PARLER À L'ŒIL

VERA MOLNÁR

CENTRE POMPIDOU
PARIS, FEBRUARY 28 - AUGUST 26, 2023








Paris, a Monday
late afternoon
I hesitate between Rothko
at the Fondation LV
or Vera Molnár

I can't remember
where I heard about Vera Molnár
probably in the newsletter
AWARE - Archives of Women Artists
Research and Exhibition

Difficult to find
Vera Molnár

Nor the Centre Pompidou website
nor the display inside the building
give me a lot of clues

On the floor of permanent exhibition 
on the right, at the bottom of the stairs
in the last cubes informally called
"blackmail to donation" (1)







The place where you come across 
tourists determined to go
till the end 
of the last square metre 
of exhibition space

In the cube
pioneering algorithmic art
by Vera Molnár

Repetitive effects
(sismo)graphic
optical, moving
alive

At the junction
between the geometric
and organic worlds

Because Vera Molnár
introduces into her work
something unstable
and unpredictable
what she describes as
1% disorder

No exaggeration
for Vera Molnár

1% is enough
to detect with the naked eye
significant changes
alterations
that Vera Molnár
studied and recorded
in 22 notebooks bizarrely
entitled "journal intime"

School notebooks
impeccable
no digressions here either
regular, precise handwriting
lots of numbers
colourful sketches
and from time to time
injunctions in red felt-tip pen

NOT BAD! To be completed!
WRONG! To be redone!
(check listing!)
AT POMPIDOU
HAFÉLEKÈPEN
TO BE DONE LATER:
ORDER FROM CIRCE
"TABLOTTINS
"

45 years of creation
which she donated
to the Centre Pompidou
so that they could be digitised
and made public

A donation for a large cube
in a museum
where her exponential work
is confined
with little imagination

Her notebooks in showcases
and spaces far too narrow
for such a vast body of work

that Vera Molnár described
with humour 
at the crossroads of three 'cons': 
("con"also means vulva in French)
the concrete, the conceptual and the computer

The major work of a woman
who would have turned 100 this year
who died last December
aged 99
faithful to her 1%



Roshan Di Puppo



(1) As Stéphane Corréard explains
on France Culture
Vera Molnár donated more than 80%
of the works on display

The work of a (long) life
acquired by an institution
that proudly claims to possess
the largest largest collection
of Vera Molnár's

but which has paid
only a tiny part of it