Singapore's National Gallery unveils first international show with Paris' Centre Pompidou
SINGAPORE -- After two years of preparation, an ambitious cross-cultural modern art exhibition between Singapore and Paris' Centre Pompidou will open to the public later this week.
The curators of the National Gallery here and Centre Pompidou, which houses the largest modern art museum in Europe, will unveil the exhibition of works from European masters and famous Southeast Asian artists, which is displayed over a 20,000 square feet space across three galleries at the new National Gallery.
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Modern art describes a style of artistic expression that flourished between the mid-19th century and the 1970s, where artists were keen to produce newer and fresher ideas. And while most people regard it as a European phenomenon that others later imitated, the curators set the Southeast Asian pieces side-by-side with the European works, in hopes of demonstrating shared sentiments of artists across the oceans.
Eugene Tan, the director of the National Gallery, explained: "Modernity was something everyone experienced. We wanted to examine how artists represented changes in Southeast Asia too."
Lisa Horikawa, the museum's senior curator, added that there's an "implied hierarchy" in modern art, where European works are regarded as higher in value than those in Asia.
As a result, the exhibition pulled together 217 pieces of art by 51 artists -- half flown in from Centre Pompidou, and the others from the region. The curators had to secure loans from other galleries and private collectors too, for works such as "The Builders" by Filipino artist Victorio Edades and "The Politician" by Thailand's Sompot Upa-in.
These paintings are hung together with more broadly recognised names like Vassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall, to name a few.
The exhibition will run from Mar. 31 to Jul. 17 at the National Gallery's Singtel Special Exhibition Gallery on level 3.
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Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
