I knew that expressed perfectly what I wanted to show. The beauty of a gesture can be terrible in its consequences… »
The show itself is multifarious and is spread throughout the city and its close suburbs : in the Grand Parc Miribel Jonas, the artist in residence Yona Friedman, offers a vision of the 21st century museum, entitled « Iconostase » : a set of circles measuring 3 metres in diameter spread out over the space. The public can then choose where to install them at random. This is very emblematic of this year’s Biennale in which there are far more installations and videos than paintings or sculptures in the traditional mould. The public is given great freedom to comment directly or « interfere » in the arrangements made by the artists.
All the official museums and foundations in the city took part, as well as all the art galleries, in an overall project called « Resonances ». Some were one-off shows like Lionel Stoccard in his studio, others were structured in the various spaces. The Bullukian Foundation, a delightful place in the place Bellecour at the heart of the city, although not very large, utilised its space to exhibit four very different artists : one South-African, one Lyonnais and two South-Americans. The overall project “Veduta” involved all the available public spaces, which were handed over to every form of imaginative art : music, theatre, architecture etc. This was also spread widely over the city and its surroundings. The MAC divided up its three floors into six distinct areas, each one give over to a specific artist-curator.
It is hard to single out particular works as the whole object was that everyone collaborated : artists and public alike.
However, to my mind one of the most exceptional moments is the show in the Musée des Beaux Arts : entitled « Ainsi soit-il », it is organised in conjunction with Antoine de Galbert. The latter is a passionate collector, who has opened a foundation in Paris (La Maison Rouge) and he has produced an excellent exhibition, where sixty artists from his own collection are « in resonance » with seven works taken from the museum’s collections - the result is deeply satisfying and most unusual. The overall theme might be deemed to be an approach to life and death, wherein we find Boltanski echoed by a medieval panel from the 15th century. Antoine de Galbert himself describes the show as an approach to belief : « not necessarily a belief in any one religion, but a belief for example in art …Géricault can have a dialogue with Arnulf Rainer or François Morellet. I did not want to give the impression that I was appropriating the museum’s own works, which is why I have shown a lot of photographs or small works, as well as installations to provide an authentic dialogue. »
To sum up, Lyon is as energetic as ever on the cultural front. This week the famous Fête de la Lumière occurs on December 8th, when the whole city is illuminated – a tradition going back to the mid-nineteenth century when Lyon promised the Virgin Mary to light up the whole town if she spared them from an impending catastrophe. Since then every home lights a candle in the window on December 8, and for the past few years the city has turned into a gigantic display of lights : the buildings, the bridges, the river quays, even the park are illuminated. Many international artists are invited to come and carry out an ephemeral work of art.

Ann Cremin