Art Of The Day Weekly

Louis Vuitton: 100 million for a foundation

PARIS – After François Pinault took over the Palazzo Grassi in Venice to set up his foundation, his great rival Bernard Arnault could not stay put for too long. He has just responded in a spectacular manner by announcing the birth in 2010 of the Vuitton Foundation for creation. It will rise over the Jardin d’Acclimatation park on the outskirts of Paris. The architect chosen is the best one currently around(or most consensual?): Frank Gehry, the creator of the Guggenheim in Bilbao or, more recently, of the Wine Town of the Marqués de Riscal cellars, in the Rioja region in Spain. One hundred million euros will be dedicated to this project that ressembles a crystal ship with all sails unfurled. The sector in which the foundation will work, as well as its objectives, still remain vague but the personnality of the woman approached for the director's position appears to guarantee quality. It is Suzanne Pagé, currently the deus ex machina at the museum of modern art of the City of Paris. The only known victim will be the bowling alley, to be sacrificed for the glory art.

See how the foundation will look like

DENVER , A POINTED WING

DENVER - The great city in Colorado will inaugurate this Saturday a daring extension to its Art museum. Facing the main building pierced with loopholes, built in 1971 by a great Italian (Gio Ponti), David Libeskind, the author of the war museum in Manchester and the projects for Liberty Tower at Ground Zero, has been asked to produce an architecture all in angles. Symbolically, the new building points towards the older one with a metalic outgrowth in the form of a point. The interior spaces have also been criticized for not always helping to exhibit the very rich collections presented in the new wing: Warhol, Lichtenstein, Gormley, etc. Outside a monumental Spider by Louise Bourgeois welcomes the visitors.

Blue, obviously blue

PARIS - There is one color we associate spontaneously with Yves Klein who died much too young (1928-1962), it is obviously the color blue. He generously spread it all over his nude models before they lay on the canvas and he registered a shade under the name IKB (International Klein Blue). That shade of blue made him famous but hid the rest of his personnality: his provocations with the make believe flight from his window or the immolation of the gold ingot, the symbol of capitalism (thrown into the Seine well before Gainsbourg smoked a bill of 500 francs), his work with fire, his writings. It is a rare privilege to have the right to a second retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. The artist, who died at the age of 32 from a heart attack and who wished to become as famous as Picasso, would have appreciated it.

Flood black

DIJON – The representation of the bible's flood in art? That's a strong theme, that corresponds well with the beginning of the autumn, the dullness, the first chilly winds. The charming (national) Magnin museum, with its cracking wooden foors, has brought together a sample of French paintings from the XVIth to the XIXth centuries. The «founding» painting, the one Poussin worked on between 1660 and 1664, is not included but an old copy represents it. It is the time in which the event was still shown as a rigoroulsy ordered landscape painting, almost calm. The taste for terror, the distress – which are catgories of what is Sublime - characterise the awakening of the Romantic movement. When man paints the Flood it allows him to define a typology of climate catastrophes, in front of which man is only a whisp of straw, and can feel the heartrendering emotion of the horrific.

Lights of the Alps

ZURICH – The Alps from A to Z: this is more or less the aim of the exibition at the Kunsthaus that goes through centuries and disciplines. From 1600 to our day, through the prism of geology, of botanics, of map making or of tourism, dozens of privileged witnesses give their vision of the great European mountain chain. It is interesting to compare Mount-Rose seen by Alexandre Calame in 1856 to the Saint-Moritz of today retranscribed by Gerhard Richter. From peasant parties sketched by Rittmeier (in 1856 as well) to the young women in traditional costumes photographed by Roland Iselin 150 years later, the eye has certainly lost its descriptive capacity and acquired a critical or subversive dimension. Watercolors by John Ruskin (the Eiger), photos by Lartigue, drawings by Gustave Doré, paintings by Segantini or Böcklin as well as Jean-Luc Godard, Turner, Viollet-le-Duc or the very contemporary Monica Bonvicini: everyone has been interested in the Alps!

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Fred Feinsilber, books through images

PARIS – Sotheby’s is scattering a very rich collection of books on 11 and 12 October. Fred Feinsilber collected them for over half a century. It is surprising by its extreme eclecticism, including the Liber Chronicarum published in Nüremberg in 1493 as well as the mythical Jazz by Matisse in 1947 (120 000 €), with his stencil drawings. The link between all these works is the fact they are all illustrated, with a remarkable variety of techniques: lithography, xylography, prints on leather, gouache or sugar-based aquatint. This last one is by Picasso, who in a way is the star of the sale. Is that so unique? Out of 550 lots, 45 are by him, among them Saint Matorel of Max Jacob, containing his first attempts to cubism (70 000 €). But the most expensive lot – not illustrated -is the fruit of Fred Feinsilber's admiration for Albert Camus: the autographed manuscript of Mythe de Sisyphe (200 000 €).