Art Of The Day Weekly

Texas and the flying bananas

« The banana is a veiled reference to stupidity ». Based on this simple concept, artist César Sáez decided to place a giant banana 300 meters long into geostationary orbit. Built in bamboo and balsa – just like Thor Heyerdahl's Kon Tiki – and covered with synthetic paper, it will keep for a month at an altitude of 30 000 m before disintegrating. It will turn on itself thanks to a system of gyroscopes but will be geostationnary, that is, it will always stay in the same place right over the Earth. And the choice of Saez and his team is obviously not insignificant: this place will be Texas, the land of space power, of macho cow-boys, of oil and President Bush. To hang a fruit of foreign origin, phallic and yellow, over Dallas, is both a big joke and a tongue in cheek satire. The project cost one million dollars and was supported by various centers of Canadian artists. A subscription has been launched as well as a call to all volunteers for a building site in Northen Mexico. Given the dimensions, the banana grows very quickly: it should get warped near the stratosphere in 2008.

To know more about the project

...LAST DAYS ...UNTIL 21 JANUARY... Do not miss TITIEN, LE POUVOIR EN FACE at the MUSÉE DU LUXEMBOURG. The most important portrait artist of the Renaissance faces the men of power of his time See ArtAujourdhui.info article (in French)

As well as...PICASSO AND THEATRE at the SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT The story of a passion that reflected on all of his work See ArtAujourdhui.info article (in French)

And until 24 JANUARY, ANDRÉ BRASILIER at La Fontaine. The peaceful beauty of the landscapes of the Tard region, the land André Brasilier aopted, at the MUSÉE JEAN DE LA FONTAINE at CHATEAU-THIERRY .See ArtAujourdhui.info article (in French)

Canaletto-upon-Thames

DULWICH (LONDRES) – Canaletto, the Great Canal, the Doge Palace… Canaletto, the Thames, the humid countryside… Is this the same artist? Yes, even if one often forgets. The English were such an essential clientele for Canaletto that he settled in their country for nearly ten years, from 1746 to 1755. This is precisely the period the Dulwich Picture Gallery , the delightful museum on the outskirts of London, explores. One sees traditional views of Venice, which Canaletto painted far from the original (but he knew it by heart, thanks to his notebooks). But also all that inspired him on site, from the Thames, of course, the industrialized cousin of the Grand Canal, to the homes of the aristocracy, bathed in the grass and the clouds. The interest of the exhibition is increased by the origin of the works: many never left the private British collections.

Baselitz travels through time

VIENNA – He was for a long time one of the enraged young men, one of the subversive talents of European art. One remembers his painting from 1962, Die grosse Nacht im Eimer, showing him as a child, masturbating, was forbidden to be exhibited. Today Georg Baselitz is 68 years old. He is known since 1969 for his characters painted backwards, he has become a sure value, and appears in encyclopedias. The exhibition that opens at the Albertina under the evocative name Remix really deserves the title of retrospective: the artist indeed looks back on his past production, the one of the 1960-70s. It serves him as an inspiration for a new creative period, one less violent, more thought out. Some 30 paintings and 60 drawings are presented for the first time: the majority come from the artist's collection. In parallel, the Rheingold foundation has deposited over the long term at the Albertina an ensemble of 9 paintings and 60 watercolors.

Pages full of Greece

VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ - The influence of ancient Greece on Western art is of course an endless subject. The modern art museum of Lille-Métropole looks into a specific period in France – from 1933, the date Hitler came to power, to the changes in 1968 – and on specific productions – books, drawing, prints, with works on paper by Zadkine, Braque, Laurens, Le Corbusier, André Masson, etc. Following a conducting line inspired by Marguerite Yourcenar, the exhibition is broken down into three «poems»: the origins, destiny, politics. While the first two refer to the antique history and the way of illustrating its myths, the third shows how the thinking of the elders inspired all of Europe in fighting against fascism. The magazinesMinotaure and Cahiers d’art (launched by Tériade and Christian Zervos, who played the role of smugglers, as they were both of Greek origin) illustrate the renewal of the myth of Greece in the XXth century.

Last souvenirs of a Greek king

LONDON – The Hellade, honored at Villeneuve-d’Ascq (see above) is also, in another manner, in London. The collection of King George 1st will be scattered on 24 and 25 January. He reigned from 1863 to 1913. Silvr ware will have a central role, in particular through the goldsmith of the English court, Garrard, his Danish homologue Michelsen or French Poussielgue-Rusand. The links between George and Russia – he married the great duchess Maria Fedorovna with whom he had eight children – explain the great number of pieces signed Fabergé, of which one, a clock in nephrite, estimated at 250 000 £. A lot less will be spent on perfume bottles or cigarette boxes. Chinese objects in jade, stools and consoles in golden wood and a few European paintings from the XIXth century complete an eclectic sale 850 lots, with a grat nostalgic taste. Given the recent royal sales, among them the one dedicated to princess Margaret, we know nostalgia is in fashion…

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Yann Toma : «Let there be West-Light! »

PARIS – Born in 1969, Yann Toma has developed since 1991 a fiction that obeys to the rules of the market: he brings to life a large electricity producing entreprise – Ouest-Lumière ( West Light) - doted with various departments, submitted to fussy shareholders and regularly calling its board of administration to meetings. Fiction or reality? In this era of virtual surges, one does not really understand since Yann Toma has brilliantly mixed up the clues. He bought the name of a company that really existed, the ancestor of Electricité De France, the French electric company, before its nationalisation in 1946. The current shareholders are real persons in skin and bones, that unit themsleves «for good» under the authority of the president for life, Yann Toma. The very complicated organigrams can be consulted over the web and one could see, a few years ago, real-false files stacked up at Artcurial. The fabrication goes even further: Yann Toma spent six months in the Rajasthan and in Delhi to launch, with the help of the last painters in letters, a true advertising campaign over Ouest-Lumière. This campaign is posted in large panels in the streets of Neemrala. For those who cannot go to India, large canvases give an efficient report at the Patricia Dorfmann gallery. The next objective of our president for life: to go conquer America.

The website of the Patricia Dorfmann gallery