23/09/14
Daniel Buren: Comme Un Jeu d’Enfant
/ Like Child’s Play, Work In Situ
Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain
de Strasbourg
14 June 2014 – 4 January 2015
Admittedly, I don’t know what the
exterior of the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCS) looked like before
Daniel Buren (b1938) coloured its glass walls and 25-metre-high canopy with his
tinted films, but it is hard to imagine it now without this stained-glass
effect, sitting as well as it does on the Adrien Fainsilber building to the
edge of the picturesque Petite France quarter of Strasbourg, seat of the
European parliament. Reflecting the colours of the late summer flowers that
spill from the window boxes and over the edges of the nearby ponts couverts, they alter the interior
of the museum as much as they do its external appearance. Whichever gallery you
enter, both in the modern and contemporary permanent collections, there are few
corners in which you can stand where the dappling effect of pinks, blues and
yellows doesn’t fall across your feet, reminding you that the touchstone of all
art – of all visual perception – is colour.
“For me, colour is pure thought,
and therefore completely inexpressible, every bit as abstract as a mathematical
formula or a philosophical concept,” Buren once explained in an interview.
“Colour is a huge problem. It seems to me difficult to apply rules to it. Are
there any? At every moment, colour has to be invented. There are no safeguards.”
To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/daniel-buren-like-childs-play-work-in-situ-review-musee-d-art-moderne-strasbourg