Anne & Patrick Poirier: Thunderstruck Landscape, September 21, 1984 through November 18, 1984 (Image: PSC_E1984i042.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 1984)
Anne & Patrick Poirier: Thunderstruck Landscape, September 21, 1984 through November 18, 1984 (Image: PSC_E1984i043.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 1984)
Anne & Patrick Poirier: Thunderstruck Landscape, September 21, 1984 through November 18, 1984 (Image: PSC_E1984i044.jpg Brooklyn Museum photograph, 1984)
Anne & Patrick Poirier: Thunderstruck Landscape
DATES September 21, 1984 through November 18, 1984
ORGANIZING DEPARTMENT
Contemporary Art
COLLECTIONS
Contemporary Art
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September 21, 1984
Thunderstruck Landscape, a 39’ by 19½’ installation depicting a mythical Mediterranean geography created by French artists Anne and Patrick Poirier, will open in The Brooklyn Museum’s Grand Lobby on September 21 and be on view through November 18, 1984.
Using fragments of charcoal, wood with water, the Poiriers have created a very real portrait of a civilization destroyed in the struggle between two immensely strong adversaries. On one level, the work describes the combat between Jupiter and giant Titans. The battleground for this conflict between order and anarchy is the whole universe; the scene of destruction is Earth and its civilization. Temples and dwellings are turned into ruins; waters are blackened by charred debris. The thunderbolt, symbol of the victorious Jupiter, stands as an exclamation mark in the dangerously mysterious waters, a lasting reminder of the struggle. In times such as these, the viewer can hardly escape seeing more than historical meaning in the Poiriers masterful description of this mythological event.
Thunderstruck Landscape represents an excellent compendium of the past and present efforts of the Poiriers. They have always been fascinated by mythology, history and archaeology, and their involvement with these diciplines has resulted in sculptural, environmental pieces describing certain specific sites or events. Their early work was oriented toward the actual reproduction of existing locales. Beginning in the mid-70s, however, their creations became more metaphorical; no longer reproductions, but an agglomeration of shapes and forms evoking in the viewer memories of archaeological landscapes from the realms of the past.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1984, 029.
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