Eliasoph, Philip

English

Fairfield University: DigitalCommons@Fairfield

Fairfield University DigitalCommons@Fairfield Visual & Performing Arts Faculty Publications Visual & Performing Arts Department 2012 Serge Clement & Marina Kamena: 'Preserving Post-Modern Pop' Philip Eliasoph Fairfield University, pieliasoph@fairfield.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/visualandperformingarts-facultypubs Archived with permission from the publisher: Venu Magazine - All Rights Reserved http://venumagazine.com Repository Citation Eliasoph, Philip, "Serge Clement & Marina Kamena: 'Preserving Post-Modern Pop'" (2012). Visual & Performing Arts Faculty Publications. 23. https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/visualandperformingarts-facultypubs/23 Published Citation Eliasoph, Philip (2012). Serge Clement & Marina Kamena: 'Preserving Post-Modern Pop', VENU 13 May/June 2012, pp. 76-79. This item has been accepted for inclusion in DigitalCommons@Fairfield by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Fairfield. It is brought to you by DigitalCommons@Fairfield with permission from the rights-holder(s) and is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@fairfield.edu. CONTEMPORARY CULTUREMay/June_CT-NY Edition  $5.991377CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE76CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINEARTSerge Clement & Marina Kamena:'Preserving' Post-Modern Popby Philip Eliasoph, Senior Arts EditorE ntertaining a steady stream of creative colleagues, literary types, and loyal patrons at their Westport home-studio, the artistic duo of Serge Clem-ent and Marina Kamena are usually at the eye of a cultural hurricane. More like stop-ping in at a little thatched cottage village refuge out in the Loire valley, we enter an inimitably art salon milieu.   Unsuspecting first time diners think they are being well fed; veterans know they are  being gorged by an inexorably moveable feast of artistic abundance. Well after the vin rouge carafes have been emptied, we sneak down into the secret subterranean studio. Wonders continue – like peeking into the magical sets for Georges Melies  “Le Voyage dans Le Lune”  [recently revived in Scorsese’s award-winning “Hugo”],  It’s all intoxicatingly,  joy-ously, and deliciously :  à la française.   While hostess Marina [she’s from a  fam-ily displaced by Tito’s goon squads in the former Yugoslavia] ushers us around various gallery-like rooms, Serge dons his chefs apron finishing off his preparation of some bivalves.  He’s partial to pearl-like oysters prepared in the customary manner of Brittany which he attends while lording over various pots with simmering sauce for a succulently prepared lamb roast.   Let’s not be blasé. The fact that this  cosmopolitan couple also make head-spinning, jaw-dropping fine art completes this picture. We are not in the midst of those who either pose or propose to be artists. This is most definitely how artists live, think, imagine – and as a sideline, invent first-class gourmand delicacies. Arriving like Lafayette to help conquer  America’s hearts and minds, Clement & Ka-mena are a delightful, beguiling, and enchant-ing addition to our regional arts community.  With the diplomatic assistance of important local supporters, they made their trans-atlantic  passage, finding Westport in 2000 as their per-manent residence.   Two years earlier they created 10 perfect renderings as the sceneography for Charles Matton’s bio-pic on “Rembrandt.” With re-markable verisimilitude, they literally painted in the faces of the starring actors into the Rembrandt paintings as perfect matches. Yes they are a married couple. No, they won’t di-vulge who does what part of each art project. Secrets are kept for pillow-talk. No wonder New York Times art critic Grace Glueck opened her critique exclaiming “over the top we go” with these boundlessly imaginative artists. And just in time for the geraniums and hydrangeas to bloom in Con-necticut’s earthly paradise, they are opening their latest series: “The Jar Memory Project” at Southport Galleries for June and July.  Take a simple object – how about the generic trademark of the Mason Ball Jar.  Patented by the Philadelphia tinsmith, James Landis Mason in 1858 as a practical way for canning fresh foods. With its wide mouth, winter beets and summer strawberries could be safely ‘preserved’ in its tight, vacuum seal. Now add two masterful illusionists –the tag-team of C&K – into the mix, stir up the post-modern visual contexts and voila! Is it a double-entendre, sight gag or para-dox of what needs to be lovingly kept from spoilage in our contaminated, toxic world?  Abracadabra – it’s the history of art is transformed into a perfectly “preserved” set of iconic images flash frozen into their wildly creative original paintings and limited edition prints. If Andy Warhol could transform the banality of soup cans and detergent packages into “Pop” art, and Jeff Koons had the idea  of making plastic beach toys of lobsters into titanium sculptures, then C&K have pushed the post-modernist irony to its ultimate  extreme. Art History’s heavyweights are each playfully canned. Each jar is filled with the memories of Leonardo, Titian, El Greco,  Ingres, Picasso, Matisse, de Kooning, Pollock, Kahlo, Warhol and Lichtenstein and more. “We are attempting something more real, more intense than reality,” Marina explains. Quoting his Parisian comrades – Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, and Marc le Bot – Serge speaks in thickly layered Gallic metaphors. But art of this nature – ponder-ous, deliriously experimental, marvelously creative – needs no pretentious analysis.   In their crammed-packed, richly il-lustrated book, “The Joy of Art: A Creative Guide for Beginning Painters,” [Harry N. Abrams, 2000] C&K propel our vision from the primordial art of the caves to the sublime techniques of the Old Masters. Along this golden road, we learn from their notes and witty illustrations that all great art is com-prised of newly invented creative methods.   Studying one of my favorites from the “Jar Memory Project” is a floating nude torso in a sea of puffy clouds against a ceru-lean blue sky. It was painted by the Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte who noted: “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.” And for Serge Clement and Marina Kamena those mysteries are being tightly sealed with their unbelievably UN-canny appeal.~ INTERVIEW ~Venü - After a so long journey - with you coming together in life, marriage, and creativ-ity – what prompted you at this moment to create the “Jar Memory Project”?C&K - Painting was born 25,000 thousand years before writing and we can see it today on the cave’s walls of Chauvet, Lascaux, Al-tamira. Geology invented the first recipients containing human genius. Which words come to our mind then: Conservation, Preservation. A jar was there, on the table, and aroused our attention. The term Conservation suggests both the museum case and the grocery shelf. Preserving peas in a transparent glass could it be compared to preserving Mona Lisa? Are the caves the first “Jars”? Are the Met, the Reference Rene Magritte: Les Marches de L'eteReference Pisanello: Portrait of a PrincessReference Rubens: The Massacre of InnocentsReference Ingres: Le Bain Turc79CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINE78CONTEMPORARY CULTURE//MAGAZINETRAVELARTLouvre, the Prado and the Uffizi big “Jars”?                           A word can occasion laughter if it brings together the Wedding at Cana and green peas. Depicting words in the language of illusion using the painting becomes our chosen task.Venü - Let’s go back to the beginning.  Serge, tell us about your early life in Paris, what it was like training at l’Ecole des Arts Appliques and how did that initial philoso-phy guide the rest of your career?Serge - I remember the American soldiers  in the streets when I arrived in Paris in  1944. The following day, my mother brought me to the Louvre Museum. It was astounding.  I had no opinions, I was running to every painting, I loved them all. From that day,  I started drawing.  Then, in 1950, I was accepted to the School of Arts Appliques. Teachers were  all great masters. After a training course in each branch I chose the lacquer studio. With Jean Dunan, my teacher participated to the realization of the extraordinary lac-quers of the Normandie, still today regard-ed as the most beautiful boat ever built. She burned in the port of New York in 1941. The school was also organizing meetings with very famous artists: Raoul Dufy, Henri Mat-isse, Herbin, Jean Cocteau. Then I started to realize lacquer panels, lacquer screens, theater sets.Venü -  Now Marina, you met Serge at what point? And share with us about earliest inspi-rations and influences.Marina - We met in Paris at the Crazy Horse Saloon. Bunch of adolescents, friends of the owner's children was gathering there on  Saturday nights, there was all kind of beauti-ful performances. As a child, I have been a music lover.  At each special occasion, a friend of my father brought me magnificent classical re-cords whose covers and booklets were full of photos and illustrations. I was really en-tering the images while listening to music. Thanks to the Beatles, I discovered other exciting images when I was a teenager. In fact, later on, I made a number of covers for famous French singers to make a living. Three art shows knocked me down: Picasso in London, Francis Bacon and Giorgio Mo-randi in Paris. I decided I wanted to paint. Venü - And after you met, how did this col-laboration develop with four eyes, four hands, but one harmonious artistic vision? It’s a smooth dance as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers- or it is more a” push-pull “ struggle like most domestic couples? And how do we know who does what, it is your secret, or why is it not really an issue?C&K - It’s impossible to have a common  vision of the world and especially in the art field. If it were the case, boredom and sclerosis would have swiped us off. To live and paint in couple, it’s necessary to develop creativity day to day. Strategists who do not boost the game become soloists, “Separati in casa.” And being two, painting on a same canvas is neither new, neither peculiar, nor frustrating. Romanticism has created this idea of “lonely creator” in his ivory tower with his painful ego. No doubt there is complicity between Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in the miracle of their dancing. There is also complicity with four hands and six eyes [Think of the third eye].Venü - You two are often traveling between Paris and Connecticut on a regular basis. What do you think characterizes the French aesthetic impulse versus a distinctly American vision? Do you think you are transatlantic artists in that sense – taking the best of both worlds?C&K - Not sure that we can talk of French or American impulsion today. Any traveler will discover walls covered with same tags in New York or in Paris. Major part of contemporary museums is showing the same artists. Contem-porary art is global. Internet changes the deal, you can virtually visit shows in different muse-ums in the same time. In the Renaissance,  Venice school was very different from Florence or Rome, the distance from one another was important. Today, web erases distances. It does not change human condition though. What you are, where you are and what you have been taught is a particular cocktail. We think perhaps we would not have started this project in France, but we started it here.Venü - Of visual arts in our culture today. Would you care to explain how the contempo-rary art world – or parts of it – are very truthful about life today? And which part of the art scene do you reject as more commercial but less about artistic ideals or humanistic virtues?C&K - There has always been an art market. No art without art market. Stephen Jay  Gould told “Life emerged as soon as it has been possible”. Likewise for Contemporary Art. Contrary to its predecessor Modern  Art, Contemporary Art showed more  “Vouloir faire” [want to do] than “Savoir Faire” [know how to do]. – What is a visual art that says with vehe-mence what cannot be mastered in term of accomplishment.  In other words: Intentional argumentation is not enough to be  an artwork. – Is it easier to promote? Contemporary art is dressed in a commercial trademark label of secure value. Today, it seems that credo in investment takes advantage of intellectual and spiritual disarray arising in our world.Venü - Now let’s “ de-construct” the meaning of the “Jar Memory Project”.  Are these art works about imitating art or do they take on a new and wonderfully magical new levels of intentionality and purpose? Help us understand what these marvelous images – from Ingres to de Kooning- are all about.  C&K - We’re the witnesses and the actors  of a phenomenal consumption of visuals called “art”.  Depicting Pompei, Piero della Fran-cesca, Ingres, Picasso, Robert Ryman, in jars comes from a playful desire to make a break, a cheery confinement to an hysterical movement that has vocation of opening all the windows on the impenetrable mystery of a work of art. To this utopia, we propose another one, based on the words: conservation, memory, patrimo-ny. It confines, in the laps of an intermission, all possible works with no distinction of epoch or style. Our paintings are not imitations but quotations carefully painted. They take on a new visual aspect that our archival project  did not quite plan. Reference Christo: PseudoReference Lichtenstein: AlrightReference Vermeer: Young Girl With PearlsReference Magritte: La Grande Guerre“The Jar Memory Art History Project” will be shown from June 1 - July 31 at Southport Galleries, 330 Pequot Avenue, Southport, CT. For more info: www.southportgalleries.com

Serge Clement & Marina Kamena: \u27Preserving Post-Modern Pop\u27

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Serge Clement & Marina Kamena: \u27Preserving Post-Modern Pop\u27

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