Art Of The Day Weekly

This is our last issue for 2006. Our next newsletter will appear next year, on 4 January 2007 MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

MIAMI – The weather was unfortunately dreadful, eliminating from the agenda any sunbathing. The visitors to the Art Basel Miami Beach contemporary art fair – nearly 40 000 were counted between 7 and 10 December - will at least be able to prove they studied… Needless to say, between the main event -celebrating its 5th edition -and the nearly ten parallel fairs, the program was rather full. Especially since the various private collections – those of the Rubell, Cisneros, de la Cruz or Robins families – had all planned on exceptional openings. In the end, it matters very little what transactions were made. They were obviously "juicy" ones (a «fever for sales» according to the French Figaro). How could it have been otherwise in a year meant to be historical in terms of transactions? The next rendez-vous to confirm the tendencies has already been set: it will be in Basel, on 13 June, for the founding event, Art Basel, that runs the risk of being overpowered by its succesful creation. Unless as some juicy rumor has it Art Basel Miami emigrates to Los Angeles. The art market finds its thrills where it can get them…

A streetcar named art

PARIS – The French capital will inaugurate in all splendor its latest large project on December 16: the streetcar covers the southern part of the outer boulevard known as the boulevard des maréchauxd, over a distance of nearly 9 kilometres. This urban facility has been an opportunity to put through public orders of a magnitude not seen since the famous Buren columns, in the Palais-Royal, over... twenty years ago. Nine installations punctuate the course, from the Garigliano bridge to the West, all the way to quai d’Ivry, to the East.Just to name them, in order: a phone booth imagined by Frank Gehry, in which Sophie Calle answers a call; a micro-architecture by Dan Graham; an installation by Angela Bulloch on the brick facade of the pediatrics institute; an animation by Peter Kögler on the Vanves bridge (doubled, a little further on by an area for roller skaters by the same artist); an «aerial bassin» by Claude Lévêque; benches by Boltanski that distil lovers' secrets in the Montsouris park; palm trees planted by Bertrand Lavier. And last but not least,a totem by Didier Fiuza-Faustino, 17 metres tall.

The shocking Chapmans

These are the rebels of British contemporary art, the ones who often preceed each scandal. Dinos (44 years old) and Jake (39 years old) Chapman are part of the famous YBAs, the movement patronized by Charles Saatchi, who for a long time was their best customer. The war, sex, capitalism are some of the subjects they deal with, all present in the retrospective dedicated to them by the Tate Liverpool. The Zygotic accelerations are assembled models of children with their genitals placed in a haphazardly way. The horror of war is seen through Goya's influence, who pushed them to recreate little embossed characters (1993), inspired from his prints. And then they stripped him without shamelessly: when the Chapmans drew over the original drawings, they created a furor... Hell is probably their most accomplished work but it burnt in the fire that destroyed Saatchi's warehouse in 2005. It represented landscapes with hundreds of figurines representing torturers. The two brothers, known for their discreet contact with the press, made it be known they are working, secretly of course, on an installation that will be unveiled at the Tate Britain in January. When it comes to the Champmans, the least expected is always yet to come.

Behind Tinitn, Hergé

PARIS – He would have been 100 years old in 2007, therefore too old to read Tintin, dedicated, as the famous saying goes, «to young people between 7 and 77 years old»… Did Hergé purposely chose to die in 1983, at the ripe age of… 76? The Centre Pompidou pays a hommage, on the mezzanine level, to the most read author of comic strips in the century: proof, once again, that the ninth art as it is now called, that was put aside as a "popular form of art", has definitly come a long way. Hundreds of prints(among them the originals of Blue Lotus), as well as preparatory drawings, caricatures of Hergé himself, or elements of his correspondence. In the first part of the exhibition, that covers his career since the magazine le Boy-Scout up to his last years as a wealthy man, a collector of Warhols and Lichtensteins, one date is of course essential: 1928, when just 20 years old,young R.G. (Remi Georges) took the reins of the supplement of the Petit Vingtième, an ideal launch pad for the adventures of Tintin. The exhibition at Beaubourg winks in complicity to history: in his last delivery, Tintin et l’Alph-art, Hergé shows the edifice,referred to as the «refinery» by an Oriental sheikh …

Turpin, in praise of the little master

ANGERS – If one had to chose between the one hundreth exhibition on the genius Picasso and the first one of the unknown Turpin, one could be very tempted to go for the latter. Who was Turpin? An obscure painter from the first half of the XIXth century, from a small noble family in Angers, who was Joséphine's chamberlain following her disgrace - and probably her lover. The museum of Angers dedicates a serious exhibition to him based on three sources of loans: from private collections (which implies a lot of serious research), from the museums in the province (Angers of course, La Roche-sur-Yon or Lisieux) and, strangely enough, from major international institutions (the Louvre,the museum of Boston, the Accademia in Venice). This is because Turpin de Crissé symbolises the pilgrim of the Grand Tour as so many that have come before and after him: anchored in his province but a great lover of Italy, without much originality in his technique and no originality in his motifs (the eternal cascades in Tivoli or views of the Vesuvius, etc). But he managed, with so many imperfections, to deliver a personal look, fresh and non-pretentious, that he extended succesfully through his his drawings and lithographs (in the Voyages pittoresques du baron Taylor). In short, he is an ideal measure for a current in painting that has since greatly declined: landscape painting.

Palazzo Madama, a major restoration

TORINO-It is finally opening again! The museum of antique art of the capital of the Piemonte region can finally be visited after a parenthesis of nearly eighteen years.Located in the Palazzo Madama (that takes its name from two French wives of the dynasty of Savoie, Christine and Jeanne-Baptiste, who also reigned), it houses the discreet total of 70 000 objects, from the paleo-Christian period to the XIXth century. It reflect the history of the building, a former roman door, transformed into a fortress in the Middle Ages and deeply rearranged during the baroque period by the great local architect, Filippo Juvarra. Launched in 1988, the Progetto Palazzo Madama, financed in part by the Cassa di Risparmio di Torino (CRT),had gone through a first phase in 2001: at the time, the front building and the monumental staircase had already been made accessible. Aside from the furniture and various objets d’art, one can admire paintings from the schools of Northern Italy (Procaccini, Brambilla) and, among the masterpieces, a sculpture by Bambaia and a Portrait of a man by Antonello da Messina.