Art Of The Day Weekly
#50 - from 7 June 2007 to 13 June 2007
IN THE AIR
Venice? Basel? Kassel?
There is the month of sales, then the "white sales". So now we have the contemporary art week. In a few days Art Basel, the biennale event in Venice and Documenta in Kassel will open their doors. It is as if the Tour de France bicycle tour, the World Soccer Cup and the Olympic games were all held at the same time! Needless to say specialists will be living in a whirling inferno. And needless to add that all other events at this time will go by unnoticed. The only trouble maker could well be Damien Hirst, whose last initiative will set tongues wagging: a sculpture in the shape of a skull, covered with 8601 diamonds, called For the Love of God, for which he wants only 50 million sterling pounds. The White Cube gallery in London, where it is shown with all the security in the world, could be one of the rare galleries not to see its number of visitors go down in this fatal week. And if it does go down, it matters very little as of course White Cube is also at Basel…
EVENTS
Like every year, Art Basel is back
BASEL - This is the undefeated queen of all trade fairs, in spite of the competition from Frieze, Fiac, Arco or Art Cologne. Certain galleries make half their annual income here. But the happy few elected galleries are...few. Samuel Keller has succeeded in confirming the event's role as the main one on the market. The young wonderboy must nevertheless leave the organisation at the end of the year to direct the Beyeler foundation. The uncertainty as to the future of Art Basel will of course be at the heart of the discussions. But what could block this machine? The edition of 2007, the 38th, hosts 300 galleries, 2000 artists (and the same number of journalists) and nearly 60 000 visitors are expected, among them a large number of collectors and museum directors. It is natural to compare this to the life of large department stores. Like at Harrods in London, Arnault and Pinault emissaries as well as those of their peers will rush in as soon as the doors open to fill out their orders in the first half-hour. Among the novelties this year, «Art Premiere» is dedicated to confrontations between two artists and «Art on Stage» to projects that combine visual artists and a live show. This last initiative will be inaugurated on the 11th in the evening at the theater of Basel with the performance An untitled concert by Rirkrit Tiravanija (who was given the Hugo Boss prize) with the Sinfonietta of Basel.
Like every other year, Venice
VENICE – The "in" thing to do is to say one is disappointed by each edition. But how can draw a conclusion when the offer is so varied? The Biennale of Venice attracts participants from numerous countries and offers an unequaled panorama on contemporary creation. It is the Queen mother of all biennial art events, far ahead of the current throngs that fill the air, and the one that continues to set the tone. Whether in the former Italian pavilion, inaugurated in 1895 for the first edition, in the national pavilions, designed by such distinguished architects as Josef Hoffman, Alvar Aalto, Carlo Scarpa, or, for the past few years, in other locations such as the Arsenale, the Biennale is also the opportunity for an architectural promenade. For the 2007 edition, we can note the presence of Sophie Calle at the French pavilion, Eric Duyckaert at the Belgian one, two among the 77 national representations (a record). The director of the event, Robert Storr, has chosen one hundred artists for the international section, at the Arsenale. At the heart of this selection, the Artiglierie show an anthology of African art, around the Angolese collection of Sindika Dokolo. The Gold Lion reward given for the first time to an African artist( photographer Malick Sidibé) is a true symbol.
EXHIBITIONS
Annette's messages
PARIS – She is one of those artists who love weightlessness, or balancing back and forth, like Ernesto Neto for example: her photos suspended by strings (in Mes Vœux-My wishes-), her objects equally suspended (in Pénétration) or placed on pikes, are the best known part of her work and enabled her to be consecrated at the Biennale of Venice in 2005 (she was awarded the Gold Lion with her installation Casino). And yet, Annette Messager is not spontaneously placed in the group of the French «majors», where we find Buren, Boltanski or Sophie Calle, a lot more covered by the media. The retrospective the Centre Pompidou is dedicating to her should contribute to placing her there though. We will see all her favorite supports– photo albums and press cutouts, cuddly toys, materials, stuffed birds, mirrors – all contributing to the thought given to the genre, the identity, the childhood, the place woman has in society. Her installations are often disquieting, disturbing(La Ballade des Pendus -The ballad of the hangman-), but are never without humor, and they have become increasingly imposing and moving with time. For the exhibition at Beaubourg, she has adapted her Venitian creation to the space of the Forum, and it becomes Pinocchio's ballad in Beaubourg.
Like every five years, Documenta in Kassel
KASSEL – Set up in a small German town, it is the least-known point of the trilogy. Yet it is here, through the long period of thought and preparation, that the deep movements that work at contemporary art can be identified. Each edition is entrusted to a new team (Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack in 2007) and the art is presented as projects. To further distinguish itself from other events, Documenta does not organise an opening cocktail for a «happy few» but rather a huge party in the town's park (Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe) to which all the residents are invited. Documenta, founded in 1955, draws its originality from its limits (a town that is not very touristy, small exhibit areas, a budget of 19 million euros of which only 10% are dedicated to the exhibitions), that really give it the aspect of a high mass of art, that of a group of art lovers rather than a social gathering. And the lovers are many: there were 650 000 at Documenta 11 !
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Martial Raysse: the former fan of New Realism
Together with Spoerri she is one of the last survivors of the group of New Realists, federated in the beginning of the 1960s by Pierre Restany around Klein, Arman and César. Raysse is one of th elast known and one of the most ironic in the game of consumer society's objects: in the retrospective currently dedicated to New Realism at the Grand Palais, the greatest success has been reached by his artificial beach with a juke box. In the production of the former athlete from Nice, we note in particular the Oiseaux de parados (Birds of paradox, rubber pipes hanging or the compositions using objects bought at the local supermarket. Even if Raysse quickly drifted away from New Realism, his art received recognition much later, when he broke his own record in an auction. On 31 May, at Sotheby’s in Paris, Tableau cassé(Broken painting) from 1964 more than doubled its higher estimate at 816 000 €.
One of Raysse's works presented at the exhibition New Realism at the Grand-Palais until 2 July.
BOOKS
Courbet's Big Bang
This is probably the most heretical painting in history. Painted in 1866, it was only shown to the public in 1988 (at the museum of Brooklyn), then, on a long term basis, as of 1995, when it entered the musée d’Orsay through a donation. We are refering of course to the Origin of the world by Gustave Courbet. The painting's damned dimension is not the only aspect that calls for an abundance of comments. Its itinerary, from one collector to another, through Europe, is an odyssey in itself. While a large retrospective on Courbet is being prepared at the Grand-Palais for the fall, Bernard Teyssèdre gives a version enriched by his invetigations, that took him from Turkish diplomat Khalil-Bey, who hid this pubic mane in 1867 behind a small green curtain, up to Jacques Lacan's country home. But those are only the best known owners. Light is shed on the others, like the Hungarian count, François de Hatvany, who owned it the longest period of time (40 years). Some rare clues – seen by Edmond de Goncourt in 1889, mentioned in a bank vault in Budapest in 1942, negotiated in Zurich in 1948 – and the presence of unexpected charactes (Gambetta, René Magritte, author of a false Origin of the World, André Masson who created a drawing-cache for Lacan) make the story very spicy. To be read like a detective story.
IN BRIEF
BRUSSELS – The Belgian fair of tribal art, Bruneaf, will be held from 6 to 10 June, with some fifty exhibitors.
LOS ANGELES – The museum of Latin-American art (MOLAA) will open again on 10 June after works carried out to enlarge it, including the creation of a new façade by Mexican architect Manuel Rosen.
PARIS – Auction records, usually reached in London or New York are starting to reach Paris. Is this a sign? A painting by Canadian artist Joan Mitchell, Sans titre (1971) (Untitled) flew off for 5.2 million € at Christie’s on 31 May. The day before, a painting by Francis Bacon, < i>Untitled, at 6.9 million €, broke the record for a contemporary work of art in France.
PARIS – The simultaneous opening of new galleries on the Parisian scene: the Fat Galerie (1, rue Dupetit-Thouars, 3rd arrdt), an extension of the galerie Templon (1 impasse Beaubourg, 3rd arrdt), the galerie Paul Frèches (12 rue André-Barsacq, 18th arrdt, with a first exhibition dedicated to photographer Guillaume Herbaut) and Espace Carte Blanche (151 rue du Chevaleret, 13e arrdt).
TORINO - The palace of Venaria Reale, one of the most imposing residences of the dynasty of the Savoys, is today one of the most important projects of current restauration in Europe. The gardens will open again to the public as of 10 June.
VERSAILLES – The Michel Dermigny gallery, dedicated to orientalist art of the XIXth and XXth centuries, has opened in the district of the Geôle (16 bis passage de la Geôle).
ON ART AUJOURDHUI..INFO
This week do not miss
AILLEURS,ICI: retrospective of François Hilsum
LA ROCHE GUYON - A painter of light and color, marked by lyrical Abstraction and the Ecole de Paris, François Hilsum is in love with the Vexin region where he lives and works. The museum of la Roche Guyon is dedicating a large retrospective with nearly 150 paintings, accompanied by an artist's book on a text by Jean-Pierre Leonardini.