The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun
Hiroshi Sugimoto joins art royalty
Since 2008, the Palace of Versailles in suburban Paris has held annual exhibitions featuring globally acclaimed contemporary artists. The 11th edition, currently underway through Feb. 17, is dedicated to Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto.
Titled “Sugimoto Versailles,” the exhibition showcases the diverse range of artistic disciplines Sugimoto embraces, from photography, sculpture and architecture to performing arts.
The history that echoes through the grand venue effectively complements the works, creating an evocative space that provokes visitors to question issues facing contemporary society.
Sugimoto joins an esteemed list of artists that have been featured at the prestigious palace, including Takashi Murakami, Lee Ufan and Olafur Eliasson.
The exhibition occupies several spaces within the Trianon Estate, where French royals resided from the era of Louis XIV (1638-1715) — who was known as the Sun King — up to the time of Queen Marie-Antoinette (175593), who was executed during the French Revolution.
On an earlier visit to the estate, which is situated in the grounds of the palace, an idea dawned on Sugimoto to use the space like a noh stage, with photographs of wax statues depicting dignitaries who would have visited in the past. The idea stemmed from a familiar noh trope of soliloquies delivered by the departed souls of historical figures, and also recalls a portrait series he started in 1994 that featured photographs of intricately made wax figures.
The Petit Trianon, a small chateau in the estate, houses some of the waxwork portraits, including a photo Sugimoto took exclusively for the exhibition of a Louis XIV waxwork that was made with a mold created when the king was still alive.
Portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte and two others are on display in the French Pavilion, which is located in the middle of the estate’s gardens. The casts for these waxworks were created by Madame Tussaud, who worked at the Palace of Versailles before the revolution broke out.
Even though the photographs are of wax models, these works can inspire visitors to think about how each of these figures may have spent time at the palace.
In the lobby of the estate’s Queen’s Theater, which was built at Marie-Antoinette’s behest, Sugimoto has included an image from his Theater series, which he started in 1976.
For the series, Sugimoto takes photographs of theater screens while a feature-length film is being projected on them. He photographs the screen in a single frame using a large-format camera, keeping the shutter open throughout the duration of the film. In the resulting photographs, the screens appear to be glowing white.
Sugimoto chose the 2006 film “Marie Antoinette” directed by Sofia Coppola to project onto the screen for the photograph.
The film depicts the life of the ill-fated monarch, who returns to the stage on which she is said to have performed as a brilliant white light in the image.
Sugimoto’s “Glass Tea House Mondrian,” a structure with a floor area of about 1.8 meter square and based on tea ceremony rooms, is also featured in the exhibition floating above the surface of a pond in the estate’s gardens.
Sugimoto’s works seem to be highly compatible with the palace’s rich and mysterious history.
The best example is “Surface of Revolution,” a sculpture on display at the Belvedere, a small octagonal pavilion in the gardens. Its title is also used as the subtitle of this exhibition.
The word “revolution” could also refer to “rebellion,” “rotation” or “revolving around the sun.”
“The title means ‘rotating around the surface,’ but it also can be interpreted as ‘the surface of rebellion,’” Sugimoto said. “It could be viewed as a sardonic questioning of whether what we refer to as revolution is just superficial, lacking any substance in reality.
“The wax figures in these works only depict the surface,” he continued. “If you look at the appearance of the figures, focus your thoughts on them as if they were alive.”
The exhibition is “a system to question the mechanism of human cognition,” he said.
It is also meant to invite people to reconsider their views of modern democratic societies and the events of history that preceded them.
“If it provokes viewers to question what they are seeing at that moment, then it has achieved its purpose as ‘artwork by Sugimoto,’” he said.