Spirit of Korea, Spirit of Paris : The Curator’s Eye

The curator's eye.

The essential tasks of a museum curator are to preserve, study, and enrich the collection for which he is responsible. To do this, it is imperative to learn how to see and educate one's eye. Images are essential to any art historian. From my teenage years onwards, I collected postcards, photographs, and clippings from sales catalogs in shoeboxes to build up a visual repertoire of the works of painters, draftsmen, sculptors, and architects of modern Europe (16th–18th centuries AD). These images were a source of learning for me and helped me exercise my memory. It was and still is necessary to review them and see the works and places they illustrate in order to immerse oneself in their characteristics. It is a long, constant, ongoing task, but it is the only way to better understand those who created them. A work of art requires careful viewing. The memory must be imbued with it. Only then will it be possible to identify the style and genius of a particular artist, to understand his technique, to grasp what makes him unique, what sets him apart from others. This knowledge acquired over the years undeniably influences the way I look at art and then, in a creative process, construct the image I want to convey of the work I am looking at. It then becomes a question of framing, lighting, color range, and the juxtaposition of forms that reflect a more personal perception of the work of art. I have been taking photographs for a long time. At first, they were intended for my visual repertoire. Then came the time to write books, where, in order to illustrate my point, it was necessary to use images to accompany my text and make it easier to understand. Framing then became very important. What should be shown, which element, which detail, which point of view, which perspective ? The way of looking at art suddenly became more original, because it was no longer enough to simply reproduce it in its entirety, instead, it was necessary to seek to understand and show what made it unique. This approach was initially applied to the architecture and decor of the Islamic world, particularly in Morocco. It has already given rise to two exhibitions in Marrakech, at the Badi Palace and the Mouassine Museum, where a selection of photographs revealed the beauty and secrets of Saadian art, which illuminated Morocco in the 16th century. Today, it leads me to compare images of Korean heritage with those of Parisian heritage. Surprisingly, while the two civilizations may at first glance seem so different, parallels can be drawn between the way a Buddhist temple or a Catholic church is vaulted, the way light is illustrated on a sculpture, or the way certain elements of architecture are rendered. The framing, the vanishing points, and the colors help to highlight these similarities and differences. All of them underscore the way in which the eye has been trained and has gained in originality in the representation of the place or object. Xavier Salmon