Renault Art Collection exhibits at Today Art Museum. (Photo/CNTV)
A car manufacturer is venerating modern art, and modern art is venerating the car in the Renault Art Collection, now in Beijing. Among the hundred or so exhibits are an exhaust system and crankshaft in black walnut, and a life-sized engine made of glass. The collection, compiled over five decades, marries contemporary art and the industrial world.
The exhibits cover a wide range of artforms, from painting and sculpture to installation, spanning the mid-60s to the present time. Among the renowned masters on display are Arman and Jean Debuffet.
Arman is best known for his works of "accumulation" - gathering various objects such as machine parts, tools, and even debris - whereby each individual item becomes incorporated into a collective identity.
Jean Debuffet initiated the concept of 'Art Brut', which explores new visual languages and contexts, as well as new materials.
The exhibition also features works from two Chinese artists, Wen Fang and He An, offering visitors a chance to compare and contrast Chinese and Western approaches.
For sculptor and installation artist Angela Palmer, CT and MRI scans are one form of inspiration. Another is the engine of a Formula One car.
"We are looking at the most advanced engineering in the world. Here you have the V8 exhaust system, I think it's very sculptural. I actually created this, I doubled the size of it and created this in black walnut. Then I took the crankshaft, I created over 2 meters high, the V8 crankshaft in black walnut. And I just used different parts to explore different components of the engine in a sculptural form but in different materials. So I was given the CAD drawings of the entire engine, life-sized, I've created here, as you can see in multiple sheets of glass. So it's like a drawing floating in a glass chamber. I drew it in black ink. If you walk to the side of the piece, it disappears," Palmer said.
The show serves as a chronicle of modern art, embracing along the way Realism, Dada, and Pop Art.
The French car manufacturer's collection started in 1967, before contemporary art had really caught on, despite a breakthrough in American Pop Art led by Andy Warhol.
But Renault's involvement encouraged artists to mine the seeming contradictions of art and industry, as curator Ann Hindry explains...
"The relation between the industry and artists is a long one, as long as industry existed and artists existed. They try to understand each other, because they are two important parts of the society, and they both produce new things, new objects that bring people together in different ways. What makes the story of Renault Collection different is that they really went to the artists, and said 'listen, you are welcome to come to us. We will give you any kind of help you need.' And then we'll see what will come out of it," Warhol said.
In some cases, Renault's participation in the lives of contemporary artists has shepherded their rise to fame. Today, the public can enjoy the collection through exhibitions and loans to museums around the world.
"A Modern Adventure: Renault Art Collection" runs at the Today Art Museum in Beijing until the end of February 2016, before heading south to the Hubei Museum of Art in Wuhan.
