Art Of The Day Weekly
#3 - from 11 May 2006 to 17 May 2006
IN THE AIR
Museums put on a great show
Following fashion (Armani at the Guggenheim, Chanel at the MoMA, Vivienne Westwood at the Victoria & Albert Musuem), it is now the turn of movies to make a grand entry into the museums. The Pompidou Center has just put the collections of the national museum of Modern Art in order under the name The movement of images, to emphasize the influence of movies and photography on XXth century art. The same institution offers the exhibition Voyages in utopia, Jean-Luc Godard, 1946-2006, a sort of kaleidoscope that associates images from current events, from the history of art and from the movie director's production. The Cinémathéque Française is simultaneously paying homage to Pedro Almodovar. It has rebuilt the career of the Castilian "enfant terrible" through drawings, paintings, costumes and different objects. As a prize, for those who want more following an exhibition and those who on the contrary are bored by the latter (it can happen), a retrospective completes the offer.
EXHIBITIONS
When Cindy meets Sherman
PARIS- She is alternately movie actress of the fifties, fashion model, a medieval Saint or an anonymous woman waiting for the bus in an American suburb. Cindy Sherman is the queen of transformation. Since her beginnings in the mid-seventies she has represented a great number of characters while remaining, deep inside, Cindy Sherman. Through the use of makeup, staging, poses, lights, she simply embodies our clichés and fantasies, by walking through time and history. Cindy Sherman works by series, using nothing else than photography. The exhibition at the Jeu de Paume, one of the most complete ever dedicated to her, groups together 250 works . We will be able to see in particular all of Film Stills (69 images), and the series History Portraits, Fairy Tales, Murder Mystery, Fashion, etc. After using models as well (Sex pictures) and working in black and white (Broken Dolls), the artist finally approached an obvious prey, the clown.
All you ever wanted to know about Jan Fabre
ANTWERP- The Flemish town has organized a true hymn to Jan Fabre. No less than three hundred exhibitions, not including the adjoining events, such as the one held at the Rode Zeven restaurant-gallery, are going to be held. It is true that the artist has so many facets -visual artist, choreographer, theater writer, movie director -that it is difficult to define him. To make things easier, he has been defined as the homo faber. At the MuHKA, the museum of contemporary art, one can follow his genesis by looking at super-8 movies and photographs of his youth. At the Royal Museum of Fine Arts he emphasizes his own sculptures or films with major works from the past, Jean Fouquet's Virgin, Memling's angel musicians, Cranach's Eve. When the ultra contemporary finds its roots in classic art... Last but not least the municipal library has brought together his manuscripts and some busts of himself he accepted to make in order to accompany Schiller and Goethe.
Battle of documents
LONDON- The Hayward Gallery offers a very enticing exhibition. While pushing forward the current argument on surrealism, it looks closely at one of its "internal ennemies", Georges Bataille, and particularly at his magazine Documents, published in 1929-1930 and financially supported by Wildenstein, the famous gallery owner. In its pages he studied primitive art, sculpture, movies, contemporary music (Stravinsky) with the avowed intention of showng that artistic creation has never been the disembodied & automatic process André Breton pretended it to be. Bataille claimed artistic creation was very deeply stimulated by death, blood and sex. The curators took a shot at playing Sherlock Holmes, looking for each of the works that illustrated the magazine. In spite of the difficulty of convincing the lenders about an event that is no simple monographic exhibition, they succeeded in bringing together nearly two hundrerd works: some Miro (of which a Composition from the Grenoble museum), a Picasso collage (Three dancers), photos by Eli Lotar (of the slaughter house of la Villette), a Mustache-head and bottles by Hans Arp, an African mask, etc. All of these works draw up a hollow portrait of surrealism, far from Breton's official line, he who did not enjoy grappling with the darker sides of our minds...
GRAPHIC ARTS
Chaumont still posted
CHAUMONT- Following a period of doubt a few years ago, the Poster festival has searched for new inspiration with a new team led since 2002 by Jean-François Millier. The choice was made to offer the largest range possible, from historic and avant-gard graphism to offers made to novices as well as to specialists. This year the classic position is filled by the great Polish Tomaszewski, recently deceased and who had been a satirist before leaving his imprint on movie posters in the sixties. In the avant-gard position, we have five bubbling Berlin studios. The exhibition dedicated to Michel Quarez will give a touch of nostalgia to the event (the cartoon strip for Citroën on Dyane's private life as well as the Festival of the Humanité, the French Communist Party's yearly event) while the students' prize brings us back to contemporary events. It rewards the best work on the crisis of the suburbs and will be the prelude to workshops led by the newspaper Le Monde diplomatique.
Amateurs for prints are still to be found
PARIS-The Employers' federation of prints says it loud and clear, France is the only country in the world that has known how to keep all of the printing techniques alive. These include lithographs, line-engraving, xylography, lino-engraving, stencils, typography, silkscreen printing. Each one of these techniques has its followers. A priori nothing has changed since Daumier! The Print Fair is the privileged place to control these assertions. We will revel in checking this with some famous spreaders of the profession such as Maeght, Prouté (both parisians), Bellinzona (Milano), Boermer (Düsseldorf & New York), MMG (Tokyo), Laube (Zurich) or Sims Reed(London). In total, some 25 exhibitors, making this an event more modest than the London Print Fair (the 21st edition was held in April), but nevertheless significant.
AUCTIONS
Amazon Winds over Drouot
PARIS-People often think that tribal art collections were all made by privileged pioneers at the beginning of the XXth century, before planes, or television, or paid vacations existed.The auction of Amazon art at the Binoche study on 11 May shows this is not always the case. The 3 ensembles offered were indeed brought together in the second half of the XXth century. The Bianchi collection -objects from high Orenoque (Venezuela) and Ecuador, is from the 1960s. That of Marcel Isy-Schwartz, the lecturer from Connaissance du Monde, started taking shape between 1954 and 1970 thanks to donations the explorer presented-the useless glass pearls the conquistadores already knew about, as well as nivaquin. It includes 67 remarkable, headdresses in colored feathers. Lastly, the third is yet more recent. Jean Lions started it at the beginning of the 1980s. It is young but fascinating for it offers a rare element, the precolombian ceramics from Brazil including plates, urns, up to a G-string in ceramics! The price range is very wide, from a few hundred euros to over 100 000 expected for an urn one thousand years old.
BOOKS
Who are you Dora Maar?
The price recently paid for a painting by Picasso Portrait of Dora Maar with cat (95.2 million dollars at Sotheby's on 3 May) obviously awakens one's curiosity. Who was this muse, not necessarily the best known among the artist's women? By sheer-and fortunate-coïncidence, the catalogue of a current exhibition Picasso-Dora Maar helps us clear things out. Dora Maar (her eral name being Henriette Markovitch, born in 1907 from a Croatian father and a French mother) was an artist in her own right. A photographer, she befriended and/or loved Man Ray, Georges Bataille, Georges Hugnet and Eluard before meeting Picasso. The fatal encounter occured in the fall of 1935, at the Deux Magots café. Olga, his first wife, was 28 years old, Picasso 54, he had just separated from her, and had a child from Marie Thérése. Dora is playing with a pointed knife which she sticks into the table between her fingers. Sometimes she missses and blood appears. Obviously the catalogue does not show these proverbial images but rather a turnaround between love and death: the passage from the last happy years(the sunlit summers in mougins -Picasso painting Dora, Dora photographing Picasso) towards the horror of the war (illustrated by a remarkable article written by Dora on the creation of Guernica). The break between the lovers reflects the brutality of those years. Picasso bought her a house in Ménerbes and left her some works of art, in particular the remarkable ensemble of torn paper sculptures. But they never saw each other again after 1946. Dora was shattered after their relation and survived half a century, until 1997, in the shadow of the genius. Picasso, Dora Maar, it was so dark, co-edited Flammarion/Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2006. 320 pages. 40€
IN BRIEF
BIARRITZ-The Biarritz photo festival will be held from 14 to 21 May in various locations in the city: the Bellevue, the Royal movie house, the CasinoTheater, in the Saint-Eugène crypt. The program includes photographs of course (on the theme of urban landscapes), videos and films by artists (Closky, Lavier, Vilmouth, etc).
BRUSSELS -This is the Mecca for antique-hunters in search of tribal art among others. This year 55 antique dealers will take part at the event in Les Sabons and will close as late as 10:30 PM on 11 and 12 May.
KOLN -The organizers of the Koln Art fair have just announced that the 2006 edition will be the last one to be held in the fall (1-5 November). As of 2007, he event will take place in the Spring (18-22 April).
NEW YORK -The 12th edition of the Fine Art Fair is being held at the Armory (dicks 90 and 92) from 12 to 17 May with some 50 international galeries, among them Didier Aaron, Cazeau-Béraudière and a great nuber of Anglo-Saxons (Richard Green, Colnaghi, etc.)
PARIS - Artists in Belleville will be organizing an Open Doors weekend on 12 and 13 May. In total, the 50 000 visitors expected will have the opportunity of seeing 130 locations and meeting nearly 250 artists.
PARIS - Spring comes along with the Evenings in the Marais: like their Belgian colleagues the galeries in the neighborhood will be open until 11 PM on friday 12 and saturday 13. Various openings will be organized during this event.
PARIS - The 2006 Marcel Duchamp prize has been given to Claude Closky, whose amusement is to divert media and advertising messages. Like his predcessors he will be honored at Espace 315 at the Pompidou Center, with a piece of work created by him for this occasion, Manège (Carrousel) (until 31 July).
PARIS - What is the current situation of contemporary art books? That is the question asked at the Artcurial bookstore (7, rond-point de Champs-Elysées, 75008 Paris) on 13 May. Following the screening of the movie Figures & Co.) by Jpël Cano, a conference-debate will be held by Catherine Millet and Daniel Janicot (Le Magasin de Grenoble).
PARIS - A town house entirely designed by Eugène Printz is going to be auctioned at Christie's on 17 May -the decor, not the walls. These are authentic masterpieces of Art deco, from the staircases to the bathroom, with extremely refined furniture.
PARIS - Moments of emotion at Drouot Montaigne: as usual, the Parisian auctioneers present the best pieces of their future sale in their prestigious location on Avenue Montaigne, next to the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. The main attraction will be the collection on Tribal art truth, to be scattered on 17 and 18 June.
ROME - Since May 10 the restored orange Garden of Villa Borghese has been hosting the donation of Italian-American businessman Carlo Bilotti. It represents 22 works of art, including works by de Chirico, one Manzù, two Severini, one Warhol, etc. Temporary exhibitions will be organized on the ground floor. The first is dedicated to commissions the collector entrusted to 3 contemporary artists: Damien Hirst, Jenny Savile and Davd Salle.
ZURICH - The painter Karel Appel has died on May 3. Born in Amsterdam in 1921, he founded in 1948 the Cobra group with Corneille and Constant.