ANNETTE MESSAGER CONTINENTS NOIRS/BLACK CONTINENTS

STRASBOURG MUSEUM OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART 13 OCTOBER 2012 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

Press Contact - National and International

Press Contact - Regional

Heymann, Renoult Associées Sarah Heymann, Laurence Gillion, [email protected] Tel. +33/(0)1 44 61 76 76 Download press kit and visuals at: www.heymann-renoult.com

Service communication des musées Julie Barth [email protected] Tel. +33/(0)3 88 52 50 15 Download press kit and visuals at: www.musees.strasbourg.eu

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

1.

THE EXHIBITION

PAGE 2

2.

EXHIBITION LAYOUT

PAGE 3

3.

LIST OF WORKS

PAGE 4

4.

SELECTIVE LIST OF ANNETTE MESSAGER'S EXHIBITIONS

PAGE 5

5.

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

PAGE 8

6.

ARTIST'S BOOK

PAGE 10

7.

RELATED EVENTS

PAGE 12

8.

USEFUL INFORMATION

PAGE 14

9.

PRESS VISUAL

PAGE 15

1

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

1. The Exhibition The Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art is presenting, from 13 October 2012 to 3 February 2013, the first exhibition devoted devoted to this artist in a French museum since the big retrospective held in 2007 at the Centre Pompidou. Under the title Black Continents, the exhibition brings together works created between 2010 and 2012, most of which are being shown in public for the first time. Annette Messager, a major artist of the international contemporary scene born in 1943, represented France at the Venice Biennial in 2005, when she was awarded the Golden Lion. Since the beginning of the 1970s, Annette Messager has been producing original creations. Resembling collections of objects, homespun handiwork or children's games, they mix together different features such as photographs, drawings, embroidery, manufactured objects or stuffed animals. Her world, imbued with humour and showing a fascination for Art Brut, celebrates woman in the most commonplace aspects of her everyday life while, at the same time, like an ethnologist, she hunts down the world through its ultimate vestiges. From 2001, the artist began creating large, gloomy installations powered by disturbing machines, portraying fragmented or dislocated bodies, metaphors of existential heartbreaks. They borrow from the worlds of theatre, expressionist cinema or the folk tale, as in Casino, a three-part installation created at the Venice Biennale, its guiding thread the puppet Pinocchio. In her most recent works, Annette Messager confronts us with a world of cataclysmic blackness, a world petrified or carbonized, an urban milieu left over from the ultimate burn-out, its miniaturised detritus floating, agglutinated into sorts of flying islands, or seeming to choke what is left of life on the planet earth. Distantly inspired by the world of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Annette Messager explores here the expressive registers of fantasy and science fiction, portraying the ills of the contemporary world in a kind of philosophical tale or political fable. Her serious intention is mitigated by her fondness for derision and playfulness, keeping terror at bay through evocations of the world of childhood. The exhibition layout, developed in close collaboration with the artist, includes around twenty works, three of them in large-scale format. Others, like the fishnet writing, sculptural objects and drawings, are smaller. Exhibition Curator: Joëlle Pijaudier-Cabot, Chief Heritage Curator, Director of the Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg

A. Messager , Le miroir aux alouettes, 2010 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/ New-York. Artist's collection ©photo : Marc Domage © ADAGP Paris 2012

2

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

2. Going round the exhibition I asked him if he thought the operator who controls these puppets should himself be a dancer or at least have some idea of beauty in the dance. He replied that if a job is technically easy it doesn't follow that it can be done entirely without sensitivity. Kleist, On the Marionnette Theatre, 1810 (tr. Idris Parry). Overture The visitor arriving at the museum is greeted by a strange host, a giant puppet buoyed up by a fan. It bangs against the walls of its prison, lurching back and forth in convulsive, anarchic spasms. Amused astonishment at this discovery soon gives way to a vague feeling of unease: these derisory struggles are those of a Kafkaesque hero reincarnated. The mood is set! Visit The visit to the exhibition is arranged in several sequences, like an unfolding narrative, the dramatic tension increasing as the spectator progresses. It opens with Motion-Emotion, 2011-2012, a large animated installation presented at the Paris Triennial. This is largely made up of clothing, plastic detritus and dangling puppets inflated and set in motion by the air coming from a battery of fans. From this simple device springs to life a strange, colourful saraband, at once joyous and discordant, evoking a disorientated feminine sensibility or the unbearable lightness of being. The disquieting effect of the work is alleviated by the artist’s spellbinding choreography and a few sly references: Marilyn Monroe’s dress flying up in The Seven Year Itch or Jarry’s farce Le Père Ubu. For the last ten years or so, Annette Messager’s work has been invaded by increasingly disturbing obsessions and existential tensions, which gradually give way to the light-hearted playful humour that from the start she has used in touching on the most sombre realities. With the Black Continents exhibition, this tendency becomes still more pronounced. We find ourselves embarked on a strange voyage into a science-fiction universe, an utterly black world from which emerge two large, highly theatrical installations, interspersed with works in smaller format. The material texture of words like Luck, Desire, or Jealousy, spelt out with nets, gives a powerful resonance to the emotions suggested. A set of drawings animated by words, paint drippings and black silhouettes conjures up shadowy swarmings. In playful derision, sculptural objects travesty the most banal aspects of the everyday, the better to pin it down (The 7 Brooms; The Operation). Black Continents, the work that gives its name to the exhibition, transports us into a petrified, carbonised world, a dire cityscape, survivor of the final burnout, volcanic eruption or nuclear explosion, its miniaturised residues floating overhead, agglutinated into sorts of flying islands, an echo of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In the midst of this upside-down world, the ineluctable passing of time is marked by three endlessly swinging light bulbs. The ominous, shapeless shadows they throw onto the walls turn the flying aggregates into monsters, their animal or mineral silhouettes arousing bewilderment and dread. The large installation Uncaptioned brings us once again into a carbonized world of miniaturized remains, here laid out on the floor. Simple yet enigmatic geometrical forms, architectural fragments, ordinary objects, abandoned toys, all in a black matt substance, invade and choke fragments of a fitfully breathing textile globe labouring to fill out its shape. In a decor recalling Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the shadow of a great clock derisorily ticks out the time over this frozen universe. But the solemnity of this scene and its implied terrors are distanced and, as it were, exorcised by the humour that, with her familiar playful spirit and tender, discordant poetry, the artist infuses into these big shipwrecked toys from the world of childhood. The exhibition closes on a melancholy image, an undulating wave made of transparent plastic film, like a gentle mist enfolding in its wake the residues of a lost world. By the end of this artistic promenade mingling science fiction and fantasy, we realize that Annette Messager has unfolded before our eyes a kind of philosophical tale or political fable. The spectacle is one of the ills of contemporary man and his deregulated world, alerting us to their vulnerability, showing us what is irremediable and, by the power of her images, inciting us to become aware.

3

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

3. List of works Motion-Emotion, 2011-2012 20 components, mixed techniques, fans, variable dimensions Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

Jealousy/Love, 2010 metal wire, black netting, 205 x 245 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection Just Married, 2011 brooms, white tulle, 190 x 110 x 34cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

Uncaptioned, 2012 various components, clock, cones, LED, rotating turntable, fabrics, fans, motors Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

The Exhibitionist, 2010 dummy, clothes, 12V motor, motion detector, 85 x 75 x 30 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

Decoy, 2010 three-sided mirror, two metallic birds, 31 x 50x 50 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

Bringing into Worlds, 2006 5 drawings on tracing paper, each 42 x 29, 5 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

The Big White Puppet, 2006 puppet, motor, 800 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection The Operation, 2011 fluffy toys, tools, 154 x 118 x 20 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

Desire, 2009 metal wire and black nets, 165 x 207 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

Mickey Astride the Mouse, 2011 2 objects in metallic paper, tools, 50 x 52 x 17 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

The Black Continents, 2012 19 wrapped components, halyards, variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

3 Squared Dissections, 2011/2012 3 fluffy toys, 5 retractable tape measures, 193 x 395 x 30 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

Luck, 2011 metal wire and black nets, 140 x 167 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection “Luck” Series, 2012 7 drawings on paper, 49 x 76 cm, 76 x 57 cm, 62,5 x 51 cm (4), 29 x 20 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

The 7 Brooms, 2011 7 brooms, 7 masks, 114 x 197 x 65 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

“Luck” Showcase, 2011 drawing under glass, 146 x 63 x 7 cm, Private collection, Luxemburg

The Little Series of Disasters, 2012 objects, fans, plastic film, variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

The Red Mask, 2011 Tutu, mixed techniques, 100 x 100 x 31 cm, Private collection

Showcase, 2011 drawing under glass, 175 x 58 x 14, 5 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

The Little Ballerina, 2011 Tutu, various materials, 50 x 10 x 80cm, Private collection

Showcase, 2011 drawing under glass, 140 x 38, 5 x 14, 5 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/New-York. Artist’s collection

4

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

4. Selective List of exhibitions by Annette Messager Annette Messager is a contemporary French visual and mixed media artist born on 30 November 1943 at Berck (Pas-de-Calais). In 1995 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the MoMA in New York co-organised the first big retrospective of her work. She took part in the Paris Biennial in 1977, in Documenta VI (1977), et XI (2002), the Sydney Biennial (1979, 1984 et 1990), the Venice Biennial (1980, 2003 and 2005), and the Lyon Contemporary Art Biennial in 2000. She was awarded the Golden Lion in 2005 at the Venice Biennial, where she represented France. Annette Messager has exhibition projects programmed for 2014, a retrospective at the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordheim-Westfalen in Dusseldorf and a personal exhibition at the Sydney Contemporary Art Museum. PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS 2012

Black Continents, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York City, USA

2011

Annette Messager, Antiguo Colegio San Ildefonso, Mexico City, Mexico

2010

Annette Messager, Marco, Museo de Arte contemporaneo, Monterrey, Mexique Annette Messager, Zacheta National Gallery, Varsovie, Pologne Annette Messager, Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscou, Russie Annette Messager, Museum of Photography/ Cultural Foundation Ekaterina, Moscou, Russie Annette Messager, Complexe Multimedia des Arts Actuels, Moscou, Russie

2009

The Messengers, Hayward Gallery, Londres, Grande-Bretagne Annette Messager, Galerie Marian Goodman, Paris, France

2008

Annette Messager, EMMA Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finlande; Annette Messager, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Corée du sud; Annette Messager, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japon

2007

Annette Messager, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

2006

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York City, USA

2004

Annette Messager – Sous Vent, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC, Paris, France Annette Messager – Between You and Me, Museet for Samtidskunst, Oslo, Norvège

2002

Hors-jeu, Musée des Beaux-arts, Nantes, France. Pudique, Publique, Palazzo delle Papesse, Centro de arte Contemporanea, Sienne, Italie.

2000

Le Retour d’Age de Repliquants, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, France

COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS EXHIBITIONS 2012

Intense Proximité, La Triennale, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France Les Maîtres du Désordre, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France Des Jouets et des Hommes, Helsinki Art Museum, Finlande ARTandPRESS, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Allemagne « Sous vent » dans la collection du K20 Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Allemagne

2011

Des Jouets et des Hommes, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris Unreal, Vancouver art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada This will have been, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, USA

5

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

2010

elles@centrepompidou, artistes femmes dans les collections du Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA Sexuality and Transcendence, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine Desire and Vice: The Seven Deadly Sins from Dürer to Nauman, Kunstmuseum Bern, Suisse

2009

Silences: Un propos de Marin Karmitz , Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg, France ; Museu Colecçao Berardo, Lisbonne, Portugal elles@centrepompidou , Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France The Puppet Show, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas; USA ; The Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA Ensemble, Le Consortium, Dijon, France LA FORCE DE L’ART 02, Grand Palais, Paris, France Soft Sculpture, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australie Parades and Processions: Here comes everybody, Parasol unit, Londres, Grande-Bretagne Libertad, Igualdad, Fraternidad (Freedom, Equality, Liberty), Sala De Exposiciones La Lonja, Zaragoza, Spain; Sala Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, Espagne Third Moscow Biennale, Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russie

2008

The Puppet Show, ICA, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Santa Monica, Museum of Art, Santa Monica, Californie; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas; The Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington

2007

WACK!, Art and the Feminist Revolution, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles; Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; PS 1, Long Island City, New York Mystic Truths, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, Nouvelle-Zélande Welcome Collection, Londres, Grande-Bretagne

2006

The Eighth Square: Gender, Life and Desire in the Visual Arts since 1960, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Allemagne Naissances, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France Smile Machines, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, Allemagne Collection Automne – Hiver, 2ème Partie, CAPC – Musée d’art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France Correspondance, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France La Force de l’art, Grand Palais, Paris, France ART FAB, la Femme, l’Art, l’Europe, Espace Rendez-vous des lices, le Lavoir Vasserot et la Citadelle, Saint Tropez, France

2005

Only Make-Believe: Ways of Playing, Compton Verney, Warwick, Grande-Bretagne Big Bang, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France Casino, 51st International Exhibition: Always a Little Further, La Biennale di Venezia, Italie At the Mercy of Others: The Politics of Care, Whitney Museum, New York, USA

2004

Un conte d’hiver, FRAC Limousin, Limoges, France Moving Pictures, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Espagne Annette Messager: Mes Petites Effigies Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris / Musée national du Moyen Age Termes de Cluny, Cluny, France The Joy of My Dreams, Seville International Biennial, Seville, Espagne

2003

Micropolitics III, Art & Everyday Life, 2001-1968, Espai d’Art Contemporain de Castelló, Espagne Phantom der Lust, Neue Galerie, Graz, Autriche Chimères, Sale des Expositions du Quai Antoine I, Monaco Yankee Remix, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, USA Skin Deep, Museo di Arte Modernae Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italie Les Spectres de l’Hospice Comtesse, Hospice Comtesse, Lille, France Utopia Station, Venice Biennale, Venise, Italie Utopia Station Poster Project, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Allemagne Gegenwärtig: Field Research, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Allemagne Not So Cute & Cuddly: Dolls & Stuffed Toys in Contemporary Art, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA

6

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

2002

Ars Photographica, Neues Museum Weserburg, Breme, Allemagne Aubes – Rêveries au bord de Victor Hugo, Maison de Victor Hugo, Paris, France Sacred & Profane, York City Art Gallery, York, Grande-Bretagne La part de l’autre, Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France. Documenta 11, Kassel, Allemagne Les années 70, l’art en cause. Musée d'Art Contemporain CAPC, Bordeaux, France

2001

Flash DVD Whitechapel Art Gallery, Londres, Grande-Bretagne Ma sorcière Bien Aimée, Musée d’Histoire de la Ville de Luxembourg Do it, Perth Festival, Perth, Australie Le BHV inspire les artistes, BHV, Paris, France In Between, Le Crestet, Centre d’art, Vaison La Romaine, France Sacred & Profane, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, Grande-Bretagne Mutations, Tokyo, Japon

2000

Zeitwenden, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Allemagne. Ich ist etwas Anderes, Kunstsammlung, Düsseldorf, Allemagne. La beauté, Palais des Papes, Avignon, France. Voilà, Le Monde dans la Tête, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France. Die Verletzte Diva, Galerie um Taxis, Palais, Innsbrück, Munich et Baden- Baden, Allemagne L’Empire du Temps – Mythes et créations, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France. Closer to one Another, Biennale de la Havane, La Havanne, Cuba. Présumé innocent, Capc-Musée d’Art contemporain, Bordeaux, France. Partage d’exotisme, Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, France. La romance digestive d’Annette Messager, restaurant Le Petit Saint-Benoît, Comité Saint-Germain-des-Près, Paris, France. Dire Aids, Palazzo della Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Turin, Italie. Arken - Museum for Moderne Kunst, Arken, Danemark. The Anagrammatical Boby, Karlsruhe ZKM, Karlsruhe, Allemagne. Biennale du livre d’artistes, Château de la Napoule, Mandelieu-la-Napoule, France.

A. Messager, L’Opération, 2011 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/ New-York. Artist's collection ©photo : Marc Domage © ADAGP Paris 2012

7

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

5. Selective Bibliography Monographs Bernadac M.-L. (sous la dir. de), Annette Messager. Mot pour mot, Dijon-Londres, Les Presses du réelViolette Limited, 2000. Grenier C., Annette Messager, Paris, Centre national des arts plastiques-Flammarion, coll. « la création contemporaine », 2001, rééditée en septembre 2012. General Works Carré J.-D., Annette Messager. Livres d’artistes et catalogues, Paris, Archives Librairies, 1995. Bradford T.-H., The Relation of American and French Feminism as seen in the Art of Annette Messager, Phd, Stade University of New York at Stony Brook, 2000. Grenier C., Annette Messager. Les pensionnaires, 1971-1972, Paris, Réunion des Musées nationaux, 2000. (Tiré à part de La revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, n°1, 2000, p. 77-82) Annette Messager, Badges, Edition Dilecta, octobre 2012 Catalogue of Personal Exhibitions Annette Messager collectionneuse, Paris, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1974 Annette Messager, Chimères 1982-1983, Marcadé B., Viéville D., Calais, Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle, 1983. Annette Messager. Les pièges à Chimère, Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1984. Annette Messager. Peindre. Photographier. Davvetas D., Nice, Direction des Musées de Nice-Galerie d’art contemporain, 1986. Annette Messager. Comédie-Tragédie. 1971-1989. Lemoine S, Semin D, Honnef K., Liu C., Vieville D., Metken S., Mascadé B., Grenoble, Musée de Peinture et de Sculpture de Grenoble, 1889. Annette Messager, Bush K., Salzbourg, Salzburger Kunstverein, 1992. Annette Messager, Telling Tales, Gourmelon M., Bristol, Anolfini, 1992. Annette Messager, Faire Parade, 1971-1995, Pagé S., Lebovici E., Vuarnet J.-N., Parents B., Bossé L., Storr R, Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Vielle de Paris, 1995. Annette Messager. Dépendance-Indépendance. Schlomoff J., Bordeaux, Capc-Musée d’Art contemporain, 1996. Annette Messager. Penetrations: A Survey of Recent Sculpture and Installation, New York Gagosian Gallery, 1997. Annette Messager. La procesion va por dentro, Diego E. de, Grenier C., Marcadé B., Messager A. et Villaespesa M., Madrid, Palacio de Velasquez, Museo nacional Centro de arte Reina Sofia, 1999. Annette Messager. Pudique, Publique, Vergine L. et Storr R., Sienne-Prato, Gli Ori, 2002. Annette Messager. Hors-jeu, Grenier C., Darrleussecq et Tossato G., Musée des Beaux-Arts/ Arles, Actes Sud, 2002. Annette Messager. Sous vent, Paris, Arc-Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Editions Xavier Barral-Paris musée, 2004. Annette Messager. Between You and Me, Jortveit A. K., Hansen V. W., Olson T., Oslo, Nasjonalmuseet, Museet for Samtidskunst, 2004. Annette Messager. Casino, Pagé S. Parent B., Arnault B., Kristeva J. et Semin D., Paris, Paris muséesXavier Barral, 2005 Annette Messager. Quartier de l’opéra, Le Pommeré M. et Mathieu C., Paris, Argol-Musée d’Orsay, Coll. « correspondance Musée d’Orsay, Art contemporain », n°10, 2006 Filmography Les Chimères d’Annette Messager, réal. Y. Brouty, 1983. Annette Messager, reine de la nuit, réal. P. Demontant, 1986. Les Trophées amoureux d’Annette Messager, réal. B.Cornand et P. Gautier, coll. « C’est comme ça », 3’09, 1987. Annette Messager, Centre d'art contemporain, Castres, 1988 La carte du tendre d'Annette Messager, réalisateur Michel Nuridsany, 1992 Annette Messager, Interview avec C. Grenier, Centre George-Pompidou., 14’, 1993. Féminin-Masculin, réal. Brigitte Cornand, 60’07, 1995. Dans les filets d’Annette Messager, réal. B. Cornand, prod. Canal+/Les films du siamois, 52’, 2001. Plaisir/déplaisir : le bestiaire amoureux d’Annette Messager, réal. H.-P. Schwerfel, prod. Artcore et Centre Pompidou, 52’, 2001. Casino, film de Gilles Coudert, 6 min, a.p.r.e.s production, 2005 (Biennale de Venise)

8

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

Artist’s Publications Mes clichés-témoins, Liège, Gallerie Yellow Now, 1973. Les approches, Hambourg, Lebeer-Hossman. 1973. Annette Messager- Kunstlerin ; Annette Messager-Sammlerin, Munich 1973. Annette Messager collectionneuse, Dudweiler Edition AQ, 1974. Les tortures volontaires par Annette Messager collectionneuse, Copenhague, Berg, 1974. La Femme… et Annette Messager truqueuse, Genève, Ecart, 1975. Ma collection d’expressions et d’attitudes diverses par Annette Message collectionneuse, Antibes, Antiquaruim, Sarrebruck et Arrocaria, 1975. Annette Messager truqueuse, Zagreb, Galerija, Suvremene, Umjetnosti, 1975. Mes jeux de mains par Annette Messager collectionneuse, Milan, Giancarlo Politi, 1976. Modelbilder, Bonn, Rheinisches Landemuseum, 1976. Ma collection de proverbes par Annette Messager collectionneuse, Milan, Giancarlo Politi, 1976. Mes enluminures, Dijon, Art&Art, 1988. Mes ouvrages, Arles, Actes Sud, 1989. La Feuille de route d’Annette Messager, Sommaire, n°22, Paris, 1993. A. Messager, Paris, Florence Loewy, 1995. (Affiche.) Annette Messager collectionneuse « Etat civil », Arles, Actes Sud, 2002. Continents noirs, Musées de Strasbourg, Paris, Xavier Barral, 2012. Livre d’artiste en collaboration avec Jean-Philippe Toussaint publié par le Library Council du MOMA de New York en 2013

A. Messager, Motion-Emotion, 2011-2012 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/ New-York. Artist's collection ©photo : Marc Domage © ADAGP Paris 2012

9

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

6. Artist's Book Annette Messager Continents noirs ISBN : 9782365110112 32 x 21 cm, bound 96 pages Price: approx. 39 € Éditions Xavier Barral Publisher’s introduction A major figure on the contemporary art scene, Annette Messager is presenting her most recent works in an exhibition entitled Black Continents at the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Autumn of 2012. While her work has always mingled playful and disturbing elements, these new pieces conjure up the tensions of today’s world, where time has run out of control. Tresses of hair waving in the breeze from a battery of fans, shoes left lying or small everyday objects covered in dark sheets of crumpled aluminium and scattered over the floor under a tarpaulin, mobile, dangling shapes, their movements those of a black, threatening mass, airborne and yet dreadfully ponderous, these installations and works oscillate between the monumental and the miniature. They arouse a sentiment of instability and fleetingness, and echo the tensions of today’s world. The ecological threats and disturbances of the present day are black continents revealed in her installations. Annette Messager’s most recent creations are traces or vestiges of an imaginary world whose disturbing implications plunge us into the mystery of their origins. The book gives us a series of views of recent works by Annette Messager, the reader moving among them like a spectator moving among the installations. The artist has asked the American writer Norman Spinrad to write a text on her recent work. Spinrad, a science-fiction writer depicts, in his novels and short stories, fantasy worlds that are drifting towards destruction. Norman Spinrad, born in New York on 15 September, 1940, is an American science fiction author of the New Wave, a movement that transformed American SF of the mid-to-late 1960s. He was made famous by books seen at the time as explosive, especially Bug Jack Barron and The Iron Dream. After living in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, he has been living for some years in Paris.

A. Messager, Série "Chance", 2012 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/ New-York. Artist's collection ©photo : Marc Domage © ADAGP Paris 2012

10

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

EXTRACT :

Does the artist have to be human? by Norman Spinrad The Pack Rat and the Bowerbird In the dry lands of the American West lives a rodent known as the “pack rat.” For reasons that seem to be motivated by neither nutrition nor safety, the pack rat gathers what to human eyes at least appears to be random bits of rubbish—bottle caps, empty cigarette packs, bits of broken glass, pieces of newspaper, whatever—and stores them as its “hoard” in its underground burrow. In the jungles of New Guinea and Australia live birds-of-paradise with spectacularly beautiful plumage, at least to human eyes, known as bowerbirds. Like the pack rat, the bowerbird gathers items off the forest floor, but these items—colorful pebbles, feathers, fallen fruits and flowers, and so forth—do not appear to be random bits of rubbish to human eyes, and certainly not to the bowerbird. The bowerbird arranges them in an obviously deliberate pattern, obviously deliberate because he spends considerable time, effort, and apparent esthetic consideration moving them around, changing the pattern, until he has finally created a “bower” that satisfies him. Since each collection of materials is different, each bowerbird bower is a unique creation. Only when his unique stage set has been created does the bowerbird begin his ritual mating dance before it, a performance designed to attract a mate. No one would deem the pack rat an artist. But by what human standard is the bowerbird not an artist? He has a specific goal, to attract a mate. He selects promising materials from his environment, and each bowerbird provides himself with a unique “palette.” With his chosen materials, he carefully creates an installation, a setting, according, he hopes, to an esthetic that will attract the desired audience for his dance. I would contend that the bowerbird is an artist by any meaningful definition. And I would contend that Annette Messager is a bowerbird. But a human bowerbird, who, unlike the bird whose choices of artistic materials are severely bounded by what is available in his limited jungle environment, her environment includes not only the biosphere, but the technosphere, the high culture sphere and the pop culture sphere, porn culture, comics, graffiti, her own child’s drawings, ordinary and mutated domestic items, photos, stuffed birds and animals, words themselves—the entire human environment, including what in other hands would otherwise be pieces of pack rat junk. And by opening her artistic palette so widely to everything that might attract her pack rat eye and imagination over more than three decades of an enormous and enormously varied body of work, Annette Messager has on the one hand expanded the possibilities of what can be art and contracted the definition of art to the bare-bones minimum: The deployment of physical material in a pattern with deliberate or even subconscious intent to produce some effect or range of effects in the consciousness of the beholder.

11

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

7. Related events (All events in French, unless mentioned otherwise) GUIDED VISITS From 14 October in French, Thursday at 12.30 pm and Sunday at 11 am Führungen in deutscher Sprache (in German) Saturday at 11 am, 20 October, 24 November, 8 December, 26 January AN HOUR, A WORK Friday 7 December Chance, 2011 or the role of the word in Annette Messager’s work ENCOUNTER Friday 18 January at 12.30 pm Exhibition visit with Annette Messager WORKSHOPS Looking at art Adult Workshop: “In the Nets of Annette Messager”, Wednesday 21 November from 2.30 pm to 5 pm Writing Workshops Poetical experiments on works displayed in the exhibition “She Steals Words”, Saturday 12 January at 10.30 am Subject to places available Tickets in advance from cash desk Workshop for 44-6 year olds Saturday 17 and 24 November and 1 December: “Gulliver’s Travels” Saturday 8, 15, 22 December: “Floating Dreams” Workshop for 88-12 year olds Saturday 17 and 24 November and 1 December: “Make your own puppet!” Workshop Cycle During the Autumn school holidays For 4-6 year olds: Tuesday 30 and Wednesday 31 October from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm “Shadow Plays” For 7-12 year olds: Tuesday 30 and Wednesday 31 October from 2.30 pm to 5 pm “In the Land of Dreams” FAMILY ACTIVITIES Sunday 25 November from 3 pm to 5 pm “I (un)stitch. You (un)stitch” From age 7 Subject to places available Tickets in advance from cash desk EVENTS Invented Visit A visit in sign language created by Levent Beskardes, actress and deaf artist, 20 January at 4 pm. All age levels, suitable for the deaf and hard of hearing MUSEUM AUDITORIUM For the duration of the exhibition, a programme involving several types of media presentation will be available in the Museum Auditorium. Radio: there have been numerous musical adaptations of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, one of the leitmotifs of the exhibition “Black Continents”. Serge Nigg’s version, for children’s choir and an ensemble of twelve instruments, is distinguished by having been adapted for radio with a text by Philippe Soupault. You can listen to this rarely heard piece, Gulliver’s Strange Adventure in Lilliput (1960), at a special evening session devoted to the exhibition. Visitors have only to close their eyes

12

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

for the world of Swift to appear, conjured up by Nigg’s bewitching score and mingling with d’Annette Messager’s strange visions. Film: documentaries by Brigitte Cornand and Heinz-Peter Schwerfel on Annette Messager’s creative processes, and great film classics linked to the exhibition and chosen by the artist herself, Lola Montes by Max Ophuls and La grande Illusion by Jean Renoir. MUSEUM LIBRARY For the duration of the exhibition, the Museum Library will be presenting two books by the artist: Annette Messager Mes dessins secrets, 1972-2011 76 drawings, variable dimensions Michèle Didier, 2011 Annette Messager Ma collection de champignons bons et de champignons mortels, 1973-2011 12 pages, 32X24 cm 2011, Michèle Didier LIBRAIRIE KLÉBER BOOKSHOP Meeting with the author Catherine Grenier, to mark the reissue of her book on Annette Messager. More information at: www.musees.strasbourg.eu MUSEUM EVENING OPENINGS For the first time, the Strasbourg Museums will be presenting “Ouverts la Nuit”, four evening openings taking place during the coming 2012-2013 season. Each of these evenings will focus on a particular exhibition, with special events including artistic interventions, visits, lectures, workshops, meetings with museum curators, exhibition curators etc. Our partnerships with other Strasbourg cultural institutions will ensure surprise encounters and exciting arts and heritage discoveries for a captivating evening experience. - MAMCS, MAMCS 26 October from 6 pm to 10 pm: in connection with the exhibition “Continents noirs” by Annette Messager

A. Messager , Les 7 balais, 2011 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris/ New-York. Artist's collection ©photo : Marc Domage © ADAGP Paris 2012

13

PRESS FILE “ANNETTE MESSAGER. BLACK CONTINENTS” MAMCS, 13 OCTOBER 20I2 – 3 FEBRUARY 2013

8. Useful Information Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain de la Ville de Strasbourg Location 1 place Hans Jean Arp, Strasbourg Tél. +33/(0)3 88 23 31 31 Tram: Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain. Opening Times Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm The exhibition and the museum are closed on Monday Special times are reserved for group visits organized by the Service Éducatif des Musées or by guides from the Strasbourg Office du Tourisme. Group visits Booking is essential for all groups of more than 10 people. Tel. +33/(0)3 88 88 50 50 (Monday to Friday, 8.30 am – 12.30 pm). Admission Standard admission: 7 € (reduced: 3 €). Admission free: - visitors under 18 - Carte Culture holders - Atout Voir holders - Museums Pass Musées holders - Édu’Pass holders - visitors with disabilities - art and art history students - persons seeking employment - social assistance recipients - badge-holding CUS employees Admission free to all: - the first Sunday in the month 1 day Pass: 10 €, reduced rate 5 €, (admission to all Strasbourg Museums and temporary exhibitions), 3 day Pass: 15 €, single rate (admission to all Strasbourg Museums and temporary exhibitions), Museums Pass Musées – 1 year, 230 museums: individual rate 76 €, family rate132 €

14