the Musée d’Art Moderne has invited Pierre Henry to hang some fifty previously unpublished works, under the title Autoportrait en 53 tableaux.
Inventor with Pierre Schaeffer of musique concrète in the early 1950s, French composer Pierre Henry (b. 1927, lives and works in Paris) is a world-renowned artist on the contemporary music scene. Since 1971, ARC 2, the contemporary department of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, has been the venue for several of his creations. In 1976, for example, Pierre Henry performed a series of twelve concerts of electroacoustic compositions in the museum’s auditorium, in a “Parcours-Cosmogonie”.
For over twenty years, Pierre Henry has been developing a singular plastic language in parallel with his sound work. In fact, the artist creates paintings, most often on wooden panels, which are made up of assemblages of composite and fragmented materials, in particular components from his now obsolete recording or mixing equipment. “I like to call these paintings ‘ concrete paintings‘,” the artist emphasizes. Hanging by himself in room 14bis, his paintings unfold in the form of a “visual score” synthesizing in five episodes the decisive chapters of his musical career and major collaborations with other creators such as choreographer Maurice Béjart (1927-2007).
In his own words, Pierre Henry “invites us to discover, outside the walls of his House of Sounds, this imaginary universe that extends his musical galaxy: a universe that mysteriously explores a new pictorial reality”.
Pierre Henry Self-portrait in 53 paintings at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris from June 27 to December 1, 2013
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