Annette Messager at the Pompidou

New exhibit of Annette Messager's work at the Pompidou




Also a great interview with the Journal of Contemporary Art:

I think that when an artist sees an object, he sees an object that is loaded symbolically but he also sees it visually, formally. In those little bottles, what I am interested in is the bad quality of plastic, the small image with the drawing, the very bright colors. It is a mixture of this strong sentimental side and the visual side. In my work there are always these two elements, and I wonder if this is not opposed to minimalist American Art. I would never make a piece solely for its visual aspect. When Americans look at my work, they are interested in the formal aspects. This is very important. Unfortunately in France the formal aspect often goes overlooked, we are not visual enough, above all we seek out psychoanalytic reasons, literary sources ... which I also find to be a big problem. In Europe we have the weight of the past on us, which makes us much less direct than Americans who seem to always produce a kind of "new art" without history. Just like with feminism, it is unable to be dogmatic and pure like in the United States, precisely because of this past ...