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Parkett is a contemporary art periodical published from 1984 until 2017 in Zurich and New York. It embodies both the end and the beginning of a story, that of recognition. As Diane Arbus expires, A box of ten photographs signals a revival. Sometimes the movements intensify to such an ultimate and radical degree that they end up turning in on themselves as if the end had its own beginning as an extension. There is the fading beauty of something that is in the twilight of its existence in this portfolio, this idea of an accomplishment and, therefore, of a completed cycle. Only four of eight portfolios were sold during Diane Arbus’s lifetime. It could have brought in some resources, asserted an influence on collections and institutions, and above all, established the equation of a style and a nuanced and complex thought. The virtue of this project was threefold. This box made of plexiglass by the artist Marvin Israel contained ten prints, each measuring 40 x 50 cm, that were supposed to sum up the author’s frontal, literal and ambiguous approach. Nevertheless, it was during this dark period, interspersed with a few interludes of light, that A box of ten photographs was conceived and was then priced at $1,000 each. Despite the prospect of exhibitions, including one at the Venice Biennale, a sense of dissatisfaction was overriding. In the early 1970s, Diane Arbus was going through a period of depression and great loneliness. It is simply impossible not to see in this ultimate selection of ten prints, the factual and dramatic shadow of a testament. It is, in fact, delicate to dissociate the biography of Diane Arbus, who ended her life in 1971, from this portfolio of ten photographs compiled shortly before her death. Compiled a posteriori, Cookie Mueller Portfolio is a heartbreaking testimony where life and death keep intertwining.Ī neutral reading of A box of ten photographs (1970) is a difficult thing to demand. Without really being aware of it, Nan Goldin put together a photographic collection in the form of a storyboard that marked the important moments of Cookie Mueller’s life until her death in 1989, only a year after she was diagnosed with HIV. As the terrible years of AIDS were unfolding, the two women had an intense relationship in the underground circles of New York of the 1970s and 1980s, sharing parties and drunkenness, loves and disappointments. It was impossible for Nan Goldin to overlook such a magnetism. They met in 1976, in the artistic communities of Provincetown, Massachusetts. This exuberant young woman, both muse, actress and poet, had decided to live unfettered like a heroine of a Beat Generation novel.
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Along her path, Cookie Mueller played a particular role, as recounted in the work Cookie Mueller Portfolio (1976 - 1989).Ī vibrant and captivating icon, Cookie Mueller was walking in equilibrium the tightrope of her own existence.
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In the manner of writers who take notes for future novels, Nan Goldin quickly seized the photographic medium to make an uninterrupted chronicle out of her life. In parallel, LUMA is honoured to host the personal and obsessive archives of Hans-Ulrich Obrist in the context of an inspiring and moving presentation dedicated to Édouard Glissant.
The body and the archive archive#
With this new type of exhibition, the intention is to revitalise the archive and to give it a special reach in which time, the objective ally of the archive, imbues contents that are often tragic with the soothing softness of a murmur, of a confession. Alongside these artists, the contemporary avant-garde magazine Parkett unveils its special relationship with the eclectic artist Sigmar Polke. In the wake of the 2017 exhibition Annie Leibovitz, The Early Years: 1970 - 1983, Archive Project # 1, the first exhibition of the Living Archives, The Hidden Side of the Archive offers an intimate and immersive dive into the works of Nan Goldin, Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz and Derek Jarman. The archive is then, beyond a memory, a mirror that is held up towards us. The challenge here is no longer to define or to demonstrate, but to feel. Testamentary wager, battle against finitude, testimony in extremis, rearrangement of time and other time related equations are all at the heart of The Hidden Side of the Archive, which invites us to put aside our habits of analytical reflection and instead embrace a perception that is both emotional and empathic. It can preserve, beyond its historical character, a trace that is still alive, like a radioactive particle travelling across time. At times, an archive that permanently enters into a repository perennially captures this reverse shot that is the life itself.