'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die,' Umberto Eco Guest Curator at the Louvre!

The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order... And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries...We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die. --Umberto Eco, on his current guest-curated Louvre exhibition “Mille e tre," Spiegel, 2009

It has just come to my attention that Umberto Eco has guest curated an exhibition at The Louvre in Paris. Entitled “Mille e tre" or "The Infinity of Lists," the exhibition is on view in the prints and drawings section of the Louvre from November 7th 2009 until February 8, 2010 and will includes poetry, text, multi-media projects, and artworks selected by Eco to illustrate his chosen theme.

To my knowledge, this is Eco's first officially curated exhibition, though fans of his books On Beauty and On Ugliness already know him to possess an idiosyncratic and sensitive curatational mind. For those of us unable to make it out to view the exhibition in person, Rizzoli has kindly produced a lavish exhibition catalog to add to the already rich oeuvre of Eco's multi-disciplinary, highly-illustrated forays into philosophy and theory.

More on the exhibition, from the Louvre's website:

Having extended an invitation to Umberto Eco, who chose to work on a theme described as “The Infinity of Lists”, the Louvre presents an exhibition of ancient and contemporary graphic works, as well as around 20 multidisciplinary events in the auditorium and the rooms of the museum.

The exhibition “Mille e tre” traces the evolution of the concept of a list through history and examines how its meaning changes with the passage of time: from its ancient use in funerary traditions to its present-day use in everyday life, via the creative processes of contemporary artists, the list is a vehicle for cultural codes and the bearer of different messages.

Read the entire Spiegel interview with Eco--which contains many more pithy and insightful comments than the one I included above--by clicking here. More about the exhibition can be found on the Louvre exhibitions webpage by clicking here. Purchase the exhibition catalog, published by Rizzoli, here. You can see more about his other illustrated volumes by clicking here. Via Metafilter.

"Classified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain"

While in London a few weeks ago, I found the time to check out a small but intriguing exhibition at the Tate Britain. Entitled "Classified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain," the exhibition focuses on recent Tate acquisitions that pivot around the central theme of classification and taxonomy, and features the work of Damien Hirst, Mark Dion, and Jake and Dinos Chapman. More about the show, from the Tate website:

Classified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain
How we see the world is how we understand it. Things are seen in relationship to other things and actions. Connections are made, naming takes place and meaning is formulated. We all engage with the world around us in diverse ways, both actively and passively.

The meanings and names given to things are not fixed, but instead fluid. We classify and catalogue but over time these categories and attendant meanings change, as does the importance they hold for us. The medieval world view, or cosmology, bears little relationship to the way we understand our place in the world today.

The works in this exhibition are drawn from Tate Collection. They adopt various forms, suggest diverse types of interpretation and provide a means of suggesting how the different types and arrangements of material culture inform our daily life. The exhibition also makes explicit the museum's role in collecting, classifying and displaying objects. It reveals how the arrangements of objects feed into museum systems of classification and interpretation bringing a sort of order to the world.

You can find out more, see more images, and watch a video about the exhibition by clicking here. But better yet, visit it in person, if possible. A small but lively and engaging exhibition.

Images, from Tate website: Top: Mark Dion, "Tate Thames Dig" 1999; Mixed media, installation; Bottom: Damien Hirst, "Forms Without Life" 1991: MDF cabinet, melamine, wood, steel, glass and sea shells, installation

Alphonse Bertillon (1853—1914)

If you are a fan of the illustrious history of human classification systems based on physical measurement, you might enjoy E-L-I-S-E's recent collection of visuals related to Alphonse Bertillon (1853—1914), creator of "anthropometry" the mugshot, and the conventional crime scene photograph.

You can visit the original post, from which the above images are drawn, by clicking here. You can find out more about Bertillon by clicking here.