ANNETTE MESSAGER
PARIS – She is one of those artists who love weightlessness, or balancing back and forth, like Ernesto Neto for example: her photos suspended by strings (in Mes Vœux-My wishes-), her objects equally suspended (in Pénétration) or placed on pikes, are the best known part of her work and enabled her to be consecrated at the Biennale of Venice in 2005 (she was awarded the Gold Lion with her installation Casino). And yet, Annette Messager is not spontaneously placed in the group of the French «majors», where we find Buren, Boltanski or Sophie Calle, a lot more covered by the media. The retrospective the Centre Pompidou is dedicating to her should contribute to placing her there though. We will see all her favorite supports– photo albums and press cutouts, cuddly toys, materials, stuffed birds, mirrors – all contributing to the thought given to the genre, the identity, the childhood, the place woman has in society. Her installations are often disquieting, disturbing(La Ballade des Pendus -The ballad of the hangman-), but are never without humor, and they have become increasingly imposing and moving with time. For the exhibition at Beaubourg, she has adapted her Venitian creation to the space of the Forum, and it becomes Pinocchio's ballad in Beaubourg.
Centre Pompidou, until September 17
The website of Centre Pompidou www.centrepompidou.fr
ARMENIAN PHOTOGRAPHERS IN ETHIOPIA
PARIS – In our eyes this is the square of exotism: a studio of Armeniam photographers immortalise political life (or what holds the office of it: the existence and the splendor of the Negus) in Ethiopia at the beginning of the XXth century. It is in the context of the year of Armenia that these disconcerting photos are offered for us to see. While a great number of Armenians chose Ethiopia as their new home following the genocide that began in 1909, the Boyadjian clan had settled there since 1905. The patriarch, Bedros,was the portrait artist of Ménélik since 1906. Fathers and sons, from Ménélik to Hailé Sélassié, transmitted from one generation to the next the art of the darkroom and above all, the art of touching up and adding color, to better reveal the symbols of religion (the coptic cross) and of power (costumes, neckllaces), in the capital or during their trips to the province. The life of the Armenian community is also photographed by the Boyadjians. It is a story twice gone by: the Italian invasion then the fall of the Negus in 1974 that led to massive departures and the closing of the Boyadjian workshop.
Jeu de paume, until September 2
The website of Jeu de paume www.jeudepaume.org
ART SENAT 2007 WOMAN, ARE YOU THERE?
PARIS - Each year, at the end of the Spring, the Senate organises an exhibition of contemporary art in the orangerie du Sénat and in the Luxembourg gardens. Borrowing the name of a famous French nursery rhyme, Woman are you there?, it invites 45 French and foreign artists to express themselves on the representations of feminine identity. The exhibition at the orangerie is over, but the monumental sculptures, set up for the whole Summer in the Luxembourg gardens and offered to the public that strolls through it, serve as an echo to the ones that were shown in the orangerie. To reinforce the impact of the works outdoors, the twelve artists offer various sculptures this year, distributed among the many lawns, in the trees and the garden paths.
Jardin du Luxembourg, until 23 September
Read the article (in French) in artaujourdhui.info
FROM CEZANNE TO PICASSO - MASTERPIECES FROM THE VOLLARD GALLERY
PARIS - Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) was the art dealer who, more than anyone else, had a decisive influence on the course of modern art. This exhibition aims to show the extent of his influence, by bringing together almost 190 works (paintings, as well as sculptures, graphic works and artists’ books).
Musée d’Orsay, until September 16
Read the article in art-of-the-day.info
CORRESPONDENCES, VINCENT VAN GOGH- JOHN CHAMBERLAIN, CLAUDE RUTAULT-GEORGES SEURAT
PARIS - In “Correspondences” contemporary artists put their own creation in resonance with a work chosen in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay. John Chamberlain and the French artist Claude Rutault have been invited in this new series.
Musée d’Orsay, until September 9.
Read the article art-of-the-day.info
EDWARD BURTYNSKY- MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
PARIS - Edward Burtynsky is one of the photographers most in vogue on the Canadian contemporay art scene. In just a few years he has reached international renown, worthy of his art's ambitious geopolitical challenges. His photographs have traveled throughout the world, but Manufactured Landscapes is his first personal exhibition in Paris. It brings together a selection of works that were recently part of the Manufactured Landscapes exhibition at the Yours Gallery in Warsaw. Parallel to the exhibition at the Canadian cultural centre, the Théâtre de la Photographie et de l’Image in Nice presents his works this summer , included in Enfants de Cartier: Photographie canadienne contemporaine.(Cartier's children: Contemporary Canadian photography).
Centre culturel canadien, until 25 August
Read the article (in French) in'artaujourdhui.info
SO WATT ! About design in energy
PARIS - Who could imagine today living without electricity? It is an integral part of our daily life, and yet we have to preserve it. How can we behave in a more conservative and reasonable manner when electricity is perfectly immaterial, invisible, intangible? Thirty designers from all over the world - Bless, Solarlab, 5.5 designers, Positive Flow have tried to answer this question through some fifty projects.
Espace EDF Electra, until September 9
Read the article in art-of-the-day.info
JULIO GONZALEZ
PARIS – From crafstman in wrought iron to great inspirer in sculpture after the war: such is the orignal destiny of Julio González (1876-1942) retraced at the Centre Pompidou. The museum holds one of the most beautiful collections of the artist's work. The fund was reinforced in 2003 with a Tête en profondeur through the sponsorship of Pernod Ricard, but benefitted in particular from the bequests of Roberta, Julio González's daughter (who married Hans Hartung) and loans from the González inheritance. His beginnings, with drawings in the aesthetics of Puvis de Chavannes, could not help us foresse what was to come, the famous sculptures in cut-out iron from the thirties, that would influence David Smith or César. His science of soldering and welding could have limited him to be nothing more than a good jeweller. Instead it projected him in another direction through his «symbiotic» collaboration with Picasso, as of 1928. By bending and cutting iron to make minimalist but recognizable forms, González then became, in the precise words of a critic of that time, the «sculptor of the void».
Centre Pompidou, until October<8/b>
The website of Centre Pompidou www.centrepompidou.fr
WEEGEE
PARIS – «Weegee the Famous»: this is the way in which he signed his photographs at the time of his splendor, which reached its climax when The Naked City appeared, right after World War II. The 220 photographs exhibited at the musée Maillol, from the Berinson collection, could all be qualified as such since they are all «vintage», i.e. prints made during the life of Weegee, alias Arthur Fellig. Born in 1899 in Austria-Hungary, died in 1968 in New York, where he knew fame, he is the perfect illustration of the self-made man, going from the small closets of the working class districts in the Lower East Side to rubbing elbows with celebritis – actors, musicians or… murderers. Before his portraits of stars, Weegee had indeed specialized in the violent side of New York, the crimes, of the gangsters of the lower strata he had befriended during his youth. He is a master in lighting (the overtly present flash) and reframing (to enhance a significant detail), always at the right place at the right moment. Weegee is one of the emblematic photographers of modern photostories.
Musée Maillol, until October 15
The website of the Musée Maillol
href="http://www.museemaillol.com" target="_blank"> www.museemaillol.com
PIERRE ET GILLES, DOUBLE JEU
PARIS – They contributed to bringing back to fashion the kitsch aesthetics, of the marshmallow tendency: from portraits overloaded with sequences and small pearls, to loud colors, worked over like photos from the Studio Harcourt, in baroque frames. The Jeu de paume museum will dedicate a complete retrospective, including the most recent creation and all of their self-portraits. Thirty years have gone by since Pierre -from the Vendée region-, and Gilles -from Le Havre - met at a party at Kenzo's. They combined their talents, photography for the first, painting for the second. Throughout their career (that experienced another international high last Spring with the large retrospective at the Manège in Moscow), they worked on movie stars and singers (Mireille Mathieu, Nina Hagen) but also worked by series on the saints or the figures of Greek mythology. While work continues to be divided in the same way, the technical evolutions have on the contrary been integrated: photographs are now retouched with software on a screen rather than with a paintbrush…
Jeu de paume, until September 23
The website of Jeu de paume www.jeudepaume.org
RODIN, LE RÊVE JAPONAIS
PARIS - Like a certain number of his contemporaries -from Van Gogh to the Goncourt brothers, including Clemenceau -, Auguste Rodin underwent a strong attraction at the end of the XIXth century for the Japanese civilisation. He collected prints by Utamaro, masks, netsuke, that one can discover in the exhibition. Certain objects were sent to him directly by his admirers from the Far East. Rodin also produced "Japanese drawings", until 1900, and his passion culminated in 1906 when in Marseille,during a tour, he met the graceful dancer Hanako of whom he did a series of 26 poses, in drawings and then in sculptures. The transfer of some of these works in stoneware, a typically Japanese material (for example, the Head of Balzac by Paul Jeanneney) or the frames done by cabinet maker Kishizo Inagaki show that his attraction for the empire of the Rising Sun had taken on many varied forms.
Musée Rodin, until September 9
The website of Jeu de paume www.musee-rodin.fr
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