Art Of The Day Weekly
#20 - from 26 October 2006 to 1 November 2006
IN THE AIR
Calling Saatchi
LONDRES - Charles Saatchi is known for being discreet – he does not like to give any interviews – but he is present everywhere. It is no wonder he was one of the most brilliant advertisers of the Western world. While his new gallery will open in the Summer of 2007 in the district of Chelsea (5000 square metres carrés on King’s Road!), we learn he has just launched a new service – the (market) loan of works from his collection to private individuals or companies that ask for them. But his latest masterstroke as media mogul is the exhibition at the respectable Royal Academy of Arts until 4 November, in the building of the former Museum of Mankind. Called «Usa Today», the young American art shown comes straight from the Saatchi "hothouses". The rate of Sir Charles' proteges, most of them unknown, is undoubtedly gone to soar, thus allowing him to get a return on his investment. As had been the case in the 1980s with his Young British Artists, with Damien Hirst first in line. Putting all deontology aside (does the concept really exist), this man really has the golden touch. Why don't we call him in to the bedside of French contemporary art?
THE MARKET
The FIAC comes into Paris
PARIS – After almost snobbing it, it seems the FIAC has decided to return to the Grand Palais now that it is renovated. Gone is the "no glamour" era at Porte de Versailles. The 169 galleries that take part in this 33rd edition occupy the center of Paris: aside from the Grand Palais (where some 100 have found their place), the most avant-garde (nearly 70 including the design galleries) are taking up their positions in the Cour carrée of the Louvre. There are over 50% foreign galleries, with some important appearances such as that of the American Barbara Gladstone, the British Waddington and the Italian Massimo de Carlo. As if splitting in two(or spreading haphazardly?) were not enough, the FIAC is also present in the Tuileries gardens with some fifteen sculptures and installations signed by Subodh Gupta, Alain Bublex, Bruno Peinado and colleagues.
Fairs a plenty
PARIS – This year, in the wake of the FIAC, various young and iconoclastic fairs have sprung up, giving Paris a dynamism that recalls that of London (where Frieze accompanied by Zoo) and Basel (where Art Basel has various satellites such as Bâlelatina). Show Off has set up at the foot of the Champs-Elysées at the espace Cardin. On over more than 1000 m2, some thirty gallereis that are crazy about contemporary creations and new technologies (Patricia Dorfmann, RX, Magda Danysz, etc) have gotten together. In a more concentrated area (22 galeries), Slick occupies an original area in Ménilmontant, la Bellevilloise, with galleries from all over France as well as from Hanoi, Zagreb or San Francisco. As for Diva, a traveling fair of video and digital art, it chose an excellent area where many people pass, the hotel Kube, where each gallery exhibits «in a room». As far as contemporary art goes, thsi will surely be the hottest weekend of the year…
EXHIBITIONS
Maurice Denis, more than a Nabi
PARIS - «A flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain way»: the definition of a painting by Maurice Denis has entered history. It also contributed to immotilize him in his role as the pope of the Nabis even if his itinerary is less linear than it seems. This fan of colors - a companion of Gauguin's, Bernard's and Sérusier at Pont-Aven - was also fascinated by Italian classicism and its sens of composition. The retrospective groups together all of Debis' production: paintings on easels and large decorations for interiors. The recomposition of the cycle of Psyche conceived for Moscovite collector Morozov in 1908 is one of the events of the exhibition. The other is the presentation of an unknown facet of the artist's: his photographic corpus, that echoes, for the portraits, his pictural production. Itineraries are offered for visits in the Ile de France region to discover Maurice Denis' monumental decorations – who relaunched religious painting with his Work Shops of sacred art - in the churches in the surroundings of Paris.
Painting in Venice
TREVISE – The ambition of this retrospective is to embrace all of Venitian art of the XXth century. Without limiting itself to follow the obvious beacons, the one put in place by the Biennal of Venice, founded in 1895 but also putting forward the activity of pioneers such as Barbantini who organised in Ca’ Pesaro, in the 1910s, exhibitions grouping together Boccioni, Casorati or Guido Cadorin. The sections of the exhibition are dedicated to artists (Gino Rossi, Filippo de Pisis and, closer to us, Arturo Martini and Emilio Vedova) as well as to themes – the portrait, magical realism. Major personnalities unknown abroad, such as Afro, Santomaso or Tancredi, occupy an important place in the developments after WWII. The itinerary stops in the 1960s, when America entered the Biennale abruptly with the major price offered to Rauschenberg.
Peggy welcomes Germaine
VENICE – Germaine Richier (1902-1959) disappeared half a century ago. One remembers the retrospective conducted by Jean-Louis Prat at the Maeght foundation in 1996. A new exhibition is now offered to us in Venice where Peggy Guggenheim had bought one of the artist's sculptures, la Tauromachie, as early as 1960. Some sixty pieces by the one who was a student of Bourdelle's and then a colleague of Marino Marini's and Giacometti's, are shown. Aside from the bronzes and plasters, we will have the opportunity to discover the drawings and prints kept by the Françoise Guiter Archives, in Paris. The garden of the Venier dei Leoni palace is the perfect setting for these forms always in tension.
The website of the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation has not been updated
BOOKS
A life of luxury
Never has the life of the "jet set" fascinated us as much. Compared to the new heroes of television and advertising, others can be proud of a long tradition of luxury and social niceties, personnified by castles that have survived over the centuries. The author and the photographer managed to be invited in eight of them, all belonging to the same family since they were built. From the Gangi palace in Palermo, used in Visconti's movie "Il gattopardo", to the palace of St. Emmeram of the Thurn und Taxis (with baroque church and library), from the Dutch castle of Haar to that of Harewood, the property of a count and musicologist, the journey takes us through ball rooms, gardens, boudoirs, roooms with frescoes and chapels. Bizarre love affairs, murders, parties or secret meetings… Small stories sometimes feed themselves from History with a capital h: aside from the fact that these persons called in major architects and decorators, many past owners of these residences contributed to form Europe's current face.
IN BRIEF
AIX-EN-PROVENCE - The new building of the National choreographic center of Aix-en-Provence was inaugurated on 19 October. Baptised the black Pavilion, it is the work of Rudy Ricciotti.
FLORENCE - The national photography museum will open on 28 October. A result of the Alinari collection, it is set up in the former convent of the Leopoldine sisters, next to the church of Santa Maria Novella. It includes a section for the blind. The first exhibition, Vu d'Italie, is dedicated to the masters of Italian photography from 1841 to 1941.
LONDON - The 4th edition of the Frieze fair, that was held from 12 to 15 October, welcomed 63 000 visitors, i.e. 35 % more than in 2005.
PARIS - The 6th art book prize, awarded by the national union of antique dealers, isgiven jointly to Marie Boudon-Machuel for her monography of the XVIIth centur sculptor François du Quesnoy (at Acanthe) and to Adrien Goetz for Ingres, collages (Passage publishing house and Ingres museum), whre the artist is seen as a forerunner of the surrealist collages.
PARIS - Artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud has succeeded a unique operation by selling at Christie's, on 27 October, without any reserve price, his personal collection of… his own works.
ON ARTOFTHEDAY.INFO
This week do not miss...
Cuban posters The José Lambert Collection
LA LOUVIERE - A journey through Cuba's history using 180 posters: the Lambert collection invites us precisely to that. Posters were the main instrument of communication during the Castro revolution, and it has known how to evolve, going from the "soviet" realist models to an explosion of colors recalling… American pop art.
25 sculptures for one collection
PARIS - Gallery owner Jacques de Vos unveils for us the result of more than 25 years of passion: 25 sculptures by authors as varied as Hans Arp, Jean Lambert-Rucki and Alberto Giacometti. With two personalities worth discovering, both dead in poverty as the old cliche of the damned artist requires: Hungarian artist Joseph Csaky and Italian artist Gio Colucci.