Andy Warhol was in favor for each person having his quarter of hour of fame. A contemporary artist ensures this in a certain way for thousands of anonymous persons, but they have to get undressed: Spencer Tunick’s congregations of nudes have gone around the world. Here is another creator, one of Great Britain’s favorites, who offers a similar opportunity. Anthony Gormley, known for his statues (among them the colossal Angel of the North at Gateshead), won the contest for the fourth pedestal at Trafalgar Square, that hosts installations of contemporary art. This time Gormley will put the scissors and the milling-machine aside. He becomes conceptual for One and other, presented this autumn: these are people of the street, the John Does and Paul Moes, who will climb on the column for a one-hour exhibition. In all, over two thousand persons could have access to this brief media excitement. That is really nothing compared to what the hermit Simon the Stylite Buñuel loved so endured, who stayed for 37 years on a pillar, in the Syrian dessert. And there wasn’t even a camera or a security net for him …

The other designated winner to follow the current installation by Thomas Schütte is Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, who will put Lord Nelson’s ship in a bottle

BERLIN – The Scharf-Gerstenberg collection, including nearly 250 important surrealist works, opens on 11 July in front of the Palace of Charlottenburg, in the Stüler building that housed the Egyptian museum until 2005. The presentation, named «Surreal Worlds», also looks at the roots of the movement among predecessors such as Piranese, Goya, Redon or Max Klinger. Important art ensembles represent René Magritte, Max Ernst and Hans Bellmer. Buñuel’s movies or those of contemporary artists inspired by Surrealism are presented in an unexpected decor: under the columns of the Egyptian temple of Sahure. The latter will only move once its definite location, in the fourth wing of the Pergamon Museum, is finished.

Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg at Schloßstraße 70,14059 Berlin

DIJON – The curators have two explanations to Charles Meynier's (1763-1832) current low level of notoriety: he painted very few portraits – an efficient vector for celebrity - and he specialized in the large in situ decors –- a genre whose authors we easily forget. This is therefore a rare occasion that we are given to rediscover a painter who was famous in his time. Meynier, who was very busy during the Empire and the Restoration, was a prize of Rome during the fateful year of 1789. With some fifty works – historic scenes commissioned by private collectors and the administration, mythological compositions on unknown subjects (The philosopher Bias buying back slaves), pen drawings and wash drawings – one succeeds in seeing all of his neo-classic work, hidden by the popularity of painter David and his followers. The most conscientious visitors will of course go to the Louvre to discover, or at least look differently, at such large compositions as The Triumph of French painting or France disguised as Minerva protecting the arts.

Charles Meynier at the musée Magnin from 11 July to 12 October 2008

LA CORUNA (Spain) – One would easily have imagined his work shown in France, where he died at Orgeval, in the Yvelines, in 1976, and where he did famous work in the Charente region with writer Claude Roy. Or even in Italy, where he also detailed the life of a small village (Luzzara) together with a big figure of movie scenarios (Cesare Zavattini). Well, it is not the case. In order to see the first European retrospective dedicated to photographer Paul Strand since his death, we will have to go to Galicia. It is indeed the Pedro Barrié de La Maza foundation that hosts some one hundred «vintage» photographs from the museum of Fine Arts of Philadelphia and the Aperture Foundation in New York, where his archives are kept. All his career is reviewed, from his beginnings in New York, where he was fascinated by the city and machines, to his friendships with Stieglitz and Cartier-Bresson, from his activity as an antifascist movie director, to his reports throughout the world, from Mexico to the Arab countries. The exhibition, that would undoubtedly have interested more than one museum, will travel very little: in October it will go to the neighboring town of Vigo.

Paul Strand at the Barrié de La Maza foundation, from 3 July to 14 September 2008

PARIS - What music instrument fascinated the avant-garde of the XXth century? Was it the violin, the piano, the flute? No, it was the guitar, that we can see in works by Picasso, Picabia, Juan Gris, Miro… This supremacy is no coincidence, but rather the result of the fascination flamenco exercised at the time, the expression since Carmen by Bizet (1875), of a mysterious, proud and sensual country. The Petit-Palais museum offers a second venue to the exhibition presented this winter at the museum Reina Sofía in Madrid. It shows how the model of the Spanish woman was created with the hair tied back and with flowers, a shawl falling off her shoulders, the mantilla and the fan, that symbolized a country as much as pizza symbolized Italy. From movies by Edison or the Lumière brothers to ads for El anis del Mono, from Sorolla’s illuminated paintings to his less famous colleagues such as Camarasa and González Iturrino up to the ink drawings by García Lorca, the woman with the fiery heels – often a Gypsy, sometimes a real star such as La Niña de los Peines or La Argentina – inspired the most famous artists. Even Hodler, Delaunay and Van Dongen fell under her spell. To be honest, men are not completely absent from this mythology: Vicente Escudero impressed Man Ray by his extreme modernism that pushed him to dance to all rhythms, even that of a car motor …

La nuit espagnole. Flamenco, avant-garde et culture populaire1865-1936 at the Petit-Palais from 6 July to 31 August 2008

Hubert Duprat is a rare artist. His exhibitions are often set many years apart. Some of his most famous creations – which we were able to see in 2005 at the espace Electra, in Paris, during the exhibition in homage to Jean-Henri Fabre – are the trichoptera coccons. For lack of traditional materials (pebbles and river twigs), he gives these water insects fragments of gold and precious stones with which they build their cocoons. At the Centre du paysage de Vassivière, the artist turned clearly towards the mineral world. While he remains faithful to his taste for assembling, this time he has chosen spar, mica, magnetite, pyrite or even hematite as primary materials, which he bends to adopt the form of cylinders, spheres, polished masses. Modeling clay and tubes in PVC complete the presentation that sometimes takes on monumental dimensions, in particular in the small theatre and the lighthouse.

Hubert Duprat’s exhibition, Massive Centrale, is presented at the Centre international d’art et du paysage in Vassivière from 6 July to 25 October 2008.

Together with Jack Lang he is undoubtedly the minister of Culture that most marked the Fifth Republic in France. With one obvious advantage: he himself created the ministry at rue de Valois. His commitment in favor of national heritage is well known, as is his interest in its most recent manifestations – he founded the service of the inventory of historic buildings and imposed a change of legislation to help protect the monuments of the XXth century. This book, the presentation of the symposiums held in November 2006, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death, details the place architecture held in Malraux’s thoughts and actions (his fascination for Greece, for Egypt or the grottos of Elephanta, in India), his friendship with Le Corbusier, Faugeron or Niemeyer, his combat to defend the Villa Savoye when it was threatened by the construction of the lycée of Poissy, the genesis of the law on the protected sectors or the beginnings of the cleaning of the capital. « I changed the color of Paris» Malraux used to say. His role in architectural creation, illustrated by a teaching reform and the construction of houses of culture, is also looked at.

André Malraux et l’architecture directed by Dominique Hervier, Editions Le Moniteur, 2008, 296 p., 29 €, ISBN : 978-2-281-19393-0

CLEVELAND - The Cleveland Museum of Art reopened on 29 June after a three-year renovation directed by architect Rafael Viñoly. Among its works of art it has important Egyptian pieces, the Holy Family by Filippino Lippi, Life, a large Picasso from his blue period or the Poplars at Saint-Rémy by Van Gogh.

LONDON - La Surprise, a painting by Watteau, which had been missing for 200 years, has set a record price at Christie’s on July 8. Estimated £3,000,000, it has fetched £12,361,000.

LONDON – The exhibition on the Chinese clay warriors from the First Emperor has attracted 850,000 visitors to the British Museum, a level of attendance that had not been reached since the big exhibition on Tutankhamun in 1972.

MADRID – The announcement by the XVIIIth century painting curator at the Prado museum, Manuela Mena, that The Colossus, one of the most famous paintings in the museum, was no longer attributed to Goya but rather to a minor painter, continues to stir controversies.

MONTPELLIER – The painting by Poussin Venus and Adonis, dismembered for the last two centuries, has been exceptionally put together at the musée Fabre. The missing part, Landscape with the river god which belongs to the Patti Birch Trust, is on loan during an exhibition.

NEW YORK – The Archangel Saint Michael, a clay sculpture by Andrea della Robbia, and belonging to the Metropolitan Museum, was damaged when it fell from the wall on 1st July. The museum has ordered a complete review of all the hanging systems.

PARIS – The Ricard Foundation will inaugurate on 10 July a new «lounge» space created by architects Jakob+MacFarlane

POMPEII – The Italian government declared on 5 July an emergency situation for the site of Pompeii. This decision will allow it to name a commissary extraordinary whose mission it will be to take all the measures needed to protect the archeological area that has been degraded, due to the lack of investments and guards, clandestine visits, stray dogs …

QUÉBEC –Unesco has granted Dresden a reprieve and has kept the city on the list of world heritage until 2009 to give time to a lawsuit against the construction of a four-lane bridge over the Elbe River. Among the new sites added during the annual meeting, held from 2 to 10 July there is Vauban’s work in France, the towns of Mantova and Sabbioneta in Italy, the wooden churches of Slovakia, the Armenian monasteries in Iran.