On Friday May 4th at 17:00, Didier Semin will have give a lecture: Visual Tricks. Modern Art, Military Camouflage and Animal Mimicry at Gerðarsafn - Kópavogur Art Museum.

Gertrude Stein once told a famous anecdote while walking in Paris with Picasso during World War I. They crossed a military camouflaged convoy on its way to the frontline. “It is us who have invented that!” (Us: the cubists, the artists). Picasso said: “It is partly true, even if the question is still somehow controversial. Many artists used to work in camouflage sections during World War I. But the artists themselves stole the idea of camouflage from the animal kingdom and called themselves “chameleons”.

In his talk he will question the unlikely relationships between animal mimicry, art and military visual tricks.

Didier Semin is a guest at the MA program at the Fine Art Department at the IUA as well as an external examinator of MA projects at the ongoing exhibition at Gerðarsafn - Kópavogur Art Museum. He is a professor at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris as well as a renowned curator and book editor with a focus on artists writings and the drawing as medium in contemporary art.