Where the Wild Things Roam César: Une Histoire Méditerranéenne at the Museum of Mohammed VI for Modern and Contemporary Arts (MMVI) in Rabat, Morocco

Where the Wild Things Roam

César: Une Histoire Méditerranéenne at the Museum of Mohammed VI for Modern and Contemporary Arts (MMVI) in Rabat, Morocco

December 9, 2015 to March 14, 2016

The main reason why I went to see César: A Mediterranean History (César: Une Histoire Méditerranéenne) at the Museum of Mohammed VI for Modern and Contemporary Arts in Rabat, Morocco (MMVI) is not just for the animal sculptures. It was primarily because of the Italian and French artist César Baldaccini’s (1921-98) compressed car pieces from the 1980s that are like the American artist John Angus Chamberlain’s artworks of the late 1950s to 1960s. Both artists’ sculptures created during nearly the same years can be interpreted to say that despite their everyday use, motorized vehicles are more than functional objects that enable and facilitate daily life of the twentieth century. They are more than icons of speed, contemporaneity, nationalism, and national identities. The exposition offers fresh ways to rethink the case studies of my forthcoming manuscript on automobile and truck decoration in Morocco, Pride of Place: Grassroots Expressions of Nationalism in Moroccan Cities and the Visual Vocabularies of Vehicle Decoration in Morocco (Bay House Publications) – in January or February. César, friend of architect Jean Nouvel and neighbor of Giacomo Giacometti, was best known for his flattened and squared compressions and fanciful to Dada-esque and Surrealistic if not downright Orwellian animal and figurative sculptures, in addition to creating the annual French film industry’s award named after him. 

However, César has more to offer than mediations upon the poetics of compression and definitions of New Realism (Nouveau Realisme). French critic Pierre Restany founded the anti-American Abstract Expressionist New Realist movement around 1960. Its original members include César and sculptor Marial Raysse, according to art historian Urszula Szulakowska in Alchemy in Contemporary Art (2011:53). Joining the movement were European artists Yves Klein, Arman, Fran?ois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jacques de la Villeglé, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Gérard Deschamps, according to the Centre Pompidou website on the art movement and wall text posted in the MMVI gallery. Additional influences are his former studio neighbor during the 40s, Giacometti, and the artists and writers who visited his studio: Picasso, Cocteau, Boris Vian, and Sartre.  One assumes that is Sartre was presence, so might have been his longtime lover, feminist author Simone de Beauvoir.

The retrospective at the MMVI spans over fifty years of the artist’s oeuvre and involves a veritable Who’s Who of the Moroccan and French art worlds. It is curated by Francis Briest, President of the Board of Surveillance and Strategy (Conseil de Surveillance et Strategy) for the Paris based Artcurial auction house and hosted by the new museum of modern and contemporary art bearing the King of Morocco’s name. It is sponsored by the Moroccan National Museums Foundation (Fondation Nationale des Musées) (FNM), the Belgian Fondation César, and Moroccan government owned Royal Air Maroc airlines. Atelier Hubert le Gall and Briest organized the sculptures thematically and chronologically inside the ground level gallery halls. The list of luminaries befits an artist who had a reputation for avid self-publicity.

A walk through each of the seven rooms is a journey though Mediterranean and European art history. It is as if César decided after wandering through the Greco-Roman, Renaissance, Baroque, and Rodin sculpture rooms of the Louvre and Rodin Museum in Paris to answer queries asked and answered by British Pop Art artist Richard Hamilton, who is also of César’s generation. Hamilton asked the questions with his collages Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different? (1956 and 1992). They are nearly the same series of questions I asked Berkeley City College students each term:  what is the popular visual vocabulary of a particular time and place? What images that we usually see in print and televised media, for example find their way into fine art? What are the layers of meaning a certain motif, subject matter, or object acquires over time and space, especially as it travels between the worlds of popular and fine art and ancient artefacts? Finally, how might one convey the same or similar messages of previous artists’ and artworks today given innovations in materials – industrial metals and packaging in César’s case -- and our current visual language(s) and literacies?  The questions are underpinned by Roland Barthes’ contemplations of how the visual world conveys meaning and to whom or, in short, the essentials of visual literacy in his 1964 essay “Rhetoric of the Image.”

One finds in the MMVI hosted César retrospective themes, motifs, and treatment of them that characterize Pre-Historic to mid-twentieth century modern sculptures like one might find in museums, only many of César’s pieces are rendered uncannily large or small and in materials and techniques that often more characterize his generation than previous, with some exceptions for the cast pieces insofar as techniques. Another way of describing César’s art is to note that he tends to play it safe, so to write, exploring familiar subject matter with updated forms. By playing it safe, he also creates bridges between cultures, examining not just timeless but cross cultural themes, like conceptions of women, humanity, life, the absurd, dreamworlds or memory, the subconscious, and death. By examining these concepts, among others, and by incorporating motifs and techniques found throughout the history of art history and popular visual cultures, César ultimately presents a large portion of the canon of art history and provides viewers broader art historical contexts in which to appreciate contemporary Moroccan artwork displayed upstairs at the MMVI and elsewhere around Rabat.

Modern and contemporary artwork in Morocco, especially of artists from the Casablanca School of Beaux-Arts is characterized by the inclusion of motifs, materials, and ways of working them from Morocco’s unique blend of visual cultures. The mix includes Amazigh to Arab and Pre-Historic, Phoenician, Roman, Hispanic, and Islamic. The upstairs and basement galleries of the MMVI have two and three dimensional pieces of artists who popularized the trend of mining the visual vocabularies of North Africa for contemporary pieces. Artists include Farid Belkahia, Malika Agueznay, and Jilali Gharbaoui and Aziz Sayed, among many others who were active and or teaching during the 50s and 60s.  The pieces are among the remnants of the 1914-2014, 100 Years of Creation (1914-2014, Cent ans de Création) MMVI inaugural show. Yet additional paintings, prints, and sculptures are housed in the nearby Bank al-Magrhib and Villa des Arts, Rabat collections, including works by Fatna Gabouri (Gbouri in Dounia Benqassem’s 2010 Dictionnaire des Artistes Contemporains du Maroc), Fatima Hassan,  Mohamed Ben Allal, Ahmed and Fatima Louardiri, and, later in the twentieth century, Mohammed Nabili and Mohamed Mourabiti. These are but a few of the artists one could mention who incorporate motifs from carpets, woodworking, and architectural decoration seen in the so-called ethnographic and archeological museums and monuments throughout Morocco. In other words, César: Une Histoire Méditerranéenne gives visitors the opportunity to see how Moroccan modern and contemporary artists are part of a larger continuum of art history, recognizing, taking inspiration from, or rejecting symbols of the past like other artists of the mid to late twentieth century. César’s artwork, therefore, presents comparisons and companion pieces to Moroccan modern and contemporary art and new ways to appreciate it from a global perspective. Finally, the MMVI retrospective offers opportunities to see in one show César’s sculptures or reproductions of them. Some of the works are in collections from Hong Kong (The Flying Frenchman [1992]) and France (Le Centaure in St-Germain-des-Pres and Le Pouce in La Défense, Paris).

In the first room of the MMVI retrospective, Women, Eternal Subject (La Femme, Thème éternel), has César’s nude, usually larger than life statues that formalistically and thematically call to mind ancient and to modern sculptures one might find wandering through museums of major European cities, like Paris where César trained. Examples include the works of Fernand Léger to the Hellenistic Venus de Milo and Nike of Samothrace. For César, the women become comparatively more stylized than idealistic figures, such as in his La Vénus de Villetaneuse (1962) Most of the artwork in this room is from the 1960s. The artist is especially inspired by the 25,000 year old fertility and mother goddess cult figure, the so-called Venus or Woman of Willendorf (Vénus de Willendorf) in the Natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria. It is interesting to note the state of the women’s rights and feminist, or, rather the neofeminist movement at this time in French history. Simone de Beauvoir published the Second Sex in 1948, around the time César was spying upon the salons and parties in Giacometti’s studio.

According to the wall text, César celebrates the female form and fecundity. The theme may seem a less than revolutionary subject to nonMoroccan visitors today.  However, in Morocco it is comparatively rare to find expositions of nude figures in either two or three dimensional formats, except perhaps at the Museum of Archeology. Viewing nude artwork in major Moroccan museums, especially of contemporary art, is still rare and controversial, especially at the museum bearing the current king of Morocco’s name. Over the past few years, I have had more than one artist in the Moroccan art world verbally warn me about the difficulties of finding galleries to show nude forms.  The June 2012 edition of the journal Actuel asked readers to contemplate “why is one afraid of the body,” placing a daringly nude female on its cover, which was publically displayed in journal vendors’ shops on Avenue Mohammed V in Rabat. Moroccan artist Fatima Mazmouz who explores the female pregnant form in photographs shows her most realistic renderings of the body in private galleries, like La Kulte, with her show SUPER OUM (March 2014 to May 2014), a series of photograph that almost calls to mind Demi Moore’s iconic 1991 Vanity Fair cover in which she posed facing us and looking the viewer directly in the eye almost like a bolder version of the late fifteenth century Northern Renaissance artist Hans Memling’s Eve minus the fruit and leaf. Mazmouz’s less overtly confrontational pieces are shown in the MMVI, instead. The César retrospective also comes on the heels of young girls being harassed and even arrested for wearing what is considered too short of skirts, prompting some to wear miniskirts in public on purpose as a political statement, a phenomenon covered in the July 2015 edition of Jeune Afrique. Male and female harassment is also a theme covered in the Modern Morocco (La Maroc Contemporain) show at the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris, France, the 2014 Marrakesh Biennale, and the MMVI during 2014-15. Artists and artworks include Nadia Bensallam 2 min 45 a Marrakech (2011) and Randa Maroufi Sans Titre (2013) series.  One wonders if the César retrospective will open opportunities for other Moroccan artists working with the poetics of the unclothed body and encourage discussions regarding when rendering the nude male or female form is exploitative or empowering.  

In the second room are César’s The Work of Autoportraits (Le Travail des Autoportraits) from the 1970s and later inspired by Northern European Renaissance era still life or vanitas artwork in which a series of objects are typically realistically depicted in two dimensional painting as a means of symbolizing a particular identity, concept, or belief. What is often conveyed is the fragility and transitory nature of life. The tradition was continued in the 1970s by artists like Audrey Flack and Amalia Mesa-Bains, who, like folk Chicano artists, create ofrendas or home altars as a way of venerating ancestors, marking time, and tracing personal histories. Pictorial versions of the ofrendas were also famously created by Frida Kahlo in her series of self- portraits.

Like the offrendas, César renders his vanitas in three dimensional form, only as solid pieces in cast metal. César incorporates classical vanitas objects with contemporary items that speak of the artist’s time, place, and identity. In this room, one finds César’s bronze Le Centaure (1983), a creature part man, part horse, part curio-cabinet, complete with a sea shell or palmette of Moroccan architectural decoration on his head and cyborg-like body/machine comprised of screws and gears, among other industrial items. A live bird is perched on his upraised hand. In Dutch Renaissance art, the shell, which was an expensive luxury item in its day, is used to symbolize wealthy, vanity, and indulgence, according to Levin Rodriguez (2012). The bird references sex (R. H. Fuchs 1978: 54, 44, 45). The machinery that comprises the arms and torso almost begs viewers to contemplate where the man begins and the machine ends, for the legs of Le Centaure are like a human’s but the upper part, particularly the face, is in transition. Other momento mori references in the vanitas room at the MMVI are death masks mounted on pedestals with facial features partially or totally obliterated like they were excavated from Egyptian, Mycenaean, Greco-Roman, or similarly ancient tombs, or the penultimate memento mori symbol, skulls that seemingly communicate with each other in silent conversation.

Le Centaure is similar to a sculpture from the 100 Years collection, Bouba’s Le Centaure (2000), in which the lower part is part motorbike and the upper, a man abstracted and disappearing in apparent movement. Like César, Bouba fuses a main mode of transportation, the scooters or motos used by many Moroccans, with the body of a man that curls out from the moto, hand reaching to his face or forehead almost as though he is in the throes of birth and becoming, if not disappearing altogether, as the machine is more solid than the porous human. In this sculpture, Bouba, like César creates a cyborg almost like those celebrated in movies from Blade Runner (1982) and the Terminator (1984) to Star Wars (1977-2015) and the Matrix (1999).

In the third room, the Gallery of the Imaginary Museum of Natural History (Galerie du Musée Imaginaire d’Histoire Naturelle), César turns to Primitivist subjects famously explored by Picasso. He creates relatively small fanciful versions of  insects, some “African,” and other creatures that would be at home in the Los Angeles, California Museum of Jurassic Technology, save for the artists’ seemingly unreflexive choice to not examine what some might characterize as the ethnocentric roots of his adoption and interpretation of African art forms. The choice presents another way César might be compared to Picasso and how both might be criticized by James Clifford much like he comments upon the Paris Quai Branly Museum as an archive of the “Other” that perpetuates stereotypes in a 2007 edition of October.

However, is there another way to see the objects? Are they César’s tongue-in-cheek reference to the imagined inscrutable and savage visions of African Continent and, therefore, a send-up of representations of Africa in art and western culture? Might César be using the diminutive sculptures to poke fun at sentiments behind the media frenzy over the killer Africanized bees, for example, the same and similar sentiments that ultimately led to 1970s movies like The Savage Bees (1976), Killer Bees (1974), and The Swarm (1978). Though a bit early for the AIDS crisis, might he also be poking fun at the idea that diseases originate in Africa? Perhaps the sentiment underlay some of his fascination with real and mythological beings and natural history museums. Most of his sculptures from his insect series are created with reused iron pieces from the 1950s, such as Le Scorpion (1954) and Galactic Insect (1956) housed at MoMA.  

The artist was happy to use scrap iron at the time, since it was inexpensive. However the choice also announces César’s Picasso and Man Ray-esque obsessions with man-made found objects – what some writers have called urban and street detritus or junk. César began his career using plaster and during his artistic career sculpted in lead, wire, ceramic, among countless other materials, according to his December 18, 1998 obituary by Alan Riding in the New York Times. In each case, it is as if César additionally recognizes how a city and civilization are comprised of both organic and mechanical objects, especially during the twentieth century, and then he seeks to represent each while simultaneously blurring the line between them, as one might expect from an artist whose career matured as vehicle and appliance ownership and the electrical infrastructure and transportation networks expanded exponentially.

The insect part of the exposition, one of several bestiary themes he explored during his lifetime, has fewer comparisons in contemporary Moroccan examples. In the Moroccan context, two-dimensional representations of Moroccan spirits, the relatively more sober representations of djoun, in the Surreal or Onirism section in the MMVI or perhaps Abderrahim Yamou’s Venus fly-trap like vegetal creations, like Amas bleus (2012) and Max Boufathal’s stylized metal wire jackal, The Challengor (2014) in the Paris Modern Morocco show at the IMA, are the closest one comes to this part of César’s oeuvre.

Rooms four and five, The Work of the Material (Le Travail de la Matière) and The Skating Hens (Les Poules Patineuses), contain a collection of his part human, animal, and mythological creatures as cyborgs that show the artist again probing the dividing points between natural organisms and machines, and, thus, the place and definitions of life and humanity in our most recent industrial revolutions and urban settings. One might also think of his work in these sections like his insects:  precursors to Guillermo del Toro’s magic realist films, such as Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).  The revolutions are suggested by César’s choice of materials which, even if made by happenstance or for cost’s sake reasons, nonetheless connote mid-twentieth century modernity and its cultural baggage. Connotations are made through choices of material, such as iron and metals normally used in construction and machinery. Connotations are also made through choices in form, including square bars, nuts, bolts, pulleys, and gears not always twisted and molded into representational shapes as often as assembled into montage or Frankenstein-like creations with the occasional stylized to quasi-realistic beak or human appendage peeping out from the assemblages. The results are crosses between factory mechanisms, heroic scale Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, Italian Renaissance era saints, and sixteenth century Northern Renaissance renderings of humans composed of organisms and objects famously depicted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Another way of describing the results is that they are sculptures rendered in an industrial dreamlike fashion with the fruits of the industrial age forming the bones, muscle, and skin of figural representations. Instead of winged feet and feathered appendages, for example, statues stand precariously on roller-skates while flapping wings that look like a collection of roofing slabs, as one sees on the icon of the exposition, La Rambaud (1990). It is a reference, perhaps, to the many French artists and writers with the name or, as claimed in the wall text, a childhood in the south of France. Some wall texts mention Richard Serra as an inspiration, especially for Fanny-Fanny (1991) made from recycled bronze pieces. Today, the hens can be read with another layer of meaning: references to the genetically engineered Frankenfood. Some figures also formalistically resemble crosses between the abstractions of Giacometti and classical sculptures with touches of the absurd and mythological conveyed by found object creations. On one wall of the room are a series of abstracted late 1950s cast metal plaques representing women, animals, and monuments, one of which is a reproduction of a Bank al-Maghrib owned artwork: Hommage à Eiffel (1984).

In the Moroccan art world, one can think of artists who also turn to industrial materials to create abstract assemblages, such as Mounir Fatmi like L’Année Zéro (2012), or the technological dreamscapes of Abdelha? Diouri, such as ArtClash (2002-15) in front of the National Library of Rabat (Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc [BNRM]). They, like César inherit the torch from Picasso and Marcel Duchamp.

In the last room, just before a small theater projecting a video of his ateliers, are the companions to his Expansions series, the Compression artworks, for which he may be best known since the 1960s. Pieces of cardboard boxes, glass Coca Cola bottles, and metal objects, like musical instruments, watering cans, and cars, are hydraulically crushed or melted. In one case, they form a French patriotic, tri-color reproduction of the flag in compressed bidons or large metal containers that might have once held oil or kerosene: Compression Fragonard (1984). The sculpture complements his patriotic stuffed square of the Moroccan flag, Portrait de compression de drapeaux marocains (date?), a piece that show organizer Artcurial sold for a record 169, 200 Euros in 2014 during a Paris auction, the very same in which artwork by A. Louardiri sold for 73,700 Euros, J. Gharbaoui for 41,500, and H. El Glaoui for 52,600. Before it was sold, Portrait de compression de drapeaux marocains was displayed – and its value affirmed if not also augmented -- in a group exposition called Morocco Spirit, 1874-2014 sponsored in part by Attijariwafa bank and held at the royal Fondation ONA sponsored Villa des Arts, Casablanca. It is one of several artworks in the 2015-16 MMVI César exposition that is borrowed from previous shows and auctions in Morocco and France, the significance of which is discussed below.

Outside the museum is an artwork created around the same time as his compression pieces: the bronze Le Pouce (1965), a large New Realistic representation of a thumb. The artwork simultaneously conjures the majesty evoked by of the Colossal Roman head of fourth century CE and representations of emperor Constantine and the Egyptian seated figures of Ramses II, in addition to the humor, whimsy, and effervescence of contemporary life captured in other Surrealistic artistic representations, like Red Grooms’, Jonathan Borofsky’s, and Claus Oldenburg’s sculptures in which the everyday and mundane are uncannily rendered in bright colors and heroic scale. Olmec heads from Mesoamerica also come to mind for this art historian. However, unlike the heads, the prehensile thumb seems to ask a viewer to consider our humanity by rendering larger than most humans are tall the tiny appendage that makes us not like most animals, except Primates. However, César may have also playfully referencing the French slang expression to give someone a boost or push to help get something started. Today, with our smartphones with Azerty or Qwerty keyboards, the title of the piece and celebration of the thumb has new meaning as another reference to the contemporary human condition and the frailty of our modes of communication that rely so greatly upon such a small appendage. In the Moroccan context, one thinks of representations of hands that signify protection, such as the iconic Farid Belkahia Main 1980, one of which is on second level of the MMVI and was part of the inaugural exposition.

In addition to providing a context in which to contemplate the contemporary Moroccan artwork in MMVI and IMA, César offers an interesting case study regarding how artists and art functions for auction houses, museums, and collectors, besides providing aesthetically pleasing or historically to cultural educational occasions.

For example, more than one piece is connected to an Artcurial auction. To refresh the readers’ memory, a senior member of the French auction house, Briest, organized the MMVI retrospective. Artcurial also hosted a 2012 auction of César Baldaccini’s work, an auction additionally co-organized by Briest, according to the program posted at https://www.artcurial.com/pdf/2012/2148-cesar.pdf . Even if I did not have a chance to read the wall text in the MMVI, I could have learned in the 2012 Artcurial auction catalogue that many of the sculptures in César’s the Women, Eternal Subject section were inspired by the Venus of Willendorf at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York and the Winged Victory (Nike) of Samothrace at the Louvre in Paris. The MMVI exposition has at least some of the pieces from the auction, or reproductions or versions of them, including Le Pouce (1993), Le Hollandais (1991), La Vénus de Villetaneuse (1962), Pompes de Claire (1987), La Rambaud (1990), and Compressional Murale Monaco (1994). In short, the retrospective in theme and contents organized César’s oeuvre similar to the Artcurial auction narratives.

The relationship may be too close for some visitors. While auction houses like most galleries are for-profit endeavors, the generally held (idealistic) belief among persons paying for museum tickets is that museums are responsible for educating rather than adding value to artwork for artists, owners, and auction houses, among others who benefit financially from owning, selling, and insuring the artwork, in addition to its display in an international show. Harsher critics may assert that the exposition of César’s work at the MMVI betrays the mission of a museum, especially the MMVI dedicated to education, per its inaugural press packet information. Others may question why it was decided to display Césear in Morocco. Answers might be found in the information concerning who owns the artwork on display or if it will be for sale, but even that is unclear. Besides the Banque al-Marghrib reference, many if not all of the wall texts mention “private collection” and “courtesy of the CESAR Fondation.” In the press packet, the CESAR Fondation is described as an initiative of Stéphanie Busuttil-Janssen, César’s last companion, who began the foundation in Bruxelles the same year as the auction.  One wonders if some of the pieces were displayed after being purchased in 2012 or after the 2014 Artcurial sale of his Portrait de compression de drapeaux marocains, or if they will be part of a future sale directed at the Moroccan market, which seems unusual. Perhaps it is part of a fundraising effort for the CESAR Fondation? All in all, while welcome, it is rather bizarre to have the retrospective in Rabat and one cannot help but wonder what the ulterior motives may be to warrant the cost and trouble of hosting it at the MMVI, which is relatively out-of-the-way for the global art market.

Though not unusual in the art world – one thinks of Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Bonhams with LACMA, the MET, and the Louvre, for example -- the close relationship between museum and auction house, especially before a potential sale, does not present the forthright image both institutions might wish to present to clients and customers. Some critics may even say it could be compared to insider trading in the financial world, while others may simply dismiss it as a type of publicity.  If Artcurial hosts another auction of the artists’ work in the future, one has to wonder if the MMVI show was staged as an attempt to add value and create publicity for the artist and sales of his artwork, perhaps like the Moroccan Spirit show before the sale of Portrait de compression de drapeaux marocains. However, the Artcurial website does not indicate any future auctions of the César Baldaccini’s work in their online database, at least at the time of writing this review in late December 2015 and early January 2016. Still, announcing that Artcurial was closely involved and also sold the artist’s work recently would have dispelled my initial misgivings regarding the close relationship.

There were a couple of other issues I would have liked to have seen addressed as I walked through the exposition. It seemed like a good opportunity to ask and answer what is an original? and what is a copy or part of the creation process, especially for metal sculptures? Some of the pieces appeared to be earlier, later, and/or miniature versions of sculptures in other collections, if not models for the larger pieces or versions of them as they were being created. They include the The Flying Frenchman, Le Centaure, and Le Pouce.  Foundries sometimes need more than one try to get things as an artist might prefer and artists make models and editions of artwork. Unfortunately, the differences between the objects on view and their Doppelg?ngers elsewhere was not explained resulting in a bit of confusion and a missed chance, in my opinion, to ruminate about conceptions and valuing of the unique in the art world, especially for cast metal pieces. It would have also afforded insight into the process and labor behind creating metal sculptures if the processes of each were noted regularily on the in-gallery texts. Especially helpful would have been insight into the casting sculptures, particularly how they necessitate collaborations with master artisans be the artist Moroccan or French. The chance to describe the various techniques of creating metal sculptures was also lost. To be fair, the film and photographs in the galleries partially filled the information gaps in the wall texts regarding how to create art objects. Still, I would have liked more information, especially given similar pieces upstairs in the MMVI or elsewhere in Rabat collections particularly of Moroccan artists like Malika Agueznay and Sahbi Chtioui at the nearly Credit Agricole gallery.

Additionally not addressed is an important teaching point about the art world in general: scandals involving art dealers selling fake César sculptures, including compression pieces, a story reported in Henry Samuel’s 2009 Telegraph article. Selling fakes are but one of the many ways in which art has become a part of criminal activities, including drug sales and money laundering, among other examples Scott Shifrel published in his September 21, 2015 New York Times article. A frank discussion like the J. Paul Getty created after a bronze purchase regarding when and what are fakes and reproductions and their nefarious uses would have additionally offered a significant teaching moment.

Despite the dropped discussions, so to write, there are many reasons to see César besides the Compression sculptures. I particularly enjoyed how the artist demonstrates what can happen when one hangs out in museums and how ancient art forms and themes, from prehistoric to classical can be significant in the twentieth century canon of art. I also enjoyed the quasi-bird, animal, and human figures revisioned in a steam-punk Surrealistic way that builds upon the richness of Rodin. Go to the MMVI to enjoy how César recreates natural forms in metal, pulling back the skin that hides the interworkings to reveal that his mythological creatures are cyborgs make of nuts, gears, pulleys, and bolts fused together into humorous and friendly yet uncannily animated ancestors to the creatures and monsters in more recent dystopian books and movies. Go to see his compression pieces that are like tombstones, demonstrating the tortured or decayed end of the objects’ lives while simultaneously memorializing them and their existence and function.

Author’s Biography

Colette Apelian (Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles) is an art and architectural historian based in Rabat, Morocco who writes about the histories of technology and modern and contemporary art and visual cultures of North Africa. She would like to thank the MMVI staff for providing her with a César press packet. Research for this article is noted by hotlinks in text. Also, for a brief biography of the artist, the author referenced Amis et Passionnées du Père-Lachaise at https://www.appl-lachaise.net/appl/article.php3?id_article=4332 . All opinions, errors, and comments are the author’s.