Projection and discussion
Magic Moirés
01 Feb 2023
The event is over
For the publication of his latest work, Magic Moirés (éditions Macula, 2022), the Centre Pompidou is inviting art historian Arnauld Pierre for a session dedicated to the history of moiré in the context of artistic creation and its circulation through avant-garde and experimental films.
Arnauld Pierre's investigation, where art history meets cultural history, explores the porosity between scholarly, scientific and artistic culture. Adopting the format of the monograph on an abstract motif generally associated with optical and kinetic art, the historian re-evaluates the role of Gerald Oster (1918-1993), the artist, scientist and self-proclaimed "father of moiré", in the development of a motif that established itself as one of the visual markers of the 1960s.
Films projected:
Oskar Fischinger, Spirals, 1924-26, 35mm, black and white, silent, 3 min
Jordan Belson, Allures, 1961, 16mm, colour, sound, 7 min 17 s
John Whitney, Permutations, 1968, film 16mm, colour, sound, 7 min 54 s
Scott Bartlett, Offon Re-Released, 1968, film 16mm, colour, sound, 9 min
John Gruenberger, Inflorescence, 1971, 16mm, colour, silent, 7 min
Stan VanDerBeek, Moirage, 1967, 16mm, colour, sound, 9 min 21s
Joost Rekveld, #11 Marey <-> Moiré, 1999, 35mm, colour, sound, 21 min
Since 2006, Arnauld Pierre is Professor of Contemporary Art History at Sorbonne University and a researcher at the Centre André Chastel in Paris. The author of many studies on eccentric forms of perception in optical and kinetic art, he has also curated the following exhibitions: "L’Œil moteur" (The Dynamic Eye, Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 2005), "Nicolas Schöffer" (LAM, Villeneuve-d’Ascq Museum of Contemporary Art, 2018), and "Victor Vasarely. Le partage des formes" (Victor Vasarely. Sharing Shapes. With Michel Gauthier, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2019). Among his many other publications, we find: Francis Picabia. La peinture sans aura (Francis Picabia. Painting without Aura. Gallimard, 2002), Calder. Mouvement et réalité (Calder. Movement and Reality. Hazan, 2009), and Maternités cosmiques. La recherche des origines, de Kupka à Kubrick (Cosmic Maternities. The Quest for Origins, from Kupka to Kubrick. Hazan, 2010).
Acknowledgements: Arnauld Pierre, Véronique Yersin and Yan Le Borgne (Éditions Macula), Light Cone (Paris), Lux (London) and The Film-makers’ Cooperative (New York). The copy of the film Allures by Jordan Belson comes from the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou.
When
7pm - 9pm
Where
Stan VanDerBeek, Moirage, 1967
© Courtesy Estate of Stan VanDerBeek