Printing is dead, long live printing. Magma, a new magazine in the style of a traditional art magazine hit the stands, with 18 artists (Sophie Calle, Lucas Arruda and Tim Breuer among them) creating new works for its pages.
Limited to just 2,000 copies, the hardcover publication is now available for purchase on line and in art bookstores around the world for around $65. It’s a very sophisticated (and very French) approach to art with detours to poetry and literature as well. “It’s a response to a certain need,” said Magma editor-in-chief, Paul Olivennes. “There is so much discourse created about artists, about writers and their work, but so little work where artists and writers can have freedom.”
Tim Breuer, Observer (2022). Courtesy of the artist.
Although it is an independent publication, Magma is sponsored by Bottega Veneta. Intellectual art efforts have become increasingly central to creative director Matthieu Blazy’s broader vision.
A star Magma feature film includes an unpublished text from 1976 by the late filmmaker Agnès Varda, ruminating on the photography of Claude Nori. Said Olivennes, “Varda and Nori lived in the same building on rue Daguerre in Paris. As a young photographer, Nori showed his neighbor and friend his images of the unusual journey of a pair of leg-shaped glasses, and Varda responded with this text. It’s a meeting that means a lot to me. On the next page, Lucas Arruda presents a painting that dialogues with a poem by Edouard Glissant.
The filmmaker Agnès Varda looks at the photos of Claude Nori. Courtesy of Magma.
“Magma it’s about showing the work, not writing about it. For the reader, it should be like a breath of fresh air,” Olivennes explained. “There is no section, no theme. It’s about creating a rhythm – between color and black and white images, between texts, between shorter and longer entries. The sequencing of the magazine should ensure that no one is bored.
Hans Ulrich-Obrist writes in the magazine’s preface: “Magma puts worlds in contact with other worlds. Olivennes further explained the magazine’s purpose: “We live in a world that has produced so much talk about artists. Magma is the discourse of the artists themselves. We remove the mediation and instead create a direct encounter through which the viewer can experience their own instinctive response to the work.
Frida Orupabo created striking photographic collages for the first issue. Courtesy of Magma.
Olivennes adds: “I see my role more as that of a facilitator than a curator. It was important to listen to the artists, their desires for collaboration and dialogue, and to find the ways in which they spoke to and resonated with each other.
Overall, Magma’s aim is to maintain the legacy of other art publications like Georges Bataille documents from 1929, Henri Matisse Verveor the first issues of Andy Warhol Interview. As Oliviennes says,It is a response to a certain need. It has to do with the times we live in and the way we engage in literature and art.
Andra Ursuța, Untitled (Disc) (2023). Courtesy of the artist, © 2023, Documents Editions
Magma makes sure that part of that engagement goes beyond just flipping through pages. The first issue contains fascinating ephemera, such as an envelope containing the moving missive reproduced and hand-scribbled by the poet René Char to his goddaughter. Later, the reader will come to Romanian sculptor Andra Ursuța’s romantic ode rendered on a 45 rpm static flexidisc printed on a vintage medical X-ray.
“In the era of technological reproducibility, Instagram, virtuality and the ephemeral”, explains Olivennes, “the goal was to give meaning to the tangible object, to the artist’s gesture”.
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