Art Of The Day Weekly
#42 - from 12 April 2007 to 18 April 2007
IN THE AIR
Museums, the cathedrals of the XXIst century
VENICE – Pinault's «victory», announced last week, has already been the subject of various comments. The municipality of Venice has chosen the French multimillionaire, owner of the Palazzo Grassi, to enhance the value of the Punta della Dogana, a triangular space, a former salt depot, at the opening of the Grand Canal at San Marco. Pinault and his team (including Jean-Jacques Aillagon, who has discovered a new life following the Centre Pompidou and the ministry of Culture) got ahead of the Guggenheim.The result behind this battle between public persons, between financial powers, seems to underline the current almighty power of the concept itself of the museum? We already saw this over and over again with the Guggenheim Bilbao, with the new MoMA, the Louvre in Abu Dhabi: the museum has become the basic magnet to attract tourism. No great city will be found without the construction or renovation site of one (from the new Prado in Madrid to the MUCEM in Marseille). In Venice, this has probably been just enough to tip the scales. The Guggenheim offered a contemporary, frequently renovated program, and obviousy of high quality. In a place that lacked the attractiveness of a new, «strong architectural gesture» (contrary to Bilbao), it also lacked the essential part – a collection. We will all be eager for the rendez-vous at the biennale of Venice in 2009 with the rest of the mysterious Pinault collection, in a setting by architect Tadao Ando.
EXHIBITIONS
Palazuelo, work process
BILBAO - The Guggenheim in Bilbao has organized two major exhibitions to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Next to universal Anselm Kiefer, it presents an important retrospective - nearly 350 gouaches, drawings, paintings and sculptures, very often shown for the first time - by one of the key figures of Spanish art of the second half of the XXth century, who is far from reaching the same international renown. Aside from presenting the works, the exhibition looks at the artist's work process over the last fifty years, and insists on the less known aspects of his work. More than on the mystic and esoteric aspects of his work, it enhances its theatrical character, that makes it different from classic abstraction. Palazuelo is not in search for the autonomy of shapes but rather for the tension between the same. He feels that to do geometric shapes covers a much deeper necessity, the one of knowing what is behind things, deep under ... Shapes are open, for the spectator to complete them...
Anselm Kieter, prior to Monumenta
It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate setting than the Guggenheim Bilbao to host Kiefer's work. The tone is given as soon as one enters through a painting 15 metres tall - a desolate, Winter landscape under a heavy sky - made especially for the atrium of the museum, of which he exploits the space in a spectacular way. Then there are some one hundred monumental works from the last ten years, brought from all over the world and from the artist's collection, that unveil all the facets of his creative universe, in a practically monochrome palette, using canvas, lead, earth, plaster, ashes, dust, branches or dry flowers. Organised by themes, the exhibition brings together works in strong interaction with architecture, through which the artist confronts nature, science, religion and history. The feminine identity also, with headless models, dressed in white crinolines, referring to historic or mythologic characters. Meditation on nature, melancholy, a feeling of loss. Memory must be preserved, for it alone can allow us to assimilate the traumatisms of human history.
Bulgaria, the gold test
SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE – Bulgaria is a mine for archeologists: its grounds have produced extraordinary objects in gold. This very appealing theme had already been explored in 1989 at the museum of national antiquities with «The first gold of Humanity». We are back there today, to celebrate the entrance of this new member into the European Union, with an exhibition that was first presented at the Museum of archeology of Lattes, near Montpellier. From the Thraces to the Greek trading posts on the Black Sea, from the conquests of Alexandre to Rome, from the Byzantine influence to the arrival of the Ottomans (XIVth century), Bulgaria has always been an essential crossroad. With some 400 objects from the diggings in Varna, the former Odessos, this is the story that is told, from the gold bracelets from the IVth century B.C. up to the icones of the end of the Middle Ages including the votive reliefs, from the Hellenistic statuettes of the Menades (bacchantes), to decorated glasswork.
FAIRS
A Spring in Cologne
COLOGNE – This respectable German fair, now at its 41th edition, has dared to do what a younger equivalent (Art Paris) succeeded in doing, that is to completely change its dates and abandon the autum to the Fiac and others like the Frieze. This time, for its first Spring rendez-vous, 207 galleries are listed. The press release refers to a «brilliant» presence of France, but the short list, without prejudging on the quality (the galleries Lahumière, Jean-Luc and Takako Richard, Ritsch-Fitsch, Sollertis, Vidal Saint Phalle, Esther Woerdehoff), does not represent more than 3 % of the participants. The sections dedicated to the young galleries and young artists is nevertheless an obligation in these international encounters: here they are called «New Entries» and «New Contemporaries». Paradoxically, there will be more to be discovered over by the «Hidden Treasures» that bring forward artists over 40 who have been forgotten or neglected, or who have died.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Philippe Parreno:
LONDON – He is probably the French artist who experienced the most spectacular ascent last year, together with Kader Attia, partly due to the film made with Douglas Gordon, « Zidane, un portrait du XXIe siècle ». His one-man-show at the Haunch of Venison gallery, one of the most important in London (recently bought by Christie’s), confirms this, prior to the exhibitions to come at the Serpentine (always in London), the Kunsthalle in Zurich and the Biennale in Venice. Parreno (born in 1964) presents his last work that aims, as is his habit, to produce unexpected moments of reality. Here it is a speech to penguins. It was given in the Magellan Strait this Winter (Summer over there), and is retranscribed through photographs, cartoon strips (with «balloons» blown up with helium). The speech itself can be unloaded off the computer as not to lose a crumb.
BOOKS
The new Akoun is out
It comes out a little after the Michelin guide and is not spoken about on the front page of the press. And yet «the» Akoun has its collectors as well since 1985. This census of the rates of 77 000 artists is a practical tool to carry to auctions to check out the artist before being carried away by the purchasing fever. Certain unprecisions can surely be found. For example, Gauguin's most expensive painting, «Maternity», is said to have been sold in 2005 in the United States while actually it was in 2004 and it is not known whether the price given (transcribed in €, but without giving the exchange rate) includes or not the fees (that can represent up to 20 %). We will forgive them for taking the tool for what it is: a compilation (easy to handle!) of avearge rates of artists of which most are not well known by the public at large. Around Gauguin, to pick up his example once more, we see Gauffriour, Gaugiran Nanteuil, Gaulbert, Gauley, Gaulis… How could we rate them and compare them to one another? For all these unknown artists, the choice is to imagine what a painting in a standard format, of 65 x 50 cm would cost, based on extrapolations on the recorded auctions. This would be an original exercice, that would be clear cut and contested if it were not often accompanied by real results with an indication on the dimensions.
IN BRIEF
HONG KONG – The sales of Asian art organized by Sotheby’s from 7 to 9 April set various records, among them the one for a Chinese painting: Put Down your Whip by Xu Beihong that sold for 6.9 million €.
NEW YORK - American artist Sol LeWitt, known for his «Wall Drawings», large geometric compositions, has passed away at age 78.
NEW YORK – According to the New York Times, the 32 paintings by Jackson Pollock, discovered a few years ago and which are questioned as to their authenticity , seem to have been sold by their owner, Alex Matter, to gallery owner Ronald Feldman.
PARIS – Jean Nouvel has been chosen as the architect of the future Philharmonic of Paris, ahead of others and in particular of Zaha Hadid, Christian de Portzamparc and Coop Himmelb(l)au
PARIS – Brun dense, a painting by Kandinsky, was sold for 1.6 million € on 30 March by the Aguttes agency. It is to date the most expensive sale in 2007 in France..