Art Of The Day Weekly
#99 - from 4 September 2008 to 10 September 2008
IN THE AIR
Art overdose
What is in store for us this season? This is the traditional question in the month of September and we know, even before giving you the details, that the program will be overabundant. It has certainly not been difficult for us when preparing this 100th newsletter, to point out the «blockbuster» exhibitions, those that will attract hundreds of thousands of visitors: Van Gogh at the Albertina in Vienna (5 September), Francis Bacon, the auction record-breaker, at Tate Britain (11 September), Corregio in Parma (20 September), Nolde at the Grand Palais (24 September), Mantegna at the Louvre (26 September), Rothko at Tate Modern (26 September), design during the Cold War at the V&A Museum (27 September), Venice at the Beyeler foundation in Basel (28 September). We all know that as far as fairs go the Biennale des antiquaires, in Paris (11 to 19 September), will have high attendance figures. It is also well-known that the Biennale of architecture of Venice (as of 14 September) will nourish endless debates. It is more difficult to determine what the surprises will be, the unexpected, delicious, intelligent, original exhibitions… Walker Evans at the Cartier-Bresson foundation (10 September)? Christian Boltanski at the Maison Rouge (13 September)? Fred Deux and Cécile Reims at the Halle Saint-Pierre (15 September)? The Aeppli donation at the musée Tinguely in Basel (19 September) or the biennale of Liverpool (starting on 20 September)? One thing is sure, we will all be exhausted by the time October starts rolling in. It too will bring its load: Picasso and the Masters in Paris, Klimt in Vienna, Canaletto in Treviso and Byzantium in London. Summertime is truly over…
EXHIBITIONS
Another Van Gogh is possible
VIENNA – Is it reallly possible to look at Van Gogh from a new angle, is it even conceivable? In any case it is the intention of the organizers of the exhibition they will dedicate to him at the Albertina… To begin with they do not fail to mention it will be the most important exhibit dedicated to the artist in the last twenty years: 150 works from various international institutions and private collections will be brought together. The aim is to show that the Dutch artist's revolutionary painting has always kept a close link with his notably more academic drawings. If nothing else, the manner itself in which he applied the paint directly to the canvas from the tube, as if he were handling a pencil, reproducing the hatching of the sketches… The 50 oil paintings and 100 drawings and water colors allow us to evaluate the relevance of this interpretation and, at the same time, to see works that are rarely shown or hidden in far away museums, such as these Sheafs of wheat from Dallas and Honolulu or the Path to Saint-Rémy from the Kasama Nichido museum in Japan.
Napoleon's soap has been taken
FONTAINEBLEAU - This is the new fashionable trend: contemporary art has invaded the castles of the Ile-de-France region! There has already been a lot of talk about the arrival of Jeff Koons at Versailles (27 September). The Palais de Tokyo has beaten them by a nose by setting up as of 7 September its team of visual artists in Fontainebleau. Napoleon's favorite castle has undergone an original face-lifting that will undoubtedly not please everybody. Among others, they have already announced a soap bar «with leftovers of Silvio Berlusconi's liposuction» in the Emperor's bathroom, a wood-breaking machine in the Belle Cheminée room and the futuristic choir in the Ballroom. Among the rascals ready to play all of these tricks, we can see among others, Etienne Bossut, Dewar & Gicquel, Daniel Firman, Loris Gréaud and Gianni Motti.
TRIBAL ART
Tribal Saint-Germain
PARIS - «Come stay with me, I live with a gallery owner friend»: this is in a way the spirit that prevails in the «Parcours des mondes», an event dedicated to tribal art, since its creation in 2002. Rather than bring together art dealers in a confined and somewhat offputting area (the convention center in Maastricht for example), they are all invited to a friendly neighborhood, namely Saint-Germain-des-Prés. There are the locals (Jacques Barrère, the Flak husband and wife, Charles-Wesly Hourdé, Bernard Dulon, etc) and those who come from far-away, «squating» other galleries, such as New York galleries Bruce Frank and Pace Primitive or Dalton Somaré from Milano. For this edition of 2008, which aims to be more organized under the new leadership of Belgian organizer and publisher Art Tribal, there are over 60 galleries that will present themed exhibitions, who espouse the large traditional zones of Africa, Oceania and America (the notion of ancestrality at Vanuxem, magic and medicine in Black Africa at Alain Lecomte, masks from Central America at the Furstenberg gallery, etc).
AUCTIONS
The latest in design at Christie's
NEW YORK – Last year, Christie’s was the talk of the town when it bought one of the major London galleries of contemporary art, Haunch of Venison. Sotheby’s is going even further by putting up for auction, on 15 September on London, new works by Damien Hirst, thus bypassing the traditional role of galleries. A few complaints have already been made… In this constant extension of the auctioneers' sphere of activity, Christie’s will organise on 8 September, in New York, their first auction of contemporary design. It is a sort of test: only thirty lots, that could go fetch between 1.2 and 1.7 million dollars – or a lot more if the current appetite for prestigious names – Zaha Hadid and Ron Arad are real global «brands» - is demonstrated again… From the former we shall see a Aqua table, estimated at 150 000 dollars. By the latter, metal sofa D, estimated at 200 000 dollars. As well as a Barbaric chair by Garouste and Bonetti, a feathered stool by Shiro Kuramata or even a yellow piece of furniture by the great Italian artist recently deceased, Ettore Sottsass. Next to offers by young talents such as Mathias Bengtsson (born in 1971) or Maarten Baas (born in 1978) and his mysterious «second-hand bookcase».
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
L'arc-en-ciel humain, 2008
Mixed media,
150 x 150 cm,
Courtesy galerie Alain Gutharc
Marlène Mocquet finds the spots
It is possible that a young woman artist practice figurative art, draw and paint. But it is not really very trendy… At 29, Marlène Mocquet has most of all been seen in collective exhibitions, in rather respectable company. At «Antidote», the contemporary art event organized by the galeries Lafayette, at the musée Réattu this summer in the large exhibition designed by Christian Lacroix, or in Shanghai in an expedition mounted by the director of the museum of Lyon, Thierry Raspail. The game that consists in giving a human face to spots or uncertain runoffs is certainly very Surrealist: Marlène Mocquet's characters and animals are made of bursts of color, from paste that seems to be smeared directly from the tube, of streaks that are somewhat reminiscent of Tanguy and Ernst. After New York (at Freight & Volume), she enjoys a personal exhibition in Paris.
BOOKS
A sense for women
When leafing through the book one has the feeling of running into a modern Robinson Crusoe: a buccaneer with an unkempt beard and a patched-up old vest, Miroslav Tichy uses old instruments more or less repaired with scotch tape or cardboard, that seem to come out from some boatwreck or have been pounded. The man is a photographer but it has taken us a long time to notice it. Though there is currently an exhibition-consecration at the Centre Pompidou (until 21 September), the first article on his work only appeared in 1989, when he was 66 years old. That is because Tichy's work - images that are often blurred, recentered, drawn over with a ballpoint pen - is quite special. He is an observer, a «voyeur», who dedicated himself for over a quarter of a century to one single occupation: to photograph from far, with homemade lenses, women or fragments of feminine anatomy stolen in the street, in the countryside, on the shores of a lake. In brief, the sort of person we would tend to lock up in a psychiatric hospital (which was actually the case in his native Czechoslovakia) rather than honor in a museum of contemporary art… In 2004 the great discoverer Harald Szeeman presented his work at the Biennale of Seville. Tichy has not been taking any photographs for a long time, but now he definitely seems to have come out of the shadows.
IN BRIEF
AXOUM (Ethiopia) – The obelisk of Axoum, that stood in Rome since the end of the thirties (in front of the current headquarters of the FAO) and which was shipped back home a few years ago after being cut into pieces, will be inaugurated in its original location on 4 September 2008.
BRUSSELS-Design September, the design festival that brings together some fifty events and exhibitions, will be held from 7 to 30 September 2008.
BUSAN-The Korean city will host from 6 September to 15 November its Biennale with over 200 works by artists from 40 different countries, under the tile "Expenditure".
GUANGZHOU(China)- The 3rd Guangzhou Triennial will be held from 6 September to 16 November 2008, with the participation of nearly 180 artists from all over the world, around a very political theme, "Goodbye to postcolonialism".
PARIS -The Collège des Bernardins, built in the XIIIth century as a lieu of teaching for the Cistercian order, will return to its original vocation. It was sold as national property during the Revolution, turned into a prison, a fire station and then a police school. It will open again on 4 September following a rehabilitation carried out by Hervé Baptiste, the head architect of historical monuments and Jean-Michel Wilmotte.
PARIS - To celebrate the half century of the creation of the Defense district and that of the EPAD (the public authority in charge of its development), a major pyrotechnic show is organized 9 September at 9 PM.
PARIS -Emmanuel de Roux, a journalist for the past 20 years at the service of newspaper Le Monde's cultural service, and specialised in national heritage, passed away on 24 August at the age of 64.
PERPIGNAN-Visa pour l'Image, the international photojournalism festival, is holding its XXth edition until 14 September 2008.
The Quadriannual of Sculpture of the capital of Latvia will be held until 10 October 2008 under the name "Dictatorship of the majority". Ludwika Ogorzelec, representing France, has united two administrative buildings with wooden lace.
SHANGHAI-The Chinese city will welcome two concomitant events, the 7th Biennale of contemporary art, from 9 September to 16 November 2008, and the second edition of the ShContemporary fair, from 9 to 13 September.
SKIDEGATE(Canada)-The Haida Heritage Center, dedicated to the culture and art of the Haida people in British-Columbia, opened its doors on 23 August.