Page 45 - DIVA_3_2019

culture

Silences

at the Muse'e Rath
BY ROBERT JAMES PARSONS
from 14 June to 27 October

Imagine a world without sound recording. Going back to the Then we arrive at the Non-dit, the unsaid: among others,
days before even the first telephones and gramophones, there Felix Vallotton's spectacular "Hate a naked man and woman,
was the human voice as a means of transmission, but it was too furious to be able to speak (Adam and Eve upon their
even more fleeting than the body that bore it. For the long- expulsion from paradise?); the prodigal son welcomed back
term, the sole reliable repositories of memory were writing with a warmth and compassion that surpasses words; and
and imagery, all of which speak even though they are silent. Marguerite Burnat-Provins' beautiful self-portrait with her
index finger over her mouth, looking sideways over her
It is this silent witness of imagery, in particular painting and left shoulder. The section also includes a series of wood-
drawing, that we are invited to contemplate in this superb block prints by Vallotton, scenes where words would be
exhibit, Silences, presented at the Musée Rath by Geneva's Art superfluous.
History Museum.
"Sacred Silence" section four is full of saints, all in scenes
Upon entering the museum, one discovers that there is no where once again, words would be superfluous.
audio guide, only a white booklet with the title of the exhibit
on the cover in blurred gray (in French). "Vanity" is next and includes two photographs by Mat
Collishaw, "Last Meal on Death Row" from 2010 which
The exhibit is divided into sections, the first of which is contrast strikingly with the sumptuous still-life depictions
entitled "From Noise to Silence". We are confronted with a from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
video screen where we see a man conducting a symphony The vanity of it all, in the strict sense of the word built on vain
orchestra with no sound track, with a woman standing next (so important at the moment when the image was recorded,
to him, interpreting the music in sign language. The oddness yet so fleeting and now so lost) makes a connecting thread
of this slowly gives way to the realization that even images difficult to discern at first but all the more forceful for being
that are usually indissociable from sound can be represented discovered.
without sound and still have meaning.
Melancholy in the plural is something one does not
There follows a series of paintings depicting events that should ordinarily think of in English, but there it is in French:
also have, but are without, sound: a group of men lustily "Mélancolies" and all the more striking for its suggestion of
singing, a storm, a ventriloquist making his dummy talk. variety in something we usually consider only in the abstract.
Because they are on canvas, it does not shock us that we hear The images run the gamut from the 1514 Dürer allegory
nothing even though the images depict scenes that must be engraving ("Melancholy") to the 2008 blurred shape with
producing sound. In contrast to the video, these do not shock. flat sides emerging from a dark base toward light, "Untitled".
Throughout this section, the human faces - and there are
But to what extent would the video image, intended for the many - are among the most arresting, just as the portraits
deaf with its sign language interpretation, shock the deaf, for bearing them are among the most beautiful.
whom the experience of a sound track is unknown? The shift
from silent video to silent canvas moves us away from our Section seven takes us into the "Poetry of Silence" where we
world of recorded noise and into a world where noise can be find Vilhelm Hammershøl's 1901 painting that appears on
represented without being heard. the exhibit's poster, "Interior with Piano and Woman Dressed
in Black" from a private collection. Neither the poster nor any
We move on to "Silent Life' people reading, women silently of the photos of it do it justice. "In person' it is superb, and
sewing, and, of course still life, so much better titled in English the simplicity, indeed austerity, of the setting only accents the
than in French (nature morte), for, with rare exceptions, there severity of the silence. The piano, a spinet, is open against the
is indeed life in a vase of flowers or an arrangement of fruit. wall with music on the rack and a chair in front of it. Next to
it, her back to us, is the woman, facing the wall.
Among the pictures are many from the Art History Museum's
vaults, occasionally - often too briefly - seen in the constantly "Silent Landscapes" section eight, includes Alexandre
rotating presentations of Museum's galleries. And among Calame's magnificent "Winter' part of a series of four
these are many of the spectacular pastel portraits by Maurice depicting the seasons. There is a rising full moon over a
Quentin de La Tour and Lienne Liotard, the two stellar pastel snow-covered cemetery with a chapel at the far side, below
artists of their age, both from Geneva. the moon and cast into silhouette against the moonlight,

46 DIVA . INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMAT