Art Of The Day Weekly
#60 - from 4 October 2007 to 10 October 2007
IN THE AIR
Sponsorship made to last
Culture has an ever growing need to be financed by non institutional sources, and this requires the development of patronage. While corporate sponsorship has become part of the way of being of multinationals, whose logos we often see decorating the posters of the major exhibitions, it is more difficult to set up for smaller companies. A Mr. Sponsorship is in charge, at the ministry of Culture, of spreading the good word and informing the public of the favorable measures of the Aillagon law in terms of tax reductions. A few examples seem to show that things are moving and that the initiative may come from local structures. The COPARY, the community of municipalities of the Revigny region, in the Meuse, has thus coordinated an original awareness campaign. In 14 units, from a doctor's practice to a carpenter's shop, from a construction company to a tile manufacturer, sponsorship has become a tangible reality, implemented from very simple questions. What type of art do you like? How could you collaborate with an artist? What can he bring you? One has reason tohope that this first experience, to be seen on site until 30 November, will give some the desire to continue.
EXHIBITIONS
What was once Nigeria...
PARIS - They have been awaited for one hundred and ten years: the most beautiful pieces of the civilisation of Benin, taken by the British after the take over of Benin City in 1897, and which had ended up in some of the major European museums (the British Museum, of course, but those of Berlin and Vienna as well) will finally arrive in France. These are the bronze figures in lost wax (effigies of sovereigns, animals or boxes), sculpted ivory (among them the saltcellars that were the pride and joy of the princes of the Renaissance) or ceremony clothes made in corral. The exhibition is not limited to present, in 280 issues, the master pieces of this art of black Africa, which developed between the XIVth and the XIXth century on the territory of what today is Nigeria. It also explains the organisation of the court, the rituals or the commercial relations with the portuguese colonists. The latter, with their long beards, often appear on the wooden, bronze or brass sculpted plaques, with their weapons and their monetary objects that allowed them to buy the local produce. Already five centuries ago, cultural crossbreeding was not an empty word…
Rothko in Rome
ROME - The colored compositions that made him famous are here of course, the oils and acrylics on canvas, called Black over Reds, Dark Greens on Blue with Green Band, allusively N° 15, N° 20, N° 11 or, even more simply, Untitled. But the mysterious Mark Rothko, born in Russia and who committed suicide in New York on 25 February 1970, is also present with paintings that are even less expected since they are old «classics», that is figurative, among them surrealist works from his youth, a selfportrait from 1936 or Metro entrance from 1938. In total, this is a real retrospective, with nearly 65 paintings, which the curator Oliver Wick managed to mount with loans from the funds of American, English, German, Canadian or Australian museums, as well as from the family's collections. Given the prices reached by Rothko (73 million $ in May 2007), one can imagine that this type of gathering will become increasingly rare. While we await the opening of Maxxxi and Macro (the institutions dedicated to contemporary art designed by Zaha Hadid and Odile Decq), this is also a means of replacing Rome on the path of the major cultural events: the Palazzo delle Esposizioni will reopen to the public for this event following a long refurbishing.
The Persian force
PARIS – While Iran is banished from the international community, Persia is welcome with open arms. And yet it is the same nation, with the historical distance added to it… The Louvre offers an original double exhibit. In «Le chant du monde», Iran's art under the safavide dynasty (1501-1736) is presented, a period of refinement in which illuminated manuscripts, sculpted metal objects, historiated ceramics, gouaches on paper are presented side by side. In parallel, we are also invited to see the future Museum of the Aga Khan, who «fled» to London and Europe and who was born in 2011 in Toronto, designed by architect Fumihiro Maki. Here the presentation is larger since it encompasses the productions of central Asia, from India or muslim Europe at the Middle Ages, from silk coats to ancient Korans.
FESTIVAL
Europe in your pocket
BRUSSELS – It is always delicate to design a «best of». To prove this, we simply have to quote the recent list of the seven new wonders of the world, in which the influence of the Chinese web surfers pushed the choices towards the Great Wall to the detriment of Angkor or the Egyptian pyramids… During Europalia, a festival meant to celebrate the Community spirit , Roland Recht, a well-known specialist, was asked to coordinate the selection of masterpieces of European art , over a millenium and a half, from the Vth to the XVIIIth centuries. There is always a possibility to argue against a nomination or regret another. But this anthology must be seen as the universal expositions of the XIXth century: a catalogue in all directions that leads to unexpected encounters. The 350 pieces come indeed from 150 different institutions and place face to face sculptures, statues, drawings, illuminations, among them works that have never left their nest, such as the Book of Dimma (Trinity College, Dublin) or the Très Belles Heures by Jan Van Eyck (Museo Civico, Turin)
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Claude Lévêque, Tous les soleils © P. Bodez - Conseil Régional de Lorraine
Claude Lévêque: ode to the smelting furnace
He is one of the strong values of French contemporary art. Claude Lévêque (born in 1953), who does not deny the influence of the American scene and who is sometimes compared to Bruce Naumann, is unique by his sense of an installation. Whether it is pink curtains wrinkled by a gust of wind or a hammered, reflecting sheet metall (a commissin for the Paris tramway), he likes to work with the
most diverse materials and to stage them, accompany them with music and colors. His last intervention, a commission for the Ministry of Culture, is undoubtedly the largest since it is applied ot an industrail cathedral, a smelting furnace, the U4 in Uckange, a remnant from the metallurgical industry of the XXth century, inactive since 1991 and now classified as an historic monument, that lights up in yellow and red as night falls.
BOOKS
Being an artist in the XIXth century
How did Gauguin, Matisse and Degas decide to become artists ? How did Courbet, Manet and Signac live? How did they chose their model? How did they bend to the demands of the prize of Rome or the annual fair? Who were their collectors, their art dealers, their critics? This highly documented study is easy to read given how much the «raw» information (the procedures to enter the Ecole des beaux-arts, for example, or the management of the galerie Goupil) nicely resembles a simple anecdote. We learn about the "Masse" at beaux-arts (the till the students had to pay their models), that Rodin decided to become a sculptor when reading a book on Micheal-Angelo or that Ingres was a deadly director of the Académie de France in Rome. In a century that saw the opening and death (in 1880) of the Salon officiel, the birth of Drouot (in 1852) the admission of women to the Ecole des beaux-arts (1897), the daily life of artists can be read like a real novel.
IN BRIEF
CARDIFF- The Artes Mundi prize, one of the most richly gifted in the field of contemporary art, has just announced the list of its nine finalists. They are Lida Abdul, Vasco Araújo, Mircea Cantor, Dalziel and Scullion, N. S. Harsha, Abdoulaye Konaté, Susan Norrie and Rosângela Renno.
LONDON - The Turner Prize, one of the most mediatised rewards in conteporary art, will be given for the first time in Liverpool. An exhibit at the Tate Britain, open from 2 October to 6 January, gives a presentation of these 23 years of existence.
MILANO-The first restauration site of contemporary art open to the public, this is the way in which the safeguard campaign of the painted ceiling by Lucio Fontana at the palazzo Litta is presented, and may be visited since 29 September until 20 December.
NEW YORK - The International Art & Design Fair will be held from 5 to 10 October at Park Avenue Armory, with the participation of 56 international galleries.
PARIS- The 6ème Nuit blanche (Sleepless Night) will be held in Paris from Friday 5 October to the morning of Saturday 6 October, with various events and artistic installations. This edition, directedby Jean-Marie Sogy and Jérôme Delormas, is dedicated to Ingrid Betancourt.
PARIS-The first Drouot litterary prize, which rewards a fiction work that refers to the art world, has been given to Antoine Laurain for his novel Ailleurs si j'y suis (Elsewhere, if I am there).
PARIS-The Gruppo Campari prize for the young French creation 2007 has been rewarded to video artist Eric Baudart.