Celebrate Ubuntu, in memory of Tutu
Desmond Tutu, who died on December 26, highlighted Ubuntu in the work of reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa. His granddaughter, Mungi Ngomane, has devoted a book to this Bantu philosophy which also inspired a Parisian exhibition, as part of the “Six continents or more” season: six exhibitions visible in one great and beautiful day at the Palais de Tokyo, whose season thus entitled illuminates our winter by “making humanity together” or by remembering that “I am because we are”. This is how the concept term “Ubuntu” can be interpreted, which inspired Marie-Ann Yemsi to this exhibition, subtitled “A lucid dream”, where Africa has pride of place. Fernando Pessoa’s sentence that the artist Joël Andrianomearisoa highlights from the facade of the palace – “Here, we carry all the dreams of the world” – gives the the of the remarkably scenographic journey of 19 artists inspired by the monumental installation by Serge Alain Nitegeka, paintings and works on paper by Kenyan Michael Armitage, the installation by Bili Bidjocka. And this is only the beginning of the exciting journey to take at the Museum of Modern Art.
READ ALSOWhen Desmond Tutu’s granddaughter deciphers “Ubuntu”
Six or more continents, Palais de Tokyo, until February 20, 2022 for: “Ubuntu, a lucid dream”. Aïda Bruyère, “Never again”. Jonathan Jones, “Untitled”. And until March 20, 2022: Sarah Maldoror: “Tricontinental Cinema”, Maxwell Alexandre: “New Power”, Jay Ramier: “Keep The Fyer Burning”.
Saying “wow” at the ephemeral Grand Palais reviewed by Anselm Kiefer
A journey through time, through the XXe century, a work on European memory, monumental, according to the habits of the German plastic artist, always as poetic as dark. Gigantic, too, these 19 canvases which take up all the space of the ephemeral Grand Palais signed by these words: “Für Paul Celan”. This global work by Anselm Kiefer is in fact dedicated to the author of the famous poem “Todesfuge” (“Fugue de mort”), written in 1945 after the liberation of the camps. Throughout his life, he sought to relay the testimony of the Shoah through his writings. It was Kiefer’s turn to be, for this staging, the “witness of the witness” of the one who, through his verses, feared the loss of reference points, the evaporation of the lessons of the XXe century. To discover absolutely.
Grand ephemeral Palace until January 11, 2022.
To live Parisian life under the sign of Lacroix
When Jacques Offenbach goes up Parisian lifeon October 31, 1866, the success of his play exceeded his expectations. Two weeks earlier, at the request of his comedians-singers, the composer had to hastily rewrite his score, because two of them were still looking for their notes and multiplying the hiccups. Tightened into four acts, instead of five initially, this operetta will be performed more than two hundred times until the summer of 1867. Between vaudeville and opéra-bouffe, Parisian life will be repeated in a score and a libretto still shortened of some fourteen arias, from 1873. It is a completely new version which is presented today on the stage of the theater of the Champs-Élysées. Nothing less than the original of this piece! Alexandre Dratwicki, scientific director of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, center dedicated to the study and the influence of the French musical heritage of the XIXe century, reconstructed (with Marie Humbert, Étienne Jardin and Sébastien Troester) Parisian life as it was to be created. The earthy staging of Christian Lacroix, who also signs the colorful costumes of the protagonists and the sets, takes us away from the torments of the time, in a whirlwind of colors and lightness welcome by the times. Champagne!
READ ALSOThe incredible story of “La Vie parisienne”
Parisian life,opéra-bouffe by Jacques Offenbach on a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Until January 9, at the Champs-Élysées theater: 15 avenue Montaigne, Paris 8e. Unpublished initial version reconstructed by the Palazzetto Bru Zane. Stage direction, sets, costumes: Christian Lacroix (assisted by Laurent Delvert and Romain Gilbert).
Playing with Philip Roth and Arnaud Desplechin
Based on an autobiographical and quite devious novel by Philip Roth (1990), an erotic, carnal camera, constructed in twelve chapters and filmed with elegance and sensuality by Arnaud Desplechin, who closely observes the amorous merry-go-round between a famous writer, the fifty, and his mistress who meet in secret in a London apartment that he rents and which he has made his office. Both talk a lot, make wild love, argue, patch things up. The whole is bathed in a literary, theatrical atmosphere, Denis Podalydès and Léa Seydoux make sparks under the eye of Desplechin / Roth who interweaves a series of conversations between this author and several women (Emmanuelle Devos), his wife (Anouk Grinberg) , his mistresses who inspired him. It is about the apprehension of age, adultery, women in general, the anti-Semitism of the English, exile, inspiration, fear of death. Brilliant.
Deception indoors.
Returning to Siberia with a cult book
The mythical hero, brought to the screen by Kurosawa, has been the subject of a great novel. Censored, the work finally emerges in its integral version, translated from Russian by Yves Gauthier, and we salute this monumental and inescapable Dersou Ouzala, signed by the adventurer and writer Vladimir Arseniev. The latter (born in 1872 in Saint Petersburg, a soldier who dreams only of travel, is granted, since transferred to the military district of Khabarovsk and attached to the office of reconnaissance missions: he will crisscross the wild lands and in particular the region of Ussuri, an area of approximately 215,000 square kilometers located in Siberia, where the Sikhote-Aline massif culminates. A wild region of incomparable richness, it attracts greed to the detriment of nature and indigenous populations, including the Nanai, a nomadic ethnic group from which the legendary Dersou Ouzala comes. Aged in his fifties, the latter lost his wife and children in an epidemic, like many members of his ethnic group, vulnerable to viruses from the West His path crossed that of Vladimir Arseniev in 1906. From their first hours together, around a campfire, he captivated him with the anecdotes he told him about his life as a wandering hunter, crossed by countless adventures. Ars eniev hires Dersou Ouzala, of whom he makes his guide, but above all his friend. The story of their companionship, which will last four years, is a sublime concentrate of adventures worthy of a western, of nature writing carried by a very beautiful tongue. Written between 1921 and 1926, Dersou Ouzala will nevertheless very soon be redacted from a good part of its volume. His criticism of the greed of the colonists who devastate nature and its inhabitants in the name of progress that leads Siberia to its doom is disturbing. It was not until 2007, and the meticulous work of Russian translators, to reconstruct the original version of the Dersou Ouzala. Here it is and it’s an event!
Dersou Ouzala by Vladimir Arseniev, translated from Russian by Yves Gauthier (Transboréal, 760 p., € 24.90).