Art Of The Day Weekly
#64 - from 1 November 2007 to 7 November 2007
IN THE AIR
A real obstacle course
Western man is rather blasé and therefore needs strong thrills. We have seen a number of fads come and go, such as war tourism (stroll through conflict zones) or hotels set up in former prisons (for example in Oxford or in Slovenia). Even contemporary art is chipping in with its share of surprises. And they are not only psychologic such as in a recent installation in Denmark where the visitor could decide whether or not to put live gold fish through a blender. One can really get hurt, like a number of people who got slightly injured during the inauguration of an installation by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo at the Tate Modern. It is a huge fault, like the ones caused by an earthquake, that runs all along the great turbine hall (the Tate Modern used to be an electrical plant). The less careful of the visitors fell into the void… Fortunately, contemporary art also knows how to offer moments of leisure to those who run such risks when they try to explore it. Since 1st November, it is possible to spend a night in a hotel perched up on the last floor the Palais de Tokyo. To spend the night in this container designed by Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann, where the client becomes a work of art (the location indeed is open to visits during the day), costs hardly less than a night at the Meurice, that is between 333 and 444 € a night.
MUSEUMS
The greater Prado is born
MADRID – The public has been waiting for some time now for the Spanish museum, one of the richest in the world, to finally come rub elbows with the greater museums in the world in terms of space and equipment. This is now the case. The extension designed by Rafael Moneo, a great brick cube, has just been inaugurated after ten yeras of works and problems. It will serve as a gallery for the temporary exhibits that were previously squeezed into the historical palace of Villanueva. One of the main reasons for fighting this project was the effect on the Hieronymites convent, dating back to the XVIIth century, aborbed by the enlargement: the cloister has been shifted up to the last floor of the building. A new policy of free admission has been announced: it will be limited to the afternoon on sundays but will be extended every day, to the last two hours. To celebrate the event, the Prado presents a rich selection from its own fund of paintings from teh Spanish XIXth century, of which many have never been shown to the public.
All for one and Ungerer for all
STRASBOURG – In principle it is not easy to dedicate a museum to Tomi Ungerer (born in 1931), who made books for children as naturally as he wrote erotic stories or political manifestos. Yet, that is the challenge the municipality of Strasbourg has met, based on the 8 000 original drawings given by the artist to his native town since 1975. The scission is done by floors: the works for children are on the ground floor, the upper level presents the political drawings (against the Vietnam War for example) and the satirical works. In his abundant production, Ungerer has also taken up a theme his predecessors in the Renaissance loved, the danse macabre. His dance of death gives to a garden, next to Fornicon and a slightly shocking assembly of Barbie dolls. Located at villa Greiner, near the cathedral, the museum also acts as an international Illustration center. Next to Ungerer's drawings, presented by groups of 300 or 400 every four months, exhibitions will be dedicated to other contemporary illustrators.
EXHIBITIONS
Germany at the brink of its dark age
PARIS – The Maillol museum has invited famous artists Otto Dix, Max Beckmann and George Grosz, accompanied by Ludwig Meidner to present the portrait of a dark period in German history. 1913-1939: the aim is to show how a society decayed, eaten away by violence, as it entered the Hitlerian nightmare. Three heart rendering portofolios on WW I by Dix, Grosz and Ludwig Meidner are brought together and show images of horror that have nothing to do with the regenerating catharsis it was meant to be, and which pushed the artists to abandon the language of the avant-gardes to recover the accents of Callot or Grünewald. Among the 250 works presented, a great number also covers the republic of Weimar, and its unbelivable combination of unemployed, of decadent and sensual aesthetes and brutal military. The exhibit also allows us to discover some paintings by lesser-know artists such as Gramatté, Felixmuller or Steinhardt.
FESTIVAL
Images from elsewhere
PARIS – Instigated by the musée du Quai Branly, a new photographic biennale is born. Photoquai federates various Paris institutions and aims at making the public discover contemporary creation in the field of set and animated images (videos) with one specificity: it presents only non-European artists. Among the exhibitions integrated in this first edition, some are indoors, like at the Brazilian embassy (Carlos Freire and the Indians from Upper Xingu by Sebastião Salgado), the Australian embassy (aboriginal photographer Ricky Maynard), the BNF (Treasures from the Société de géographie), the Maison européenne de la photographie (installation by Rogerio Reis on the violence in the favelas), or the Chinese Cultural Centre(Liu Lei and Yuan Xue Jun). Others, following a fashion that has been around for some years now, are hung outdoors(passerelle Debilly, quai de l’Alma). It is surely there one will have the best opportunity to make discoveries with 400 images by 70 different photographers, most of them unknown.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
The Hole, 2007, projection DVD (11’ 5’’) Courtesy galerie Praz-Delavallade
Jim Shaw: deux ex machina
PARIS – The California artist (born in 1952) has easily taken on his role of a demiurge. For years now one of his projects has been to create a parallel world, a religion, «Oïsme», with all its paraphernalia of dogma and taboos. Ahead of Second Life and all the virtual reality movements currently overflowing through internet and the digital revolution, Jim Shaw gives body to Oïsme through video films that willingly recall amateur experiences
of the 1970s. He completes his universe with models, objects he makes, or anonymous paintings he brings together (like at the ICA in London in 2000). The Jim Shaw retrospective is the opportunity for the Praz-Delavallade gallery to inaugurate its new space, rue Duchefdelaville: there will be the Vacuum Cleaners installation, a strange orchestra made up of old vacuum cleaners, that make up a «oïste» choir.
BOOKS
Helman, a Rumanian in Paris
There is something of Soulages, of Hartung, and of Soutine in his work, if such close quarters could be imagined between the three. Robert Helman (1910-1990) is among those artists from the middle of the XXth century, whose fame never went beyond the close circles but who carried out a very demanding work, far from changing fashions. His Forests, his landscapes of an imagined Genesis escape figurative art and are heavy with black and somber colors in think coats of paint. In this illustrated monography, the author replaces Helman in his network of relations, which was rather wide: he was a friend of Bénézit, of Mané-Katz and of Maurice Nadeau, as well as of Oscar Domínguez and as a matter of fact set up in the workshop where the latter hung himself on 31 December 1957… Born in Rumania, living in France but a great traveller, Helman perfectly illustrates the open and cosmopolitan dimension of the School of Paris.
IN BRIEF
CIRENCESTER(ENGLAND)- A painting estimated at 1000 £ was sold last week for 2.2 million £ by the Moore Allen & Innocent auction house. The "Democrite" painted on copper in the XVIIth century could be an authentic work by Rembrandt.
LONDON - According to his will that has just been made public, supermarket tycoon Simon Sainsbury, who died last year, left 18 paintings by great masters estimated at more than 50 million euros (Gauguin, Monet, etc) to the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery.
LONDON - A watercolor painting by Winston Chruchill, called Marrakech, which the British statesman had offered American President Harry Truman will be auctioned at Sotheby's on 13 December. It is estimated at nearly one million euros.
PRINCETON - Following the example of the Metropolitan Museum and the Getty, the museum of Princeton university has just reached an agreement to return to Italy works of art illegally exported. Out of the 8 pieces, of which an Apulian vase and an Etruscan bas-relief, 4 will remain on loan at the museum until 2011.
VALENCIA (SPAIN)- The rainstorms last week damaged one of the masterpieces by Santiago Calatrava, the Palau de les Arts, and have led to the cancellation of a part of the greatest opera season in Europe.
ON ARTOFTHEDAY.INFO
This week, do not miss...
ENCOMPASSING THE GLOBE Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Century
BRUSSELS -In the context of Europalia this retrospective of nearly 200 exceptional pieces at the Palais des Beaux Arts tells the great adventure of the Portuguese explorers and adventurers during the Renaissance.
A MAJOR EXTENSION FOR THE PRADO AND TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS
MADRID - The Prado museum has just carried out -around the Hieronymite convent -with architect Rafael Moneo, the largest extension of its two centuries of history. Two exhibitions -The XIXth century at the Prado and Vélazquez, the Fables , mark the event.
CORRESPONDANCES
PARIS - In its series of Correspondances in which it confronts two great masters in its collections and contemporary creators, the Orsay museum presents two original couples: Emmanuel Saulnier -Odile Redon and Jannis Kounellis -Jean François Millet.