Art Of The Day Weekly
#63 - from 25 October 2007 to 1 November 2007
IN THE AIR
Soft or brutal recession?
October has been the month of capital fairs (the FIAC in Paris and Frieze in London, just like a remake of a rugby game). The month of November is traditionally filled with beautiful Imressionist and Modern auctions. Old proverbs claim that bad November weather ensures a good year. We have gotten so used to a continuous rise in auction prices for the great masters, definitely starting with the million $ (Klimt, Pollock, Picasso), that we are generally indifferent to the year's harvest. Who will reach the first place on the podium? Picasso with his Lampe from 1931 or Gauguin with his Te Poipoi, the Tahitian landscape from 1892 (both at Sotheby’s New York on 7 November)? The news the public at large hears over the evenig news is more like a hit parade than anything else. Should we interpret the result of these auctions as an almost exclusive indicator of the sector's health? Maybe then we run the risk of pushing certain investors towards other choices? Towards barley? Biofuels? Oil? In an increasingly global and ephemeral market, where art has become a commodity like any other, cascade reactions, similar to the American subprime crisis, should maybe not be brushed aside.
EXHIBITIONS
Another Siena
LONDON - To speak of Siena in the XVIth century is like righting a wrong. Why? Because the Tuscan town is systematically associated to the end of the Middle Ages, with the masters of the XIIIth and XIVth centuries such as Duccio and Simone Martini rather than with the blooming Renaissance. The National Gallery presents itself as a dispenser of justice, which it can easily do given the fund it owns in this field. At the heart of the exhibition there stands a reconstituted altarpiece: the curators re-assembled the missing parts of the polyptych of Asciano, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin. Masters with poetic names, belated painting experts with gold backgrounds, are among the artists to be discovered, such as Matteo di Giovanni. From Neroccio de’ Landi, we can admire a very symbolic piece: the statue of Saint Catherine, the town's patron, which has never left Siena in half a millenium. On the other hand, the last section is dedicated to a well-known master, Domenico Beccafumi, one of the stars of mannerism next to Pontormo or Parmesan. Here too it was like a treasure hunt since the paintings shown here were in the home of a wealthy merchant in Siena.
Paris-loving Japanese
PARIS – The only one we really know is Foujita (1886-1968), a friend of Man Ray's, of Kisling's and of Kiki's, totally incorporated in the adventure of Montparnasse. And yet, more or less at the same time as Gauguin and Van Gogh found their inspiration in the Land of the Rising Sun, many other Japanese came to find theirs in Paris. La Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris, celebrating its tenth anniversary, helps us discover some fifty paintings. Next to Foujita's uncomparable white lines, here are the pioneers Seiki Kuroda and Chû Asai, bards of academicism who participated in the universal Exhibition of 1900, then Sotaro Yasui, influenced by Cézanne and Picasso. When they returned to Japan, these artists tried to reconcile the local motives with Western technique - yôgâ painting – and sometimes reached enviable fame. Others, such as Yûzô Saeki, met the fate of the accursed poets and died from tuberculosis in suburban dispensaries…
Canova meets Venus
ROME – A few months ago, a sensational piece of news shook the Roman cultural inner sanctums: Canova, the severe, austere Canova, would have done his sculpture of Pauline Borghèse by making his mold directly on her breasts…As there is no proof to this audacious act, we can reach no conclusion. But if we visit the exhibition at the Borghese gallery, we will recognize once again the cold sensuality that emanates from his plasters and marble. The museum he cherished the most has brought together some fifteen Venuses made throughout the career of the neo-classic artist(1755-1822). These Venuses from from afar: the Sleeping Nymph from the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Naïad from the du Metropolitan in New York and the Three Graces from the Ermitage. Sketches, plasters, paintings and the complete series of his Amours show how the artist pursued his quest of an ideal beauty, unpersonal, which he also imposed on the French Imperial family. The nearly fifty pieces shown are set in the permanent galleries, in order to allow them to dialogue with the works by Corregio or Bernini Canova worshipped.
MUSEUMS
The Louvre: Kiefer follows in Braque's footsteps
PARIS – This week the Louvre museum will unveil the decor it commissioned to Anselm Kiefer, a staircase in the department of the Egyptian Antiquities. This is the first time a contemporary artist intervenes in the museum since Georges Braque more than half a century ago (in 1953 with the ceiling of the Etruscan room). It is symbolic of the opening of the museum towards current creations, which seems shocking to some but is not very revolutionary since Poussin or Ingres, in their time, had already been called in. The theme chosen by the artist, «Frontiers», which corresponds to the artist's personal experience (war, the rise and fall of Nazism, the German reunification) is developed as a large canvas representing the constellations and funerary practices. It works as a conductor to the cultural program that accompanies this inauguration with, in particular, a choregraphic creation by Bill T. Jones.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Irrational Promenade, 2003, color photograph, 150 x 120 cm, courtesy galerie Xippas, © Marc Domage, © ADAGP, 2007
Philippe Ramette: his upside downs
Cocteau used to say jokingly that in Venice the pigeons walk and the lions fly. Philippe Ramette, born in 1961, invites us to the same sort of reversal of values. His work happily defies and breaks all the rules of gravity and of the perspective. His series of the Balcons is the most known, in which railings and parapets are vertical, and not horizontal. But he can also show chairs that fly or mirrors in which one can enter (to go through). Alice of course comes to everyone's mind…At the domaine de Chamarande, Ramette shows a palette of his creations. He has also created six works unseen to date, of which a huge aluminum ladder. As it is placed against the castle, it gives the latter the appearance of a doll's mansion. A bit further away, there is a greatly enlarged puppet theater where the puppets are missing: the visitor quickly realizes she/he can play
the role. Ramette's installations authorize various readings - that of the absurd but not only - which makes their wealth. * Philippe Ramette at the Domaine départemental de Chamarande (Essonne), from 21 October 2007 to 3 February 2008
BOOKS
Group spirit
In the tradition of the art history agendas, launched with success by Italian publisher Electa, Hervé Gauville, the former columnist at French newspaper Libération, draws a profile of the art world after WW II. He dissects it by following a «community» thread: what we are dealing with here, is all this art that is written in movements, associations, fraternities. In thehistory of Equipo Crónica, of the Transavanguardia, of the narrative figuration or of Supports-Surfaces, we find the fever of group creation that gives (a little) life back to the atmosphere of the workshops of the Renaissance, with one small difference, in that the rigid hierarchy that existed in the past between master and students has been done away with. From poetic trials that make us dream such as "nuagisme" to Pop Art, from the Présence Panchounette in Bordeaux to the Japanese Gutaï, the inventory combines East and West, the famous and the forgotten, unveiling a few interesting (re)discoveries along the pages.
IN BRIEF
COLOGNE – The Cologne Fine Art fair will be held for the first time in the autumn, from 31 October to 4 November. It has in particular a well developped Art brut section.
LA ROCHELLE -The Museum of natural history will reopen on 27 October, after 10 years of works and an investment of 10 million €.
PARIS – The Fondation du Patrimoine (Heritage Foundation) will celebrate its 10th anniversary with an photograph exhibition on 150 operations carried out over the last decade.
PARIS - In the unique setting of the Galeries Royales of the Madeleine, a brief, almost confidential exhibition (until 10 November), brings back to life two publications that marked the intellectual life at the turn of the century: the Revue blancheand the Cri de Paris , through issues, photographs, posters, letters often not published and kept in the Natanson family. Capiello, Hermann Paul, Vallotton, the Nabis and all the great illustrators of the time are present...
PARIS - The 2007 Marcel Duchamp Prize has been awarded to Tatiana Trouvé, an artist born in 1968 in Cozenza (Italy) who lives and works in Paris.
TORONTO – The Toronto International Art Fair will be held from 26 to 29 October.