5.5 Curator of the XXI century | Interview with Julien Domercq. Part 2

Discover how influential projects are shaped, what drives contemporary artistic trends, and where the global art scene is headed through the second part of our conversation with Julien Domercq, a renowned art curator of the Royal Academy of Arts. Perfect for listeners interested in contemporary art, exhibitions, and the inner workings of the art world!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And today, Phantom of the Robins welcomes the curator of the Royal Academy, Julian Demerk. I actually also wanted to ask you some more questions about your other show that was happening in the Royal Academy earlier. I think about it was there about a year ago, as I remember, and it was one of the show. Well, I also really enjoyed Van Gogh and Kiefer and the show that's now in a national gallery, but this one was really something that I fell in love with when I came there. So, how was curating uh Michelangelo, uh Da Vinci and Raphael in the Royal Academy? Um, what were what fresh perspectives did it give you to the artists?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Well, that was a dream exhibition. Um, I mean, I I must not take too much credit for that exhibition. Um, I got to do the fun, the most fun bit, which was to actually hang it. Um, and I got to do that with uh my predecessor and and friend and colleague Per Romberg, who was my predecessor at the Royal Academy, who moved to be the head of curatorial, the J.K. Brothschild head of the curators department, the curatorial department at the National Gallery. Um, and so the show was very much his sort of his uh his vision, and we got to to work on it together uh in sort of latter stage and really working on what it would look like uh on the walls and um a really wonderful way of being able to tell a very specific story of Florence around 1504, the moment in time where these three sort of giants, I mean, you know, it's often rare to have two giants together in the same place at the same time, but actually in Florence around 1504, there were the three of them, you know, uh Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael at very different stages in their careers. But to be able to show how they related through their works and how they encourage one another, how they I mean, it's not that they copied one another directly. I mean, even the young Raphael, when you see him, there's a wonderful, there was a wonderful bit in the show where you saw the uh the Tade Tondo, the only Michelangelo sculpture in the country, which actually is in the collection of the Royal Academy, uh, and we showed next to it a little sketch that Raphael does where he must have encountered the Tondo in person, uh, in the house of Tadeo Tadei, who was the who commissioned the Tondo for Michelangelo, um, and you see him sort of sketch it, and you really feel you're in that moment, and then you see how he yes, sort of copies it, but very quickly changes it to make uh one of his most important early works, the The Bridgewater Madonna. So he was able to show, you know, through these incredibly important works, the majority of them drawings, the artists interacting with one another, and it was quite magical in the way that it seemed to bring those interactions alive, and you seem to sort of see them in front of you. You almost felt like you were looking over the artists' shoulders as they were looking at each other's work.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yeah, that's I remember this moment in the exhibition where where you would have those two works together, and you I think you had quite a few um various drawings together from different artists to see how they were looking at each other. Were there any challenges of um putting those works together that you faced?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Well, gosh, I mean it's always uh again, every exhibition is a challenge for for many, many ways. Uh, I mean this exhibition, the most challenging thing, of course, was it it's a collection of drawings. Um it's an exhibition of drawings of drawings by very major artists. Uh, you know, drawings are very, very fragile. Um the case for Van Gogh drawings in Kiefer Van Gogh or or you know, drawings in this show. So the big, big challenge was to um be able to borrow great drawings from great collections from these three great artists, and to manage to convince museums that, you know, if they were going to lend you one of these drawings, it's you know, when you lend a an important, well, actually any drawing for that matter, if you show it in an exhibition for three and a half, four months, like we do at low light levels, but the work will have to then spend about five years in the dark. So it's it's asking a lot of a collection to entrust you with basically like five years of this work's existence with an audience, I mean, the ability of an audience to to look at it. Um, and so that's that was the the the challenge of this show. But the the concept um that that my fellow co-curators um you know Pear Bromberg and and and and Scott were able to um to to come up with was it was such a compelling story that it made it very easy to lend to. You know that the Royal Collection was able to lend like a dozen great works by great drawings by Leonardo da Vinci gladly um to make the show happen.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Thank you for for your answer. And I w I wanted to ask you, you curated and co-curated some of the most visited and successful exhibitions in the past few years. So what do you think is the the secret of making an exhibition so appealing to the public?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

That's a very good question. Um I think I think I mean there's a there's a few things. I mean at f first is you you really you know I I'm a curator who really um I mean not that I'm saying that this is not the the case with some of my my colleagues, not at all, but I I really really think of the audience and the audience experience. Like I'm I've come to curating as uh a sort of frustrated academic who wanted to speak to a broader audience and share my enthusiasm for art and particularly works of art as physical objects in front of you, which is what we do as a curator. It's it's being there mediating between the original work and the audience and making them realize just how extraordinary looking at the real thing actually is, um, which is you know, in the age of images and social media and is is particularly difficult at times. But so for me, like the way an exhibition would relate to an audience is really, really key. And while some people might find uh that you know, doing a show that that speaks to the audience might be maybe compromising, like the intellectual or the the um academic integrity of an exhibition. Um I really don't believe that it is. I really think you can do and the time is ripe to do shows about great well-known artists and movements, um, shows that you know an audience would feel familiar with, um would want to come see, and it's possible to look at uh these artists and say something new and challenge their perceptions. So it's almost finding the hook to invite them in and then and then blow their minds, really, is the the um the idea. But but I so I think that is sort of my philosophy of making exhibitions. That's what I enjoy seeing exhibitions doing in exhibitions. There's nothing more I enjoy than to see a lot of people in an exhibition have created, and but more than the numbers, also I think what I try to do in my shows is to really create the sort of environment where people will feel compelled with really spending quality time, if you will, one-on-one or two-on-one with a picture or a sculpture, and really take time to look at it. And so, much more than large crowds of people in a show, what I've really enjoyed, what I really enjoyed seeing in the Florence show at the DRA, or indeed in Kiefer Van Gogh, or in Radical Harmony at the National Gallery, um, is to see really people taking time looking. And yeah, to me, it's really to see how do you create that environment, how do you build a sort of narrative through an exhibition that both helps the public know where they're going, but also enables them to, or rather, makes them want to look at the works and to engage with the works uh visually uh and you know think and write their own their own story. So those are the little the little tricks of the trade, if you like, the things I enjoy doing in an exhibition to to encourage close looking. But I think, yes, to me it's really about sharing one's enthusiasm for these great things.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

And the uh curation of the exhibition changed a lot in the past uh 15 years. How do you think it will change in the future? What are the um you think the direction the curation might take and the way how exhibitions would be presented might take in the future years.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Well, I think for a variety of reasons the shape of exhibitions is changing quite drastically. I mean to not be political, but it's impossible not to be political about these sort of things, you know, when you see what's happening in the US at the moment, the huge cuts to art funding, how art has become a political toy for those in in power in Washington. It's becoming really tough to make exhibitions in the US. Um and one does one collaborates a lot with institutions in in America, so that that will just be a challenge in in the days that are coming. And that's not at all, you know, they're great colleagues in the US, but it's becoming very, very difficult to make shows there. Um it's again for a variety of reasons becoming more and more too difficult to make shows. Art is um harder to borrow, ever more expensive to insure, more expensive to transport. Um so I think exhibitions will have to be more and more deliberate. But I think so, you know, you you you you really have to the works you borrow will be fewer and you really have to get them to do more in the exhibition. But again, I feel I feel for me, because I'm I think there's no point flying a work um from the other side of the world with the the ecological consequences that we know if you're not really making a case for it and really enabling the audience to look at it. So I think exhibitions will be smaller in numbers of works in them, but again, I think that's not a bad thing if people really engage with, say, a hundred works in a big uh R ratio rather than 150 or 200. I think that's an equally valuable experience. Um But I think to me, and that's I find that's a very positive change or evolution in exhibition making, is that one has to be ever more collaborative making shows. Um, it's increasingly difficult for a museum, and that's true of the Royal Academy or of the National Gallery, to go and do an exhibition on your own. Um, and so you really have to collaborate with colleagues, and that is something you now do for every single show, um, which is a great joy because I've become a curator because I like working with other people and collaborating with others. But I think that that's really a change and that will build up sort of more and more, you know. But Kiefer Van Golf is a collaboration with the Van Golf Museum, um uh Radical Harmony with the Kolla Mulla, uh a show we're doing next year in the spring, which is opening in a few days in in um in Vienna is a collaboration, is a show called Mikkelinavotier collaboration with the the the um the kunsthistorisches. Okay, we're gonna go and see it's quite well I I hope you I hope you you enjoy it. Well, see it in both places, because uh it'd really be a stunning, stunning exhibition. So it's really it it will be much more about collaborating with international colleagues, uh which I think is is a is a wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

And if you would curate a dream show, which show would it be?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Oh how long do you have to answer that question? Well, there's there's I have many. Um there's an idea that I keep on returning to, um, which I would so love to curate. And if anybody uh listening to this wants to do it with me and get uh get in touch, um it's it really it's something I've been interested for about for I mean, as long as I've been an art historian, a curator, and is the idea of late style. Um the idea that um, and you see it throughout art history, um, of artists getting old and in old age achieving a sort of new feeling of freedom in their work, and often um a moment where they push the boundaries of what art is and can be, and you see that I mean famously with Titian, you know, late Titian. You can say if you look at the death of Actian at the National Gallery, a late Titian painting from around 1570, you could say is one of the first times that painting becomes about painting, you know, that's the subject of it, and that you know, in in old age you feel sort of so liberated and compelled. But you see that in late Rembrandt. Um you see such great freedom in late uh works by Dugar or um or Monet. And so to me, it would be this dream exhibition bringing these incredibly beautiful, uh very important works together to look at what it means to get old as an artist and how some artists are able actually to draw incredible energy and creativity out of that.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

But would it be more of an artist getting to a certain age and liberating themselves for artists getting to a certain age and completely changing the direction like Goya, for example?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Yeah, absolutely too. Yeah, I mean that there are different ways that that that that that um late style uh can can express itself, absolutely. But it would really be, I think it would be such a compelling exhibition if you could look at it um across four or five hundred years of art. Um, you know, and and and you know, it's it's an excuse to do something I've always hoped to do, and something is very difficult to do when you um you know you're you're dealing with such important artists, but to for instance see um you know a late Titian next to a late duga together um works that you know are united by the fact that it is that sort of pursuit of pushing the boundaries of what art can be.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

That's beautiful, that's an amazing idea. And once you've mentioned the term curator of the 21st century, can you elaborate on that a bit more?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Well, I suppose it's it's it's it it's it's what I was saying to think it that we're really in an age where we take for granted about works of art in museums. Um we cannot take for granted anymore. Namely the fact that you know museums are extraordinary places because they're places where people and places like the National Gallery for free, a place like the RA and our collection galleries for free as well, and in great exhibitions where you can come and see the real thing, great works of art. Um and you actually realize that in the 21st century this is a notion we can no longer take for granted, as in there is such a proliferation of images. Um works of art are achieving such huge prices on reasonable prices at auction. You know, you'd be hard pressed to find a van Gogh that doesn't sell for less than 100 million, probably you know, 150 million by the time some people uh listen to this uh or would look and listen at this recording. Um and I remember it was it was quite, you know, I at the at the National Gallery I always uh when I was working there, I always enjoyed sitting at the visitor's desk a few times, you know, during my time time there and just asking people what they come and see. And uh there was a comment that would come back recurrently, um recurrently, where people would say, you know, I'd ask them, What did you enjoy? What did you come see today? What did you enjoy? And they'd say, Well, I came to see The Virgin of the Rocks, or I came to see The Sunflowers by Van Gogh, probably the most frequent answer. And but very often they would say, Oh, but I came to see it, it was great, but it's a shame that it's not the original. And I would look at them and say, No, no, but it it it is. And they would say, No, no, it can't be. Like, why would such an important work, such an expensive work, be there? You could visit it for free. And to me, it was really wow, like we we actually have a lot of work to do. We cannot take for granted that you know this is not that that people will assume that this is this is the original. So I think we're it's quite a sort of existential situation for curators and and museums where we really have to make clear and intelligible um that we are this extraordinary place where extraordinary works of art and people can have this one-on-one relationship with original works of art, with the very pigments that Van Gogh painted on the canvas or that Anselm Kiefer painted on his great scale landscapes, or or the same with Sorau, that it's really the place where you can commune with the great original work of art. And I think to me that is the challenge for curators in the 21st century.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

And what are the tools one could use in such a challenge to tell a more broad broader audience you're creating that these works are actually original and that they just can come and see them? Uh what do you think a curator could do about it?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Well, I think it's to to really uh and it's it's going to sound quite simple, it's not simple at all actually, um, and requires a lot of work and determination, but it's really to make collections um and exhibitions ever more accessible, uh ever more sort of stimulating, um, to not see you know popularity of certain things or or the hooks that you might have to use to bring audiences in as a negative thing or something that compromises um curatorial or or or academic integrity, and it really doesn't have to be. Uh, but it is really to create these compelling stories that speak to people today. And actually, you know, there's this feeling that only contemporary art can connect to new generations and new audiences because it is about the art today, but actually, there's so much one, and you you know that yourself, right? Um being surrounded by the art of the past, actually, how compelling these more historic works of art can be. Um, and that just one has to be there to give people all the tools to be able to engage with them, to understand them, and then to make it their own. Um that that's really the the the tools that we we need to use.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Of course. And Julian, I wanted to ask you what inspired you to become a curator? Why why art history? Why this period, what this moment that inspired your person in your childhood? How did you come to this?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Uh that's a that's a good question. I think I mean art has always been in my life. I mean, I come from a very artistic family. You know, my mum studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. I think brought me to see. She always likes to say she took me to see a Matisse exhibition when I was three months old. So every time I see I show a Matisse, she says, Well, it's because I took you when you were three months old. Um, you know, my my my my father worked in the arts, so you know, my my brother uh is is still to you know this day an artist and winemaker and makes but wait, you know, sort of brings up makes wine as a sort of art form. So I've always been seeped in it very deeply, and it's always art is always something that meant a lot to me. Uh, but then you know, it was encounters with great shows in Paris and London and New York, uh, when I was younger, and then really uh, you know, as is in all professions, I suppose, the people that you meet and the people that encourages you uh, you know, a great um supervisor in Cambridge, Jean-Michel Massin, uh Chris Rio Pell, the creator of Post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery, that gave me my first job, that uh allowed me to curate my first exhibition on Edgar Degas about a decade ago. So it's all these things that sort of build you up. So both a passion for the things and for transmitting that that knowledge and that enthusiasm, but also some sort of key people uh along the way that have encouraged me and made me feel like this was um something I could be good at.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

So, and by the way, congratulations was this. uh show of Edgar Degas uh as well. I think I have I have seen it too some some years ago an amazing show. So would you say that uh Chris Hurpal and your professor in Cambridge they were your sort of mentors?

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Oh absolutely absolutely and I and and Chris is a is a is a is a very generous and and very modest person and he always sort of uh shies away when I say remind him and say and say thank you no but he well and he he he he well and truly is I mean you know I I'll never forget being asked in a very casual way oh do you do you want to curate that that Degasho you know are you and he's saying well let me think yes um and it's just the greatest greatest thing when someone just believes in you and says well if you you want to you know do it we'll drop you at the deep end and I'll be there to to catch you if you fall but otherwise you know just just do it and and enjoy it and and you know yes this sort of chance encounters and I think I've I've been very very lucky um to to get to work with them from the from the get go.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

And if not art history is there anything else what you would do in your life or just art history?

SPEAKER_01 23:15

No there are many things you know I I I sometimes you know it's a it's uh being a curator is a wonderful wonderful job but also you know you know the state museums are in and art institutions are in at the moment so it can also be excruciatingly frustrating at times um and so you end up musing I don't know there's this um I mean every art historian or or curator in a way I'm sure has an artistic temperament and would have would have thought what it would have been like to to to work uh to work as an artist filmmaking is something I've been interested for a long time I had a small career as a as a aspiring filmmaker uh where actually another mentor to me very important person to me the director film director James Ivory was really crucial in that part of my life and actually also then in in in becoming an art historian because he's somebody who's so interested in in culture and and art as well so there's these these different things but I feel I feel very um content being a curator and an art historian.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

That's that's great and what would you tell for for example a young person studying art history who wants to become curator in the future is there any advice you could give for someone to become such a successful curator as yourself curating so many shows who has worked in such great institutions and it's kind of you to say you know it it always feels um it always feels like an immense privilege and it always feels like it's something that that is not a given like it's not you always feel like you're very lucky like it might not the stroke of luck to be able to carry these great shows like might sort of you know run out.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

It's not something you take for granted and I I I think I'd say to to you know that you really have to have a great sort of passion for it and a passion for the art and a passion for art as as physical objects in front of you and a passion for audiences and great curiosity as well. I think what is wonderful about being a curator is you yes you both have to train as an art historian and develop a specialism and and that's really important and that's what I tell aspiring curators like go and spend time really digging deeply in something and enjoy it. But then also keep open minded that you know when you become a curator even if you're a 19th century specialist like me for instance you will work on Renaissance Florence and you'll get to relish doing that and then get to relish working with someone like Kiefer so you have to keep very open minded and then also you know it's a it's a tough profession. It's one where there are very few like entry level jobs and you have to be very determined and very sort of thick skinned and be willing to not uh take myriad rejections uh personally and just just just keep at it keep determined go see a lot of go see a lot of shows um and then sort of keep yeah keep that passion flowing uh I think is really really key and really and and and it really I think something to be a successful curator you really have to enjoy working with others um and the fact it's a profoundly collaborative endeavor not only with fellow curators in other institutions like like I said but also with all sorts of departments in a in an institution all working at their best to contribute to the many many different layers of that project and you know and as a curator it's really also about recognizing and valuing everybody's expertise.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

So it's it's relishing in and how multifaceted uh the making of exhibitions can be thank you very much for your answer and thank you everyone for watching us and have a great afternoon everyone please follow for more news thank you Julian for you very much Darien