MAMAC Nice: House of the giants

(This article is written long time after the visit on May 2019)

As a keep-up-on-your-schedule kind of person, this random visit to MAMAC (Musée d'art Moderne et d'art Contemporain), Nice, France would be a big pay-off. I was walking out of a baroque church when I saw this grandeur power ranger-style building across the road. It turns out to be a museum, so I decided to walk in.

After purschasing the ticket, the first artwork you'd encounter was the mural painting by Tania Mouraud entitled "Melancholia-P-T1" (2016) that run the whole section of wall with black words, which could only be comfortable seen from a distance at certain angle.

The next hall hosts the temporary exhibition of Hippolyte Hentgen (duo artist), called "The Invisible Bikini". It displayed of paintings and installations of bodily world in much exaggerated size: cigars, hands, gloves, legs, breasts. The artists played with fantasy, creating avant-garde, cartoonish and pop works to encounter the visitors with the rethinking about body and stereotypes.

The second hall contained the temporary exhibition on the occassion of Nice Biennale 2019, displaying the op-art (optical). Here the fun part began. Across the room were various monochromatic installations of black and white with lights being reflected all over the places (I couldn't help to feel so connected). Also installed here were the optical illusion works, kinetic pins and loud banging sounds from the mechanisms. Not only look futuristic (even though they were executed a century ago), we were as if brought into the world of James Bond or MIB. The op art also further extended to the fashion world. Here, displayed some fashion designs made of aluminium; imagine how they glow up while being hit by the spotlights all over the catwalk. To make you cringe (and appreciate) the art of making art, you could watch the documentary on how the 'clothes' were put on to the models; some even cried loudly when the sharp edges of the aluminium scratched through their skin right before the showtime.

The next section (permanent?) was dedicated to the development of pop art and new realism. The earlier is the term in America, while the latter is used for the European counterpart. You could find Andy Warhol's "Diamond Dust Shoes" (1980), as well as Arman's "Poubelle de Warhol" (1969) and "Le Village de Grand Mere" (1962). Arman is famous for his installation of everything and anything being put inside a plexiglass. Also not to be missed is the manifesto "Déclaration constitutive du Nouveau Réalisme, 27 Octobre 1960" signed by 9 artists, including Yves Klein and Arman.

Among many other interesting sections here, there are two particular halls dedicated to two French modern art giants: Niki de Saint Phalle and Yves Klein.

Niki de Saint Phalle is a prominent artist with her momentous artworks that (mostly) expressed from an emotion: anger. She executed everything inside her head through anything she could find around. The works also stem from feminism, rage of past memories, critics towards patriarchial institution like the Church and her determination of liberation. For many people, the first encounter with her work might generate an uneasy sensation, but when we associate those deeply into our narrative, they become the representation of our deep memoric emotions, from which we would behave more sympathetically.

Yves Klein is more notoriously known from his works on monochromatic ultramarine blue, the new pigment later called IKB (International Klein Blue). From the painting to the sculptures, he executed them with "his" color. He also explored the body using his pigment to make anthropometries artworks: naked models covered in pigment crawled or dragged across a piece of clothes, producing an abstract look.

There are still many artworks you can explore, like typical contemporart arts, try to engage your experience and challenging your mindset. One of my favorite pieces is "Rampe Schoeller" (1964) by Robert Malaval, the handrail made of casted hands which produce a surrealist sensation. It's so regretful that I don't have much time to connect more intensely with the artworks and examine the exhibition in detail. If you happen to be visiting MAMAC, allocate at least two hours to wander around their special collections and both gardens outside the main building and on the rooftop. Totally worth it!