The Barbican

The definition of a couple is elastic in the Barbican’s ‘Modern Couples’ exhibition. Tracking the role of collaboration and creative influence, the show brings together more than 40 artistic partnerships active during the first half of the 20th century. Some ‘couples’ include more than two people; some are not romantic in nature; and some fluctuate in nature. With around 600 items including books, letters and snapshots on show, the exhibition offers an alternative history of the Modern period, told through the relationships between artists rather than as a series of heroic tales. This often involves recasting the muse as a collaborator, but it is also about making visible the cross-fertilization of ideas between pairs working within larger groups. The show surveys a range of media, from the photographic experiments of Lucia Moholy and László Moholy-Nagy, to Virginia Woolf and Leonard Woolf’s experiments in publishing with the Hogarth Press, or the interiors made by Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici, who are described in a delightfully ambiguous turn of phrase as ‘friends or possibly lovers’. - 在巴比肯的“现代夫妇”展览中，情侣的定义是有弹性的。跟踪合作和创造性影响的作用，展览汇集了活跃在20世纪上半叶的40多个艺术伙伴关系。有些“夫妻”包括两个人以上，有些人在本质上不浪漫，有些人在自然界波动。展览上展出了大约600件展品，包括书籍、信件和快照，展品提供了现代时期的另类历史，通过艺术家之间的关系来讲述，而不是一系列英雄故事。这通常涉及将缪斯女神重塑为合作者，但它也涉及使在大型团队中工作的两个人之间的思想相互渗透变得可见。该节目调查了一系列媒体，从露西娅·莫霍利和拉兹洛·莫霍利-纳吉的摄影实验，到弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫和伦纳德·伍尔夫在霍格斯出版社出版方面的实验，或者是艾琳·格雷和让·巴多维奇的内部实验，这些实验都以令人愉悦的、模棱两可的方式被描述。短语的意思是“朋友或爱人”。