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Last Updated on Thursday, 10 June 2010 14:32 Written by Administrator Tuesday, 12 August 2008 17:50
>> Raoul Hausmann Archive
      Raoul Hausmann, Untitled, 1950
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Raoul Hausmann was born in 1886 and is celebrated as a founder of the Berlin Dada movement. Together with others in the aftermath of World War I, he set about redefining what art should be. He was one of the first to invent the photomontage assemblage technique and also initiated the field of sound poetry. Virulently iconoclastic, Dada artists sought to demolish barriers between art and life, releasing a wave of creative potential that lasted throughout the 20th century and is still felt today. Hausmann fled the Nazi rise to power in 1933 and after a period of travelling across Europe eventually found refuge at Peyrat-le-Château not far from Vassivière in the Limousin region. After the war, he moved the few miles to Limoges where he settled definitively, working there until his death in 1971. |
The Rochechouart Archive was established in 1986 with the aim of recording Raoul Hausmann's wide-ranging production of art and documenting the underlying intellectual currents behind it. Over 700 works are currently in the collection, complemented by a vast corpus of personal documents donated by Hausmann's life-partner, Marthe Prévot. The only other such concentration of works can be found at the Berlinische Gallerie in Berlin. The Raoul Hausmann Archive in Rochechouart contains prime examples of the artist's work that range from research into synesthesia to experimental sound poetry, plus letters, theoretical texts, poems and recordings by the man who dubbed himself the "Dadasoph".
Selections of works from the collection are regularly displayed in a permanent gallery in the museum and upon request, the complete archive may be accessed for research.
Selections of works from the collection are regularly displayed in a permanent gallery in the museum and upon request, the complete archive may be accessed for research.
>> Further Information
Last Updated on Tuesday, 01 March 2011 09:38 Written by Administrator Tuesday, 12 August 2008 17:50
>> On-Line Collection
List of works in the museum's permanent collection can be accessed via the Vidéomuseum data-base http://collection.musee-rochechouart.com
Last Updated on Friday, 11 June 2010 17:30 Written by Administrator Saturday, 09 August 2008 17:46
>> Contemporary Art Collection
      Christian Boltanski, Le grenier du chateau (Castle Garret), 1990
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Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art was established by Haute-Vienne district council in 1985 and today, over 25 years later, it boasts a world-class collection of international artworks. Three principal themes - history, landscape and imagination - have guided the growth of the collection. A central core quickly developed around major movements such as Arte Povera and Land Art or pinpointed significant 20th century artists (eg., Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke), creating a body of works relevant to vital issues in the vanguard of contemporary art. Instead of seeking to constitute a complete collection of any one artist or movement, the museum has aimed to provide a balanced vision of different currents in creative practices today. |
Notable themes in the collection include British sculpture (Richard Long, Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Gary Webb…), approaches to reconstructing the past and storytelling (Tacita Dean, Ian Hamilton Finlay…), questions of time and movement (Thierry Kuntzel, Philippe Decrauzat, Anthony McCall, Robert Breer…), representation of movement (Rineke Dijkstra, Douglas Gordon, Mathias Poledna…), landscape and its immediacy (Valérie Jouve, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Sophie Ristelhueber…), invented worlds of action (Julius Koller, Jiri Kovanda, Gabriel Orozco…). The museum organizes several exhibitions a year on chosen subjects or specific artists, permuting works and ideas from the collection as well as drawing on outside sources such as the Fonds national d'art contemporain, a large national collection of contemporary artworks.
Since the late 1980s, in parallel to its contemporary collection, the museum has inaugurated and undertaken development of the Raoul Hausmann Archive, dedicated to this important founder of Berlin Dada, who pioneered new fields of perception and set out to remove barriers between art and life. His spirit and vision live on in much of the museum's contemporary collection.
Since the late 1980s, in parallel to its contemporary collection, the museum has inaugurated and undertaken development of the Raoul Hausmann Archive, dedicated to this important founder of Berlin Dada, who pioneered new fields of perception and set out to remove barriers between art and life. His spirit and vision live on in much of the museum's contemporary collection.