Art Of The Day Weekly

Once again, talk regarding museum funds

The echos on the report by Jacques Rigaud on deaccessioning public collections have hardly toned down, and a new incident has come up to promote the vigorous circulation of the pieces of art that remain dormant in the museum funds. And it does not come from just any source: it is the respectable Museums Association (MA), grouping together the main English museums, that recommends it. The terms of the report, expressed by Mark Taylor, the director of the MA, are quite clear: «Museums collect thousands of objects they do not need. Wonderful collections can become a burden if they are not liberated from unused pieces.» Indeed, the destruction or sale are considered as the last resort. On the other hand, donating to other institutions, exchanging between museums, be it even giving back to the donator, are recommended solutions. In line with their pragmatism, our English cousins from the MA have just published a «disposal kit». This «deaccessioning kit» may be downloaded from the internet. The French version is not yet on line.

Download the «disposal kit» on the website of the Museums Association

French depression

While Drouot gave a rather optimistic report on the past year, the Council of Voluntary Sales (Conseil des ventes volontaires -CVV-) does not feel the same way. The regulatory authority of public auctions uses somber colors and words in the report it handed in at the end of February. One single sector seems toavoid stagnation, the sale of… horses, up 11% in 2007. But they only represent one twentieth of the total amount of the sales that stands at 2 154 billion €, down 2%. The core of the activity - furniture and objets d’art, that represnet over half of the sales – has not made any progress. While hammering its wish for a more favorable legislation, the CW actually believes that one out of two objects, in value, leaves the country to be sold abroad. Compared to the growth rates we see in Asia and the Near East, the French market is quite stagnant. It does not even benefit from the explosion of transactions over internet: no significant operator is French…

The website of the Conseil des ventes volontaires

LAST DAYS ...UNTIL March 2nd... Do not miss GEO HAM Painter of Speed, Master of Posters in Laval See ArtoftheDay article

BRUSSELS - « It is a fact that we are two real theater lovers. Everything that has a link with the stage and and decors deeply touches our soul and once again I was overtaken by this feeling » Paul Klee wrote from Rome to his fiancee Lily Stumpf during the winter of 1901. The exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts explores this attraction the Swiss painter felt. He expresses it in his drawings and paintings of acrobats, clowns and dancers (Klee was fascinated by the circus and by the choreographies of Isadora Duncan and Loïe Fuller) and in his taste for masks. He also expressed it, in a more general manner, in the way he saw the world like a stage where reality and imagination intertwine. The curators complete their demonstration with works – mainly videos - by contempoary Swis artists to show how Klee's spirit survived in the generations that succeeded him.

Daumier, master of engravings

PARIS – Even more so than Plantu or Jacques Faizant, Daumier (1808-1879) supplied the Charivari, a 4-page independently minded newspaper, for 40 years with images. At the time, it was not well looked upon to criticize the people in power: at the beginning of his carreer, Daumier spent six months in prison due to a lack of compatibility of opinion on censorship… When dealing with this polymorphic artist – he was a painter, a sculptor (admired by Rodin) and drawer – the Bibliothèque nationale decided to give preference to its fund which is truly exceptional: the law on the legal deposit of 1817 indeed made it mandatory for newspapers to deposit a copy of each one of their issues. The BNF therefore has all of his 4000 plates, of which the 3500 he made for the Charivari. Daumier was born ten years after the invention of lithography, and he used it widely in his political caricatures (from Louis-Philippe's "pear" to the massacre of rue Transnonain). After 1835, the year in which censorship was reestablished, he turned towards the painting of customs with series on the Tenants, the Justice people or the undescribable Ratapoil. The plates of the BNF are of excellent quality since they are the proofs called «before the letter» (before the caption) on white papir and not on newspaper. Over 200 of them are shown, covering all the periods and all the themes dear to Daumier.

The Italian Ottocento -our XIXth century

ROME - Mention an Italian artist: that's easy regarding the Renaissance, the XVIIIth or the XXth centuries. But when it comes to the XIXth, the Ottocento as our southern neighbors say, it is a totally diferent story … Aside from Canova at the beginning, and maybe the socialite Boldini at the end, very few names come up spontaneously to a foreign observer. The exhibition prepared at the Scuderie del Quirinale wishes to show that painters did not unexpectedly desert the land of art. Though they lost their aura, while the country was in the midst of a unification crisis, they continued to work, grouped together in regional schools: the Romantic Lombards with Hayez and his famous Kiss, the Macchiaioli in Tuscany, with Fattori and Lega, keen on every day life, the Napolitan landscape artists from Pausilippe with Morelli. Out of the one hundred paintings that describe the period, there is one that has become famous even though its author remains little known: that is the Fourth state by Pelizza da Volpedo, the traditional cover of history books …