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Art Of The Day Weekly

#96 - from 26 June 2008 to 2 July 2008

IN THE AIR

Don't cry for me, Argentina...

A bicentennial without the Eiffel Tower? Unthought of. It is something equivalent that is about to happen in Argentina. In the midst of the chaos of the strikes, of the cacerolazos (concerts of pots and pans), road blocks and meetings on the Plaza de Mayo, that accompany the tug of war between president Cristina Kirchner and the agricultural world, an anniversary went by unnoticed. The Colón theater–one of the most beautiful opera houses in the world, with revered acoustics – was closed to celebrate its centenary, last 25 May. The restoration works were not finished on time. Well-informed persons have gone so far as to question its inauguration in 2010, for the bicentennial of the independence. An ambitious exhibition, planed for the same date and which studies the French influence on Argentine architecture in the 1900s, could be at risk as well. But it is in moments of difficulty that a country seems to have the genius to find unexpected resources. As proof of this, two of its most dynamic museums were inaugurated in 2001, the year of the great crisis: the MACLA (Museum of contemporary art of La Plata) and the MALBA (Museum of Latin-American Art of Buenos Aires). The latter has just celebrated its two millionth visitor and is hosting since 19 June a major exhibition on Mexican art from 1968 to 1998. This is proof of its local success and its role at the level of the continent. And a way of placing Argentina on the map otherwise than with wine, tango and football…

The website of the MALBA

EXHIBITIONS

Miró's roots

MADRID – The great creators of the XXth century that have participated in all the avant-guard movements can be rearranged in many ways. For Spanish artist Miró, it could be «Miró and Picasso», «Miró and Surrealism», « Miró and freedom», etc. The theme chosen by the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum is more unexpected: «Miró and the earth». From his beginnings marked by the rural world of Mont-Roig, in Catalonia, up to his sculptures and collages, which show his taste for matter in relief, from the «plutonic» figures from the thirties up to his ceramic works, this new way of looking at his work aims at pulling Miró away from the over intellectual games of the Surrealists and showing that this native urban artist also had an element of the rural world in his soul. Among the 70 works exhibited, some are on a privileged loan, such as the most important Miró works from the Guggenheim (Ploughed earth and Landscape) and from the MoMA (Catalan landscape).

  • Miró: tierra at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, up to 14 September 2008.

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  • New China

    PARIS – They are seen everywhere and the spotlight on the Olympic games is not about to slow down their ascension: Chinese artists are the new planet's stars. How can we classify them, differentiate them when it is already so difficult to remember their names? The musée Maillol is trying, for neophytes, to carry out this work of taxonomy. The title of the exhibition underlines the iconoclasm of this new generation. Sheng Qi used gold, the color reserved in the past for the emperor, to cover a cosmonaut in his suit, waving at the visitors with a finger cut off. All the idols are subjected to the same demolition work: Mao, the army, bureaucracy, as well as the consumer society (see the Wrigley chewing-gum by Jiao Xingtao, crushed and treaded, each over a meter long). The performance is for these bulimic creators an expression tool as important as at the time of Fluxus, even if here we can only check it with photographs, like the ones that show He Yunchang molding himself in a concrete screed. What is surprising actually is the variety of techniques used. These young artists – about thirty of them, including stars such as Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang, whose paintings can be sold for more than 3 million euros – are at much at ease with sculpture, photography, video, and ready-made than with traditional oil painting.

  • China Gold at the musée Maillol until 13 October 2008. Catalogue Gallimard.

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  • Avedon's large spectrum

    PARIS – Following Annie Leibovitz last week, another sacred monster of the world of photography has just landed in Paris. Therefore the Jeu de paume museum did not hesitate to open all the site of the Concorde: nearly 300 images are exhibited there, a posthumous homage to Richard Avedon who died 4 years ago. And, like in Leibovitz’s case, his success in the fashion world – where he discovered he was closer to Frank Horvat, preferring outdoor «spontaneous» shots to Cecil Beaton’s sophisticated staging– somewhat hid the rest of his production. Not his well-known portraits, those that cover all the cultural and political spectrum, but rather his subjects with a social aspect: we can thus see his series on the workers in the American West (creating a link in this case with Erwin Blumenfeld), and his reports on the Ku Klux Klan, the Vietnam war or psychiatric hospitals.

  • Richard Avedon, 1946-2004 at the Jeu de paume from 1st July to 28 September 2008

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  • AUCTIONS

    Paper architects

    PARIS - The expert in charge of the sale, Patrick de Bayser, did not hesitate in declaring this is «the most exceptional collection of drawings ever seen on the market ». The compliment is maybe generous but the fund offered by the Millon study seems indeed quite unusual. The collection was started in the XIXth century and was completed by a «distinguished amateur of the XXth century». After been so patiently gathered, one can only regret that it be scattered. Will a white knight show up? Among the nearly 200 lots, the most beautiful elements should not sell for less than 25 000 €: a Project for the palais d’Orsay by Etienne-Louis Boullée, 70 cm long, an ensemble of four architectural follies attributed to Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain or, also dated from the end of the XVIIIth century, a curious reproduction of Versailles surrounded by a colonnade inspired by Saint Peter’s in Rome, by Marie-Joseph Peyre. Following these pens and wash drawings, the XIXth century offers some water colors in the spirit of the prize of Rome, in particular by Alexandre Dufour. For prices very inferior, one can have decorative motifs (chandeliers, ceilings, arabesques).

  • A remarkable collection of architecture drawings by the Millon study at Drouot on 26 June 2008

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  • ARTIST OF THE WEEK


    Lynn Pook et Julien Clauss, Veille, exposé au Dojo de Nice

    Lynn Pook : the beauty of sound

    For some time now visual arts have no longer been limited to the marble bloc to be sculpted or to the canvas to cover with colors. The contaminations between disciplines have knocked down barriers. Lynn Pook, a Franco-German artist born in 1975, studied at the school of beaux-arts as well as dance, and she loves to work on border lines. Her installations leave a major place to sound. With eight loud speakers slipped under the skin, she stimulates the skin

    directly or, indirectly the inner ear, as the sound waves reach it after a journey through the bone network. Evolution of Raplapla, shown in a water tower in Berlin, in 2004, a new audio-tactile system called Veille is set up at the Dojo in Nice. It is the result of a collaboration with Julien Clauss and includes five hamacs and 70 loud speakers, that call upon the body in a unique way.

  • Veille by Lynn Pook and Julien Clauss, presented at the Dojo (22 bis boulevard Stalingrad, Nice) from 20 June to 20 September 2008

    The website of the Dojo in Nice

  • BOOKS

    Magyar colors

    The Fauvists are in the air… After Vlaminck, who has met with success at the Luxembourg museum, now we have Matisse's Hungarian epigones, who also take their name from the scandal created at the Salon d’automne in 1905. One of the main exhibitors from the Hungarian branch was actually present during the founding event: Béla Czóbel was then very near to the famous room 7 (the one with Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck). The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition that just opened in Céret shows the pictorial effervescence that took over Hungary right before WW I, with the creation of an Artists’ Home in Budapest or of an artists’ community at Kecskemét. The influence of Paris was then essential. Many of these Hungarian Fauve artists studied in Paris, either at the Julian academy or with Matisse (such as Perlrott Csaba), and had their workshops there (an appendix to the catalogue gives the addresses). Their unity, materialized by the creation of the group of Eight, did not last long. Consequently, as of 1911, Kernstok, who opted for a classic style, repainted his former paintings. The war took care of dispersing the rest of them. The tragic history of a young couple of painters symbolises it well: Valéria Dénes died of pneumonia on 18 July 1915. Two days later, her husband, Sándor Galimberti committed suicide at her burial…

  • Les fauves hongrois, Biro publishing house, 2008, 264 p., 39 €, ISBN : 978-2-35119-047-0

    To see: the exhibition Les Fauves Hongrois at the Céret museum until 12 October 2008

    Buy that book from Amazon

  • IN BRIEF

    AMSTERDAM – Rembrandt laughing, the painting bought in October 2007 for 2.2 million £ (after being estimated at 1500 £ by Moore, Allen & Inocent, the auction house in charge of selling it), was considered by their main experts as an authentic selfportrait of Rembrandt. It is exhibited at Rembrandt's house until 29 June.

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    CALCUTTA – Architects Herzog and Meuron were chosen to design the KmoMA, the future museum of Modern Art of Calcutta. Co-financed by the government of Western Bengale and private partners, its cost is estimated at 50 million $ and it is programed to open in 2013.

    Read the article in the Telegraph of Calcutta

    LAVAL – The Biennale of sculpture of Laval, held from 28 June to 28 September, will focus on the relations between sculpture and painting.

    Read the article on artaujourdhui.info

    LONDON – A new record has been set for a painting by Monet with Le Bassin aux nymphéas (1919) which was sold at Christie’s on 24 June for 40.9 million £ with fees (79 million $), twice its estimate. One of the top works of the upcoming sales is Untitled (Pecho/Oreja) by Basquiat, estimated at 5 million € at Sotheby's. The seller is the rock group U2, who will pocket a considerable added value. At Christie's, on 30 June, next to a Bacon seen for the first time, Three studies for a selfportrait a painting by Lucien Freud, Naked Portrait with reflection, is estimated at 15 million €.

    The website of Christie's

    PARIS - To coincide with the French presidency of the European Union, the Miistry of Culture launchs a European cultural season: in France, as of 1 July and for six months, 300 artistic events will bring forward the culture of the 26 other members of the Union.

    PARIS – The Pinacothèque of Paris, a new exhibition space that opened in June 2007 at place de la Madeleine, has hosted 700 000 visitors during its first year of activity, marked by the presentation of Soutine and of the Chinese clay soldiers.

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    PARIS - In its sales of 2 and 3 July, Sotheby's offers a large selection of Impressionist and Surrealist works, among them the Village of Sablons by Sisley (600 000 to 900 000 €), paintings and sculptures by Man Ray and an interesting series of political drawings of Vallotton.

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    PARIS - The sale of the furniture from the Royal Monceau hotel has established a record for scattering the contents of the grand hotel: the 20 000 objects brought in 3.3 million € during the 4 days of the auction, directed by Bertrand Cornette de Saint-Cyr, from 19 to 22 June.

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    TURIN – The XXIIIrd World Congress on architecture will be held in the Piedmontese capital from 28 June to 3 July. Some one hundred participants are expected, from Will Alsop to Muhamad Yunus including Odile Decq, Massimiliano Fuksas and Dominique Perrault.

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    VENISE – In the context of the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the exhibition Coming of age, dedicated to American art from 1850 to 1950, will open on 28 June.

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    ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO

    This week, do not miss

    OPENING MAPS

    BRUSSELS - The exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts is one of the largest retrospectives dedicated to young Latin American photographers, from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego. It will present 200 images by 18 artists in three main themes: portraits, landscapes and "alternative stories".

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