Art Of The Day Weekly
#83 - from 27 March 2008 to 2 April 2008
IN THE AIR
131 million dollars
NEW YORK - 131 million dollars: that is the amount one single man is ready to give one single museum, on one single condition: that it not leave the historical building it occupies. We could say that this generous gesture will not cost too much to the man who announced it and that it will not even affect his fortune, that is measured in billions of dollars. But he could just as well have bought himself a private home, a few yachts or a baseball team. We can therefore pay tribute to Leonard Lauder, one of the heirs of the Estée Lauder empire, who announced in the New York Times that he has taken all the necessary precautions so his donation may not be endangered by a shifting economy: the amount has been invested for various years in bonds of the US treasury. In the Lauder family, brother Ronald is the one who most often appears in the media as he opened the Neue Gallery, dedicated to German and Austrian art and who acquired the most expensive Klimts in the world. By the way, what museum are we talking about? It is the Whitney Museum, located near Central Park in a building designed in 1966 by one of the masters of the Bauhaus, Marcel Breuer. By financing the development of the museum and defending modern architecture, Leonard Lauder has hit two birds with one single stone.
EXHIBITIONS
Karavan comes through Berlin
BERLIN – When an Israeli artist who has produced a lot on the war and antisemitism has a retrospective in the German capital, there is always a symbolic aspect to the event, even if he has already worked in the country (with, in particular his Street of Human Rights in Nuremberg). The retrospective is developed over some twenty rooms of the museum, and covers all of the career of a sculptor born in Tel-Aviv in 1930, who started as a decorator for Martha Graham's dance company. He then became known for his installations such as the monument to the Negev brigade at Beersheba, in Israël (1968) or the sculpture Passages in Port-Bou, Catalonia, dedicated to Walter Benjamin. As we can well imagine these works are not reunited for this exhibition, but all of their accompanyment is: photographs and films, drawings and models. At the entrance of the museum stands a work especially created for this occasion, on the history and divisions of Berlin.
Corinth's flesh and tones
PARIS – Serge Lemoine, who has ceded his place as president of the musée d'Orsay to Guy Cogeval, is retiring with flying colors as he is the curator of this retrospective dedicated to one of the greatest German painters of the first half of the XXth century. Even though he was taught in Paris by Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury, Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) has never had an important exhibition in France. This one, with 80 paintings and some thirty works on paper, focuses on his different favorite themes: mythology, landscapes of an elderly life or portraits, representing an important part of his production around 1900, at the moment of the Secession. Once he settled in Berlin, Corinth became the interpreter of the exciting and liberated life of the German capital, and the nude – which he treated in a very carnal manner - his most personal motif.
Paracas, death in this material
PARIS – They are 2000 years old and yet they only appeared on the artistic scene at the beginning of the twenties: the director at the time of the national museum of Archeology of Lima, Julio C. Tello, was surprised to see textiles of extraordianry quality appear on the clandestin markets in Peru. Following the tomb robbers, and by diggings in the arid region of Paracas (on the coast, at some 250 km to the South of Lima) archeologists brought out to the light of day an exceptional ensemble of «fardos». These are materials used for funerals that were wrapped around the mummified bodies. A small number of them will be leaving Peru for the first time, after being the object of a restoration campaign financed by the museum of Quai Branly. Their motifs are quite varied (with very precise symbols), as are the techniques, and the forms (ponchos, tunics, turbans, etc) and are presented with the precious objects that accompanied them in the tombs. Another exhibition complements the first: it is dedicated to artist Elena Izcue, who between the two wars created for French fashion designers textiles inspired from the precolombian motives.
THE MARKET
Japan's hour
NEW YORK - There was a lot of talk about the young British artists, then the Chinese, finally the Indians and creators from the Middle-East, who all broke records, en masse. A very discreet country is now in the limelight: Japan, that had not been seen in this type of celebration since the pharaonic purchases by its business entrepreneurs at the beginning of the 90s (with a Van Gogh and a Renoir that had reached historical prices, going past the barrier of the 50 million dollars). In this case it is not a contemporary installation but rather a much older piece that is honored. The Sitting Buddha in cypress wood from the XIIth century, that completed this feat, had been recently discovered. It went for 14.3 million dollars at Christie’s, multiplying its estimate by seven. The buyer has a tradition as a sponsor and investor in confirmed art: it is the major department store Mitsukoshi, the equivalent of the Galeries Lafayette or Saks 5th Avenue, in the archipelago.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Château de Versailles II, courtesy galerie Yvon Lambert
Candida Höffer : empty Paris
Born in Cologne, Candida Höffer was the student of Bernd Becher, who gave birth to a whole current of German contemporary photography, marked by the research of extreme objectivity, often united under the term school of Düsseldorf. While the Bechers worked outdoors, photographing gaz pipelines and industrial intallations under a white light, Candida Höffer preferred interiors, which she reproduces in immense formats. She kept the principle
of a frontal vision – which allows to amplify the effect of perspectives -, and natural light, and like the Bechers carried out themed series in which man is strangely absent. With the small difference that the places she photographs are symbols of human genius: librairies, theatres, museums. The ensemble she presents at the galerie Lambert, called «Paris Serie», brings together, among others the Sorbonne, the castles of Versailles and that of Fontainebleau.
BOOKS
The horse's palette
It is man's most noble conquest. It is also, no doubt, the animal that has been most represented in art. He appears in the Lascaux caves, then in the paints or pastels of Gozzoli, Rubens and Degas. Closer to us, agitator Maurizio Cattelan took the liberty of hanging a taxidermised example in a gallery. There is enough to fill a large volume on horses' artistic misadventures, given here in a chronological order. The civilizations that gave them an important place, such as the Persians, the Romans or the Arabs, are obviously the theme of long chapters, illustrated with bronzes, ivory diptychs, mosaïcs or objects in hammered silver. Themed chapters – horses and war, harnasses, sporting art - enrich the texts and show that the mount may be presented in many different ways. Géricault presented it in a fiery semi-savage race, while the horse almost became an interior ornement for the English in the XVIIIth century.
IN BRIEF
HOUILLES – The 7th Biennale of young creators, with the presence of 12 young visual artists chosen among 150 candidates, will be held from 28 March to 18 April.
LONDON - The Apotheosis of James I, a painting by Rubens currently exhibited at the Tate Gallery, has been put on sale by its owners, descendents of the viscount of Hampden. The Tate Gallery has launched a campaign to gather before 31 July the 6 million £ needed to buy it back.
LONDON – The Commonwealth Institute, in Kensington, an emblematic building of the 60s, will be restored by architect Rem Koolhaas, who will also be in charge of supervising the development of the site.
NEW YORK – The Armory Show will be held in New York from 27 to 30 March with 150 galleries. Various «satellite» fairs, dedicated to contemporary art, are organized at the same time, among them Pulse at Pier 40, grouping together 80 contemporary art galleries, Volta or Scope.
PARIS – The sale of the imperial library of Dominique de Villepin, by Pierre Bergé and Associates, brought in 925,000 € on 19 March, i.e. twice its inital estimate. The Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène by Las Cases, represented the highest bid at 38,752 €.
ROME – In March Italian customs officials seized an ensemble of 6000 archeological objects, clandestinally taken from diggings, among them columns, mosaics and bas-reliefs from the end of the Empire period.
TORINO – The Charter of Torino, signed on 7 March by various major European institutions, is a text for the museums of decorative art, that defines commun principles and initiatives.