ABSTRACTION AND CALLIGRAPHY (ENGLISH)

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The opening of this major international exhibition — the tenth since Louvre Abu Dhabi’s launch — marks more than a key moment in the museum’s history. In the wake of the challenges posed by the global pandemic, this exhibition also represents the new chapter unfolding in the Emirate, one of recovery and renewed revitalisation, which stands as a testament to Abu Dhabi’s ambition and resilience.

The COVID-19 crisis has taught us much about the value of adaptability and about how much we can achieve through collaboration. The museum’s teams have done a truly incredible job in establishing its collection online, in digitising its resources and in creating new content that can be accessed remotely. However, engaging with artworks in person is an unparalleled experience, not least for the emotional and intellectual reactions this can evoke.

“Abstraction and Calligraphy — Towards a Universal Language” is the product of the very highest standards of curation and in-depth academic research, and like all of Louvre Abu Dhabi’s international exhibitions, it is sure to have a global impact, not just in its valuable contribution to art history, but in reaching out to audiences that are new and increasingly diverse.

To stand before the wide array of artworks displayed in this exhibition is to be confronted with the long history of humanity’s desire to communicate, and to do so in a way that transcends geography, culture, ethnicity or religion — a desire that finds a contemporary echo in the mission of Louvre Abu Dhabi. Ever since the earliest forms of writing took shape on the cuneiform tablets of ancient Mesopotamia, pictograms, signs, lineaments and calligraphies have emerged as some of our purest forms of imaginative expression as well as a potent symbol of our creativity and ingenuity, second only to the power of the human voice. These artworks represent a universal celebration of non-verbal communication that help us make sense of the globalised world we live in today, through a pictorial language we can all understand.

This exhibition would not have been possible without the dedication, hard work and perseverance of my friends and colleagues in the museum, our esteemed French partner institutions and the Department of Culture and Tourism — Abu Dhabi. They all deserve our unreserved admiration and gratitude. The unwavering organisational support of France Muséums, which has been instrumental in helping us achieve our vision, is also wholeheartedly appreciated.

I would like to express particular gratitude to the show’s curator, Didier Ottinger, and to Centre Pompidou for making this exhibition possible and for enabling us to share some of the most important concepts and moments in art history with our audiences here in the UAE.

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Since the opening of Louvre Abu Dhabi, all the exhibitions organised and produced with the support of partner French museums and France Muséums have been the result of a great deal of research and decentralisation, with the aim of staging unprecedented events that expand the universal narrative of the permanent galleries.

Following a crisis never experienced before by the world’s museums, we are particularly glad to see a continuation of the collective momentum essential for the organisation of events as inspiring as this exhibition, which inaugurates the new season at Louvre Abu Dhabi devoted to East–West cultural exchanges. The Centre Pompidou has always been a key partner of Louvre Abu Dhabi thanks to the quality of its loans to the permanent galleries and to its curatorship of exhibitions such as “Rendezvous in Paris: Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani & Co. (1900–1939)”, staged in 2019.

As a testament to the fascination of Western artists for ancient forms of writing, “Abstraction and Calligraphy — Towards a Universal Language” explores a new aspect of our common visual culture: the balance between image (picto) and writing (graphy) during the 20th century and in contemporary times. Through their individual journeys, artists such as Hans Hartung, Jackson Pollock, Henri Matisse and Joan Miró breathed new life into the calligraphic tradition. The exhibition also highlights the interest in calligraphy among artists from the very countries where this practice is a major form of cultural expression, such as the Franco-Tunisian eL Seed or the Pakistani Sanki King, who were both invited to create some monumental “calligraffiti” for the show.

The first exhibition to be staged since the temporary closure of the museum, “Abstraction and Calligraphy” thus brings together for the first time in Abu Dhabi a selection of one hundred major artworks from the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and other French and international institutions, such as The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation in New York.

We would like to commend the remarkable work done by curator Didier Ottinger, Deputy Director of Cultural Programming at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, assisted

by Marie Sarré, Associate Curator. Our warm thanks go to Serge Lasvignes, Chairman, Director and CEO of the Centre Pompidou, and to Bernard Blistène, Director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre de Création Industrielle, and their colleagues, as well as to the various teams of France Muséums and Louvre Abu Dhabi, all of whom have worked together to stage this beautiful exhibition.

At a time when everything that draws us closer together deserves to be cultivated, this exhibition bears witness to the importance of cultural exchanges in renewing our creative vision and invites us to take an open-minded view of art history.

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Foreword

Manuel Rabaté Director, Louvre Abu Dhabi

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It is with great pleasure that we present “Abstraction and Calligraphy — Towards a Universal Language” at Louvre Abu Dhabi, an exhibition that must surely count as one of our most eagerly anticipated given the disruption and uncertainty that resulted from the COVID-19 crisis and lasted throughout much of 2020. During the long period of lockdown and the museum’s temporary closure, the preparations for this show served not only as a much-needed distraction from the global pandemic but as a source of hope and a promise of better times ahead.

This exhibition explores the exchanges and commonalities between certain forms of Western modernism and contemporary practice alongside the traditional arts of the Far East, the Arabic language and the culture of Islam. In doing so, it not only examines currents in the history of art that consciously strive for the universal and the transcendent but also illustrates the museum’s unique curatorial focus and its role in exploring previously overlooked moments of cultural dialogue and intellectual exchange.

The curator of the exhibition, Didier Ottinger (Deputy Director, Cultural Programming, Musée National d’Art Moderne), has done an incredible job in selecting the artworks for this exquisite exhibition, which are not only truly global but range chronologically from ancient Egypt to the present moment. We are enormously grateful to him. We are also indebted to the lenders to this exhibition: Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Musée du Louvre, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Musée de Grenoble, Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Zentrum Paul Klee, The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, The PollockKrasner Foundation, Administration Jean Matisse, Musée Municipal de Saint-Germain-Laval, Galerie Michael Werner, Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Galerie Jacques Bailly, The McKee Gallery, Mona Hatoum Studio and noirmontartproduction. We are grateful, too, to the dozen French regional museums that house works from the Musée National d’Art Moderne, testifying to the importance of their deposits, for giving their support in the form of loans to the show. Finally, the importance of the contribution made by the teams at France Muséums and Louvre Abu Dhabi must be highlighted as it is they who have enabled us to present such a comprehensive and wide-ranging exhibition despite these challenging times.

Louvre Abu Dhabi has always dedicated itself to rethinking the museum for the 21st century, but the global pandemic has acted as both a lens through which we have reassessed our priorities and a powerful catalyst of change. Most importantly, it has encouraged us to develop new ways of communicating with our visitors and, as a result, we have digitised much of our content and made it available to an ever-wider audience.

I wish to assure our audience that this spirit of outreach and innovation will continue to guide our development and will remain an integral part of Louvre Abu Dhabi’s curatorial identity and intellectual DNA.

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Joan Miró Personnage, oiseau [Character, Bird], 1973

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Joan Miró Femme, oiseaux [Woman, Birds], 1976

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André Masson (1896–1987)

After studying painting at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in 1922 André Masson set up his studio in the French capital, in rue Blomet. As a result of meeting Joan Mirό and André Breton, he joined the newly formed Surrealist group in 1924. Influenced

by Freud’s studies of the unconscious mind, Masson produced his first “sand paintings” in 1926 in response to Breton’s advocacy, in the Surrealist Manifesto (1924), of “psychic automatism”.

His interest in Nietzsche, Sade and all things Dionysian, led Masson to Georges Bataille, who at this time was publishing the dissident review Documents, then to the review Acéphale, of which he was the sole illustrator. In 1940, Masson rejoined the Surrealist group in Marseille, then accompanied Breton to Martinique, before settling in the United States. There he first encountered the Chinese painting of the Song dynasty and found inspiration in its beauty and mysticism. The spontaneity of his works and automatic drawings had a lasting influence on the young American exponents of Abstract Expressionism.

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André Masson Les Villageois [The Villagers], [1927]

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Jean Dubuffet Donnée (H 36), 15 May 1984

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Jean Dubuffet Donnée (H 46), 21 May 1984

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Jean Dubuffet Donnée (Non-lieu H 57), 30 May 1984

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Jean Dubuffet Dramatique XVI (Non-lieu H 139), 30 August 1984

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Jean Dubuffet Idéoplasme XVI (Non-lieu L 20), 8 October 1984

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Jean Dubuffet Passe flux (Non-lieu L 50), 22 November 1984

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First published in 2021 by Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd Registered address: 27 Old Gloucester Street London WC1N 3AX UK www.scalapublishers.com This edition © Department of Culture & Tourism — Abu Dhabi, 2021 © France Muséums, 2021 © Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd, 2021 ISBN: 978-1-78551-352-7

Project co-ordinated by Laura Fox (Scala) Designed by Change is Good, Paris English translation by Simon Knight in association with First Edition Translations Ltd English editing by Robert Anderson in association with First Edition Translations Ltd Printed and bound in Italy 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers Ltd and France Muséums.

Every effort has been made to acknowledge correct copyright of images where applicable. Any errors or omissions are unintentional and should be notified to France Muséums, who will arrange for corrections to appear in any reprints.

Cover: Jean Dubuffet Donnée (Non-lieu H 10), 24 April 1984 (detail) Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas 68 × 100 cm Acceptance in Lieu, 1986 Paris, Centre Pompidou Musée National d’Art Moderne– Centre de Création Industrielle AM 1986-334

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