Art Of The Day Weekly
#18 - from 12 October 2006 to 18 October 2006
IN THE AIR
The Sevso treasure, the return!
LONDON – It was in the center of an incredible adventure at the end of the 1980s and now a few privileged persons will have the opportunity to see it up close in the Bonhams locale… The treasure of Sevso includes 14 silver objects from the late Roman Empire, plates and ewers remarkably worked. Its origin still remains a mystery: Serbia? Lebanon? Hungary? When its owner, the marquis of Northampton, bought it in 1980, he aimed to sell it right away to the Getty Museum, that was very interested. But as soon as the Lebanese export documents were declared false, the matter took on another aspect. The sale foreseen at Sotheby’s New York in 1990 led to three years of litigation. A great number of countries pretended the treasure had been robbed from them. Though not one of them could prove it… Fifteen years later, the potential value of the ensemble reached mind blowing levels (rumor has it it could be worth 150 millions €) but the stigmata of its origin has not been wiped away and thus the transfer remains a problem. The happy few who will be lucky enough to see it will be very closely watched…
See the treasure on the website of the Antiques Trade Gazette
MUSEUMS
The Louvre is an American treasure
Et in Arcadia Ego by Poussin, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione by Raphael, The infanta Marguerite by Vélasquez, The Young Beggar by Murillo… These are a few of the great classic paintings the Louvre museum will part with for a year (only three months as far as the Raphael is concerned, which had never left France since the XVIIth century) to benefit the High Museum in Atlanta. The collaboration between the two institutions began very discreetly but will become a reality on 14 October: in Atlanta, a new 1000 m2 wing has been reserved for three years to the works snet by the Louvre. They will be organised in three cycles: «Royal Collections» (14 October 2006 to 2 September 2007), «The Louvre and Antiquity» (October 2007 to September 2008), «the Louvre today and tomorrow» (October 2008 to September 2009). This exchange also includes a pedagogic aspect but its main "raison d'être" is of course financial: le musée, contraint comme beaucoup de ses homologues à accroître ses ressources propresLouvre, tirera de l’opération quelque 10 millions d’euros.
FESTIVAL
Lille on Indian time
LILLE – The northern capital will host the most dynamic metropolis in India, Bombay, for a series of ambitious events. This is a good way not to lose the energy acquired in 2004, when Lille was the cultural capital of Europe. The avant-garde of contemporary creation – artists who were unknown just a few years ago and whose works easily go for more than 100 000 dollars today – are present: Subodh Gupta, who dares pile up pieces of stainless steel crockery, Ravinder Reddy and his huge colored heads, Anita Dube. Also in the program: fashion, photography and, of course, cinema since Bombay is the nerve center of the Indian movie industry, with the Bollywood studios. Billboard artists and decorators have been given – practically -"carte blanche" to transform the city.
EXHIBITIONS
Half of Velazquez
LONDON - It is not easy to organize a retrospective of the «painter of painters» as Manet called him. The public only knows some 80 paintings of his, and two institutions hold one third of this stock: the Prado (where the major exhibition took place in 1990) and the National Gallery, which hosts the present one. Half of his works will be presented, which is quite an achievement in itself. This of course includes the nine paintings from the host museum, among them the only nude by the painter, the Rokeby Venus(Venus and Cupid), bought exactly one century ago, in 1906, through the contribution of the very young Art Fund. The Prado has accepted to send nine paintings (in exchange for a similar future loan the other way, we can easily imagine), including in particular Apollo and the Vulcano forges. Needless to say the very famous Las Meninas(Maids of Honor) and the Surrender of Breda(The Spears)have not left the Spanish territory…
Rauschenberg, in praise of pot-pourri
PARIS – In spite of its recent difficulties with some overly fragile North American art works, the Centre Pompidou continues its exploration of the great Yankee art. This time the guest is Robert Rauschenberg. The latter marked a major era in American art with his Combine paintings, during the second half of the 1950s. The young Texan, less than 30 years old at the time, ex-student, ex-sailor, worked at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and studied at the famous Black Mountain College (where he met John Cage), put an end to conventions and even went beyond Pollock's Action Painting. He created paintings full of the objects he found, full of capitalist symbols(the Coca-Cola bottle), stuffed dead animals (eagle, chicken or the angora goat that appears in the famous Monogram), as well as reproductions borrowed from the history of art. Half way between painting and sculpture, these Combines open the way to installations, to pop art, to conceptual art…
...and Fabrica , open your eyes
PARIS – Do not leave the Pompidou Center without first going to the lower level by taking what is here a tuned stairway, where each one of your steps gives out a sound taken from the South African Marumba. One can discover the extraordinary wealth of the works by Fabrica, the research laboratory created by Luciano Benetton and Oliviero Toscan, where young professionals from all over the world redefine the frontiers between art and communication. New styles, new languages, new materials, all daringly politically incorrect. Visual communication at the service of the large NGOs' communication campaigns....Themed photographic reports on the family, death, the weather…Interactive experiments in which the spectators participate physically. You can create your own composition, play with your own mobility to project your image or decipher the sense of an installation …And all parents should see Evidence the documentary by Godfrey Reggio who filmed continuously the look of children in front of the television.
The Thraces measured in carats
PARIS - Gold in abundance is what we expect from an exhibition on the Thrace civilisation, especially when it concerns the most brilliant dynasties, that conquered all, from the Danube to the Egean sea, between the Vth and the IIIrd centuries BC. Ceremonial dishes, jewelry, bits or saddle decorations, in gold or in silver: the nearly one hundred objects exhibited correspond to simple typologies. Sometimes the inventions were unexpected, like simple farmers working the land, surprised to work precious metals… Four famous treasures are present, those of Rogozen, Borovo, Letnitsa, Panagjurishte. The moment is also unvoluntarily well chosen, since at the same time, in London, the treasure of Sevso is being presented.
BOOKS
The secret of the dome
It is a famous Parisian brasserie, but prior to that it is a roofing technique that has fascinated man since earliest antiquity. How can one set up a hemisphere on four walls without making the whole thing come falling down? From the simple corbelled construction to the dome on pendentives, all the way to the current solutions that the new flexible and resistant materials allow today (PVC, special steels, etc), we have come a long way. The technical aspect will undoubtedly remain mysterious for the uninitiated, but they will have embarked on a beautiful journey through time and space, from the villages in Cameroun with their strange bomb-shaped cabins to the church of Saint Sophie in Istanbul, from the Bon Marché department store in Paris to the geodesic domes created by Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983). The latter, a genius in his own style, projects into a world of science-fiction with his project of a 3 kilometre in diametre dome over Manhattan. He imagined it in 1964 but it has not yet been carried out…
IN BRIEF
GRENOBLE – At the Magasin, as of 22 October, Kader Attia presents an installation 15 metres tall, in memory of the tsunami of December 2004
LONDON - Scope, the young contemporary art fair will be holding its 3rd edition in the Truman Brewery in the East End. More than 60 video, state-of-the-art galleries will be present for 12 to 15 October.
LONDRES – Warhol's famous Flowers will be up for sale at Christie’s on 15 October (estimate: 2.5 million £). The following day, during the Italian Sale, an important De Chirico, Mobili nella valle (estimated at 1 million £) will be up for bids.
PARIS – Letters are losing popularity but postcards are resisting: as of 16 October, the musée de la Poste will analyse, since their Austrian ancestor in 1869, the life of these images on the back of which we write insignificant phrases…
VENICE – The young auction house of San Marco, created by the Semenzato family (who left the house that bears its name), offers an interesting programme on the 15th at the casino (Ca’ Vendramin-Calergi) including a Lorenzo Lotto (Saint Roch), a Breugel the Younger, a Giambattista Tiepolo (Portrait of a senator) and a beautiful still life by Luis Meléndez.
ON ARTOFTHEDAY info
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