Art Of The Day Weekly
#59 - from 27 September 2007 to 3 October 2007
IN THE AIR
France, your art market is still moving...
At least Christine Albanel, minister of Culture, would like to believe so. When she presented a new aquisition by the Musée national d'art moderne (Adoration of the calf by Francis Picabia), purchased with the help of private patrons, she announced an ambitious revitalisation plan. Various measures are currently considered - not programed, immediately inducing a certain precaution… Among them: measures for tax rebates or interest-free loans for new collectors, a crusade against the VAT on imports (but this is a European Union subject), a specific fiscal status to set up foreign visual artists in France (the Irish model?), the simplification of administrative constraints (among them the "police book" in auctions). The initiative is worthy. But in an art market that increasingly resembles the financial market (see the analysis in the latest Art & Auction, showing an ever closer correlation of the indexes), delocalized and globalized, the advance London and New York have taken seems unsurpassable. The golden age of the 1950s (Drouot weighed more than Sotheby’s and Christie’s put together!) is over. It could be wiser to enter targeted actions, in niches in which France still has honorable positions (ancient books, «primitive» arts, drawing)?
EXHIBITIONS
Millais, Pre-Raphaelitism and big bucks
LONDON – For the French public at large, he is the author of one single painting: Ophelia, in which we see Shakespeare's heroine floating in the water in a dress of flowers. To the English public, John Everett Millais (1829-96) has been a national glory as the founder of the Pre-Raphaelites, then as a portrait artist very sought after by the aristocracy. With over one hundred works, the National Gallery re-evokes the career of this prodigal drawer, who was the youngest student in the history of the Royal Academy (he entered it at the age of eleven) and who shocked his contemporaries by treating biblical scenes in an over-realistic manner(Christ in his father's workshop). Together with his friends Hunt and Rossetti, he brought back to life a dream-like Medieval era, peopled with troubadours and long-haired heroines (Isabella, Mariana). In the second part of his career, he lost interest in the principles he defended, multiplied portraits of children with round cheeks and young girls suitable for marriage, and became a very wealthy London notable.
Ferrara revisited
FERRARA - The city, in the Po valley, was a major center during the Renaissance, and had a golden era under Borso d’Este, from 1450 to 1471. In the Palazzo dei Diamanti, which Borso commissioned to architect Biagio Rossetti, there is the presentation of the two best-known interpreters of this refined and profane court art: Cosmè Tura, with a very decorative style, close to the miniaturists, and Francesco del Cossa, with a dryer line, and compositions that are more rigorous and symetrical. We will admire in particular the former's reconstitution of the polyptych of Saint-Jacques, dismantled between Paris, Caen and Florence, and the latter's
Design through the ages
PARIS – We have to admit the word no longer means much. «Design» today refers in a rather vague manner to the objects that are in fashion, as the initial association of beauty and utility has in a way fallen to oblivion. This pressing entry into our vocabulary merits an explanation, and such is the expressed intention of the exhibition at the Grand Palais, as it reviews two centuries of furniture. Rather than follow an «ordinary» chronology, the objects chosen-with decades, be it centuries separating them - are confronted to one another. A low Arabesco table by Carlo Mollino (1949) stands next to a long Bubbles chair by Frank Gehry (1987), a ceiling lamp by Rietveld (1920) faces 1810 Viennese shelves, an African palm wood chair by Pierre Legrain (1924) rests next to the Barbare chair in rod iron and foal leather by Garouste and Bonetti (1981). This journey through materials, forms and motives of inspiration shows certain unexpected correspondences between generations.
MUSEUMS
Arp on the mountain
ROLANDSECK - It undoubtedly has a little resemblance with the Getty Center… The new museum dedicated to Hans Arp is indeed signed by the same architect, New-Yorker Richard Meier. The same dominant location over the surrounding plains, the same aspect of a luminous fortress. It overhangs a building 150 years old, a neo-classic station. The two structures are connected by an elevator and by a tunnel, and have different missions: the lower level is a center for contemporary art dedicated to temporary exhibitions, the upper level is the Arp museum properly speaking. It will hold works – sculptures, drawings, collages - by Hans Arp as well as by his wife Sophie Tauber-Arp.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
A Brief History of Jimmie Johnson's Legacy Courtesy galerie Elba Benítez - Madrid
Mario García-Torres
PARIS – MADRID – The young Mexican artist(born in 1975)did not not go by unnoticed this Summer at the Biennale of Venice and at the Documenta in Kassel.We can admire his works in two different locations. This epigone of conceptual currents works with video or with more anachronic media, such as slides or the super-8 camera. In Paris, where he spent some time in residence at the Kadist Foundation, he presents an enigmatic image July 2007: the result of a projected virgin slide
he kept for a month in his pocket. In Madrid, at the Elba Benítez gallery, his videos question the traditional role of museums or give the status of a work of art to some of man's productions, simply by modifying the way we look at them, such as the abandonned air landing strips in California.
BOOKS
Paris, version X
Unclassifiable and yet very refreshing, this book is a rediscovery of the city: to borrow one of Georges Pérec's titles, this book is an attempt to exhaust a Parisian location. The author strolls through every street of his arrondissement, the tenth. Often in a tone of black humor he enumerates the facades - whether it is those of private homes or filthy windows- the urban furniture, as well as the movement, the traffic – whether pedestrian, automobiles or any other. Along the pages we see appear living or long gone characters, known or not, from abbé Chatel, who became a hypnotizer and a grocer, to Guy Bedos, the comedian. This very personal vademecum is the antithesis of the tourist guide, it sways between the architectural stroll and the sociology summary and is above all a pamphlet against our decor becoming commonplace.
IN BRIEF
BERLIN – The 12nd edition of Art Forum, the international fair of contemporary art, to be held from 29 September to 3 October, will bring together some 120 galleries.
BRUSSELS – 150 Congolese artists, active in all the fields of creation, are invited from 30 September to 20 November, to the manifestation "Yambi", held in various locations, in particular at the Botanique.
EVRY – Nearly 20 years after the inauguration of the cathedral of Evry, designed by Mario Botta, the musée Paul-Delouvrier will open in its space. It includes four permanent collections: Ethiopian art, sacred liturgical art, dream boxes by Madeleine Schlumberger, contemporary paintings.
FLORENCE – The XXVth Biennale of antique dealers will be held in Florence at the Palazzo Corsini from 29 September to 7 October 2007
HAMBURG – The Hamburg Fine Art Fair will host some twenty specialised exhibitors, from 26 to 29 September, at the Decorative Arts museum.
NEW YORK – The Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall, a gallery entirely dedicated to contemporary photography, will open on 25 September at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
PHILADELPHIA – The extension of the museum of Fine Arts of Philadelphia, set up in an Art déco building from 1927, the Perelman Building (the name of the couple of patrons who gave 15 million $), opened on 15 September to the public.
REGGIO EMILIA (Italy) – The Maramotti collection, assembled by the creator of the Max Mara brand, will be accessible to the public upon reservation as of 29 September.
TALLINN – The Biennale of young artists, organized in the capital of Estonia, will open on 28 September. Until 11 November, it will present some forty creators, most of them from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.
ON ARTOFTHEDAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
APARTHEID The South African Mirror
BARCELONA - Apartheid is a painful period of South-Africa's history, and can also be read as a metaphor of the current world order. By putting face to face works by African artists and other parts of the world, the CCCB in Barcelona shows how this mechanism of exclusion continues to operate between peoples, religions or nations.
UNDER THE CHINESE ROOF
BRUSSELS - The reduced models found in the graves in Henan are fascinating works of art, that allow us to retrace 2000 years of Chinese architecture. The Musées royaux d'art et d'histoire present a selection that includes pagodas and theaters as well as kitchens or latrines.
GEORG BASELITZ
LONDON - The Royal Academy dedicates a retrospective to the German painter, known for his "upside-down" figures. Over 60 paintings are shown, together with drawings, engravings and sculptures, among them Model for a Sculpture, that created a sensation at the Biennale of Venice in 1980.