Agenda

The musee du Temps in Besançon and the musée international d’horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds are well-known museums in the field of watchmaking and time measurement.

In association with the annual Nuit de la Photo festival in La Chaux-de-Fonds, they have jointly organised a cross-border exhibition.

The French and Swiss territories of the Jura have fostered an exceptional horological and mechanical culture and watchmaking history,.

This cultural heritage also includes a whole range of traditions and living, social, ritual and festive practices, as well as skills and expertise.

The exhibition Transmissions. Picturing the intangible (Transmissions. L’immatériel photographié) addresses this intangible cultural heritage through photography as a contemporary artistic medium offering new and sensitive approaches to the craftsmanship of mechanical watchmaking and art mechanics.

The exhibition displays the work of photographers. they explored the area, visiting the workshops, businesses, museums and schools of the French-Swiss watchmaking region.

The exhibition’s point of departure is the four-part Engadin-Panorama by Giovanni Giacometti (1868-1933), which is at the Graubünden Art Museum (Bündner Kunstmuseum)  as a permanent loan.

It was Giovanni Segantini (1868-1899) who involved the artist in the great panorama-project for the Paris World Exhibition of 1900. Segantini died, however, and his project did not make it to Paris. Three paintings are shown in the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz nowadays.

Afterwards, Giacometti painted various panoramas himself. After the panorama of Muottas Muragl (1898) he painted a view of the Upper Engadine scenery with the massive Hotel Palace of Malloja (1899), and as the conclusion of these representative assignment-paintings, the famous triptych for the Hotel Waldhaus in Flims (1904).

These three paintings set a beginning to the onset of his career.

The artist Ré Soupalt (1901-1996) was born as Erna Niemeyer in Pomerania, Germany. The Bauhaus student was part of the avant-garde in Berlin in the 1920s.

Afterwards, she was a fashion designer in Paris, a photographer in Tunis, a journalist in New York and, after years of exile, a translator and radio essayist in Basel and Paris.

Her life reflects the difficulties of an independent woman and the political events of the 20th century.

The exhibition follows the main developments of her life and her years in Basel from 1948-1958 in particular.