Art Of The Day Weekly
#89 - from 8 May 2008 to 14 May 2008
IN THE AIR
Correggio plays football
This is the fight to the end at the head of the Italian League 1: the Milan AC team beat the Inter and the suspense is at its climax. Will the AS Roma join Berlusconi's boys in first place? At the bottom of the classification, the FC Parma seems to haved saved the skin off its players' backs by beating Genoa 1-0. Is this little miracle due to the striker Lucarelli, who put in a goal at the 13th minute? Not at all, the hero of this lucky Sunday, May 4 is Correggio. He is not the allenatore (the trainer) nor the portiere (the goal keeper) but a painter. Yes, Correggio, the one who painted the nude sfumati, the delicate necks of the pensive cherubs! Correggio won a football game! In any case that is the conclusion reached by the organizers of the retrospective dedicated to the painter from the Emilia region that will open on 20 September. In order to diversify the advertising media, they printed the poster of the exhibition on the players' shirts. They affirm this is the first time a great master of the Renaissance comes down in this manner to the field. It is not a bad idea, after all. Why not a Warhol exhibit in the locker rooms? Or photos by Bettina Rheims in the Kop stand at the Parc des Princes stadium? In face of the violence in the stadiums, let us demand art!
MUSEUMS
Lisbon, new capital of the Orient
LISBON – The closing of the Kwok-On museum in Paris a few years ago had not gone by unnoticed. And where did its beautiful collection of Oriental puppets go? We have had the answer for some time now and we can go check our information: it was all taken to the Museu do Oriente, the new Portuguese institution that will open on 9 May in a renovated building in the dock area of Lisbon. Next to the Kwok-On fund – the aforementioned puppets as well as porcelains, sculpted heads and music instruments – the museum has an important fund on the Portuguese presence in the Orient (a theme that recently nourished an exhibition at Bozar, in Brussels). It will be exhibited by rotation, the first show being dedicated to Asian masks. The opening week will offer a program filled with concerts, ballets and Japanese movies.
EXHIBITIONS
How to give Michelangelo a face
FLORENCE – He is somehow the Salinger of the Renaissance: Michelangelo did not like to be represented. We have very few self-portraits of the artist, aside from a few appearances under the traits of someone else (saint Bartholomew in The last Judgment at the Sistine Chapel or Nicodeme in the Pietà at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo). It is just as rare to have descriptions by other artists. Casa Buonarroti, the family house built by one of his descendants in the first half of the XVIIth century, presents an obviously concise exhibition on the difficult theme. Next to the four pieces that are a part of the collection – a medal by Leone Leoni, two paintings by Giuliano Bugiardini and Jacopino del Conte and a bronze bust by Daniele da Volterra – we can admire the fiery Michelangelo at 23 in a Roman engraving or the artist in his sixties in a watercolor by Portuguese artist Francisco de Hollanda. Federico Zuccari represented him observing his own brother at work and Van Dyck recreated him by memory, fifty years after his death. To find this star who carefully avoided all spotlights, thera are a few group portraits to be seen elsewhere, in particular the frescoes by Vasari or Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura at the Vatican.
Loth, a German Caravaggio?
MUNICH – We know his French emulators, from Georges de La Tour to Valentin de Boulogne, or his Italian companions, such as Battistello. On the other hand we know nothing, or very little, on the influence Caravaggio had in Germany. The Alte Pinakothek sheds light on an artist long forgotten, Ulrich Loth (1599-1662). He was mostly active in Munich, where he contributed to decorate numerous churches. A four-year study trip to Italy had a great influence on him and after that he completed many commissions for Maximilian I of Bavaria, in particular for historical scenes. The altarpieces and portraits assembled here show how the lessons given by Caravaggio on light or the realism of the characters combined with a baroque sensitivity inherited from Rubens to produce a «militant» painting in favor of the Catholic Counter-Reform.
Steinberg, orchestra-cartoonist
PARIS – Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) is an institution: six decades of good and loyal services as the star cartoonist in another institution, the most stylish American magazine, The New Yorker. The exhibition at the Cartier-Bresson foundation (Steinberg was a friend of the photographer's, whom he frequently spent time with from 1947 to his death) gives us the opportunity to see a part of this wonderful, forever funny production – drawings for smart people according to the an appropriate expression well chosen by a commentator. It also illustrates his nomadic life – born in Romania, his years of architecture studies in Italy (and the first drawings published in the antifascist press), his settling in New York in 1941 after waiting for a visa in Santo-Domingo – and his artistic activity aside from his illustrations. Steinberg made masks from brown paper bags, collages (among them a famous one on the walls of the Maeght gallery in 1966), portraits from finger prints, was also a scenographer… His great number of interests made him -as he himself said- an orchestra director more than a «painter painting».
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Richard Serra under the vaults of the Grand Palais Courtesy Ministère de la Culture / Heymann Renoult
Richard Serra weighs it on
PARIS – The first edition of the Monumenta event, dedicated in 2007 to Anselm Kiefer, had ended with a very good level of attendance – 135 000 visitors in 5 weeks. Just as many are expected for the second edition. Richard Serra, the sculptor who fancies monumental sized works, who drew a «Promenade» under the vaults of the Grand Palais, made of large volumes of steel, will be the star. The California artist, who last year enjoyed a retrospective at the MoMA in New York, is also in the limelight in Spain: the
Reina Sofia museum, that had lost one of his pieces – a surrealist exploit if one simply considers the 38 tons it weighs - Equal-Parallel / Guernica-Bengasi, has agreed to a reedition. To coincide with Monumenta, the sculpture in the form of parenthesis that Serra had made for his exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 1983, Clara-Clara, has been set up again in the Tuileries Gardens.
BOOKS
Parr, a world apart
In the sixties a pioneering collection of small, original, well-written books on travels published by Le Seuil was named "Petite planète" ("Small World"). Martin Parr took up this title, undoubtedly not aware of the filiation. According to the preface it was Henri Cartier Bresson who used this expression when visiting an exhibit by the British photographer. What ever the origin, it is definitely a reduced world, like in miniature, that transcends from these photographs: he shows the erasing of local distinctive signs in all venues touched by massive tourism. Everywhere one sees the same clothes, the same T-shirts with the stupid prints, the same advertising. The worst part is probably something else: the visitor -one does not dare say the traveler-is usually a group animal, has an empty look (or frightened when a native holds him too close), arms dangling (or busy taking the enth useless photograph). Even if we have often seen them, these shots always make us smile at our own ridiculous attitudes. We can regret though that the critical aspect is so reduced: aside from the subjective preface by Geoff Dyer and the cryptic captions, there is no text nor biography.
IN BRIEF
BASEL-While Samuel Keller, director of the Basel Fair, gets ready to leave the stage (he will preside from now on at the Beyeler Foundation), it seems even more difficult to find him a successor than it was believed. Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, who had been named artistic director at the beginning of the year, has just resigned unexpectedly, a month before the opening of the next edition.
BARCELONA-The Loop fair, dedicated to contemporary video art, will be held from 8 to 10 May in the Ramblas Catalonia hotel. Some forty international galleries will take part.
FONTENAY-The water ram of the forge of the abbey at Fontenay, dating back to the XIIIth century, was rebuilt by the students of various European technical highschools. It will be inaugurated on 9 May.
JOUY-EN-JOSAS - Les Environnementales, a biennial on contemporary art dedicated to landscapes, will hold its 5th edition from 13 May to 21 July in the Tecomah park of the chamber of commerce and industry.
NEW YORK - A new record price has been set on 6 May for a painting by Monet: Pont de chemin de fer à Argenteuil was sold at Christie’s for $37 million.
NEW YORK- The International Fine Art Fair, with some fifty international galleries (among them Aaron, Bérès, Boulakia and Taménaga from Paris), will be held from 9 to 14 May at the Armory.
VILLANDRY-The castle of Villandry is enriched by a new composition, the Sun garden. Designed by landscape artist Louis Benech and botanical artist Alix de Saint Vernant, it is inspired from the plans published in 1924 by Joachim Carvallo, the creator of the gardens.